Introduction and LAS

Hi! So you've come to learn a little bit about how to not look silly as a Spellslinger in PvP, perhaps I can help :D. I'm Baal, or as other people call me, that PoS Spellslinger who won't stop one shotting me. Spellslinger is a class that ever since I made an alt character for has slowly become just as fun as me playing on my Engis, perhaps even moreso. I figured I'd make a guide even though there's tons of other Spellslinger guides out there. I've been meaning to make this guide for quite a while now, so let's get right into my standard LAS for any Battleground I find myself in.


As of recent, this ability has surpassed in how useful of a spammable ability it is. The builds and DPS you can do with this ability are all over the place and very flexible which is why you see tons of Spellslingers run this ability now. The constant damage is very good for pressuring any target you're trying to kill, and is also very good into all Tanks in PvP due to how much you can spam it. Also the free big crit at the end is nice. The only "problem" this ability has is that it is a BITCH to actually aim on moving targets, so as cliche as it sounds, practice DOES make perfect when you start to use this. Leading your telegraph with this ability is crucial to get down correctly, as you will lose so much dps missing even just one. If you have problems hitting targets with it, you can drop for to make it easier and also give yourself more utility for kiting/setups for your and . You will lose out on some damage with not on your bar, but you can still manage to put out a lot of pressure without it.


This ability needs no introduction really. Spellslingers have been running this ability in PvP for the longest time and it still holds true to be one of the best T8s of any Spellslinger build for BGs. Another build that exists is replacing this ability with , which if you can land 's projectiles will outdps if at least one of the four shots crits. The reason a lot of people don't run is because of how ridiculously small the telegraph's hitbox is on the projectiles and how large is. I've used plenty, and I just prefer running . It requires less channel time to get off that big burst than , and provides more instant "oh shit" damage to whoever you're hitting. It's also a lot easier to hit as the telegraph's width is about 3x bigger than .

/
Pretty standard ability for most Spellslinger builds. This is interchangable with if you need the extra utility if you're being focused in BGs, or if you are having problems aiming your a lot. This ability just adds extra damage to my chains to get them into range. The burst is also very good if you get a crit alongside damage. Note: This ability can be used while casting anything, so you can use

and use this ability while casting it no problem. Using this ability on the 4th shot of

is a very good amount of instant burst if

crits alongside

free crit.


An ability that, in my opinion, every Spellslinger LAS should have in PvP aside from my dueling build. This is a very good finisher ability, hence the name , when people are low HP after spamming / a bunch and, of course, smacking them with big crits. Once you drop someone's health with and a bunch of and spam, you can use to finish them off, and boy does it hurt if it crits. This ability isn't too difficult to aim, but you have to be pretty good at leading the telegraph with it like a , or else you'll miss it easily. You cannot afford to miss on a low hp target, these shots can crit VERY hard and will be the difference between killing someone and letting them live.


Standard movement ability that I and probably almost every other Spellslinger in PvP runs. Very good stun for a setup on /Shock and Awe AMP crit, and also a very good ability for kiting. I recommend getting this in any LAS you run, never ever drop this under any circumstances.


Another movement ability that is extremely good for kiting. This ability also, at T4 which we run, will drop our Assault cooldowns such as C/ by 50% and also gives us a hefty AP increase. This will allow us to spam more with and increase our DPS all around while making us mobile. Always run this ability for PvP.


At T4, this acts as a CC break and also makes us pretty tanky due to the Armor Rating increase and Deflect Critical Hit Chance. Pretty simple ability. Increases our slippery factor and makes us more mobile and less prone to dying.


Our "oh shit" button to get out of very sticky situations. This ability can also be used to follow other Spellslingers in the void who are low HP and trying to run away which I see a lot of Spellslingers never do. Can also be used as an aggressive CC break to continue pressuring the enemy team.

AMP Tree and why I don't run Shock and Awe (are you stupid Baal?!)

In this section, I will just outline the AMP tree and explain why I take certain AMPs that aren't self explanatory. Also, for my playstyle and how I AMP/rune, I DO NOT RUN SHOCK AND AWE. As a quick disclaimer, I will leave the Shock and Awe spec in my AMP tree on this page due to how popular the AMP is amongst Spellslingers. Read down further if you want to see which AMPs I take in place of Shock and Awe.Let's begin.

