Uploaded June 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago

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Average: ~172K

I did quite a lot of farming for this one (~4 hours) and got a lot of 174s and 175s. Did some testing here and there and I feel like Overload into an Incap for the opener is slightly better than emptying Overload completely. I could be wrong, or maybe it's basically the same either way.

Apprentice/Warrior mundus is obviously a slightly higher ceiling if you're willing to crit farm a bit longer. You still end up at ~80% crit chance with App/Warr which is pretty good.

I ended up going back to Thief for some final attempts, but both App/Warr and Thief are basically the same on average. As always, Thief is more consistent and generally recommended for content.
 
⚠️ What's New in U46 ⚠️
As one might expect, there's A LOT of changes this update with subclassing.

Arcanist's "Herald of the Tome" and Nightblade's "Assassination" skill lines are basically the core of every full DPS, ideally with Arcanist as the base class for crux banner. Herald and Assassination together have most of the best damage skills and passives.

For Single Target (ST) builds on the dummy specifically, the 3rd line is ideally Sorcerer's "Storm Calling" and abusing Overload. You can probably make some good arguments for Overload for some scenarios in content, especially after Pillager got nerfed and you don't need a dedicated Sorc anymore for Storm Atros. Something worth testing.

There's a handful of other ST variations that can hit low to mid 170s but (ignoring Overload) probably the most realistic ones to use in trials are either Ardent Flame or Aedric Spear (with or without Jabs). Other notable DPS skill lines are Animal Companions, Grave Lord and Dawn's Wrath.

To be honest, I wouldn't recommend playing an ST build like this in content unless you're in a trifecta/scorepush trial team that has plenty of AoE and can afford a couple ST builds to make ST boss fights a little faster. ST builds like this one are also very hard to play well compared to beamers which are much easier and aren't very far behind in ST.

If you do play this in content though (assuming Highland isn't realistic for the particular fight), I recommend Null Arca + Tide-born.

Thanks to Luna Cairu, Zeebs, Skinny Cheeks, Evael, Alduin, GoAvs and Kortekk for the many discussions and tests in the DPS Nerds discord server.

⚠️ % Thresholds For Dummy ⚠️
- At 33% start using Killer's Blade instead of Surprise Attack
- Between 20-30% cast Hurricane, Barbed Trap, and Inspired Scholarship one last time
- At ~15% stop casting Merciless Resolve
- At 10-15% cast Stampede and/or Tentacular Dread one last time if they're about to run out
- Under 10% just spam Killer's Blade

I encourage y'all to read thru the patch notes if you want to know all the changes, but I'll leave a simplified overview of some of the most notable combat changes below.

1.) Subclassing
- You get to pick one or two skill lines from other classes, but you must always keep AT LEAST one skill line from your base class. These subclassed skill lines must be leveled but the progression is shared among all your characters.

2.) Big Azureblight Nerf
- "This set now requires 20 additional stacks of Blight Seed for each group member wearing this set"
- It's still a very strong set in AoE scenarios but it's essentially back to a one-person-only set

3.) Arcanist's Fatecarver Changes
- "Increased the cost of this ability and its morphs by 40%. Increased the damage of this ability and its morphs by ~8%. These abilities can now hit a max of 6 targets, rather than having no target cap"
- VERY noticeable sustain nerf for beam arcs. I recommend Pragmatic Fatecarver instead for content, even for most high-end trial groups.

4.) "Beam" ability changes
- Week 4 changed "beam" abilities to be considered "Direct Damage" rather than "Damage Over Time". These include Radiant Destruction, Fatecarver, Soul Strike, Vampiric Drain and all of their morphs.
- This means that Fatecarver can no longer contribute to Azureblight or Runecarver
- Grave Lord's DoT boosts no longer affect Fatecarver
- These beam abilities can now be buffed by Maelstrom 2H's 12% direct damage boost

5.) Null Arca Buff
- "Increased the damage of this set by ~8%. Reduced the cooldown after it activates to 4 seconds, down from 5"
- This is roughly a 30% effective damage increase for Null, making it the best ST trial set

6.) Nightblade's Assassination Changes
- Master Assassin: This passive now increases your Critical Chance by 6.6% against enemies you flank, rather than 2974 penetration
- Grim Focus: This ability and its morphs can now stack up to 10 times, rather than 5. Merciless Resolve gives 30 Weapon/Spell Damage per stack. Relentless Focus gives 40 per stack

7.) Pillager's Profit Nerf
- "Reduced the amount of Ultimate this set grants per tick to 2%, down from 5% of the Ultimate spent"

Other Info:
🧬Race - Dark Elf
🧃Potion - Ult pots
✨️Mundus - Thief
🍲Food: Lava Foot Soup

Music:
V.I.P.N - Wandering