Sniper PVE Guide: The Bitter Wind

[[aL]]

EDIT: This guide is no longer updated since I dont play my sniper anymore; skill details and rotation might be outdated.

by: aL

Content:

1. Introduction
2. Skills & Skill Build
   • Detailed Skill Description & Info
     • Active Skills
     • About Windshaft
     • Passive Skills
   • A Recap of All Skill Details
   • Skill Build
     • General Skeleton Build
     • My Personal Build
3. Gameplay
   • Basic Skill Rotation
   • What to do After
   • Tips and Trick
     • Siege Stance
     • Cheating Point
     • Triangle Shot
   • Final Thoughts
4. Misc Info/Calculations/ETC
   • Windshaft Cast Time

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1. INTRODUCTION

About Me:
Hi, im aL, started playing DN around early 93 cap and have been playing Sniper as main from the get go. I have always played archer (like real archer, physical bow and physical arrow) based class on every MMO I have played, and so here I am playing Sniper in DN.

About Sniper:
Sniper is, I dare say, the only existing archer that we can play in DN. Her cousins either are kick loving, air pouncing, or magically shoots arrows. So, if you love plain bow & arrow, sadly Sniper is the only class you get.

Sniper’s main attribute is AGI(agility) and is a Physical Attack type. As the name implies, Sniper is a long range, not-so-mobile, DPS class. Her gameplay focuses around positioning(re-positioning), timing, and micro-managing skills.

FAQ:

1. Q: Is Sniper a very strong HDPS class?

A: No, she’s not, further discussion and/or explanation will be addressed below.

That’s basically it for FAQ, I guess.

P.S. No gearing guide, I'm lazy to do it. Maybe in future part, or by popular demand, because in my eye you don't need guide about gearing (?).

EDIT LOG:
05/08/2018 - Start of guide, based on KR's 04/04/2018 Class Balancing

[[aL]]

2. SKILLS & SKILL BUILD

Detailed Skill Description and Info:

Active Skills: Removed [Outdated]

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About Windshaft:

Windshaft is a special attack in Sniper’s arsenal. It is shot when Sniper have enough Wind Arrows, 1 Windshaft needs 10 Wind Arrows and Sniper can hold a maximum of 20 Wind Arrows. To gain Wind Arrows:

a) Hit Siege Stage:

- 1 Wind Arrow per hit

b) Casting Skill on Siege Stance

- 1 Arrow every Charged Shot

- 4 Arrow every Arrow Shower

Damage calculation of Windshaft is as follows:

5000% + 1000%*(Siege Stance Level-1)

On maximum Siege Stance level it would be:

5000% + 1000%*15-1=19000%

While that is the total damage, the coefficient of the Windshaft is 20 hits, thus per hit it is 950%.

About the cast time, default cast time would be 3s. More info on Windshaft’s Casting Time on Misc. info.

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Passive Skill Removed [Outdated]

A Recap of Skill Details: Active Skills Removed [Outdated]

[[aL]]

Skill Build
Now with that all out of the way, its time for skill build you all have been waiting to just copy.

General Skeleton Build:



My Personal Build:


FAQ:

1. Q : Why no Fake Shot? Why Triangle Shot?
   A : Fake Shot into Arrow Shower [Instant] has been removed as per recent revamp. Triangle Shot now is the new CMII and is decent now.

   ---

2. Q : Why no Cheating Point EX?
   A : The skill only makes explosions pull enemy towards it, not needed for nesting.

   ---

3. Q : Why take useless skill like Sliding Shot?
   A : With the revamp, Arrow Shower takes longer to cast, only Sliding Shot can cancel it.

   ---

4. Q : Why take Wise of The Owl?
   A : It is changed into a passive that gives flat 20% Critical Damage.

   ---

Skill Plate

• Charged Shot (Action Speed) *yes, it still does affect Windshaft, thankfully.
  This is useful because you will shoot a lot of Windshaft outside of Camouflage buff.