Utility
- Cooldowns 3/3 (Tier 1)
- Reorient, Readiness (Tier 2)
- Void Pact (Tier 3)


Assault
- Assault Power 3/3, Armor Pierce 1/3 (Tier 1)
- Deadly Chain, Piercing Shots, Critical Surge (Tier 2)
- Gunslinger, Assassinate, Surge Damage (Tier 3)


Hybrid A/S
- Critical Hit 3/3, Critical Hit Severity 3/3 (Tier 1)
- Trigger Fingers, Locked and Loaded (Tier 2)


ELABORATION TIME!
So, I will briefly explain the AMPs that you should pay very close attention to here and should learn how to properly use. A lot of them will be from the Utility tree as those AMPs are what makes Spellslingers so slippery and kite effectively.


SPEED OF THE VOID
This AMP basically gives us a speed boost on our class CC breaks such as Phase Shift, Void Slip, and Gate. This helps us chase people or kite away from people better after getting out of a sticky situation. Stack this on top of Void Pact and you'll be sprinting faster than Usain Bolt. This AMP is crucial as to how I play my Spellslinger.

REORIENT
This AMP is probably the MOST important AMP into kiting as a Spellslinger. When we Dash, we regenerate 33% of our Sprint bar and gain immunity to Daze for 2s. Daze is when you are hit by a player while Sprinting and your movement speed is drastically slowed, so this AMP will allow us to Sprint after a Dash to get away from a player faster and kite quicker. Dashing through melee and Sprinting away from them is a very VERY useful tactic and you should practice it constantly when kiting warriors/stalkers/medics.

TRIGGER FINGERS
This AMP, while spamming Rapid Fire, will allow you to regenerate your Gates/Flash Freezes and basically all of your abilities faster just by hitting people with Rapid Fire over and over again. One of the best AMPs to get on a Spellslinger hands down.

LOCKED AND LOADED
This AMP is a pretty good AMP as you will always feel the full effect of the 24% Crit Sev on every Charged Shot you do. With the Drop 8 changes, the percentage gains from this AMP is no longer affected by softcap DR, so it is inherently stronger now than before. I tend to run this over Speed of the Void these days as I can kite well enough without Speed of the Void. Up to you though on which one you want to use!

Baal, why in the actual hell do you not run Shock and Awe!? Every Spellslinger runs that!

I won't explain too much as to why I don't run Shock and Awe, but the general gist of why I don't run it is that I get a ton of free crits with Gunslinger being up constantly due to Rapid Fire spam, so my Charged Shots tend to crit half the time anyway and I like to use my Gate moreso for kiting rather than setup. I only use Gate for setup when I see at least 3 people grouped together and generally with Gunslinger up, that Charged Shot will crit anyway. Dropping Shock and Awe allowed me to pick up Speed of the Void and Piercing Shots which, in my opinion, is worth a lot more than one free crit. That's just specific to my playstyle, so not having Shock and Awe may not be your thing, that's just how I play my Spellslinger. I'll leave my AMP tree to have the Shock and Awe version just so you know how I'd spec for it speciffically. If you want to run my normal setup, just drop the Shock and Awe tree, drop the Armor Pierce AMP and put the 8 points into Piercing Shots and Speed of the Void.

Small Healing Section (Drop 8 update soon)

I figured I'd also make a little healing section. Healing on a Spellslinger is pretty simple, so this will be a short excerpt from the DPS portion of the guide. Don't expect too much explanation here, a lot of Spellslinger healing is very self explanatory.

- Tier 8
Our bread and butter healing ability that we spam constantly to keep people alive and constantly proc Absorb shields on players to cleanse debuffs with Clean Coat's set bonus. The other option is Vitality Burst which is the bigger AoE healing build. I'm only going to cover Runic Healing since I haven't extensively played a Vitality Burst build yet.

- Tier 4
A Spellslinger's gigantic burst of healing on low HP targets. If one of these two charges crit, you'll generally instantly bring someone back to full life as I've had it crit upwards of 15-16k before. I always run this no matter what.

- Tier 4
Another great HoT ability for your teammates. Has a huge AoE and will hit a lot of your teammates to help keep them sustained while you spam Runic Healing.

- Tier 0
A nice ability that gives you a fat absorb shield for you and your teammates. Generally just a good LAS slot filler. Helps prevent burst damage if you surge it.

- Tier 0
As explained before, standard movement ability for kiting/setup. Always take this.

- Tier 4
As explained before in the DPS section, this will lower our cooldown on abilities such as Regen Pulse and all of our other Support abilities. Also good for kiting and increases our healing a bit because of the SP increase. Recommend always running this.

- Tier 4
Our class CC break as explained in the DPS section. Also not bad for tanking warriors and messing with stalkers with the 100% Deflect Critical Hit.


The Spellslinger's "oh shit" button to get out of very sticky/bad situations.

Healing Set Runes (Drop 8 update soon)

I will outline my healing runes here. It focuses very highly on focus recovery and, of course, critting on heals like every Spellslinger healer should be trying to aim for. Pretty simple stuff here.

