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[xelander]

Min-Maxing the Artificer Rogue

 

Let's talk about the Artificer and how to get the most out of it. There are three key talents from that tree (plus the focus ability). First and most important is the passive Opportunity Knocks - it reduces your cooldowns by 0.5 second whenever anyone in the party (including yourself) scores a critical hit. And Take Them Down is another passive which increases critical chance by 5% party-wide. You can see the main theme from those two skills - given enough stamina and high critical chance you can spam abilities, i.e. the primary function of the Artificer tree is to turn your Rogue into a sustained DPS machine. As I've said before, it's the equivalent of bringing a Gattling gun to a musket firefight.

 

Important note: the above means that the Artificer benefits the most from talents that score several hits per cast, as each has a chance of proccing a critical..

 

The other very important talent is Elemental Mines and its upgrade Throw Everything. The upgraded mines spend all your stamina, but litter the area in front of you with mines. With sufficient critical chance you will be able to cast mines with about 1 sec cooldown. Or less. Since they have various elemental types. no enemy is completely immune/resistant to them, which makes them the best mob killer in the game bar none, and I am talking across classes, not just Rogues.

 

Since the focus skill Hail of Arrows works only with Archery at the moment, I'll tackle it when discussing the Archer.

 

The other skills in the tree are only occasionally useful and therefore not a priority. Spike Trap and its upgrade provide an almost-instant CC centered on you and with a very small radius and damage - quite situational. Fallback Plan is a mix between Barrier-type damage mitigation, teleportation, and, with the upgrade, an isolating method for your nearest enemy, but since we will be killing stuff very fast adn we have Stealth in the first place, it will rarely come to use. Set Them Up increases your trap damage, which is nice for your mines and Spike Traps, but you'll get it anyway on the way to Elemental Mines. Tricks of the Trade is another party-wide buff, but not essential to the central concept of the Artificer, so it's lower on the priority list.

 

Now, since for all this skill spam we need stamina, we need a way to restore stamina fast, and that is Looked Like It Hurt from the Sabotage tree. It grants 10 stamina per critical hit. Oh wait, did I mention that the Artificer is built on the foundation of scoring critical hits? Why, yes I did. Once we've covered the bare essentials of the Artificer Rogue, another useful passive to get is Dance of Death from the DW tree. It works regardless of weapon used and grants 50 stamina upon a kill. Since Artificer already favors multiple hits per cast abilities, this means that you will be proccing this passive quite often. By late game you will be able to recast Elemental Mines on mobs as soon as the animation for the first cast finishes.

 

 

 

So, to sum it up, the bare essentials of the Artificer are the following:

 

Artificer - Opportunity Knocks, Elemental Mines (and its upgrade) and And Take Them Down. Hail of Arrows as wel, if you are an Archer and want to use a focus ability. Total of 6 or 7 skills.

Sabotage - Looked Like It Hurt and, since we can get it directly after, the armor sunder on critical hit - Cheap Shot. Total of 2 or 3 skills.

Subterfuge - Stealth only for Archers (they have Leaping Shot for dodging) or Stealth and Evade for DW. And since Ambush is right after Evade, we can take that one too - 6 sec of 50% armor penetration after Stealth. Total of 1 to 4 skills.

 

Things to focus on as an Artificer:

- Critical chance. Through gear and talents. Meaning that once you got your basic build done, Sneak Attack from DW is a good passive to get.

- Stamina replenishment and increase of general stamina pool (i.e + stamina gear). As I said, Dance of Death from DW is nice, and once you can get To The Death and its upgrade on Blackwall, you can make a beeline for the Sandy Howler in the Hissing Wastes and get that +50 stamina amulet.

- Abilities that score multiple hits per cast - because each hit can trigger a critical, meaning higher incidence of crits in a short amount of time. So taking mages with Energy Barrage, Chain Lightning and Blizzard will benefit you quite well.

 

TL;DR

 

Artificer is a specialization which favors high critical chance for sustained DPS through spamming abilities. Upgraded Elemental Mines spam destroy any mob and ability spam from your relevant weapon tree talents kills the big bosses. You start seeing big returns only after investing two points in the specialization tree and generally 6 points will serve for getting the most out of it with minimal investment. It's a very relaxed way of beating the game on Nightmare.

