Energy Overflow Soulfist Build Guide for Lost Ark

The Soulfist, while being a melee class similar to the other Martial Artists, also has access to a collection of ranged abilities in their arsenal. Utilizing effective combos and managing your hype meter are the core gameplay mechanics you will be focused on. In this build, you will be equipping the Energy Overflow engraving, which speeds up your combat quite a bit.

Strengths

• Extremely mobile.
• Can ignore energy bar (no management).
• Consistent damage output.

Weaknesses

• Low burst outside Awakening.
• Awakening skill very easy to miss.
• Falls behind other builds in later content.

Investing in the Energy Overflow engraving will maintain a similar playstyle to what you experienced while leveling - just faster. As you may or may not have noticed, when you deplete your Inner Energy bar to zero, you cannot use any abilities until it refills back to full. Equipping this engraving removes that mechanic from the game, allowing you to spam your abilities to your heart's content while incentivizing you to stay at low Inner Energy. While below 30% of your maximum Inner Energy, your damage is increased by 5%/10%/15%.

Playing with this mechanic effectively means leaning into the Swiftness stat to allow you to rotate through your skills more frequently. Given that this is a more consistent damage build, the way you play around your Hype meter changes slightly. An important mechanic to understand is the downtime after your Hype meter expires before you can reactivate it, referred to as "Hype 0." Depending on which Hype state you were in when the meter depleted, the time spent in Hype 0 will differ. Hype 1 leads to the shortest Hype 0, and Hype 3 leads to the longest. Because of this, you will only want to enter Hype 3 when your Awakening ability World Decimation is off cooldown. This will be discussed in further detail later in this guide, but it is important to be thinking about whenever you do not have the Robust Spirit engraving equipped.

When facing a new boss, it is a good idea to at first take the time to figure out how the boss moves around. Some bosses stand still a lot and are easy to position around, but others move quite a bit. Due to World Decimation's incredibly long cast time, this is even more crucial for Soulfist players. So much of your damage is focused into this one ability, and it is soul-crushing when you miss. Do not miss. Unlike other MMO's, the amount of healing you can receive is extremely limited in Lost Ark, so it is important to do damage while taking as little in return as possible. In endgame content, even the number of healing potions that you can use is limited per encounter, so you cannot count on healing yourself with potions.

In this Soulfist build, you will not necessarily NEED any other supportive buffs in your group to function. However, you do HEAVILY benefit from more burst-oriented synergy buffs. Buffs with higher value but a short duration, for example, Red Dust from Berserkers, stand to provide more for Soulfists than more consistent high uptime/low value buffs.

Every class has a wide variety of skills to chose from with Tripods that can change how each skill performs. The Soulfist can select eight skills to be on their action bar alongside their Awakening skill. The Soulfist's Identity skill is the Hype meter. Activating your Identity will progress your Hype state 1 stage, up to a maximum of Stage 3. After the meter depletes fully, you will experience a downtime phase (Hype 0) before you can use this ability again. Below we will discuss our picks for skills for general purposes and single target fights.

For most content, you are going to want to bring massive area of effect damage to help you clear out groups of enemies, as well as good mobility to help move around quickly. Regardless of which class engraving you choose, Soulfists will use very similar builds for this content.

1. 256 Skill Point Tree;
2. 268 Skill Point Tree;
3. 284 Skill Point Tree;
4. 300 Skill Point Tree;
5. 328 Skill Point Tree.

If you encounter any skill breakpoints where you are off by just 1-3 points from getting your next big tripod, feel free to play with Flash Step with 0 points invested. The mobility this provides is still quite strong without the Excellent Mobility Tripod.

This build of Soulfist is fairly simple in purpose and design. Crippling Barrier does most of the heavy lifting with its massive range. Shadowbreaker and Palm Burst are your strong clearing abilities in between Crippling Barrier casts. Both have slightly less reach and coverage but plenty of damage to mow enemies down.

Tempest Blast and Energy Blast provide very high clearing if you can group mobs in a line. They also blast through any Elites or Bosses you encounter like they are nothing.

Your remaining three skills all serve some sort of utility or filler role. Pulverizing Palm is used to apply a very large personal buff before using a big skill with the Ready Attack tripod. This does fairly solid damage as well, albeit in a small area in front of you. Lightning Palm is a fairly high damage ability also equipped with a personal buff via the Prepared Attacker Tripod.

Last but not least is Flash Step. At first glance, this is simply your mobility tool. However, this is also the quickest way for you to dump energy and start utilizing the Energy Overflow buff. When entering combat, you want to use your three charges as quickly as you can before entering into your normal damage rotation of buffing with Pulverizing Palm and then using your other skills. Remember, when you advance to a new Hype Stage, you refill your energy bar. You will want to dump as fast as possible again to reactivate your buff.