Weapon: 3/6 Resurgence (269 Crit 2x), 3/6 Cynosure (269 Focus Recovery Rating 2x), Rejuvenating Bonds Fusion Rune. The name of the Fusion rune has the name Selene in it on the AH, so search for that.

Head: 3/6 Cynosure (269 Focus Recovery Rating 2x), 5/6 Resurgence (269 Crit 2x, 40 Focus pool).

Shoulders: 8/8 Clean Coat (40 Focus pool 2x, 269 Focus Recovery Rating 2x, 485 Max HP).

Chest: 5/6 Resurgence (269 Crit 2x, 40 Focus pool), 2/6 Cynosure (269 Focus Recovery Rating).

Hands: Cynosure 2/6 (269 Focus Recovery Rating), 2/6 Devastation (269 Crit), 3/6 Resurgence (269 Crit 2x). Protector Fusion rune.

Legs: 4/8 Vindication (269 Crit, 269 Crit Sev), Resurgence 2/6 (269 Crit), Cynosure 3/6 (269 Focus Recovery Rating 2x).

Boots: 3/6 Resurgence (269 Crit 2x), 3/6 Cynosure (269 Focus Recovery Rating 2x).

DPS Set Runes

DPS Runing is very straight forward with Spellslinger as you just want a buttload of Critical Hit and Critical Hit Severity. You don't need Critical Mitigation like a Warrior might need because you're ranged and have a ton of escapes and a lot of kiting.

Weapon: 6/6 Devastation, Bludgeon/Venom fusion rune. I have two different interchangable sets of Pistols for these two fusion runes as sometimes I do not need Venom because the enemy team will not have any Stalkers and will instead run Bludgeon for the extra damage. If I see that I am going against Stalkers, I switch out for Venom so I can track them in stealth and stop Stalker tanks from Steadfast capping masks/panels.

Head: 6/6 Devastation, Blood Rage fusion rune. You can switch Blood Rage for Deadly Blows if you feel like you need even more Crit Sev, but I did some testing to compare both of these fusions and Deadly Blows does not add as much damage as one would think to your crits. It only adds about 700 to 1k damage to a max end damage Charged Shot, and Blood Rage equalizes this difference very closely at the 4% damage/LS threshold, and starts winning past 6%. Blood Rage has saved me in a lot of small skirmishes quite often, but Deadly Blows is still a fine alternative. Neither choice is a bad one, just up to you if you want more Crit Sev or the LS utility/dmg of Blood Rage.

Shoulders: 8/8 Vindication. Spellslinger DPS class set. Both 4 and 8 set bonuses are extremely good, especially the 4 set.

Chest: 6/6 Devastation, 2/8 Vindication (Crit Sev). I don't run Full Strength or any fusion rune in my chest due to the fact that I think Full Strength in PvP just isn't worth running. The lifesteal is not worth dropping for extra Crit Hit or Crit Sev. Also, the lifesteal does not scale as well as Blood Rage would, and the Vigor only increases your damage dealt from 1.89% to 3.40%, which is very miniscule. Also, even as a Spellslinger, you will be taking damage more than likely in the 1st push of every BG. Unless your team just roflstomps them mid, you will more than likely not be at full HP to get the full effect of the vigor on this fusion rune. This is just my take on it though and I choose to not rune it.

Gloves: 5/6 Devastation (Crit Hit, 2x Crit Sev), 2/8 Vindication (Crit Sev), Enrage. Running extra Crit Sev just to get closer to the softcap in BGs when upscaled. Enrage fusion rune is very good due to you most likely taking damage to always keep it at 6% increased damage.

Legs: Devastation 6/6, Resurgence 2/6 (Crit Hit).

Boots: 5/6 Devastation (Crit Hit, 2x Crit Sev), 2/8 Vindication (Crit Sev), Acrobat. I run Acrobat over Speed Burst/Quick Feet for the extra dash to proc Reorient more often. I feel it helps me kite better compared to the other two boot fusions because of having the extra 2s of daze immune sprinting to kite. Quick Feet is a perfectly fine alternative though, especially with 3/3 Dash Regen AMPs. Speed Burst I don't really find all too useful since you can't really control when you get the speed boost like you can with Quick Feet.

Other LAS options

In this next section, I will be outlining the other Spellslinger LAS options that I like to sometimes switch to. These builds offer different pros and cons than the standard build I run, and I will outline them below.

True Shot/FF

- T8
- T8
- Base
- Base
- Base
- T4
- T4
- Base

This build has more setup/self peel with Flash Freeze on the LAS and more range with True Shot being on the LAS compared to Charged Shot. I tend to run this build whenever I feel I need FF for extra kiting resources if I know I'm gonna be focused extra hard in a certain BG due to certain players being on the enemy team, or if I simply want more range against a team filled with Ranged classes.