[xelander]

Archer Artificer

 

Now that we have a grasp of how Artificer works best, we can start building our Archer.

 

 

Let's have a look at the active talents from the Archery tree:

 

Long Shot - good skill, with high damage given enough distance. However the Artificer is optimal at close distance (because Elemental Mines and Leaping Shot function best at those distances), so we'll starting using it a bit less after Skyhold. The upgrade is also useful, with a bit of positioning you can hit multiple targets. Or you can have Solas pull them together for you. Also - combo detonator on a very short cooldown.

 

Explosive Shot - mediocre damage but a decent knockdown method with small stamina cost and acceptable cooldown. The upgrade increases the damage somewhat but not enough to make it worthwhile. It's a decent CC to be used pre-Skyhold.

 

Full Draw - high Damage skill with a small CC (or excellent single target CC if you upgrade it). However, the animation is quite long (during which you are vulnerable), the stamina cost is high and the cooldown is high. Furthermore, Long Shot at 15 meters or more offers similar damage (at least against an already damaged enemy). Full Draw makes things easier pre-Skyhold, but it is not necessary. I beat the first act (the Templar route, didn't try the Mage one) without it. While it is an excellent skill in the hands of an Archer Assassin, the Artificer can deal more damage using other skills.

 

Leaping Shot - the bread an butter of the Archer Artificer. Low stamina cost and decent cooldown. However, it takes some tactics to get the most out of it. Leaping Shot fires a cluster of 12 arrows (at half weapon damage), meaning you get higher incidence of criticals in a short amount of time (excellent for an Artificer!). However, the larger the distance, the bigger the arrow spread. So, in order to hit with most of those 12 arrows. you need to fire them at shorter ranges. Which synergizes well with your other most used skill - Elemental Mines. The other important thing is that it puts you into a dodge. So you get hit less often and you increase the distance between yourself and the enemy. The former is excellent, the latter kinda throws a wrench in our tactics until we get Strafing Shots. After that we got into a rhythm of - approach while auto-attacking, fire off Leaping Shot, rinse and repeat.

 

The upgrade Rolling Draw adds a knockdown and extra damage to your next regular attack. A nice thing to have, especially early game.

 

Caveats when using Leaping Shot:

- You want shorter distance for tighter arrow spread. So get Strafing Shots and walk towards the enemy while waiting for the LS cooldown.

-Some people complain that the dodge animation throws you off in unfavorable position on the battlefield. With just a little bit of turning your character you can choose in what direction you'll leap back, so I personally never had a big problem with that.

-Rolling Draw charges your next auto-attack with extra damage and a knockdown, so be mindful and hit with it, otherwise the effect is wasted.

- I had a weird issue when chaining Leaping Shot under Hail of Arrows. Since I had my Artificer mechanics working, when using Hail of Arrows I could recast the ability instantly and certainly before the animation of HoA was done. This often made me fall through the map and spin uncontrollably in some kind of out of bounds half-rendered space. Now, that maybe just my weak machine, but a workaround I found is to fire off Leaping Shot, shoot while walking 2 or 3 steps and only then do the Leaping Shot again. Funny story - when I discovered the workaround I was tackling the Highland Ravager (with tier 2 gear and 2 levels under) and had to reload 6 times already because of that issue . On the 7th try, I killed it in under a minute and with only one health pot and one fire tonic used.

 

A quick look at the passives in the Archery:

 

Death From Above is a nice damage increase, but requires positioning, which becomes more irrelevant the more you flesh out your build and consequently the more you are able to spam abilities.

First Blood is a good damage boost for the opening phases, nothing much to say here.

Strafing Shots, while almost useless on an Assassin is essential on the Artificer, because it allows that rhythm of shortening the distance while shooting, Leaping away and doing it all over again. Also, it gives you a very high chance to dodge regular enemy arrows (but not whisp or spider shots, or activated abilites like Full Draw) if you are on the move.

