Build:Deadeye - SA Rifle Roamer

The community gave this build a rating, making it top-tier: Great

Focused on: Strike damage and Mobility

Designed for: WvW Roaming

Difficulty:

Easy

This build was last updated on August 27, 2023 and is up to date for the March 11, 2025 patch.

Overview

A Shadow Arts take on Rifle Power Deadeye, this WvW roaming build relies heavily on stealth to survive between frequent but small burst chains while utilizing its ranged attacks to stay out of harm's way.

Skill Bar

Rifle

Dagger/Pistol

Utility

Skill Bar Variants

Heal

• Hide in Shadows
  - more focus on stealth, but you sacrifice an on demand evade frame on
  Withdraw
  for a skill that has a cast time, which means it generally performs worse under pressure unless you are already stealthed or built proper distance.

Utility

For the optional slot:

• Binding Shadow
  - CC and damage boost through Vulnerability stacking. Because of the delay, with proper timing BS can be used to set up burst such as
  Death's Judgment
  while you're still in stealth.

• Assassin's Signet
  - passive damage increase and an active that can greatly enhance your burst damage.

• Signet of Agility
  - cleanses several conditions, has a useful passive, and refills just enough endurance for a dodge roll which means it has great synergy with
  Silent Scope
  .

• Blinding Powder
  - stun break and instant Stealth access.

Elite

• Dagger Storm
  - a panic button that can save your from enemy burst.

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Equipment

Head
Marauder

Shoulders
Marauder

Chest
Marauder

Hands
Marauder

Legs
Marauder

Feet
Marauder

Backpiece
Marauder

Accessory
Marauder

Accessory
Marauder

Amulet
Marauder

Ring
Marauder

Ring
Marauder

Rifle
Marauder

Sigil

Sigil

Dagger
Marauder

Pistol
Marauder

Sigil

Sigil

Rune
x6

Infusion
x18

Relic

Equipment Variants

Relics

• Relic of Antitoxin
  - less damage, more cleansing.

• Relic of Isgarren
  - a damage boost that can be maintained somewhat passively, but might not be active for stealth bursts or when you're trying to catch enemies offguard. Works well in prolonged 1v1s however.

Stats

• Replacing some Marauder pieces with Berserker for a higher risk/reward playstyle is also a viable option.

Sigils

• Superior Sigil of Air
  over
  Superior Sigil of Energy
  - better burst on your main set, but less
  Silent Scope
  synergy.

• Superior Sigil of Air
  over
  Superior Sigil of Bloodlust
  - in case you don't want to bother with a stacking sigil.

• Superior Sigil of Blood
  over
  Superior Sigil of Cleansing
  - more damage, less defense against conditions. Air is better if you don't already have it on D/P, but if you've already replaced Bloodlust with Air then go with Blood.

Consumables

Food

• Bowl of Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew
  - great synergy with
  Silent Scope
  , this food provides not just more evasion but also higher Stealth uptime.
  • Budget version:
    Bowl of Meat and Winter Vegetable Stew

• Cilantro Lime Sous-Vide Steak
  - better burst damage and some extra life steal.

Utility

• Superior Sharpening Stone
  or
  Tin of Fruitcake

Usage

Elite specialization basics

• Steal
  is replaced by
  Deadeye's Mark
  , which has greater range but also a cast time. We're still going to refer to this as steal.

• Stolen skills are also replaced by new ones for each profession, although these are much less situational and can be used more freely. One thing to note is that you cannot pick the target freely for the new stolen skills, they will always be used on your marked target (even if they are in stealth, which can be useful for finishing off low HP stealthed targets).
  • If you want to know more about these skills, here's a list of them from the official wiki.

• Your specialization resource is called Malice. It's built using attack skills with initiative cost on your marked target and you can have up to 5 stacks of Malice, each increasing your damage by 3%. Stealth attacks such as
  Death's Judgment
  consume Malice and are further empowered based on the number of Malice stacks.

• At the 5 Malice threshold stolen skills such as
  Steal Health
  grant Stealth on activation, which is going to be their primary purpose - but be wary that they also do damage, so if you were already in stealth these will reveal you instead. There is a workaround for this however: stolen skills need line of sight (LoS) to deliver damage, if you intentionally break LoS then you can use them for the stealth without drawbacks.

