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Specter - Condi DPS

The community gave this build a rating, making it second-tier: Good

Focused on: Condition damage

Designed for: Raids and Fractals

Expansions required: End of Dragons builds

Difficulty:
Easy
This build was last updated on March 09, 2025 and is up to date for the February 11, 2025 patch.

Overview

A condition DPS build for Specter. Gaining a defensive shroud similar to Necromancer as well as a powerful ranged weapon in Scepter, Specter can feel much safer to play than other Thief specialisations. It deals great damage, which can be enhanced even further if it is able to pre-cast its venoms (particularly relevant in fractals). At the same time, it provides some incidental group boons whenever it

s and it always has access to powerful single-target barrier, enabling it to act as a support in emergencies.

As a torment-focused class, it prefers stationary targets, but the simple rotation and ability to deal almost all its damage from range means that it is able to maintain damage very easily even on mobile encounters.

As a Thief, it has excellent out-of-combat utility for speeding up fractals and raids.


Skill Bar

Scepter/Dagger
Utility


Weapon Variants

The nature of initiative means that you rarely use more than one weapon, so there are a number of options for the second set:

  • If you own Janthir Wilds, Spear is the strongest weapon, though it is needs to be in melee range, and is significantly more complicated to use. It is worth keeping Scepter/Dagger in the second set to give you a strong ranged option when necessary.
  • You can bring an offhand Pistol in addition to the dagger to have more CC available on swap. As entering and exiting Shadow Shroud counts as a weapon swap, you will still gain the benefits of .


Utility Variants

There are three strong contenders for the third utility slot:

  • - Has the highest theoretical DPS, but requires the target to remain inside the AoE for 10 seconds, and ramps up slower. It also becomes less efficient in phased encounters, unlike the other two options.
  • - The cooldown starts as soon as the trap is placed, allowing it to be precast before the fight or new phase, though the arming time makes it vulnerable to your target moving away from it.
  • - The lowest damage option, but also doesn't require your target to stand inside an AoE for 5/10 seconds. The boonstrip present at the start of many encounters also removes venom stacks, but it can be precast during split phases as long as your allies don't waste it attacking an invulnerable boss. The instant cast time and fact that it has the same cooldown as also makes it much less disruptive to your rotation than other options.


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Specializations


Equipment

Head
Viper
Shoulders
Viper
Chest
Viper
Hands
Viper
Legs
Viper
Feet
Viper
Backpiece
Viper
Accessory
Viper
Accessory
Viper
Amulet
Viper
Ring
Viper
Ring
Viper
Scepter
Viper
Sigil
Dagger
Viper
Sigil
Rune
x6
Infusion
x18
Relic
  • You could run a second Scepter or Dagger with a instead of the . By aligning your shroud and weapon swaps, this allows you to benefit fully from both.
    • If running Spear you can do the same with two Spears.


Non-SotO/JW Gear

is the best relic for players that don't own Secrets of the Obscure or Janthir Wilds, which necessitates switching some gear to Sinister stats Sinister stats:

Head
Viper
Shoulders
Sinister
Chest
Viper
Hands
Viper
Legs
Viper
Feet
Viper
Backpiece
Viper
Accessory
Sinister
Accessory
Sinister
Amulet
Viper
Ring
Viper
Ring
Viper
Scepter
Viper
Sigil
Dagger
Viper
Sigil
Rune
x6
Infusion
x18
Relic


Consumables

Food


Utility


Usage

Scepter Rotation

If you're using a pistol offhand, ignore any weapon swaps below. It is also optimal to skip the Post-Shroud section in this case.

As the third skill is variable, just ignore any skill casts that you don't have.

Opener

  1. If possible, precast such that you can immediately trigger it and place it a second time.
  2. , and . These are all instant cast, so can be used during the cast time of step 2. Make sure you're within range of allies for the venoms!
  3. x2
  4. if it's available.
  5. Grasping Shadows Grasping Shadows
  6. Eternal Night Eternal Night
  7. Weapon Swap Weapon Swap
  8. x2


Rest of the Rotation

The rest of the rotation has no strict skill order:

  • You should enter Shadow Shroud as soon as it becomes available, and use one of the shroud loops below.
  • If using , use off cooldown while in Shadow Shroud.
  • Use , , , , and off cooldown.
    • Triggering can be delayed if necessary, as the cooldown is only gated by preparing it.
    • As lasts for 24 seconds, it may be worth saving until the next phase of a boss if the current phase is about to end.
  • Spam to use up all your initiative.
  • Try to finish autoattack chains if possible. Unusually, you have a lot of grace time between the chain skills to use other skills without cancelling the chain.
  • If you have no other skills to cast, you can use to gain access to . The cast time is very long though, so be sure you won't have to delay other skills in order to finish it.
  • Weapon Swap Weapon Swap, and will all trigger and . These have a 9- and an 8-second internal cooldown respectively, so if you are able to track these cooldowns you can squeeze extra damage out of the rotation.
    • If using two on-swap sigils, weapon swap immediately after exiting shroud.
    • Otherwise just Weapon Swap Weapon Swap off cooldown and hope for the best, being sure that you have less than 9 initiative to prevent wasting the effect of in case it triggers.


Normal Shroud Loop

Most of the time when you enter shroud, you want to do the following loop:

  1. Grasping Shadows Grasping Shadows
  2. Eternal Night Eternal Night
  3. Haunt Shot Haunt Shot until Grasping Shadows Grasping Shadows is off cooldown
  4. Grasping Shadows Grasping Shadows

Use

if it comes off cooldown between steps 1 and 4.