Pincushion - now that's a solid damage boost which synergizes splendidly with Leaping Shot. A must-have after you get your basic functionality in order.

 

Focus Ability:

 

Hail of Arrows  - this so OP, I don't even...

 

 

With all that said, here's an example of a bare necessities Archer Artificer build.

 

0. Stealth

1. Long Shot

2. Death Form Above

3. Leaping Shot

4. Rolling Draw

5. First Blood

6. Explosive Shot

7. Caltrops

8. Looked Like It Hurt

9. Archer's Lance

10. Cheap Shot

11. Pincushion

12. Spike Trap

13. Opportunity Knocks

14. Set Them Up

15. Elemental Mines

16. Throw Everything

17. And Knock Them Down

(highly-recommended:)

17.5 Hail of Arrows, if you want to kill dragons in under a minute or two.

18. Twin Fangs

19. Dance of Death

20. Sneak Attack

 

 

Mid/Late game active bar skills:

 

Stealth, Leaping Shot, Long Shot, Elemental Mines, Hail of Arrows

 

The rest is up to you. I had Fallback Plan, Spike Trap and Explosive Shot/Poisoned Weapons on, but I rarely used them.

 

 

When you have the above listed skills, you can go for Poison. It's nice to poison your Elemental mines and get another poison effect when the first mook dies and poisons the others. But generally I was killing stuff so easily through mines  alone that I rarely remembered to use it. You could use it on bosses, but once again I was dealing so much sustained DPS through Leaping Shot/Long Shot spam, that I almost never used it. Stuff just dies too fast for the DoT to be of much use.

 

Getting Full Draw is a very viable option, which gives you another high damage skill with light CC.

 

You might want to get upgraded Hook&Tackle in order to close the distance for a devastating Leaping Shot (and chain this to to infinity). Just beware that it has somewhat longer animation and you are vulnerable in the final stages of it, so choose wisely when to use it..

 

Padding out the rest of the Artificer tree is nice, especially the party-wide passive Tricks of the Trade.

 

You could do some Knockout Powder/Mercy Killing insta-crit shenanigans from the Subterfuge tree. Or get Evade (and Ambush) for some extra mobility. Or just grab Cunning/Dexterity passives.

 

Since pre-Skyhold is the toughest part of the game you might want to do these outings in the Subterfuge/Sabotage trees early on, but I found it perfectly adequate to get by with just the Archery tree (and the Sabotage critical passives).

 

Tips for pre-Skyhold:

Focus down archers/whisps first. Use Rolling Draw and Explosive Shot to CC obnoxious archers and Terrors. Take advantage of Long Shot's low cooldown for plenty of Ruptures, Shatters and Discharges (CCCs). Try to time Archer's Lance for maximum targets in line (once you get it). Get Wall of Fire on a mage teammate - it's an excellent CC. Energy Barrage, Leaping Shot and probably Chain Lightning are also nice on teammates - more crits mean more stamina.

 

TL;DR

 

 

Kill mobs by spamming Elemental Mines. Kill bosses by spamming Long Shot and Leaping Shot (the latter at close distance for tighter arrow spread). Don't get addicted to the sound of the mines popping off.

 

 

EDIT:

DW Artificer is on my list, but I want to do a few other builds first, so I won't be posting in-depth about it for a while. Generally the same Artificer rules apply though, you  just need to pick whether to focus on the right or left side of the DW tree, And get First Blood and Pincushion. Perhaps someone who has played it a lot can oblige...

[Duelist]

Archer Artificer

Now that we have a grasp of how Artificer works best, we can start building our Archer.


Let's have a look at the active talents from the Archery tree:

Long Shot - good skill, with high damage given enough distance. However the Artificer is optimal at close distance (because Elemental Mines and Leaping Shot function best at those distances), so we'll starting using it a bit less after Skyhold. The upgrade is also useful, with a bit of positioning you can hit multiple targets. Or you can have Solas pull them together for you. Also - combo detonator on a very short cooldown.

Explosive Shot - mediocre damage but a decent knockdown method with small stamina cost and acceptable cooldown. The upgrade increases the damage somewhat but not enough to make it worthwhile. It's a decent CC to be used pre-Skyhold.

