Striker Class Guide – Lost Ark
Striker is the male martial arts type in Lost Ark uses back attacks and careful positioning to execute the perfect damage.
It’s an incredibly mobile class even with no swiftness. His skills will give you all the mobility you need to duck in and out of the fight.
Most of the striker skills are single target skills and his main damage comes from using basic skills to charge his Esoteric orbs that unlocks the usage of 5 spenders you may choose from. It’s versatile and mobile class that can do burst damage or consistent damage.
From a PvP perspective, Striker is one of the most annoying/powerful classes in the arena, he can keep his opponent knocked up for a decent amount of time while dealing damage. With his mobility, he can escape some dangerous attacks and run circles around his opponents.
If you are looking for a unique class that ispowerful throughout the early, mid, and end game, consider investing in the Striker. If you’re interested, you can check out our Striker leveling guide.
Comparisons to other classes
Striker is the male version of Wardancer, with major changes in core playstyle
It is slower than the Wardancer but usually Strikers focus on Specialization/Crit unlike Wardancer who usually go Swift/Crit or Swift/Spec.
Both engravings for striker never lock the Esoteric orbs unlike Wardancer with “fast intention” engraving that locks Esoteric orbs and makes Esoteric skills unusable.
Less mobility than a Wardancer but still better mobility than many classes around.
Check out how Striker performs in the current meta in our Lost Ark tier list.
Class Mechanics
Strikers buildup their Esoteric orbs by doing damage with normal skills and basic attacks.
While casting an Esoteric skill, it will consume Esoteric orbs, so use your skills wisely and make sure to position yourself correctly before casting, since most skills rely on“Back Attack” to do optimal damage.
PvE
As a Striker, you will usually play carefully and take your time to position at the back of the boss before casting your main Esoteric damage skills.
PvP
In PvP, the Striker’s playstyle relies more on moving in and out. With the mobility skills of a Striker, you can constantly jump in and out of melee and avoid deadly attacks while landing your own through CC and knock up chains.
Core Abilities
Esoteric Skill: Lightning Tiger Strikes
Gathering lightning energy that penetrates your enemy kicking/knocking them into the air, this is the hardest hitting skill for Strikers. It can hit once with extra damage tripod but takes a second to charge or instant twice with normal damage. It also has weak point to deal destruction and decent stagger.
Esoteric Skill: Tiger Emerges
Considering this skill as the 2nd hard-hitting skill for the Striker. Unlike tiger strikes skill, this skill is instant cast, high stagger, and paralysis immunity.
Sweeping Kick
Sweeping a kick forward that lands decent damage to your opponent, it’s highest damage among all non-Esoteric skills. It has a darkness element tripod that increases the crit chance of the skill itself and of course if your opponent is weak to dark, it’s an extra 8% elemental damage.
Esoteric Skill: Call the Wind God
Summons a tornado that knocks up every normal enemy around, turning the striker himself to a tornado that moves around knocking up everything. Very useful in chaos dungeons and cubes.
Moon Flash Kick
Non-Esoteric skill that propels the Striker forward and deals some decent damage and recharges Esoteric orbs faster as well.
Awakening Abilities
Nova Blast
Dash forward and perform 4 powerful strikes with an explosive attack. The1st strike staggers your opponent if it’s not an elite/boss type, but if you miss 1st hit, Striker will not continue the rest of the strikes so be careful!
True Heavenly Awakening
Gather powerful energy in Striker’s legs and draw a wide trajectory before slamming the ground twice dealing the ultimate damage, Unlike the nova blast, this one hits only 2 times but both are performed even if you missed your 1st hit.
Advanced Class Engravings
Every Lost Ark class has access to engravings that will focus your playstyle in one particular direction. For Striker you will choose between Deathblow and Esoteric Flurry. They are two completely different playstyles.
Deathblow
Image from Maxroll
- If you want to have some of the highest burst in the game (BIG NUMBERS!), this is for you. This engraving will heavily amplify your Esoteric skills, it takes all your orbs while casting 1 Esoteric skill and inflicts extra (17/26/35%) extra damage per orb, this engraving increases you orbs to 4, which means if you have this engraving maxed, the extra damage with full orbs will be (140%) extra damage on 1 skill. That’s a lot of damage!
- The downside is that if you miss your burst window upon activation, you will lose most of your damage. Since all of your hardest-hitting skills are back attack, unless you know the boss’s patterns really well- you will probably miss… a lot!
- You want the highest specialization to build your orbs to fill faster and do more damage with your skills.
- This engraving build can be annoying and very low damage at the early game since a Striker will lack some crit chance points, so it’s recommended to be used after getting the “head & back” set from Valtan/Viakis legion raids.
Esoteric Flurry
Image from Maxroll
- This engraving ignores the Esoteric skills requirement (2 orbs consumption), allows a Striker to consume only 1 orb per Esoteric skill, and also increases the damage of Esoteric Skills by (8/13/18%).
