Antiquary - Dusty Duelist

This is a placeholder build that was useful in the past. Click here to view current builds.

Focused on: Hybrid damage, Control and Sustain

Designed for: PvP Conquest

Expansions required:

Difficulty:

Hard

Overview

A hybrid-damage Antiquary build centered around spamming the namesake Dust Strike as well as various artifacts. Can be a capable teamfighter as well against comps with low Resistance.

Skill Bar

Staff

Shortbow

Utility

Skill Variants

Utility

• Emergency Jade Shield over Roll for Initiative - better as a stunbreak, best if used with Prodigious Pincher.

Elite

• None: Skritt Scuffle provides far too much value.

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Specializations

Variants

• Pressure Striking over Bountiful Theft - trades utility for damage.

Variants

• Prodigious Pincher over Possessive Hoarder - higher skill cap and lower boon uptime in exchange for more initiative and cleanse. realistically, both of these traits are viable picks, differing only slightly in power.

Equipment

Staff

Sigil

Sigil

Shortbow

Sigil

Sigil

Rune

Amulet

Relic

Equipment Variants

Amulets

• - more raw HP. Good into condition builds.

Weapons over Shortbow:

• Scepter/ Pistol for more versatility in fights at the cost of map mobility. notably the root from Measured Shot is deadly in combination with Mistburn Mortar, follow with Head Shot to really seal the deal.

Usage

Basics

• Use Skritt Swipe at the very start of the game to obtain a set of artifacts. Artifacts and information about them can be found below.

• Stay on staff unless you need Infiltrator's Strike or Choking Gas.

• Use Canach-Coin Toss to regain initiative. With Scoundrel's Luck you get a free cast of it after using any artifact.

• Dust Strike is what you'll be spending most of your initiative on. It costs 4 initiative, applies Blind 3 times, does decent damage but more importantly gets 1200 additional value thanks to Cloaked in Shadow. Combined with Relic of the Mist Stranger and Enterprising Aristocrat you have a lot of sustain so long as you keep spamming Dust Strike.

Elite specialization basics

• Antiquarians gain access to Skritt Swipe which functions as their Steal and benefits from all traits that would affect it. Using Skritt Swipe with or without a target will give you a set of artifacts. This build takes Prolific Plunderer which makes your artifact sets consist of 3 artifacts instead of the default 2, and you'll be able to use 2 artifacts from a pilfered set. Your F2 will always be an offensive artifact, F3 is always a defensive artifact, F4 can be either.

• Using an artifact restores 1 initiative.

• All artifacts have an immediate effect and a lingering bonus effect. The lingering effects are applied when the skill finishes casting. They don't need to hit anything for you to get the lingering effects.

• High value artifacts: Mistburn Mortar -- Forged Surfer Dash -- Exalted Hammer -- Chak Shield. These are your best available artifacts.

• Medium value artifacts: Zephyrite Sun Crystal -- Metal Legion Guitar (weapon stow after the first pulse) -- Summon Kryptis Turret. These are situational but still good.

• Low value artifacts: Holo-Dancer Decoy -- Unstable Skritt Bomb. Outside of niche situations these should be avoided.

• Skritt Scuffle is your elite. It gives you a fresh set of artifacts every 3 seconds as long as you remain in its radius. Due to the high average power of artifacts & the traits they trigger, you'll want to try and use one from each set you get. Being able to quickly adapt to which artifacts you get from this skill is key to the success of this build.

General

• Use Skritt Swipe without a target during downtime to fish for good sets of artifacts, or during combat on a target to interrupt a key ability.

• Before using an artifact, if you have Scoundrel's Luck, use Canach-Coin Toss.

Mobility

• Using Skritt Swipe gives 10s of Swiftness.

• Use Infiltrator's Arrow to quickly traverse the map. You can use artifacts to regenerate initiative through Enterprising Aristocrat, Canach-Coin Toss & Scoundrel's Luck.

Defense

• Your third and fifth skills on staff, Debilitating Arc and Vault, both give you 1/2s of evasion and should be used as pseudo-dodge rolls. This build doesn't have access to Vigor so interspersing these skills with Dust Strike is key to staying alive.

• Emergency Jade Shield is an always-available stunbreak as long as you have Scoundrel's Luck's buff. You'll have to choose between Canach-Coin Toss and Emergency Jade Shield in the heat of battle, so try and keep in mind ahead of time what you're more likely to need.

• Canach-Coin Toss is your primary source of condition cleansing. Use Scoundrel's Luck's buff on Canach-Coin Toss at any time to cleanse conditions and regain initiative.

• Infiltrator's Arrow and Vault can both be used to escape. The latter provides 1/2s of evasion when used but doesn't travel as far. Both have high initiative costs.

Advanced

• Weakening Whirl creates a number of Whirl finishers. Use it on top of a target while standing in Mistburn Mortar's fire field or Cover of Shadow's dark field for a ton of extra damage.

• Scoundrel's Luck only gives you its buff after your artifacts finish casting. Many artifacts have long aftercasts which you can animation-cancel to speed things along, notably Mistburn Mortar and Exalted Hammer. Use Dust Strike, Skritt Swipe, or whatever the moment calls for to cancel the animation and immediately gain the Scoundrel's Luck buff. This is something you'll need to get used to in order to make full use of the trait's strengths.