Full Draw - high Damage skill with a small CC (or excellent single target CC if you upgrade it). However, the animation is quite long (during which you are vulnerable), the stamina cost is high and the cooldown is high. It makes things easier pre-Skyhold, but it is not necessary. I beat the first act (the Templar route, didn't try the Mage one) without it. While it is an excellent skill in the hands of an Archer Assassin, the Artificer can deal more damage using other skills.

Leaping Shot - the bread an butter of the Archer Artificer. Low stamina cost and decent cooldown. However, it takes some tactics to get the most out of it. Leaping Shot fires a cluster of 12 arrows (at half weapon damage), meaning you get higher incidence of criticals in a short amount of time (excellent for an Artificer!). However, the larger the distance, the bigger the arrow spread. So, in order to hit with most of those 12 arrows. you need to fire them at shorter ranges. Which synergizes well with your other most used skill - Elemental Mines. The other important thing is that it puts you into a dodge. So you get hit less often and you increase the distance between yourself and the enemy. The former is excellent, the latter kinda throws a wrench in our tactics until we get Strafing Shots. After that we got into a rhythm of - approach while auto-attacking, fire off Leaping Shot, rinse and repeat.

The upgrade Rolling Draw adds a knockdown and extra damage to your next regular attack. A nice thing to have, especially early game.

Caveats when using Leaping Shot:
- You want shorter distance for tighter arrow spread. So get Strafing Shots and walk towards the enemy while waiting for the LS cooldown.
-Some people complain that the dodge animation throws you off in unfavorable position on the battlefield. With just a little bit of turning your character you can choose in what direction you'll leap back, so I personally never had a big problem with that.
-Rolling Draw charges your next auto-attack with extra damage and a knockdown, so be mindful and hit with it, otherwise the effect is wasted.
- I had a weird issue when chaining Leaping Shot under Hail of Arrows. Since I had my Artificer mechanics working, when using Hail of Arrows I could recast the ability instantly and certainly before the animation of HoA was done. This often made me fall through the map and spin uncontrollably in some kind of out of bounds half-rendered space. Now, that maybe just my weak machine, but a workaround I found is to fire off Leaping Shot, shoot while walking 2 or 3 steps and only then do the Leaping Shot again. Funny story - when I discovered the workaround I was tackling the Highland Ravager (with tier 2 gear and 2 levels under) and had to reload 6 times already because of that issue . On the 7th try, I killed it in under a minute and with only one health pot and one fire tonic used.

A quick look at the passives in the Archery:

Death From Above is a nice damage increase, but requires positioning, which becomes more irrelevant the more you flesh out your build and consequently the more you are able to spam abilities.
First Blood is a good damage boost for the opening phases, nothing much to say here.
Strafing Shots, while almost useless on an Assassin is essential on the Artificer, because it allows that rhythm of shortening the distance while shooting, Leaping away and doing it all over again. Also, it gives you a very high chance to dodge regular enemy arrows (but not whisp or spider shots, or activated abilites like Full Draw) if you are on the move.
Pincushion - now that's a solid damage boost which synergizes splendidly with Leaping Shot. A must-have after you get your basic functionality in order.

Focus Ability:

Hail of Arrows - this so OP, I don't even...


With all that said, here's an example of a bare necessities Archer Artificer build.

0. Stealth
1. Long Shot
2. Death Form Above
3. Leaping Shot
4. Rolling Draw
5. First Blood
6. Explosive Shot
7. Caltrops
8. Looked Like It Hurt
9. Archer's Lance
10. Cheap Shot
11. Pincushion
12. Spike Trap
13. Opportunity Knocks
14. Set Them Up
15. Elemental Mines
16. Throw Everything
17. And Knock Them Down
(highly-recommended:)
17.5 Hail of Arrows, if you want to kill dragons in under a minute or two.
18. Twin Fangs
19. Dance of Death
20. Sneak Attack


Mid/Late game active bar skills:

Stealth, Leaping Shot, Long Shot, Elemental Mines, Hail of Arrows

The rest is up to you. I had Fallback Plan, Spike Trap and Explosive Shot/Poisoned Weapons on, but I rarely used them.


