Lost Ark offers a wide variety of classes so that every player can find their niche. Moreover, this MMORPG is an alt-heavy game, which means, that if you want to speed up your progression, you need to create alternate characters to funnel upgrade materials to your main character. One of the cheapest and easiest to build classes is the Shadowhunter in Lost Ark.
What is a Shadow Hunter in Lost Ark?
Shadowhunter is a part of the assassin archetype that wields a shadowblade. This blade allows them to obliterate foes in mere seconds. They are adept at close to mid-range combat and inflict a crazy amount of damage. In my opinion, Shadowhunter is a good entry point into exploring the world of Arkesia. There are a few benefits that Shadowhunter offers to players including:
- Shadowhunter class has easy-to-use spells that deal a massive amount of damage.
- Shadowhunter has a balance of mobility, damage, and survivability.
- Shadowhunter's Demonic Form recovers you some health and unlocks a new skill set that increases your damage, movement speed, and even more.
- Shadowhunter's gameplay is pretty simple. If you're used to hit-and-run gameplay, you will like playing this class.
Shadowhunter’s Identity Skill
Before diving into the most viable build for Shadowhunter, let me discuss their Identity Skill. Shadowhunter has an identity Gauge called Shadowburst Meter, and you can charge it using skills in Human Form. When the gauge is filled, you can go Demon Form by pressing ‘Z’ and gain access to six new skills. In Demon Form, you deal more damage plus an additional 20% Movement Speed and Attack Speed. This is further enhanced by their class engraving, Demonic Impulse, which provides a 30% crit rate. Because of your class engraving, your goal is to fill your shadow burst meter as fast as possible to transform and deal with considerable burst damage skills like Blood Massacre.
The Best Shadowhunter Build in Lost Ark
Shadowhunter's DPS potential will shine in Tier 3 content. It's because, in Tier 1 and tier 2, you require high specialization stat and wealth runes to ensure you can charge your shadow burst meter to complete in 1 human form rotation. This isn't possible in tier 1 unless you use your awakening skills. This will be fixed until you reach tier 3 since T3 accessories give you more stats to optimize your build.
Raid Skill Build
Human Form
- Demonic Slash: Damage Application - Nimble Movement - Chain Charge
- Thrust Impact: Swift Thrust - Deep Thrust - Encroaching Power
- Demonic Clone: Vital Point Hit - Fist of Destruction - Enhance Release Encroachment
- Rising Claw: Naively Honest - Giant Hand - Grasp of Death
- Demon Vision: Concentrated Release - Encroaching Power - Instant Discharge (Wealth)
- Demon's Grip - Swift Fingers - Encroaching Power - Stretching Hand (Wealth)
- Howl: Swift Fingers - Encroaching Power (Wealth)
- Decimate: Swift Fingers - Weak Point Detection - Cruel Hand
Demon Form
- Ruining Rush: (Quick Recharge)
- Death Claw: (Rage)
- Destruction:
- Gore Bleeding: (Galewind)
- Leaping Blow: (Galewind)
- Blood Massacre: (Galewind)
Gameplay
- Your goal as a Demonic Impulse Shadowhunter is to reach the full shadow burst meter as quickly as possible to transform into a demon form. Your normal mode skills are only used for the shadowburst meter.
- Your primary shadowburst meter generator skills are: demonic clone, demon vision, decimate, and howl.
- If you need to counter bosses, you can use rising claw (human form) and death claw (demon form)
- Demonic slash is your gap closer skill and primary mobility in human form. On the other hand, ruining rush and leaping blow in demon form can serve as gap closers.
- You need to hit your Blood Massacre skill since this is your most considerable nuke damage and missing it is punishable.
- Use Awakening: Gate of Eruption to gain shadowburst meter in tier 1 and tier 2. Once you reach tier 3, you can replace your awakening with Fallen Ruin. Just remember, the hitbox for this skill is hard to hit and you would do more damage if you can reach demon form much faster.
- When in your demon form, you can spam every skill on cooldown except your Death Claw if the enemy has parry/counter mechanics.
Shadowhunter Stat Priority
As I mentioned above, you need to generate shadowburst meter quickly so you will need Specialization. Specialization will also increase the damage dealt by all of your demon form skills and increases the uptime of the demon form. Crit stat is your secondary priority and is only included in your necklace.
Engravings
There are two different types of class engravings for Shadowhunter:
Perfect Suppression: Increases your normal skill damage by 30% but disables your demon form.
Demonic Impulse: This is the needed engraving for this build to be viable since this increases your crit rate by 30% in demon form. Your goal is to reach level 3 engraving for this build.
There are few engravings that suit Shadowhunter but the best engravings for Shadowhunter in Lost Ark are as follows:
Adrenaline: This provides an additional source of crit and attack power since this provides 1% atk power for 6 seconds and will stack up to 6 times. If you reach the max stacks, you will be provided with an additional 15% crit rate.
Hit Master: This is a great choice to improve your DPS since almost all of your demon form skills do not have a head attack or back attack modifier. This provides you with an additional 16% damage without having to deal with penalties such as Curse Doll.
Keen Blunt Weapon: This requires a high crit stat to make use of this bonus, thankfully, you receive a crit rate stat boost on your demon form, adrenaline, and 1370 Argos set. This engraving gives you 50% crit damage but your attack has a chance to deal -20% damage.
Advanced Engravings
These are the engravings that you can use if you want to have more challenging gameplay yet more rewarding if you can deal with the penalties.
Curse Doll: This will significantly raise Atk. Power by 16% but at a cost of 25% healing penalty.
Grudge: This increases your damage done while also increasing the damage received. This engraving is highly effective if you can read and dodge boss patterns easily.
Alternate Engravings
If you're running swiftness build these two engravings to synergize with each other:
Spirit Absorption: This provides you with an additional attack and movement speed bonus of 15%.
Raid Captain: This is a decent engraving if you are running Spirit Absorption since you can gain 45% Outgoing damage of basic move speed bonus. So, if you can reach 140% movement speed, you gain an 18% damage increase.
Overall, Shadowhunter in Lost Ark is a pretty simple class that offers high DPS and decent mobility. In fact, I much rather pick Shadowhunter over deathblade since it has much more survivability in the late game because of the demon form. However, you will have a hard time in tier 1 and tier 2 content so if you're looking for a budget-friendly and easy-to-use alternate character in your roster, you can go for a Shadowhunter. Do take note that you only need two gems to optimise her DPS potential. If you liked this build, we have more build guides in our class series.
