The Tanky Sniper

### Note, This page is outdated.

The idea of this build is to build around the Gunslinger's Aimed Shot skill. This skill drastically raises the crit chance for the current attack, and adds additional damage on top of that.

It is an extremely powerful single-target physical Skill that can easily one-shot most foes, dealing upwards of 60 damage with one crit in the mid-game. However, as a physical Skill, it has a cooldown of 3 turns in between uses. Therefore, your main objective is to survive in between shots.

## Starting your character

When you start your character, you get to choose both the Background of your character and your Pet. These provide you with passive perks that will affect your character's combat capability. While they do not provide an extreme boost, any boost is better than no boost at all. Below are a few recommended Backgrounds / Pets for the Tanky Sniper:

## Backgrounds

### **Berserker - 8% chance to restore Sanity on critical hit**

Sanity is an important resource that needs to be managed in the dungeons. With the amount of criticals you're going to be dishing out, this will help greatly.

### **Survivor - -5% chance of enemy crit**

Those enemy crits *hurt*, because not only do they do damage to you, they have a chance of taking off your Sanity as well.

### **Lab Rat - +2 Spell Resistance**

My personal favorite, this helps you become an even tankier sniper.

## Pets

### **Killer Lynx - Critical hits deal 15% more DMG**

More damage means you have an easier time one-shotting foes, which means one less enemy wailing on you.

### **Planeswalker Cat - 4% chance to avoid all DMG**

4% might not seem to be a lot, but it does upgrade as you level so it's not too shabby.

### **Vampire Bat - 6% chance to heal for 1/2 of inflicted DMG on physical attack**

Yes, Aimed Shot procs this as well, making this an amazing clutch heal sometimes.

## **The Early Game**

Now, the main drawback of this build is that before you get a gunpowder weapon, you're practically useless. When you get one really is dependent on luck, so do your best to survive till then. Here are some of the skills and spells you will need to defend yourself till then:

## Spells

### **Dark Pact - 8-16 DMG, 4 DMG self**

I cannot stress how important this ability is. Even though 4 damage to self seems like a lot, it pales in comparison with how much damage an enemy can potentially deal to you. At the early levels, Dark Pact can one-shot a foe most of the time, heavily injure it for the rest. Pick it up, but don't bother levelling it past two, because once you get your gunpowder weapon Dark Pact can be abandoned.

### **Absorb Pain - HEAL 1/2, +0 HP**

The next most important spell on this list is Absorb Pain. Its effect is to convert all damage done to you into healing, healing you for half of how much the attack would have normally dealt. This spell essentially wastes the enemy's entire turn, while healing yourself in the process, which makes it extremely useful for waiting for the cooldown of Dark Pact and - when you get it - Aimed Shot. Do note however, that any status effects will still stick, and you will still lose Sanity for a critical hit.

### **Ice Shell - 1 DMG RET., +3 MAX HP**

At the lower levels, 1 damage done to the enemy is a lot. It also heals you for 3 HP every time it is cast (it increases both your max and current HP), which makes it a reliable heal. One might argue that Regrowth is a better heal, but that's only at lower levels - at higher levels, Ice Shell heals for just as much, and allows you to overheal past your max HP.

## Skills

### **Outdoorsman - Camping restores 50% HP and 1 SANITY**

This is perhaps the most important skill in the entire game. Once per dungeon, you can get a 50% HP + 1 SANITY heal. This is essential especially in early level diving, and can prove useful even in mid- to late-game where you had one fight that just went wrong out of nowhere. Learn it as soon as possible.

### ~~**Aimed Shot**~~

Even though it's tempting to put a point into Aimed Shot, it's worthless without your gunpowder weapon. Invest in skills that can take out enemies faster, help you tank more, generally keep you alive.

## Fighting in the Early Game

It's simple: survive. Use Dark Pact to start fights to take out one enemy quickly, or spend a turn killing it if the enemy didn't die. Use your skills and abilities to keep tanking hits, then Dark Pact again and repeat the process once your cooldown ends. Always judge if you will take more damage by defending rather than attacking; if you can kill a foe instead of defending, that is almost always the favorable option.

## Getting the Gunpowder Weapon

Alright, now you've got the big guns. What's changed?

Nothing, really. Instead of Dark Pact, you're now waiting for cooldowns of Aimed Shot. You're still tanking as best as you can, delaying as much as possible for your next sniper bullet to finish reloading. Here are some of the spells / skills that are useful:

## Spells

### **Glacial Spear - 4-5DMG, STUN**

Stunning an enemy means you're not taking damage from it. Simple reasoning.

### **Nature's Embrace - +2HP/TURN, 21% chance to restore 1 SANITY**

Perhaps the most important aspect of picking up Nature's Embrace is its Sanity restoration. With limited access to means of restoring Sanity outside of consumables in the early game, this is a very valuable skill to pick up. Its HP regeneration is nothing to scoff at either, healing you constantly for 5 turns total.

## Skills

**Drifter - 4% chance to restore 1 SANITY**

As a tank, you're going to be taking a lot of hits, and that means more enemy criticals, and that means more SANITY lost. Upkeeping your SANITY is essential, because once you hit 0, you die, regardless of how tanky you are. Don't let that happen to you.

**All dam passives**

Pick up all the passive abilities you can get to boost your damage and tankiness. You're a one-trick pony, you don't have to learn new tricks.

## Fighting with the Gunpowder Weapon

Much like before, you simply rinse and repeat Aimed Shot. Get into battle, snipe a guy, tank up, snipe the next, repeat... I personally like to start with Aimed Shot, then Ice Shell and Nature's Embrace. Depending on how many enemies there are left, I either use Absorb Pain (for 2 or 3 enemies alive) or Glacial Spear (for 1 enemy alive), then use Aimed Shot again. Very few things survive past 2 hits, including bosses.

During turns where your core spells are on cooldown, you can either attempt a normal attack to see if you can get in a crit, or beef up even more with more buffs, such as Slow Time or Arcane Binding. Your objective for each battle should always be to win with full HP / SANITY, or as close to it as possible.

Equipment wise can be interesting. At lower levels of Aimed Shot, getting a crit is likely but not certain. To lessen the number of times your sniper shot doesn't crit, equip armor and accessories that provide an additional crit percentage. At higher levels of Aimed Shot, however, the crit percentage rises sharply (capping at 85% at level 6). This means you only need to build 15% crit to make that a guarantee crit chance for Aimed Shot, leaving your armor and accessory slot open for other tanky abilities such as more armor or evasion.