General

• Start fights with
  Deadeye's Mark
  to begin passively building Malice.

• Silent Scope
  provides easy stealth access on rifle, the only limiting factor will be endurance.

• Mercy
  recharges
  Deadeye's Mark
  . Use it when you either run out of initiative, have to switch targets, or need to interrupt via
  Sleight of Hand
  .

• Shadowstep
  is easily the most versatile skill in the build. Couple of applications include:
  • Extending the reach of rifle by 1200 range instantly.
  • Escaping from melee, and then doing it again with
    Shadow Return
    when they get close.
  • Stomping downed opponents with Shadowstep ⇒ Shadow Return.
  • Breaking stun and cleansing conditions.

• Signet of Agility
  is good for more than just cleansing conditions or boosting your precision, its active effect restores an entire dodge roll's worth of endurance which can be turned into stealth.

• D/P is the set you use if Rifle's either getting countered by projectile denial for an extended period of time but you want to go for the kill, or if you need to stack stealth and resustain.

Rifle

Main weapon set. Burst, mobility, easy stealth access.

• Rifle technically has 10 skills, but most of them won't be used much if at all.

• The basic game plan is the following: spam
  Skirmisher's Shot
  until you reach the Malice cap, then enter stealth and follow up with a
  Death's Judgment
  .

• Kneel
  swaps your rifle skills for more powerful ones but limits your mobility. The cost usually doesn't justify the payoff, so stick to your
  Skirmisher's Shot
  spam. The only real scenario where you'd use Kneel skills for damage is if you're in a safe spot somewhere up on the highground from where you can snipe targets passing below, quickly taking them out with while having proper line of sight. In that case:
  • Three Round Burst
    (TRB) will be the main skill to spam on the weapon. This is where most of your damage comes from, not to mention Might and Malice stacking.
  • Spotter's Shot
    can be used either to set up burst with the Immobilize, or as a cheaper way to reach the Malice cap (Spotter costs 3 Initiative and gives the same amount of Malice as the 6 initiative TRB). The boons provided are also quite good.

• The only reason most people ever use Kneel is to drop a smoke field with skill #4 which is a combo field your team can use for stealth stacking and grants access to
  Death's Advance
  for instant stealth access and some mobility.

• Death's Retreat
  is basically the
  Infiltrator's Arrow
  of this build when it comes to mobility, but that's just one aspect of it. In combat this serves as a spammable condition cleanse or even combo tool for stealth access when used in a smoke field.
  • We recommend that you set up a bind for "about face" (Options ⇒ Control Options ⇒ Movement). This makes it easier to teleport forward with this skill using the following sequence: about face ⇒
    Death's Retreat
    ⇒ about face.

• At maximum (5 stacks) of Malice you should enter stealth and do a
  Death's Judgment
  . Exceptions include targets at very low health, in that canse it may be quicker to just spam them down with other skills.
  • At maximum Malice prioritize using stolen skills for stealth access, don't waste dodges if you don't have to!

• Sniper's Cover
  could be useful against other ranged specs, but a more common application of it is stealth stacking. It's a combo field which can be utilized by you or your team. After dropping SC at your feet, either cancel kneeling and use
  Death's Retreat
  to combo stealth (the two skills are also tied to the same button), or use its chain skill
  Death's Advance
  which is cheaper but doesn't cleanse conditions (and teleports you in the opposite direction).

Rifle burst rotation example:

1. Deadeye's Mark
   , which already puts you at 1/5 Malice with
   Malicious Intent
2. Skirmisher's Shot
   x2
3. Stealth using either a stolen skill or a dodge
4. Death's Judgment

Stealth

• Entering and exiting Stealth removes conditions and grants some Initiative.

• Rifle's
  Silent Scope
  is the cheapest way for you to enter stealth, endurance being the only limiting factor.

• Shadow Meld
  provides easy stealth access when no other method is available or you want to extend the duration of stealth.

• Stacking longer duration of stealth on rifle is rather expensive but doable, you can do this with the
  Sniper's Cover
  ⇒
  Death's Retreat
  while also mixing in a dodge or two.

D/P stealth stacking rotation

1. Black Powder
2. Heartseeker
   x4 in Black Powder
3. Swap to rifle, dodge

Related Builds

• Marauder Rifle (sPvP) - the Conquest PvP version of this Deadeye WvW Roaming build.