When you have the above listed skills, you can go for Poison. It's nice to poison your Elemental mines and get another poison effect when the first mook dies and poisons the others. But generally I was killing stuff so easily through mines alone that I rarely remembered to use it. You could use it on bosses, but once again I was dealing so much sustained DPS through Leaping Shot/Long Shot spam, that I almost never used it. Stuff just dies too fast for the DoT to be of much use.

Padding out the rest of the Artificer tree is nice, especially the party-wide passive Tricks of the Trade.

You could do some Knockout Powder/Mercy Killing insta-crit shenanigans from the Subterfuge tree. Or get Evade (and Ambush) for some extra mobility. Or just grab Cunning/Dexterity passives.

Since pre-Skyhold is the toughest part of the game you might want to do these outings in the Subterfuge/Sabotage trees early on, but I found it perfectly adequate to get by with just the Archery tree (and the Sabotage critical passives).

Tips for pre-Skyhold:
Focus down archers/whisps first. Use Rolling Draw and Explosive Shot to CC obnoxious archers and Terrors. Take advantage of Long Shot's low cooldown for plenty of Ruptures, Shatters and Discharges (CCCs). Try to time Archer's Lance for maximum targets in line (once you get it). Get Wall of Fire on a mage teammate - it's an excellent CC. Energy Barrage, Leaping Shot and probably Chain Lightning are also nice on teammates - more crits mean more stamina.

TL;DR


Kill mobs by spamming Elemental Mines. Kill bosses by spamming Long Shot and Leaping Shot (the latter at close distance for tighter arrow spread). Don't get addicted to the sound of the mines popping off.


EDIT:
DW Artificer is on my list, but I want to do a few other builds first, so I won't be posting in-depth about it for a while. Generally the same Artificer rules apply though, you just need to pick whether to focus on the right or left side of the DW tree, And get First Blood and Pincushion. Perhaps someone who has played it a lot can oblige...

Cool, thanks for this.

While melee Assassin is more my style, playing with Varric has been a lot of fun.
Dude clears mobs faster than anyone in my party and can hold his own in boss fights.

[HeroxMatt]

Thanks for posting that! OP updated! 

[finc.loki]

Good info, wish there was a an Artificer Archer video. Although I do not like the idea of playing archer up close, seems silly. Might as well play DW.

I want to see an archer Arty video from a distance like a proper archer. I have a feeling it won't be all that fun, if the elemental mines have less use.

 

Which is why I am still leaning towards Assassin Archer, at least be able to do hard hitting abilities and double up the damage and more.

[xelander]

You could do it, but you'll definitely not be using the Artificer specialization to the fullest. Leaping Shot and Opportunity Knocks synergy is quintessential. Also, Elemental Mines are seriously addictive.   You could make a specific crit chance based party and  use them to refresh your Long Shots and Full Draws, but I don't like to depend too much on party composition.

 

The Assassin is definitely the way to go if you want to play more of a "sniper" build. I had one up to lvl 15 or 16, but scrapped it to finish my Artificer playthrough. It was very powerful as well, just had a different feel to it.

[Rathys]

I'm totally in love with my artifice archer atm. I'm thinking about grabbing hook and tackle (since you're already down the tree to get Looks Like it Hurt) to combo with Fallback Plan to get into melee for mines and tight leaping shot clusters, and to get out quickly if it gets hairy.

 

Thoughts?

[Duelist]

You could do it, but you'll definitely not be using the Artificer specialization to the fullest. Leaping Shot and Opportunity Knocks synergy is quintessential. Also, Elemental Mines are seriously addictive. You could make a specific crit chance based party and use them to refresh your Long Shots and Full Draws, but I don't like to depend too much on party composition.

The Assassin is definitely the way to go if you want to play more of a "sniper" build. I had one up to lvl 15 or 16, but scrapped it to finish my Artificer playthrough. It was very powerful as well, just had a different feel to it.

Agree wholeheartedly on the bolded.

[zeypher]

A question, i play a dw assassin and now i seem to have spare points. My choices are get throwing knives, spinning blades, or ambush passive.