  ---

• Arrow Barrage (Damage)
  Arrow Barrage is one of your top DPS skill.

  ---

• Critical Break (Damage) *yes, it’s still good with the nerf, and yes damage still better than chance.
  Even though with the big nerf on Critical Break, it still remains top 3 on your DPS skill details.

  ---

• Cheating Point (Cooldown)
  Cheating Point is your new best friend. Its in top 3 of your DPS skill details, and sometimes if use properly (while your Windshaft misses) can overtake Windshaft in DPS skill details.

[[aL]]

3. GAMEPLAY

About Sniper gameplay, from its name only it is clear that it’s going to be immobile. That is true for all Sniper iteration, and it is still true now.

With the new revamp, Sniper have more than Windshaft in her arsenal. Most of her other skills, compared to be previous Level 93 Cap Sniper, contributes more to DPS.

For example; the new Cheating Point, gives considerable amount of Damage. Along with Arrow Barrage Cool Down being recovered every time you hit Windshaft, makes it a lot more spam able.

So here is the rotation that you could now do with Sniper: Note* always have Willpower Fragment.

Basic Skill Rotation:

1. Start with Bull’s Eye for that damage debuff; use Sylp’s Aid if off Cool Down.

• With Arrow Barrage off Cool Down.
  Triangle Shot → Aerial Chain Shot → Arrow Barrage

• With Arrow Barrage on Cool Down.
  Aerial Chain Shot

2. Main Rotation:

Cheating Point → Siege Stance (Charge Shot) → SS (Arrow Shower) → Piercing Shot (Left Click) → Siege Stance until recovered all Arrow Shower Cool Down (10 times or more, depends on action speed) → SS (Arrow Shower) → SS (Charged Shot) → SS (Aerial Chain Shot).

This way you maximize your Cheating Point damage output. Total seed drops damage:

2 + 5 + 10 + 5 +2 = 24 seeds = 24 * 1100% = 26400% Damage Total

3. At the end of rotation you also would have 20 Wind Arrows. (You notice also, main rotation ended with ACS, so that the following Windshaft would take advantage of it)

1 + 4 + 10 + 4 +1 = 20 Wind Arrows

With the 20 Wind Arrows you should do:

• When Camouflage off Cool Down:
  Windshaft → Camouflage (Gain 10 Arrow) → Windshaft → Windshaft

• When Camouflage on Cool Down:
  Windshaft → Windshaft

4. On A full rotation like this, you also managed to recover X*10s of Arrow Barrage’s Cooldown.

What to do After:

Well there is not much more to it, your skills would align itself with flower cool down. Most importantly you need to make sure not to use Cheating Point with Piercing Shot and Arrow Shower on cool down. So After the rotation, make sure you recover all of Arrow Shower’s cool down before Cheating Point is up, also don’t use Piercing Shot without Cheating Point. Also, shoot any extra Windshaft you can before doing the rotation, because the rotation will give you 20 Wind Arrows without fail.

Tips and Trick:

1.Siege Stance

After using either SS (Charged Shot) or SS (Arrow Shower), it sometimes would fail to register the next SS skills; for example:

You are using:

SS (Charged Shot) → (Arrow Shower) just like stated in the rotation

Sometimes you will get:

SS (Charged Shot) → Normal Arrow Shower instead; which is not what you want

What you want to do is, always use a single SS [Left Click] after any Siege Stance skill, this also includes shooting Windshaft in quick sucession.

When you try to do:

SS (Windshaft) → SS (Windshaft)

Sometimes you will get:

SS (Windshaft) → SS (kick the air like an idiot)

So you want to shoot a single left click in between using Siege Stance skills in succession.

