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 June 25, 2023 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 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

Stats

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

Runes

• Rune of Superior Rune of the Eagle - great stats and a 6th piece condition that's much easier to fulfill. This rune however overcaps crit chance while on Rifle by ~0.6% when you have Fury (assuming full Ascended gear), so if you want to be absolutely optimal replace your shoulder with one that has Dragon stats. If you factor in the Borderlands Bloodlust buff then instead of the shoulder you may replace something with more stats on it like one of the rings.

Sigils

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

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

• Sigil of Superior Sigil of Blood over Sigil of 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

• - great synergy with Silent Scope, this food provides not just more evasion but also higher Stealth uptime.
  • Budget version:

• - better burst damage and some extra life steal.

Utility

• or

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.