Life of the Abyss Walker [Builds]

[Cipherel]

Starting this off sooner rather than later since Abyss Walker is such a played class and I'm worried my opinions will be buried under the weight of everyone else with an opinion on it. [where's the strikeout for sarcasm when you need it]
So then, just builds to start out. Commentary to follow should anyone actually request it. Note that these are my personal builds, complete with techs. PVE ONLY

Level 90 - This is the build I'm using right now


Level 93, Pre-Awakening (Which is gonna be a damn long time ;-; ) Forgot to add in on the screenshot, but 3 SP left over in this one.

and finally...
Level 93, Tentative Build

[Davodile]

I wanna know why you maxed illusionary chakra

[Cipherel]

Every point you put into Illusory Chaka reduces the cooldown by 2s, starting from 30. At level 10, that'll put the CD at 12s or 9.6s if you're using a cd crest.
Hitting an enemy with illusory (left click during skill) will activate dark line instant, which is also an immediate cooldown of the skill. Since dark line is your primary dps skill and second strongest overall -second only to your ult- being able to reset it every 12s is vital.

[Davodile]

I didn't know illusionary chakra can reset cd on darkline, thanks for telling me )

[SkitzoRoy]

Why get Shadow Hand at all? Piercing Star has better dps for one, and two, you could put Shadow Hand's sp into Dark Focus especially since it was buffed now.

[Cipherel]

Shadow Hand is part of my personal preference. I use it due to the high SA break it has. Admittedly it's of very little use in raids unless I'm pushing seeds, but in regular dungeons it can cancel most mechanics. Level 6 makes the cast time almost instant at the cost of cutting the range to be pretty much right in front of you (3-5m). This is of little consequence since as a mid-range fighter you should be relatively close to what you're hitting at all times and just makes the cancelling happen faster.
Valid point that dark focus is quite a bit better and on a much better CD, however my playstyle uses dark focus simply to activate the CM2, and rarely as an actual dps skill. Not to say it's not highly useful when used for dps, just need to make sure you get as much dark burn on a target before activation for maximum effect.

[SkitzoRoy]

What mechanics in dungeons need/can be canceled o.o? And sure, Dark Focus takes a second to cast, but it has the same SA break as Shadow Hand on a much lower cooldown.

Also, (my reference is only pvp but) I'm like pretty sure stacking dark burn on a target doesn't make dark focus's damage (even though it seems like it says it) go up (if that's what you're referring to when you say "just need to make sure you get as much dark burn on a target before activation for maximum effect.". I'm pretty sure the "Damage per Dark Burn Explosion Hit: 5%" is just for the 4ish (I forget the actual number) of extra hits after the initial hit (meaning each hit is just 5% regular damage) and not "5% more damage for each dark burn on the target". (I say pretty sure because this is how it is in pvp and I haven't bothered to test for sure if it was also pve but it just seems really likely.. unless this is yet another thing bugged about Bringers..).
But even if I'm wrong about that, you'd probably get more dps off by using it whenever it's off cd instead of waiting to stack the dark burns to use it.

[Cipherel]

So I did some damage testing and I'd have to conclude you're right that "stacking" dark burn doesn't actually increase dark focus damage output. The top two counters are only using a single dark line to inflict dark burn, as that's the only skill I think can accurately do it only once. Nether burst leaves a small aoe that causes more damage and night burst has multiple pulses. For all tests I had the Raid skill buff active, so +10% to all crits, and also for these 4 tests I made sure that dark focus was a crit. The other skill damage is negligible since they were only used to attempt to stack dark burn. Seeing as the damage stayed mostly consistent through all 4 tests I'd assume there's no stacking burns.
For the second tests when I tried stacking I attempted to make sure the boss was unaffected by nightfall and therefore not affected by the debuff, but even if it was, the damage should've been lower and not consistent with the first two.
Dark Focus was at level 6 (1211%) for these tests. Added my field stats on the side for reference in case the numbers look weird for single hits. Made sure class mastery 2 was not active for any of the dark focus uses.

Hopefully people get more out of this than just seeing a huge wall of text and image. My thoughts were kinda all over the place, I know :L

[SkitzoRoy]

Hey cool, good on you for testing it out . Idk if you're the first one to test this in pve, but you're sure the first one to display results that I've seen so yay .
A tip tho, for testing anything else in the future, you should try to lower your damage as much as possible so that the gap in your physical damage becomes as small as possible. Stuff like buying lower level weps from Belin or the potions that lower your attack from Honest Ed. That way, you'll see the lowest amount of variance in your skills' damage.

So, first off, Nether Burst and Night Burst only add one dark burn each. The lingering parts/multiple hits only refresh that one dark burn. You can easily see this after Night Burst is finished for example. You don't see multiple burns from each hit on the boss, you'll just see the last hit causing the one burn to last 10 more seconds (5 more burn ticks if I'm correct on saying each burn tick comes up every 2 seconds). Also, it seems you forgot a single poke from Illusion Strike adds a dark burn (with each new poke refreshing that burn).