What you want to do:

SS (Charged Shot) → (Left Click) → (Arrow Shower)

Or

SS (Windshaft) → SS (Left Click) → (Windshaft)

2. Cheating Point

There are 2 hits that’s possible from Cheating Point’s seeds, 1100% for hitting enemy directly, and 30% of that if enemies only get hits by shockwave. The thing is, both can hit at the same time, but sadly its random. Placing Cheating Point on top of Boss ensures the seeds hits directly dealing that 1100%, but it still allow the shockwave to hit from time to time (this chance won’t increase if you distance placement of Cheating Point). So it is still better to put Cheating Point on top of Boss.
*this is true until further testing.

3. Triangle Shot

Sometimes it is hard to aim Triangle Shot if you are moving. What you want to do is press either [W+S] or [A+D] together when you Tumble → Right click, so you would fly and spin in place and you are free to aim. This also helps you hit your Aerial Chain Shot easier. *this takes practice to master.

[[aL]]

Final Thoughts:

Sniper’s revamp gameplay has little to be desired, yes maybe it is more fluid now than it is before, and have more potential towards her damage output. But in the end, her rotation is too rigid and too reliant on a single skill, Piercing Shot.

Failing to utilize Piercing Shot, means one and only one thing, you lose all of your DPS. You lose:

1. Flower seed drops
2. Cool Down recovery for double Arrow Shower and Charged Shot
3. Wind Arrows worth 2 Windshaft
4. 20s of Arrow Barrage Cool Down recovery.

Which is basically every important damaging skills being affected, and this will cripple all of Sniper’s DPS potential until the next Cheating Point, which is 24s with Cool Down Plate.

This also brings us to a new problem. Piercing Shot CM3 buffs only lasts 3seconds, if ever you need to dodge directly after casting Piercing Shot you will, more or less lose all the buff’s uptime. Piercing Shot itself has very low Super Armor, and will be cancelled by the slightest of touch, thus making Sniper failing to gain that CM3 buff.

So, is it a good revamp? Yes, yes it is. Damage output wise it’s a lot better, on paper you could dish out a lot of damage in decent amount of time. However, gameplay wise, as fluid as it might be, it’s too reliant on a single skill to function. It doesn’t give any room for mistake and freedom to use skills. There is basically only 1 set of rotation that will work, and outside of it, you’d be left with nothing.

For me, a good and quick fix for this is just to change Piercing Shot CM3 buff, into hit counts. Instead of 3s of buff, make it into "Buff will last until 10 hits of Siege Stance" or something, would be very helpful.

[[aL]]

4. MISC INFO/CALCULATIONS/ETC

Windshaft Cast Time

This research is done before the Sniper revamp, so Camouflage is on 2x increased Windshaft Action Speed, not the new 3x.
*note : with the revamp, Camouflage should be at 33.33%
: yes the plate is Charged Shot Action Speed Plate, and yes it still works
*note : the way buff stacks are multiplicative, the buff effect applies on layer and not parallel.

From the results, there are 2 patterns that are very clear.

1. Marked in Yellow; Plates and Camo have something going on between them, thus making results inaccurate.
2. Marked in Orange; WP and Sylphs have something going between them as well.
3. Marked in Green; is just a disaster of combination of everything coming together.

We will get through Orange first, just because it’s simple. The reason is, Action Speed buff for Windshaft is capped at 25% Action Speed buff. If you see WP+Sylphs Cast Time, and compared it to Sylphs Cast Time, they are the same.

Now the hard part and more maths for the Yellow stuff:
With a hypothesis that either of Plate and Camouflage affecting each other, we would need to assume 2 types, which are:

1. Plate affecting Camouflage:

Plate Reducing Camouflage's Effect
	(A%)
Camo Default	50.00%
Camo Corrected	62.50%	(50%+(50%*25%)

With the corrected Camo value the corrected Yellow values would be:
Buff	Test Result (s)	Default Theoritical Cast Time	Corrected Theoritical Cast Time (s)	Difference
Plate + Camo	1.6	1.3125	1.640625	2.54%
Plate + Sylphs + Camo	1.2	1.0828	1.23046875	2.54%
Plate + WP + Camo	1.35	1.1156	1.39453125	3.30%

