Introduction

This guide died for a while as I'd stopped playing the game, however after transition to F2P I've began replaying

So here is the updated Ballistarena Pew-Pew! Made by myself based on Gameplay, discussion with other Spellslingers over the year and extensive researching and number crunching, When played right the Spellslinger can be a force to be reckoned with in arenas - it's just about adapting and keeping on your toes!

Abilities

- T8 for the awesome 20% movement speed and 5% damage buff.
- T8 Main damage ability and the DoT is great!
- Finisher after 30% health and extra damage during burst.
- Great for CC and repositioning.
- T8, with amps this is amazing for 1v1 & 1v2 and some sustain healing.
- Root for CC and interrupt armour has no effect on it.
- This is your "shit got a bit too real" button.
- Confuses and allows you to proc Shock and Awe amp giving 100% crit chance, in otherwords... sweet!

Some PvP guides will give you a rotation, I don't... the reason for this is that going against different class combinations can really change your rotation and it becomes more a can of trial and error until you develop actual knowledge or what to use when and how you benefit from it. Rotation is fine for PvE but in PvP it often gets in the way of play, just practise and practise until you feel comfortable.

Amp Build

NOTE: WSBASE has not updated the AMP system on the site, however the placement of the amps are in the correct spots, the descriptions just don't match the descriptions in-game since Drop 6.

ASSAULT TREE:
Tier 1
Assault Power I-III - Assault power increase of 7.5% for straight up extra damage.

Tier 2
Critical Surge - Spell power generator to allow for more burst surged damage.
Deadly Chain - Works great with your abilities as using magic or physical damage will increase the other.

Tier 3
Assassinate - to unlock the Assassinate skill.
Surge Damage - 10% damage increase after using a surged ability.
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UTILITY TREE:
Tier 1
Cooldown I-III - Shorten Cooldowns by 15%.

Tier 2
Speed of the Void - So this is a pretty cool amp. It gives all your utility abilities essentially a heal and with the short CD and active heal on It ends up out healing a lot of sustain DMG and even some burst DMG on TOP of the swiftness it gives which lets you out run a lot of melee quite easily while kiting.
Reorient - This is a MUST for kiting Melee as well as outrunning some ranged, Essentially its the "NO DAZE" amp of a spellslinger.

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HYBRID A/U TREE:
Tier 1
PvP Offence I-III - Increase PvP Offense by 3%.

Tier 2
Shock & Awe - 100% crit chance on any successful stun or interrupt. This is a MUST right now especially if you do not have the 100% crit trinket (Ruby Rage Enhancer). This allows your Gate and Spatial Shift to proc a 100% crit and you always want to use this with Charged Shot when it is up. Note that in order to get the most out of this talent you want to run the glove fusion rune: Disabler: When you decrease a targets interrupt armor remove an additional interrupt armor and apply an interrupt. Can occur every 25s. This makes its so by the time spatial shift is back up, the disabler proc is up again and gives you a certain interrupt as well as 100% crit chance afterwards. Useful for keeping pressure on healers and getting an extra edge on other ranged casters.

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HYBRID A/S TREE:
Tier 1
Critical Severity I-III - 12% increase Critical Severity.
Critical Hit I-III - 6% increase in Critical Hit

Tier 2
Power Surge - Whilst Spell Surge is active Assault Power increased by 8%
Trigger Fingers - Even though this ability has been nerfed a ton since release, with all the cooldown reduction you have: Trigger fingers, Cooldowns I-III, Vindication - it adds up!
Locked & Loaded - good increase in Damage. As long as your in combat you gain a 8% increase in crit severity that stacks up to 3 times and it stacks every 1 second. Meaning that when you're setting up your burst, either Gate to Charged Shot or Spatial Shift to Charged Shot, the time it takes from when you stun or interrupt them to charge up your shot adds up for a total of 3 seconds making it 24% increase in crit severity.

Runes

Legs
Vindication (8/8 | 2 Fire | 2 Earth | 1 Air)
Superb Vindication Rune: Critical Hit (2)
Superb Vindication Rune: Critical Hit Severity (2)
Superb Vindication Rune: Strikethrough (2)
Superb Vindication Rune: Critical Hit (1)
Superb Vindication Rune: Critical Hit Severity (1)

Shoulders
Devastation (6/6 | 2 Fire | 2 Earth), Resurgence (2/6 | 1 Fire)
Superb Devastation Rune: Critical Hit (2)
Superb Devastation Rune: Critical Hit Severity (2)
Superb Devastation Rune: Critical Hit (1)
Superb Devastation Rune: Critical Hit Severity (1)
Superb Resurgence Rune: Critical Hit (2)

Chest
Devastation (6/6 | 2 Fire | 2 Earth), Fusion Rune: Full Strength
Superb Devastation Rune: Critical Hit (2)
Superb Devastation Rune: Critical Hit Severity (2)
Superb Devastation Rune: Critical Hit (1)
Superb Devastation Rune: Critical Hit Severity (1)
Fusion Rune: Full Strength

Hands
Devastation (6/6 | 2 Fire | 2 Earth), Fusion Rune: Disabler
Superb Devastation Rune: Critical Hit (2)
Superb Devastation Rune: Critical Hit Severity (2)
Superb Devastation Rune: Critical Hit (1)
Superb Devastation Rune: Critical Hit Severity (1)
Fusion Rune: Disabler

