Antiquary - Power Antiquary open world

This is a rough draft. Once adequately written, it will progress to the testing stage, where it can be rated by the community. You can help by proposing changes with a comment.

Focused on: Strike damage

Designed for: Open World and Open World General

Expansions required:

Difficulty:

Hard

This build was last updated on November 11, 2025.

Overview

Power antiquary build for open world. Work in progress. Gives Alacrity.

Note that this build isn't easy to play. On top of the normal Spear minigame with its unique skill chains, you also need to juggle your artefacts and must learn what each one does.

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Skill Bar

Spear

Rifle

Utility

Weapon Variants

• Spear requires Janthir Wilds. If you don't have access to spear, replace it with dagger+dagger.
• Rifle requires Weaponmaster Training with Secrets of the Obscure. If you don't have access to rifle, replace it with pistol+pistol.

Backfire

Antiquary healing and utility skills can be used again while they are on cooldown, but doing so may trigger a backfire and block skill usage until it cools down. Generally speaking, backfires are bad.

Heal Skill

Signet of Malice provides good passive healing.

• Antivenom Draught - weak healing but removes conditions. Heals for more, and removes more conditions, when it backfires.

Utility skills

Stone Summit Cannon is great for damage, never replace it.
Haste is an offensive stun break with great boons and low cooldown. Can be replaced if needed.
Canach-Coin Toss gives initiative and removes conditions. If used while on cooldown and it backfires, you may instead not regain initiative and have your boons converted to conditions.
Other options you can consider are:

• Shadowstep - amazing mobility plus stunbreak and condi cleanse.
• Shadow Refuge - long duration of stealth for channelling Hero Challenges.
• Signet of Agility - if conditions are a problem, though its passive precision is not needed due to Keen Observer.
• Scorpion Wire - very situational. Extremely good for pulling the bomb in Battle in Tarir south lane meta event.

Elite Skill

Skritt Scuffle is a great source of damage through artefacts. Although the skill cannot backfire, you have to be careful since the skritt have a chance to prank you and give you a deadly Unstable Skritt Bomb. Do not use this artefact. Other options can be considered.

• Dagger Storm - a 4 second evade.
• Basilisk Venom - strong crowd control if there are allies nearby.
• Thieves Guild - good damage skill

Specializations

Variants

• Invigorating Precision - sacrifices a small amount of damage for sustain. Great option for solo open world.

Equipment

Ascended gear and stat infusions are not required; you can use exotic gear with the same stats.
This set uses gear similar to Daredevil - Power DPS, making it excellent for general PVE.

Head
Berserker

Shoulders
Berserker

Chest
Berserker

Hands
Berserker

Legs
Berserker

Feet
Berserker

Backpiece
Berserker

Accessory
Berserker

Accessory
Berserker

Amulet
Assassin

Ring
Berserker

Ring
Berserker

Dagger
Berserker

Dagger
Berserker

Sigil

Sigil

Rifle
Berserker

Sigil

Sigil

Rune
x6

Relic

If you are gearing this character from zero, start with exotic quality gear. Search the trading post for "Nika" armor. Then search for the weapons you want to use: "Exterminator" rifle, "Usoku's Needle" dagger, "Shattered Short Bow" shortbow. Upgrade to ascended gear as you progress. See also: Guide:How to Gear a Character.

• For the relic you can instead consider Relic of Zakiros to trade a Quickness for sustain.
• For defense, equip the highest tier Jade Core you can afford.

Consumables

Budget consumables are acceptable for use in open world.

DPS

• Prioritize Steak Ascended food.
• /
• /

Farming

• Prioritize Steak Ascended food.
• /
• (and variants)

Usage

Artefacts

The antiquary's profession mechanic are artefacts, which occupy the F2, F3, and F4 slots (you gain a third artefact due to Prolific Plunderer. If needed, rebind these keys to something you can press with ease. You gain artefacts by using Skritt Swipe or Skritt Scuffle. The F2 artefact will always be an offensive one, the F3 artefact will always be a defensive one, and the F4 is fully random. Note that Skritt Scuffle might backfire and give you a Unstable Skritt Bomb instead, which deals huge damage to yourself.

Damage

Spear

Work in progress. You'll need to learn the spear's combos. Normally you use 2,3,2; 4,3,2. However, when low on initiative, you need to use the stealth attack Ashen Assault to recover some. This can be done by using the guitar artefact, or by ending the spear combo with skill 3 to enter stealth, for example 2,3,3.

Rifle

Rifle should only be used when ranged damage is needed. It has decent burst with Three Round Burst. You can replenish initiative with Canach-Coin Toss. If you get the guitar artefact, you can also use the stealth skill for good damage.

Notes

• Death's Judgment inflicts Revealed when cast, so it will always make use of Revealed Training.
• Try to stay above 50% health to benefit from Keen Observer and Twin Fangs.
• When possible, try to attack from behind to benefit from Twin Fangs. This isn't required against bosses or other enemies with defiance bars, the trait is always active against them.
• If using Action Camera, they keybind "Look Behind" can be used while casting Death's Retreat to quickly and seamlessly jump forward.
  • if you don't use action camera, you will have to stop running, turn your character, cast the skill, turn the character again, and resume running. The keybind "About Face" can help with that.
• Use Sniper's Cover to destroy dangerous projectile attacks like the volley of arrows from the Tengu Hero Point in Auric Basin.
• Death's Retreat deals damage before teleporting. If you are in Stealth, it will reveal you.
• Most of your rifle bullets pierce their targets. When fighting groups of enemies, try to line them up to strike them all.

Defense

• Some of your artefacts heal, or evade, or let you dash to safety.
• Invigorating Precision provides some sustain, especially since this build has permanent Fury. It stacks with Relic of Zakiros.
• Remember that you can always kill enemies with Skirmisher's Shot while running away, and they won't even come close to you.

Crowd Control

• Some of your artefacts inflict crowd control.
• Distracting Throw (it only dazes if the enemy already had a movement impairing condition, for example by using it two times in a row since the skill does Cripple)
• If you need more crowd control you can use Basilisk Venom, or Scorpion Wire, or Prepare Pitfall.