2. Camouflage affecting Plate

Camouflage Reducing Plate's Effect
	(A%)
Plate Default	75.00%
Plate Corrected	87.50%	(75%+(50%*25%))

With the corrected Camo value the corrected Yellow values would be:
Buff	Test Result (s)	Default Theoritical Cast Time	Corrected Theoritical Cast Time (s)	Difference
Plate + Camo	1.6	1.3125	1.53125	4.30%
Plate + Sylphs + Camo	1.2	1.0828	1.1484375	4.30%
Plate + WP + Camo	1.35	1.1156	1.3015625	3.59%

Theres no real way to figure out which one affects which one (Plate and Camouflage). But in the end the results of both are similar, and the point is now we know how to roughly calculate the cast time.

So in conclusion:

1. Charged Shot Action Speed Plate reduces Action Speed by 25% only.
2. Action Speed Buff cannot exceed 25%.
3. Plate and Camouflage will have effect on one another if co-existing.

To apply this conclusion, we will try to fix the Green Theoretical Cast Time.

- Base Cast Time : 3.5s

- Plate : 75%

- Sylphs Aid : 75%

- WP : n/a (capped at 25% Action Speed buff by Sylphs Aid)

- Camouflage : 62.5% (Corrected)

- Cast Time Final : 1.23s

Cast Time based on our test is: 1.2s, so we are 97.46% accurate~

[Mr.Shovels]

damn that charged shot action speed skill heraldry still works and i just dumped it on my trash!!!

[[aL]]

Reserved for later use

[[aL]]

Reserved for later use (2)
Critique and discussion are very much welcomed~

[Adhelaida]

Good guide. I would still recommend Fake Shot at the General Build even if just to extend the iframe/distance when Tumble.

Her DPS potential is very high even if might need some very specific scenarios and being so Piercing Shot dependant is not exactly the best but still the revamp it is overall good yeah, as long as you don't get/have to cancel this skill for any reason you'll be fine.

[[aL]]

Yeah her dps potential exceeded my initial expectation. On my early tests it doesnt feel/perform as good; until i found, use, and master that specifc rotation. I wouldnt use very high to describe her DPS potential, but its definitely close.

Fake shot, is based on personal prefference i guess, but its not essential, so I skipped it.

[Xenocho]

I see skill dmg table, I give likes. Good guide.

How does cheating point work? The number of seeds and coefficient shown do not really tally. Asking out of curiousity.

[Xenocho]

I'm not sure how large 30m would be but it becomes easier to understand when juxtaposed to unseen art. Given the description of seed and shock wave, is it correct to say that the flower should be as near as the boss as possible?

[[aL]]

The area is very big, just put it at that hahaha.
Putting it closer is better yes, so you get the full direct hit. Im currently testing if there is a specific spot to increase the chance of double hitting (both direct and shockwave hitting), but so far its pretty much random whether you get double hit or not.

[nanalouis]

in Aug Kr patch they just buff cheating point again

[Ririn]

Good guide, but i personally prefer using arrow barrage plate rather than cp plate

[Mr.Shovels]

Nice guide! Sniper mains would agree to this.

I also wanted to take note that the action speed buff from your CM3 not only applies to your Siege Stance, but can also be applied to any action you use, so you can take this advantage by using both of your Charged Shot and Arrow Shower in SiegeStance mode the instant it has cooled down while you still have that 3 second buff, at that time frame you can get more Wind arrow to spam while your Camouflage is still on cool down.

[Jeanne]

I can't for the life of me figure out what WP stands for. Prosperity?

[Xenocho]

Willpower stone, which (used to?) add 15% ASPD

[Xenocho]

OchaL where are you

[Mr.Shovels]

I am now a cleric main, i don't think snipers would even get a standing ground on the rankings anymore, Majority of the sniper users transitioned into other classes.

Guides like this is only meant for people who are dedicated on playing it, and it is such a waste to see some class that was on the higher rankings of DPS to fall down onto the gutter just like that.