Loyal Companion Sharpshooter Guide for Lost Ark

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

Strengths

• Non-positional / Hit Master class
• Deals really good consistent DPS
• Very easy to maintain Synergy

Weaknesses

• Animation lock on most of the high damaging abilities
• Has clunky counters with Evasive Fire and Deadly Slash
• Very MP hungry requiring supports, runes and tripods to mitigate

Loyal Companion is a consistent DPS that has a relaxed playstyle that excels with you can manage high uptime. Along with the playstyle comes options on what build you want to take; be it Spec, Swiftness or a 50/50 hybrid. It adds a bit of flavor to the class with each build having their own nuances and optimization points. Scaling with your Spec, your Silverhawk is a large portion of your DPS through auto attacks and its own skills. With Swiftness builds, the hawk won't hit as much but you use your own skills much more frequently to compensate. Between the three builds they all deal similar damage, so it's personal preference as to which one you play.

Managing your Hawk Meter is incredibly easy as the duration of your hawk summon is doubled and you only need at least one Silver Master skill to upkeep full uptime. However, managing your MP will be an issue especially on Swiftness builds without the use of Focus runes and MP tripods. Rotations with Loyal Companion aren't fixed and the class has a focus more on hitting all your skills and having good uptime to perform well. Our damage buff from Silverhawk is always applied due to how refreshing on every bird auto attack and also Wings of Storm. There's also a multiplicative Atk. Power increase when the bird is summoned. We still prioritize our Synergy and highest damage skills first, being Atomic Arrow & Snipe respectively. Both Charged Shot and Hawk Shot do similar numbers, with Charged Shot edging out just a bit on average. Given we have a constant damage buff, there is no sense of urgency to get out all of our skills within a strict window like Death Strike. We use skills as they come up and always want to land them; this is fundamental across all builds especially with Swiftness that requires having good uptime to keep up with the other builds.

• Use Atomic Arrow and summon your Silverhawk → Wings of Storm. This applies the 6% damage Synergy and the 12% mark that increases damage for the Sharpshooter only.
• Cast Snipe first as it's our most damage skill, if you use Hawk Shot as your meter gain skill we use it second.
• All other damage skills can be used in whatever order, although Charged Shot should be used first if you are using Steady Aim as it has a charge up.
• Auto attack / dodge while waiting for skills to come back off cooldown. Constatnly use your Wings of Storm.

Beginning encounters is usually done with using Fenrir's Messenger to max our Hawk Meter and have our buffs up right away. In real raid scenarios, burst damage is favored which means less time your hawk will be using auto attacks and less casts of Wings of Storm. That's one of the downsides of running a full Spec build since the extra damage your hawk will deal doesn't translate well into the actual encounters. On the flip side, full Swiftness suffers from encounters that have too much downtime as you'll be sitting on skills that are off cooldown but cannot use them. In theory, a hybrid build will output the most DPS but it's still close enough to where choice is based on preference. Overall, Loyal Companion is a very easy and consistent DPS with some build variety and a loose priority system. The class really focuses on managing good uptime similar to Death Strike, but is far less puninshing for mistakes and on average is actually more rewarding.