Sharpshooter Guide for Lost Ark

Sharpshooter is an easy to pick-up ranged class that can either deal consistent damage or have more of a burst spec depending on your engraving choice. Its identity, the Silverhawk, can be summoned once the meter is full and has its own attacks and mechanics. Sharpshooter's damage scales further with players who have mastered both the class and fight encounters. Its lack of Push Immunity on its main damage skills leaves you susceptible to being interrupted and losing a large chunk of your damage. You'll definitely feel that if you decide to play Death Strike.

Aside from the specific hawk interactions Sharpshooter's engravings have, your basic gameplay loop relies on upkeeping your 6% damage Synergy, Amplified Damage, and landing your skills. Building your hawk gauge is done passively through the Silver Master tripods that increase your gauge by a fixed amount of the course of 10 seconds. You'll also proc a natural regen by using auto attacks and skills. With the rigidity of how meter is gained, it creates a stiff playstyle for Death Strike. Your hawk gauge refills even while summoned, so Loyal Companion experiences a rather relaxed playstyle that doesn't have to worry about their hawk ever disappearing.

The burst spec of Sharpshooter, Death Strike grants us +50% damage for 8 seconds upon using Last Rush, our hawk's suicide skill. Though to a fault, this +50% damage is a debuff on the target hit and not a buff on the player. This makes actually landing your hawk incredibly important as otherwise you have to wait for meter & skills to come back up. Within those 8 seconds you have to land roughly 5 to 6 skills to deal optimal burst damage. This is where the class's lack of Push Immunity comes into play as you can easily be interrupted or flat out miss skills due to boss actions. Sharpshooter is pretty MP hungry, guzzling it every rotation. It can be mitigated by using a Focus, food items and support buffs. Death Strike overall is a punishing spec, almost to a frustrating degree. It's not for the faint of heart and requires more effort to excel with compared to Loyal Companion.

Loyal Companion is an incredibly consistent DPS that can be built either with primarily Swiftness or Specialization. This gives players an option of how they want the class to feel; the damage difference is negligible. With this build, your hawk provides a +12% damage debuff on the target upon auto attack or Wings of Storm. Additionally, it provides another +4% move speed and a multiplicative +6% Attack Power buff while summoned. On top of all of this, the engraving buffs the hawk's Critical Rate, attack range and summon duration. Building Swiftness creates a spammy build with high movement speed, making it easier to move around mechanics. Specialization scales your skill damage while your hawk is summoned, so you'll see bigger numbers at the expense of playing at a slower tempo. Landing your skills is important for both builds; you'll find that Swiftness suffers more when met with a lot of downtime.