Death Strike Sharpshooter Guide for Lost Ark

If you're looking for further information on the Death Strike build for Machinist, the following links will provide that for you.

Strengths

• Non-positional / Hit Master class
• Deals really good burst damage in ideal scenarios
• Very easy to maintain Synergy

Weaknesses

• Animation lock on most of the high damaging abilities
• Susceptible to unintended downtime if you miss Silver Master skills
• Strict window to land skills for personal burst

Death Strike is considered the burst spec of Sharpshooter; focused on fitting all of your DPS skills within a tight 8.0 second window and building your Hawk Meter passively through the Silver Master tripods on select skills. Having high potential burst damage is one of the draws of Death Strike, which in a vacuum can reach staggering numbers. In reality, there's a high level oh rigidity when playing due to how much damage lies within your hawk's finisher Last Rush. Since it applies the damage debuff only on hit, missing it or missing skills within your window causes an astronomical DPS loss. Not having access to Push Immunity also greatly hurts Death Strike's capability of tanking hits whilst still dealing damage. A lot of your skills will get interrupted at the worst possible time & that's a part of playing Death Strike that you'll have to accept, even at the higher levels of play.

Generating Hawk Meter is primarily done through Silver Master tripods on Moving Slash & Hawk Shot. The buff Silver Master builds (x) amount of meter over 10.0 seconds while our natural regen ticks so long as we're actively hitting a target. To minimize our downtime between cycles, Hawk Shot is the first skill we use after Last Rush is used. Because of how tight our window is, we typically follow a priority of what contributes the most DPS for rotations. Snipe by far is our most powerful skill, dealing well over a quarter of our damage so it's always casted first. The three main skills that remain are Charged Shot, Sharp Shooter & Arrow Wave. Sharp Shooter on average will do the most damage and the other two are interchangeable. Another damage optional skill is Claymore Mine, though it does the least damage out of all and is used last if taken. Depending on the circumstances, the order of these skills can change but we still prioritize Hawk Shot & Snipe where they are.

• Use Atomic Arrow and summon your Silverhawk → Wings of Storm. This applies the 6% damage Synergy and gets additional damage from your Hawk.
• Always use Last Rush → Hawk Shot, proccing the damage bonus and meter regen.
• Cast Snipe first as it's our most damage skill, then cast remaining DPS skills underneath Death Strike's buff.
• Reapply your Synergy with Atomic Arrow & Silver Master by using Moving Slash.
• Auto attack / dodge while waiting for skills to come back off cooldown.

A trait of the class is its high mana usage and Death Strike is no exception to this. Without a support or certain foods, you'll find yourself starved of mana in as short as 2-3 skill cycles which leads to even worse DPS losses. The Atk. Speed from the Salvation set is warranted given how tight our requirements are for the burst window. Along with the reliance not just on player skill, raid knowledge and proper timing comes that of critting certain skills like Hawk Shot & Claymore Mine that have such high innate Critical Damage but no extra crit chance within its tripods like Snipe, Charged Shot or Sharp Shooter. There's a lot of things that Death Strike has attached to it that makes it less appealing than the easier Loyal Companion playstyle that provides similar damage. In real raid scenarios, if you're constantly pushing mech to mech and you can frequently get off bursts, Death Strike feels rather good and the nature of the spec begins to shine. However, it still feels a bit clunky along with frustrating that makes it one of the more challenging builds to play and truly excel at.