Short Shroud Loop

Sometimes you may end up going into shroud just before your utility skills come off cooldown. In this case, do a much shorter loop:

  1. Grasping Shadows Grasping Shadows
  2. Eternal Night Eternal Night


Video example


Spear Rotation

Spear is more complicated than other thief weapons as it employed a combo system where skills 2 and 3 each have three sub-skills that are classified as Lead Attacks, Follow Ups or Finishers. These flow together in order, with the active skills changing depending on where you are in the chain, and you can switch between 2 and 3 for different effects.


Additional complexity is added by your stealth attack, and skills 4 and 5, all gaining bonuses if they are used after a Finisher:

If this isn't enough,

will also count as a Lead Attack in this case, which means the next combo will skip the normal Lead Attack.


Rotation Explanation

The buff from

is strong enough that we want to get it as soon as possible, but as it needs to follow a finisher (and cannot follow a stealth attack), we first do a basic combo of .

Your strongest weapon skill is

as not only does it do great damage, it regenerates enough initiative to maintain a rotation without ever having to rely on autoattacks. Specter lacks a convenient way to access Stealth Stealth though, so must rely on (the Finisher' on skill 3). Hence your highest damage combo looks like (though the first time round we replace with ). This combo is slightly shorter than the duration of Revealed Revealed, so the rotation has to be padded.

The best way of doing this is to use shroud skills.

is all that's needed to make the loop long enough to Stealth Stealth again. The cooldown of is too long to use every loop, so a non-stealth combo is used every other time instead.

To maximise the use of

and/or , you can adjust the position of the Shadow Shroud section so that you enter it every ~10s rather than in a fixed position in the loop. This won't break your combo chains, but it does make it harder to track where you are in the loop. This is a moderate DPS gain over the looping rotation below.


Opener

  1. (if you precast it), and
  2. All Venom skills as soon as you're in combat - many encounters remove these as part of the boon strip at the start of the fight, but in some fractals this isn't the case and they can be cast earlier.
  3. Weapon Swap Weapon Swap (only if using two spears with doom/geomancy sigils)


Loop

When your target is above 90% health,

is stronger than .

  1. Weapon Swap Weapon Swap (only if using two spears with doom/geomancy sigils)
  2. Return to start of loop
  • Use and your utilities off cooldown. You can do this without interrupting your combos, but be aware that the pulsing damage from will reveal you if you are stealthed. The cooldown starts when you place the trap though, so you have flexibility when you activate it.


Video example (non looping rotation)


Utility

CC


Support

All your Scepter skills and

can be used with an allied target to provide them barrier and . This is a DPS loss, but can be used to save people if a healer isn't going to (particularly helpful on the tank).


General Tips

  • Almost all your damage on Scepter can be done at range, but Eternal Night Eternal Night and Mind Shock Mind Shock are both melee range. If you are not in range to use them, either delay or skip them during the shroud loop.
  • While in Shadow Shroud, incoming damage is absorbed by your Shadow Force rather than your health. If you believe an incoming attack will kick you out before finishing the full Shroud loop, it may be worth doing a shorter one instead.
  • Avoid staying for too long in Shadow Shroud as the DPS from Haunt Shot Haunt Shot is worse than that of Scepter, and you need to spend initiative to maintain stacks of .
  • If there is nothing to attack, you can target allies with Scepter skills to buff them with barrier, and apply stacks of venom via just before a new phase starts.


Ratings

This build has a rating of 4 stars based on 3 votes.
Log in or register to rate this build.
3 stars
OfficerAndyGentleman gave this build 3 stars • April 2024
Simple rotation, almost fully ranged, and even provides a bit of incidental support. With the nerf to shadow shroud you need to be a little careful about taking excess damage, and being almost entirely single-target with a low damage ceiling hurts its potential..
5 stars
Lucinellia gave this build 5 stars • March 2022
An incredibly strong condition DPS option that is only limited in terms of stacking by venom sharing. Offers very high DPS, good CC, good survivability, good sustain and does not have the issue of forced movement that has plagued cDD and cDE.
5 stars
Wizardxeze gave this build 5 stars • March 2022
With simple rotation and able to deal top damage and is able to deal good range dmg this build might become meta for Fractals/Strikes/Raids As rotations are still missing: Step 1: use utility skills off cooldown. Use F1 and Weapon swap off cooldown when not full Initiative Step 2: 333333333 Step 3: F2 Shadow Shroud off cooldown when you don't have initiative 2 4 5 2222 until you have 10 initiative drop the Shadow Shroud F2 Step 4: Repeat from Step 1 Tips: -Entering Shadow Shroud can activates Quick Pockets trait causing you to gain 3 initiative, you want to avoid this if possible with weapon swap. -F1 can be used for Allies, you should always make sure you have done so if you don't see the tether while in Shadow Shroud. -Barrier gives Rot, when boss phases pick up dps and auto-attack them as that will give you extra dps when boss comes back. -Shadow Shroud 5 is delayed Stability, you can use this for examples against Chrain Wing 4 first raid boss if you don't trust your raid team as it is part of your dps rotation -Poison is 5 targets and if you use it only for yourself that is ~10k dps loss. -Know your timings. Poison lasts 30 seconds and has 30 second duration, abuse this but make sure you get poisons to 5 people. -CC taking pistol is major dmg loss and should be avoided, your CC is Basilisk Venom or Shadowfall for AOE CC

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