I'm not completely sure what you mean by the boss being "unaffected by nightfall". If the boss is standing in Nightfall, that boss will take 20% more damage I believe. Nightfall also doesn't cause a dark burn, so I'm also unsure of why you used it in the first place unless 1, Nightfall does inflict a dark burn in pve UNLIKE PVP, or 2, you didn't know maybe or 3, something I'm not seeing. (Using Dark Focus immediately after Nightfall never does any damage (from Dark Focus). Also, the damage should've been like 20% higher if you used Dark Focus while the boss was standing over Nightfall (which it looks like that wasn't the case? Otherwise the damage should've been noticeably about 20% more.) so that's good.
From here on I assume that Nightfall applies no dark burn though.


So, I currently forget what the extra 5% would actually be (as I'm typing this). Is it 5% of your physical damage, therefor adding only a couple extra thousand? Or is it 5% of the damage that dark focus does after the initial hit of 1211% (in your case). Then it would do 5% of a couple million, which would be much more beneficial/more noticeable. If it's just the extra thousand, your tests may not be able to show this; even 15% on each hit would only add up to the hundred thousand range.

However, I now just confirmed in pvp that it's 5% of the initial hit, (1211%). So, in this case it could result in adding a little above a million which your results showing consistent damage show otherwise.
(8,000,000 * 1.20 (4 hits of 5% so 20% more damage) = 9,600,000 which is around what your damage was coming to. 8,000,000 * 1.60 (from the 3 dark burns causing 4 hits of 15%) = 12,800,000 which you never really came close to (also, if the boss was over Nightfall, that'd be another 20% more damage as well).)
Dark Focus seems to always do 4 hits of that 5% no matter how many burns are applied so, it's also not the case where it adds more 5% hits based on how many burns you have.


Lastly, "Made sure class mastery 2 was not active for any of the dark focus uses." I'm again, not sure what that means either. AW's class mastery 2 deals with Illusory Chakra. The 15% more damage is actually a permanent passive buff (your damage isn't increased when Illusory Chakra/Dark Iine instant is used, it's already increased by 15% (again, my reference being pvp)).


So all in all, AW's skill descriptions could be a bit more descriptive.. AND IT'S FUNNY HOW EVERYONE EXPECTS NIGHTFALL TO APPLY A DARK BURN EVEN THOUGH IT DOESN'T. Yes I'm annoyed at this. Always have been, always will be ><. (Since it's never ever applied it in pvp since release.)

Nightfall
"Create a dark sigil around you.."
sig·il
ˈsijəl/
noun
noun: sigil; plural noun: sigils

• an inscribed or painted symbol considered to have magical power.

Yeah well that magical power clearly ain't so powerful if it can't burn anything. I'm hoping our awakening will fix this..


Thanks for taking some of your time to do your own tests though !

[nervnqsr]

I'm beginning to think dark focus might be better than illusion strike. It's a little long and inflexible, but it bursts, is still faster than using illusion strike and immediately cancelling it, and has an almost non-existent cooldown. With how frequently you cast dark line and the 2 burst skills, I feel like there's no room for sitting still spamming illusion strike for the buff.

[Cipherel]

Unintentionally abandoned my thread because forgot about it.
Depending on how you play and whether you're constantly applying dark burn, it may very well be more beneficial to go with dark focus, though I wouldn't recommend it. I prefer Illusion strike since I'm hitting 1m+/ hit atm and also in the case you're about to get hit, your left click to throw knives forward also functions as an iframe.
Amusingly that fraction of a second you jump to throw the knives also counts as being off the ground, so you can avoid a stomp if need be. Tested and confirmed on wyvern stage of RDN, though I don't have any screenshots of it.

[SkitzoRoy]

You only need the damage buff every 10 seconds. Illusion Strike is a 9 second cooldown which is kinda more convenient than Dark Focus's 5 second cooldown for this purpose since you can just use Illusion Strike off cooldown. 9 hits of Illusion Strike (9 out of a total of 19 so half-ish) will do a little more damage than Dark Focus. So, you can cut Illusion Strike's animation in half to keep that iframe handy and still do the a little more damage than what you would do with Dark Focus.

[nervnqsr]

How much does the cat contribute to dps in endgame nests? She's about 30% of my dps right now so I feel like a cat+1 necklace is better than anything else that could go in that slot.

[SkitzoRoy]

Depends on the nests. Tabi (Pact of Azuna) can probably do about half of your DPS if not more. It depends on how aggressive you can be. However, there are some nests that wipe summons quite frequently. This severely lowers Tabi's overall damage. Nests like IDN and DDN have a lot of mechanics that will cause you to have to resummon. Other nests that allow him to constantly attack will benefit him more.

But, yeah, a cat+1 necklace would be great. A radiant necklace might be better but that can be pretty expensive.

Also, in case you didn't know, Tabi's attacks are split into 5 moves on the DPS Meter. Ajna Blade and Ajna Drop aren't usually seen on the DPS Meter, so it's hard to say exactly how much of your DPS Tabi actually does. But, the other 3 can usually be seen, so make sure you account for all of them when considering how he ties into your DPS

[nervnqsr]

Thanks for the in-depth answer! I knew about her being split into a bunch of listed skills so I added all the ones I could see to reach 30%.

[ceruulean]

AWakening time