First Intention Wardancer Build Guide for Lost Ark

The Wardancer is a master of elements, utilizing their power to buff allies and deliver devastating blows. Typically this involves the building and spending of Elemental Orbs, also referred to as the Identity bar. However, with this build we'll be ignoring that. By equipping class engraving First Intention, your Wardancer will lose the ability to generate any Elemental Meter. In return, all of your damage is buffed by 15%/20%/25% depending on the engraving rank.

Strengths

• Burst damage & synergy +++
• Quick counter skill
• Strong mobility

Weaknesses

• Can have mana issues
• Positional reliant (Back attack)
• Downtime that requires basic attacking

Wardancer's that choose to invest into this engraving are rewarded with one of the quickest builds available in Lost Ark. Because, you can't use skills that spend Elemental Orbs, you are highly incentivised into choosing gear with high Swiftness and completely ignoring Specialization. The benefits of this are twofold.

For one, Swiftness increases your attack and movement speed. So, not only will your attack animations completely faster to allowing you to reposition more frequently, but those movements will be lightning quick. This has very obvious benefits when it comes to dodging mechanics, but the less obvious benefit is how much easier this makes landing your back attacks consistently.

The second major benefit to a high Swiftness build is the cooldown reduction component to the stat. The majority of your damage as a Wardancer comes from short burst windows. The more cooldown reduction, the more frequent these happen. The more frequently you burst, the more damage you do and the cycle repeats. All in all, both Wardancer builds are very patterned, with some downtime between your burst. This build alleviates that downtime the best.

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. It is not mandatory to always land positional attacks, most of the time it is best to just do damage when your cooldowns are up while avoiding taking damage. Master of Ambush will eventually become a common engraving choice for Wardancers, so it is something you want to work on getting comfortable with. Unlike other MMOs, 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.

As a Wardancer you have one other class that will become your best friend in parties. I guarantee every time you see a Bard queue up for your raid or dungeons, you'll be inviting them in an instant. The mana regen provided by Heavenly Tune is a savior in the early game for Wardancers. As we progress through Arkesia, the mana issues are naturally alleviated in other ways, but for now find yourself a pocket Bard if you can!

Every class has a wide variety of skills to chose from with Tripods that can change how each skill performs. The Wardancer is able to select eight skills to be on their action bar alongside their and Awakening skills. This build does not have an active Identity skill either, due to equipping the First Intention engraving. Below we will discuss our picks for skills for general purpose 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 get around quickly. However, most of the Wardancer's strongest AoE abilities cost Elemental Orbs, which we cannot build or use with this engraving. Because of that it is recommended that you carry some spare accessories that do not have First Intention on them.

Early on in your life in Arkesia this may prove to be a bit difficult, so these are the skills and tripods we recommend if you wish to use this build for all of your content:

• 252 Skill Points
• 268 Skill Points
• 312 Skill Points
• 340 Skill Points:

If you do have spare accessories that allow you to remove the First Intention from your character, the build makes one easy swap. In place of your 8th skill ( Moon Flash Kick in this case), you'll take Over Revolution. Here is an example of what that looks like with 252 Skill Points. From there you can fill in your additional points similar to the builds listed above.

Wind's Whisper & Roar of Courage are the two true staples of any Wardancer build. The burst rotation is entirely centered around using them together, followed by high damage abilities. Focus on being ready to use them as close to on cooldown as possible. These are especially useful when fighting Elites or Bosses, as killing those grant big Cooldown reduction, allowing you to get back into your high damage abilities faster.

Sweeping Kick is your highest damage ability assuming you're playing with First Intention. It does suffer from being a line frontal rather than a true AoE skill, so grouping mobs properly beforehand is important.

Swift Wind Kick is a fairly simple filler ability that lets you continue to move during its cast. This paired with Seismic Strike which keeps mobs in place, works wonder for lining up a big Sweeping Kick

Lightning Kick serves as your primary damage source outside of your burst cooldowns. With how much Swiftness you'll be running, along with all the Cooldown Reduction found in Chaos Dungeons, you will use this skill extremely often. The Sharp Movement Tripod makes this even more beneficial as you bounce around the map.

And finally Energy Combustion, commonly refered to as "fart cloud". This ability provides a decent source of passive damage, alongside the passive damage reduction that makes Wardancers so durable. Aim to keep this up as often as possible.

If you chose to drop First Intention, your final skill will be Esoteric Skill: Call of the Wind God. This is perhaps the most recognizable Wardancer skill, as you transform into a mobile tornado, destroying up all enemies in your wake. A channeled skill that allows for free movement over the duration. You will be spending all of your Elemental Orbs on this, as soon as they are available.

If you don't have another set of accessories available to choose from, do not be afraid to try out all your remaining skills to fill out the 8th slot. Moon Flash Kick is our recommendation, but many others could fit your playstyle better!

It is important to note that most of your damaging skills are Back Attacks meaning that they will deal 5% more damage and have 20% more critical strike chance when hitting tougher enemies from behind. While this does not really matter against weak enemies, keep this in mind when facing bosses. Either Awakening ability is a fine choice, but once you unlock both you should favor Ultimate Skill: Fist of Dominance.

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. This is where the First Intention build can truly shine. The following skills should help you maximize single target damage while providing maneuverability to avoid taking damage.

• 252 Skill Points
• 268 Skill Points
• 296 Skill Points
• 312 Skill Points
• 340 Skill Points

This set up is fairly similar to the General Purpose build. The key difference is maxing out Moon Flash Kick to bring our burst combo on line. A typical combo is very simple.

1. Wind's Whisper
2. Roar of Courage
3. Esoteric Skill: Blast Formation
4. Esoteric Skill: Call of the Wind God

You will want to coordinate with your party as best you can with this, as the buffs and debuffs provided by Wind's Whisper & Roar of Courage benefit them too.

As always you'll want to make sure you keep Energy Combustion up as much as possible. This alongside Flash Heat Fang, and Lightning Kick make up your damage outside your burst. Make sure you put these on cooldown at the beginning of a fight before bursting, that way they will be available again right after your burst is over.

Sky Shattering Blow has decent mobility attached to it, but the primary purpose it serves is as a Counter Attack. This is one of the fastest Counters in the game, so always be ready to help your team by landing a clutch hit.

You will want to unlock Ultimate Skill: Fist of Dominance as soon as you can for this build. It will simply do quite a bit more damage than Ultimate Skill: Flash Rage Blow.

For this build, the most important stats are Swiftness and Crit. We discussed Swiftness earlier and its importance to the build. Having your abilities available more often leads to more buffs and debuffs for your party, and more burst windows! You will want to favor this ever so slightly over Crit.

The most important Engraving is Esoteric Skill Enhancement. Gaining access to the 4th Orb allows for your core burst window to function. Most of the value comes from the first rank, so we keep this at Level 1 for now. Grudge is the overall best Engraving for damage across the board, so you will want to invest in Level 3 of this as soon as possible. This is doubly important due to the way the Engraving scales. The positive effect (4%/10%/20%) scales at an increasing rate per rank. However, the negative effect (20% damage taken) is a fixed value across all ranks. What you with your remaining Engravings is a bit of personal preference.

Master of Ambush is a huge damage boost if you are able to land your Back Attacks consistently. Cursed Doll is perhaps the best overall choice, but can be a bit more punishing for progressing new fights. Keen Blunt Weapon and Raid Captain can also be nice options as you progress further and obtain higher item level gear. These Engravings start to really shine at high levels of Crit and Swiftness respectively.

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 pickup 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 Specialtization and Max life.

There are no consumable 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 corrosponding fight checks if you're 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.