- Unlike the Deathblow build, you can go Crit/Spec/Swift and balance between your states to get the most of it
Build
Deathblow Build
Image from Lostarkive
This build takes only two Esoteric skills since each skill will consume all your 4 orbs at once.
The Normal skills are to recharge your Esoteric orbs then until you’re ready to land the big one. Remember to use “Lightning Whisper” first to buff yourself and debuff your opponent before casting your main damage spenders.
Here are some of the skill explanations and tripods you will take. Make sure you have 4 points in every spell and then max them out in the following order
- Moon Flash Kick
- 3-3-2
- Great for recharging Esoteric orbs. This skill can be used for mobility in a pinch but its not recommended since you lose a lot of resource generation.
- Storm Dragon Awakening
- 1-0-0
- This skill is primarily used as a mobility skill and is not leveled up much.
- Lightning Whisper
- 1-1-1
- Buffs you & your party with 8% atk speed – debuffs opponent with -10% crit resistance. Itlso recharges a decent amount of Esoteric orbs. This move is key to nailing your rotation.
- Violent Tiger
- 3-1-1
- This move is primarily used as a combo to recharge Esoteric orbs
- Sky Shattering blow
- 1-0-0
- Counter skill, so is left mostly unleveled.
- Sweeping Kick
- 2-1-1
- This is your highest damage resource builder, and is great at both. Mind the windup time!
- Esoteric Skill: Tiger Emerges
- 3-2-2
- One of your spender damage skills. You will need to position yourself at the back side of the boss to get the most of it.
- Esoteric Skill: Lightning Tiger Strike
- 2-1-1
- This takes 1 sec to charge, and it’s your main damage skill. You will need to position yourself at the back side of the boss to get the most of it.
Stat Priority
- Prioritize Specialization.
- Crit is a good secondary on the necklace, but Swiftness isn’t bad.
Runes
- Wealth runes on Lightning Whisper – Violent Tiger – Moon Flash Kick
- Rage or Bleed on Storm Dragon Awakening
- Quick recharge on Sky Shattering Blow
- Galewind on Sweeping kick – Tiger Emerge
Engraving
- Deathblow lvl 3 – must have for the build
- Master of Ambush lvl 3 are the best skills for this build
- Grudge and Cursed Doll lvl 3 make great skills once you are an advanced player and can slot them in
Gems
- Prioritize Damage on Esoteric Skills and Sweeping Kick..
- Cooldown on the rest of normal skills.
Esoteric Build
Build from Lostarkive
You are free to choose between Violent Tiger or an extra Esoteric Skill, Blast Formation.
It works pretty similar to Deathblow build such that normal skills recharge your Esoteric orbs allowing you to cast lightning whisper and then cast Esoteric Skills.
The difference here is each Esoteric Skill consumes 1 orb only, so you can use 2 Esoteric Skills in a row as 1 combo after lightning whisper.
- Moon Flash Kick
- 3-3-2
- Great for Recharging Esoteric orbs. This skill can be used for mobility in a pinch but it’s not recommended since you lose a lot of resource generation.
- Storm Dragon Awakening
- 1-0-0
- This skill is primarily used as an extra mobility skill and is not leveled up much.
- Lightning Whisper
- 1-1-1
- Buffs you & your party with 8% atk speed – debuffs opponent with -10% crit resistance. It also recharges a decent amount of Esoteric orbs. This move is key to nailing your rotation.
- Sky Shattering Blow
- 1-0-0
- Counter skill, so is left mostly unleveled.
- Sweeping Kick
- 2-1-1
- This is your highest damage resource builder, and is great at both. Mind the windup time! Damage and recharging Esoteric orbs.
- Esoteric Skill: Tiger Emerges
- 3-2-2
- One of your main damage skills, you will need to position yourself at the back side of the boss to get the most of it.
- Esoteric Skill: Lightning Tiger Strike
- 2-1-1
- This takes 1 sec1sec to charge, and it’s your main damage skill. You will need to position yourself at the backside of the boss to get the most of it.
- Esoteric Skill: Blast Formation
- 1-3-2
- It leaves a fire DoT on your opponent for 5 seconds stacks up to 6 times, you will need to position yourself at the back side of the boss to get the most of it.
Stat Priority
- Prioritize Crit and make Spec/Cwift your secondary stat.
Runes
- Wealth runes on Lightning Whisper and Moon Flash Kick
- Rage or bleed on Storm Dragon Awakening
- Quick recharge on Sky Shattering Blow
- Galewind on Sweeping Kick, Tiger Emerges, and Blast Formation
Engravings
- Esoteric Flurry lvl 1~3.
- Master of Ambush lvl 3 is the best skills for this build
- Grudge and Cursed Doll lvl 3 make great skills once you are an advanced player and can slot them in
Gems
- Prioritize Damage on Esoteric skills and sweeping kick.
- Cooldown on the rest of normal skills.
Thanks for reading! For more articles and guides, check out the rest of our Lost Ark blog.