[MagisterMaximus]

Ambush

[zeypher]

Thanks.

[Cmpunker13]

I admit that after xelander's posts, I don't know if I should roll a dw tempest or artificer...

[Novadove]

https://www.youtube....h?v=dMpRzdD88iA

 

the only skill I used to kill that dragon is full draw.

 

you can see my full draw refresh rate.

[Novadove]

my latest video

 

https://www.youtube....eature=youtu.be

 

edit: artificer has a shotgun build; explosive shot and elemental mine (no upgrade) to sneak up and cluster kill just for info

spam mine and explosive non stop

[Gaz83]

Just running my first ever Artificer.

 

Oh my.

 

You people are right. It's insanely fun. 

[xelander]

https://www.youtube....h?v=dMpRzdD88iA

 

the only skill I used to kill that dragon is full draw.

 

you can see my full draw refresh rate.

 

That's Sera's FoL and Opportunity Knocks for ya...

 

And just for kicks - Hail of Arrows

[samb]

upgraded flask of fire combined with upgraded shadow strike can be done how often before flask of fire runs out? 

[Rynas]

my latest video

 

https://www.youtube....eature=youtu.be

 

edit: artificer has a shotgun build; explosive shot and elemental mine (no upgrade) to sneak up and cluster kill just for info

spam mine and explosive non stop

 

Looks super fun - nonstop Leaping Shot because of crits and full stamina all the time because of Looked Like It Hurt?  How well does Leaping Shot refresh cooldowns without the focus ability on?

 

[Edit] Also, is that green thing the upgraded Pitch Grenade?  Never used it before, so I don't know what it looks like

[Novadove]

@rynas

The non stop leaping shot is due to artificer's passive skill "opportunity knocks". As long as anyone crits' all skill cd refreshes.

Artificer focus does not refresh skill cd but helps
due to clone hits as well.

The green pitch is tears of the dead grenade. M0nsters hit by it takes extra damage from all sources.

 

edit: oh yes, pardon my mistake. it's pitch grenade. got mix up with the name

[zeypher]

Tears of the dead is poison, the grenade is pitch grenade.

[Rynas]

I messed around with this last night on my rogue Inquisitor (loaded a pre-specialization save), and it's quite viable and fun as a solo Nightmare spec.  Especially with the ability that lets you plant a Spike Trap while stealthed.  The damage overall is a bit low, but the playstyle is fun and interesting.  (I was probably not playing optimally, though)

[Diefree]

Interesting ideas. Which spec would anyone recommend for those archers who want to stay at range? I like Artificer look for thematic reasons. Hail of arrows looks awesome but I like staying at range. How viable is artificer with that playstyle?

[HeroxMatt]

Interesting ideas. Which spec would anyone recommend for those archers who want to stay at range? I like Artificer look for thematic reasons. Hail of arrows looks awesome but I like staying at range. How viable is artificer with that playstyle?

 

Assassin would be best for ranged, however, Artificer suits the playstyle as well.

 

Through Artificer, you can spam Leaping Shot for constant Stamina and CD Reduction. The mines become a fun back up, if there are any  Rogues that stealthed their way to you.

[Diefree]

Assassin would be best for ranged, however, Artificer suits the playstyle as well.

 

Through Artificer, you can spam Leaping Shot for constant Stamina and CD Reduction. The mines become a fun back up, if there are any  Rogues that stealthed their way to you.

 

I just don't like getting into melee if I can avoid it and that seems to be the artificer thing. I was looking at your assassin ranged build and it looks good, in what order would you recommend taking the skills once I get my specialization?

[Novadove]

artificer archer gives you both range and melee options.

 

in fact, it's because I been playing range for far too long, I started messing around with point blank to see if there's any variation to playstyle.

 

it just shows archer is very flexible and is as effective as range capability.

 

point blank massacre: stealth in, throw mines, explosive shot, throw mine, explosive shot, throw mine, explosive shot.

 

leaping shot and bail out if somehow fail. guarantee no group mobs survives that. job done.

 

range option: standard full draw x2 opening, long shot shattering kill for single target.