For single target focused content such as Guardian Raids, you will want to bring a skill set that is focused on dealing the maximum damage to a boss. For the Soulfist, you can use the same build for both class engravings because it is the playstyle that varies.

1. 240 Skill Point Tree;
2. 256 Skill Point Tree;
3. 268 Skill Point Tree;
4. 284 Skill Point Tree;
5. 300 Skill Point Tree;
6. 328 Skill Point Tree;

The major hook of this Soulfist build is to fit your highest damage ability inside your short buff windows. This leads to somewhat scripted bursts when all your cooldowns are available, with a bit of flexibility in between those windows. While playing in this "normal" gameplay state, remember you do not want to enter Hype 3. Instead, let your meter deplete fully while in Hype 2, so you will spend less time in Hype 0.

Energy Release and Pulverizing Palm are the primary skills you are playing around during your burst. Both of them have the Ready Attack Tripod, but this buff does not stack. Because of this, the goal is to space your buffs so that all your skills are covered by at least one self-buff. You want your highest damage abilities following the Energy Release buff. An example of these sequences looks like this:

1. Activate Hype (Assuming you are not already in Hype 1 or Hype 2)
2. Energy Release
3. Merciless Pummel
4. Shadowbreaker
5. Force Orb: The 40% Ready Attack falls off around here
6. Pulverizing Palm to reapply Ready Attack at 25%
7. Celestial Palm
8. Lightning Palm

Because Energy Release has a longer cooldown than your two hardest-hitting abilities, Merciless Pummel and Shadowbreaker, you will want to fit another small burst in before your next Energy Release. This is simply:

1. Pulverizing Palm
2. Merciless Pummel
3. Shadowbreaker

As you gain more Swiftness, you may be able to fit another skill in before the buff from Pulverizing Palm fades. Otherwise, use them whenever you can. Before your next cast of Energy Release, make sure you will have all your skill available for the full combo.

If you have World Decimation available, your combo is MUCH simpler (or is it?).

1. Activate Hype 3
2. Energy Release to gain your biggest Attack Power buff
3. World Decimation

You did it! Obviously, this is much less complex, but it can often be the harder combo to execute. World Decimation has a VERY long cast time and animation, and thus bosses are very liable to move out of it before it lands. If and when this happens, do your best to remain calm! The next one will hit for sure.

For this build, the most important stat is Swiftness. This build is limited simply by its cooldowns and attack animations. Swiftness reduces BOTH of these, allowing for more frequent burst windows that you will eventually fit more skills into with shorter animations. On your necklace, which always has two unique stats, you are looking for Crit as the off-stat.

Engravings for this build are very, very simple. First, you want to have Rank 1 Energy Overflow to facilitate the fast-paced playstyle. After that, any of the more popular DPS engravings work just fine, with Grudge Rank 3 being the highest priority. Cursed Doll, Master of Ambush, Keen Blunt Weapon, Raid Captain, and Spirit Absorption are all fine choices to fill out your remaining engravings. Energy Overflow Rank 3 is also a good choice if you are not worried about filling out your engraving book with the generic traits to be used on alt characters.

Preemptive Strike gets an honorable mention as well. This is normally an overlooked Engraving, as it has essentially no value when fighting bosses, but it performs exceptionally in Chaos Dungeons and world content. Although it may be tempting to pick up a defensive Engraving like Heavy Armor or Fortitude, we highly recommend you avoid using them because Engravings are a large source of increased damage that you would be missing out on otherwise.

Pets can have stats that boost your character, and for this build, we recommend using a pet that boosts your Crit and Max life.

There are not any consumables that would be considered "best" for this build. Rather, there are a handful of consumables that are situationally very valuable. Major HP Potion & Panacea are commonly used to help survivability. While Clay Grenade (Stagger), Destruction Bomb (Weak Point), and Dark Grenade (Damage) are commonly used to help with their corresponding fight checks if you are having trouble meeting the requirements. Adrophine Potion can also be used for a flat damage increase, but at the cost of some health. Your choices will vary depending on what your specific party or raid needs.

Card Sets are a rather late-game part of Lost Ark and can require significant time and investment in order to reach the leveled-up benefits of any deck. This build does not require any particular deck to be effective but does benefit from any of the damaging increasing decks. Your end game goals for card sets should be either Lostwind Cliff (12) for the Crit Chance or Light of Salvation (12+) for the Holy damage conversion and buff. Unless you have the aforementioned decks, we recommend using anything that boosts your Max Health, such as World Bosses or Armory sets.