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Best Lost Ark Striker build: overview and Identity Skills
Lost Ark’s Awakening Classes revolve around their Identity Gauges and Skills. Striker shares the Esoteric Orbs gauge with the Wardancer. Striking enemies will fill your three Esoteric Orbs, seen between your skill and item hotbars. Unlike other classes that use their identity gauge for a stance toggle or temporary powerup, Striker can spend Orbs to cast certain powerful skills from his main arsenal. When viewing your skills (default keybind K), you will see some skills that cost one or more Esoteric Orbs to use. You may hear players refer to these Esoteric Skills as “spenders.” Your spenders are far more powerful than normal skills and are the key to Striker gameplay. It takes some practice, but once you get the hang of managing your Orbs you will dominate the battlefield.
Best Lost Ark Striker build: leveling and skills for PvE and PvP
Striker doesn’t have the massive AoE attacks of something like an Artillerist, but makes up for it with superior mobility. Use skills like Moon Flash Kick to maneuver around mob packs and group them up. Then, finish them off with your spender skills. Most of Striker’s skills have the Back Attack property too, so use that mobility to get behind bosses and show off your superior single target damage. Each skill in Lost Ark has ten levels that require progressively more skill points to reach. You’ll earn just over 250 leveling to 50 and completing the main story, and can acquire more from Skill Potions rewarded from endgame content. Skills also earn Tripods at levels 4, 7, and 10. These powerful augments sometimes drastically alter how a skill functions, and are an important aspect to build around. In most cases, you’ll invest in a skill enough to hit one of these key breakpoints. Work towards the PvE build below as your progress through the main story and you will be set up strong for endgame.
Best PvE skills for Striker
Best PvP skills for Striker
PvP is a little different. In Arenas, you will receive a normalized pool of skill points to set up presets with. This levels the playing field and lets you max out a few more skills. PvP is all about crowd control, and Striker has access to several powerful knockdowns. Plus, all that mobility makes it easy to dodge enemy crowd control while keeping up the pressure. Striker has room for a lot of skill expression on the ranked ladder.
Best Lost Ark Striker build: Engravings
Engravings are another layer of customization, allowing players to boost certain stats or alter their class’ function. You’ll earn a few Engraving books over the course of the main story, but these powerful character augments really come into play at level 50. There are numerous generic Engravings for all classes, but each class also has two Class Engravings that are almost like a second subclass. For Striker, these are:
Esoteric Flurry: Striker reduces the cost of all spender skills to one Esoteric Orb and increases Esoteric Skill damage. Death Blow: Striker increases your maximum number of Esoteric Orbs to 4. Using an Esoteric Skill will spend ALL available Orbs, and deal bonus damage based on the number of Orbs consumed.
These Engravings clearly push Striker towards two distinct playstyles. Esoteric Flurry enables great consistent damage. You will be able to fire off spender skills much more frequently and maintain excellent DPS throughout a fight. Death Blow, on the other hand, enables colossal burst damage. Death Blow is a slightly more skill-intensive playstyle, as whiffing a spender that consumes all of your orbs is obviously quite punishing. Both styles are strong though, so play around with both and see what fits you. Your generic Engravings are pretty flexible. Just be cognizant of any downsides and the ways you can play around them. These suggestions will work for a variety of playstyles and content.
Master of Ambush increases Back Attack damage. You should be hitting bosses in the back whenever possible anyways, so this is a nice generic upgrade. Spirit Absorption provides attack and movement speed boosts with no downsides. Keen Blunt Weapon increases crit damage but has a chance to reduce non-crit damage. This will net you more damage overall with a high crit rate. Grudge increases damage output but also increases damage taken. In the late endgame when you can max this out and are comfortable with your class, Grudge is excellent. However, the tradeoff isn’t worth it until you can max Grudge out. If you only have access to level 1 or 2 Grudge, use an alternative.
Best Lost Ark Striker build: Combat Stats and accessories
In addition to Engravings, accessory items in Lost Ark (necklaces, earrings, and rings) are your source for Combat Stats. These substats can have a major effect on your character, and it is important to target gear with the right stats for your build. Strikers should target Crit while leveling, raising their critical strike rate and damage. This is the most efficient stat for increasing your DPS during the main story, but Swiftness’ cooldown reduction makes it a good secondary target. Once you start using class Engravings, base your stats on the Engraving you’re currently using. Both specs should stack up lots of Crit, and Esoteric Flurry users will still want Swiftness. Death Blow users, however, should target Specialization over Swiftness. Since Death Blow needs more Esoteric meter to maximize damage, the extra meter gain from Specialization is a big help.
Awakening Skills
Awakening Skills are another endgame option, which you will unlock by following the post-level-50 Trixion storyline. These are extremely powerful, high-cooldown attacks. Think of them as an ultimate ability from similar games. Each class has two, but you can only equip one at a time. Striker’s Awakening skills are:
Nova Blast is a series of advancing strikes that deal enormous damage. The attack cancels if the first strike misses. True Heavenly Awakening kicks twice in an arc, dealing massive damage and launching enemies up into the air.
In most cases, these abilities have pretty similar functions; they deal a ton of damage with a single cast. True Heavenly Awakening is quicker, and therefore safer. Nova Blast, however, deals much more stagger damage. Some endgame bosses will have deadly, arena-spanning attacks that you and your party will need to stagger them out of. Nova Blast is the clear winner for these specific cases, but True Heavenly Awakening is great for a variety of other content. That’s everything you need to get started with Striker in Lost Ark’s endgame! This is one of the trickier classes to master, but mastery pays off. If you’re still trying to pick your class, check out our tier list for some ideas. Every class is solid though, so don’t sweat it too much. Once you’ve made your decision, our guide to leveling fast in Lost Ark can help you slog through the story and get into endgame quicker.