Pros: More range, more selfpeel with Flash Freeze, easier LAS to use/understand. Flash Freeze makes True Shot much easier to hit.

Cons: True Shot has a much slimmer telegraph and takes longer to cast than a Charged Shot, so it's a harder ability to use. Less damage overall compared to the standard build due to not having Flame Burst.

"Rail Gun" Spec

- Base
- T8
- T8
- Base
- Base
- T4
- T4
- Base

This build is probably the biggest burst damage build you will come across, but the downside is that it is not a Rapid Fire build and is less mobile compared to a Rapid Fire build since with this build you usually run Brutality over the Break Free gadget. Still a great build though and worth playing sometimes if you really wanna have some fun and instagib people from really far away.

Pros: Biggest potential burst out of all the specs. Longest range spec so not having Break Free is sometimes ok. Minimal downtime on damage.

Cons: No Rapid Fire which is a very big loss on constant damage/pressure. Less mobile due to Brutality gadget over Break Free. Small amount of downtime on your damage due to having Quick Draw and not Rapid Fire while waiting for Charged Shot/True Shot's cooldowns to come back up whereas with Rapid Fire you can constantly dish out damage.

Arena Spec

- T8
- Base
- T4
- Base
- Base
- T8
- T4
- Base

This is my standard arena build that I run whenever I actually get the rare chance to do 3v3 these days. It's a very simple build with a lot of potential burst if you RNG Assassinate crits on your target, and a very mobile build with having Flash Freeze, Gate, and Void Pact up to T8. If you land almost all of your Rapid Fires, you will have nearly 100% uptime on Void Pact's MS increase. This build is also usable in Battlegrounds if you choose to run a simple build that annoys the living hell out of melee classes.

Pros: Very mobile, lots of CC for burst setup with 4th RF crit + Flame Burst combo and chained or single Assassinates, lots of selfpeel with the extra CC/mobility. If in arena, T4 Assassinate is king for hardswitching.

Cons: No real upfront burst with Charged Shot or True Shot. Relies on RNG crits for it's biggest burst rather than a big Charged Shot or True Shot. Makes up for tons of mobility/setup.

Dueling Spec

- T8
- T4
- Base
- Base
- Base
- T8
- T4
- Base

Perhaps the cheesiest of all of the builds out there, the dueling build consists of adding sustain to last longer in 1v1 scenarios, primarily dueling hence the chapter title. This build consists of only Rapid Fire and Flame Burst as our primary source of damage. Assassinate is replaced by Regen Pulse to give us a sustain option when dueling. This build is highly mobile just like the Arena spec, but with self-sustain added to the equation. Generally, you should want to try and Spell Surge on regen pulse, but most of the time unless you get wrecked in the first 10 seconds, you will have to unsurge it and leave the surges for your Rapid Fire so you don't run into DPS downtime. Practicing and refining your kiting will allow you to get away with unsurging your Regen Pulses and maintaining a strong bar of health. If I have time, I will add a twitch clip of me dueling my Warrior arena partner, Archangel Tyrael, to highlight this. Our duels usually last 3.5-5 minutes on average and near perfect kiting is absolutely essential when dueling a warrior of his caliber if you want to keep your Regen Pulses unsurged to maintain DPS with Rapid Fire.

Pros: Good self-sustain, very mobile, fairly strong constant damage output, ok burst if 4th shot RF + Flame Burst combo crits.

Cons: Least damage out of all the builds, no real respectable upfront "oh shit" burst.

Matrix Update Thoughts on Magnum

So I've been seeing some Spellslingers getting Magnum in their LAS now, and I figured I'd put a little section here on my personal thoughts on it. Personally, I think Magnum in PvP for Rapid Fire specs is garbage. You lose too much DPS trying to make time to grab it, and to top it off, it drops in random locations around your character. For example, let's say you're kiting away from a team and you use Magnum to get the damage boost. The shell drops in front of you rather than behind you in the direction you're kiting. Congrats, the ability is now rendered useless. This is the main reason I suggest not taking it at least in Rapid Fire Specs. It doesn't synergize very well in PvP for RF. I would stick to getting the AMPs/Ability Points.

Closing

Hope you enjoyed my Spellslinger guide! More updates may come as time goes on if I forgot anything. Not much else to say, here's my in-game character names I usually play on if you wanna ask me any questions directly!

Emperor Baal (Exile)
Baal Warhound (Exile)
Doctor Baal (Exile)
Baal Archimonde (Dominion)
BaaL lll (Exile)
Baal Ross (Dominion)