Feet
Devastation (6/6 | 2 Fire | 2 Earth), Fusion Rune: Acrobat
Superb Devastation Rune: Critical Hit (2)
Superb Devastation Rune: Critical Hit Severity (2)
Superb Devastation Rune: Critical Hit (1)
Superb Devastation Rune: Critical Hit Severity (1)
Fusion Rune: Acrobat

Head
Devastation (6/6 | 2 Fire | 2 Earth), Fusion Rune: Blood Rage
Superb Devastation Rune: Critical Hit (2)
Superb Devastation Rune: Critical Hit Severity (2)
Superb Devastation Rune: Critical Hit (1)
Superb Devastation Rune: Critical Hit Severity (1)
Fusion Rune: Blood Rage

Pistols
Devastation (6/6 | 2 Fire | 2 Earth), Fusion Rune: Bludgeon
Superb Devastation Rune: Critical Hit (2)
Superb Devastation Rune: Critical Hit Severity (2)
Superb Devastation Rune: Critical Hit (1)
Superb Devastation Rune: Critical Hit Severity (1)
Fusion Rune: Bludgeon

Rune Breakdown

Devastation

The Devastation Runes we are interested in are the Critical Hit and Critical Hit Severity. Each Critical Hit Rune gives us +269 Critical Hit Rating and each Critical Hit Severity Rune gives us +269 Critical Hit Severity. In this build we use 10 of each. giving us a +2690 Critical Hit and a +2690 Critical Hit Severity.

2 Power: +0.21% Strikethrough
3 Power: +0.20% Critical Hit Chance
4 Power: +0.90% Critical Hit Severity
5 Power: +0.25% Critical Hit Chance
6 Power: +1.10% Critical Hit Severity

The maths:
Per Set you get:
Strikethrough 0.21%
Critical Hit Severity 1.10% + 0.90% = 2%
Critical Hit Chance 0.20% + 0.25% = 0.45%

Multiply this by the amount of times you have the Devastation 6/6 set, which in our case is 6 times:
6 x 2% (Critical Hit Severity) = 12% Critical Hit Severity
6 x 0.45% (Critical Hit Chance) = 2.7% Critical Hit Chance
6 x 0.21% (Strikethrough) = 1.26% Strikethrough.

Vindication

Vindication is a Spellslinger PvP Class Rune Set, as such it can be quite pricey to build this rune set if your relying on the Commodity Exchange - that said you could get lucky ;)

The runes we're interested in are: Critical Hit (2) and Critical Hit (1) which both give +269 Critical Hit Rating. Critical Hit Severity (2) and Critical Hit Severity (1) which both give +269 Critical Hit Severity Rating as well as a Strikethrough (2) which gives +269 Strikethrough Rating.

Power 2: +0.18 Critical Hit Chance
Power 3: +0.80 Critical Hit Severity
Power 4: Vindication; Using a Spell Surged ability reduces the active cooldowns of your utility abilities by 1 second.
Power 5: +0.30% Strikethrough
Power 6: +0.28% Critical Hit Chance
Power 7: +1.20% Critical Hit Severity
Power 8: Vindication; Landing a hit with Charged Shot, True Shot or Assassinate grants an Empower for 4 seconds. Empower Grants +5% PvP Damage (Stacks twice).

Fusion Runes

Fusion Runes are great runes that quite a lot of people seem to overlook, they are really not to be overlooked! Fusion Runes can be socketed into any element too which is great as it means you don't have to re-roll sockets to put them in. Fusion Runes can be socketed into your weapon, head, feet, hands and chest, but not your shoulders or legs. Also only 1 fusion rune can be put in a piece of gear and there are specific runes for each gear i.e. a Fusion Rune: Blood Rage is for a head socket and cannot be put into your chest, feet, gloves or weapon.

Fusion Rune: Bludgeon

This fusion rune gets socketed into your pistols and Applies an Expose upon a direct damage attack. Expose increases incoming damage by 2.5% and stacks 3 times.

Fusion Rune: Blood Rage

This fusion rune gets socketed into your head and grants an empower based on your health. increasing damage and lifesteal by up to 8%.

Fusion Rune: Acrobat

This fusion rune gets socketed into your feet and grants a special passive ability, Acrobat: Dashing restores a Dash token. Can occur every 8 seconds.

Fusion Rune: Disabler

This fusion rune gets socketed into your hands and grants a special passive ability, Disabler: When you decrease a targets interrupt armour, remove an additional Interrupt Armour and apply an interrupt. Can only occur every 25 seconds.

Fusion Rune: Full Strength

This fusion rune gets socketed into your chest and grants an empower based on your health, increasing vigor rating up to 135 and lifesteal rating up to 540.

Tips & Techniques

Stutter Stepping

You may have heard about Stutter Stepping from League of Legends, well Spellslingers have a trick similar to Stutter Stepping. Use whilst kiting them. Jump and ar them for the movement buff, then hold sprint for a second and run away from them (this requires a bit of camera movement so you end up strafing away from them, then jump and for movement buff, then hold sprint and strafe away from them. This technique works on any melee. It can be a little tricky to perfect but it will separate you from bad Spellslingers.