Torchlight III: Sharpshooter – Flaming Destroyer ‘Phoenix’ DPS/Summon Build

Class: Sharpshooter
Relic: Flaming Destroyer
Build: Fire themed DPS + meat shield summons

The Sharpshooter is a ranged class that lets you fire deadly barrages upon your enemies while a wall of summons protects you from harm and having two class skill trees that synergize great together. The Precision tree contains the Sharpshooter’s ammo using attack skills. Ammo is the Sharpshooter’s unique mechanic; it is a resource that is consumed when you use a Precision attack skill and regenerates over time. The skills in the Adventurer tree do not use ammo and provide support and summon related abilities. Each of the Adventurer skills also gives an unique buff when you use your next three Precision skills (the buff will overwrite the previous buff if you have not consumed their three charges yet).

My initial impression of the Sharpshooter was kind of poor. Sure the early pet support was nice for tanking while I went pew-pew but the ammo mechanic felt very annoying. I’d fire off a few Precision attacks only to quickly burn through my ammo pool and was forced to switch to boring basic attacks while I waited for my ammo to regenerate enough so I could start using the fun skills again. Then I hit level ten and, checking the new skills available, realized that my issues were solved with the Reload skill! The skill restores all your ammo on use and single-handlely takes the Sharpshooter class from meh to being easily the best class alongside the Cursed Captain imo.

For relic, I went with Flaming Destroyer and built a fire themed build. The main reason for picking the relic was because my Sharpshooter was the last of the five class I made and it was the only relic I hadn’t used yet tried lol. If you’re interested in a different relic, the Bane relic is an excellent option if you want to go heavier on the summon side. Coldheart is maybe the weakest overall relic but provides an extra tank type summon and slowing effects to your attacks should be good for kiting. Blood Drinker doesn’t seem very useful, you already have pets to tank for you. Electrode is generally good overall I think so also possible option.

Tight Grouping

The Sharpshooter’s default starting skill, Tight Grouping fires several arrows in a narrow cone. It’s a decent skill, however, I prefer Targeted Strikes over it. Use it until you unlock Targeted Strikes then refund the default point at first opportunity.

Targeted Strikes

The build’s primary spammable DPS skill, Targeted Strikes fires a volley of three piercing shots at a target. Good for ‘burning’ down big targets and stacking up burn dots.

Skill should be maxxed 10/10.

Reload

The Sharpshooter’s most important skill and pretty much mandatory for any build. Reload instantly restores your entire ammo pool and resets the cooldown for all your Adventurer skills. This lets you burn your ammo spamming Precision skills, trigger Reload, then go back to spamming Precision skills. Refreshing cooldown on your Adventurer skills lets you cast those more often letting you keep summons up constantly and completely refreshes all charges on your Ghostly Visage movement skill giving you tremendous mobility.

Each point in the skill decreases Reload’s cooldown letting you recast it more often. Tier 1 reduces ammo costs for a short time after using, Tier 2 gives a damage buff to your Precision skills and Tier 3 gives Reload a second charge. With maxxed Reload you’ll never need to use a basic attack.

Skill should be maxxed 10/10.

Goblin Legion

The Sharpshooter’s first summon skill, Goblin Legion summons a pair of goblins to tank for you. The Adventurer’s bonus will cause your next three Precision skills to spawn an additional goblin. Makes for extremely effective tanks that can provide some extra DPS. Use Reload to eliminate cooldown if you need to resummon the goblins quickly.

Tier 1 increases the goblin’s lifespans, Tier 2 increases your pet’s damage and Tier 3 also spawns a stronger Goblin Brute in addition to the original two goblins.

Skill should be maxxed 10/10.

Ghostly Visage

The Sharpshooter’s movement skill and is absolutely mandatory for every build. Ghostly Visage teleports you in the new location and makes you unable to be targeted or take damage for either six seconds or until you attack again. The Adventurer’s bonus will increase your next three Precision skills critical hit chance by 60%. Use Reload to instantly refresh all charges.

Tier 1 gives the skill an additional charge. Extra charge is really easy to get and generally worth getting imo. Tier 2 gives a chance to also become intangible after using potions which is fairly nice but build doesn’t need to use potions much and better options to put the points I’d say.

Recommend 3/10.

Sacrifice to Goose

A very useful support skill, calls down an eagle that hurts enemies, knocks them back and, more importantly, applies a 30% damage vulnerability for six seconds. The Adventurer’s bonus will cause your next three Precision skills to fire three ghostly eagles in a cone towards your skill’s target.

Tier 1 further increases the damage vulnerability, Tier 2 lowers your cooldowns and Tier 3 gives your Precision skill extra eagles.

Recommend getting at least 3/10, more if you can free points up elsewhere. The damage vulnerability will make enemies easier to clear and the eagles make for a decent way to help clear packs.

Loyal Shasta

Summons a spirit wolf that taunts enemies for you and provides an useful tank pet. The Adventurer’s bonus will cause your next three Precision skills to fear enemies for a couple of seconds. Personally I prefer other Adventurer skills bonus effects to Shasta’s fear effect so I’d suggest activating Shasta first, then activating another skill afterwords.

Skill should be maxxed 10/10. Extra bonus damage to taunted enemies and the Tier 3 burning area fits into the fire theme.

Explosive Arrow

Fires an arrow into the air that explodes on impact with the ground. I’m using it as a secondary attack for large groups and primarily chose it because it fits into the fire theme. If you prefer another skill for AOE, go ahead and use that. Tier 3 bonus is totally useless for me as I don’t use basic attack.

The Flaming Destroyer relic has a number of fire themed abilities. Primarily the relic is used to enhance your attacks to apply fire and burn damage. Targeted Strikes from Precision lets you hit your target multiple times quickly, applying your burn DOT and triggering effects.

Ignition Source

Gives you a chance to apply a burn DOT to your enemies and gives you passive evasion chance. Should should be maxxed 5/5 as this provides good additional damage and more survivability, not to mention that other passives are dependent on your enemies being on fire to trigger! When in the endless dungeon, I’d recommend avoiding levels where enemies are immune to burning as you’ll notice the DPS loss.

Magma Burst

Gives a chance to trigger an explosion when killing or critically hitting a burning enemy. Max 5/5

Giant Swings

Increases your basic attack damage, gives your basic attack a chance to trigger a flame shockwave and increase your relic energy generation while using basic attacks. 0/5 if you are not using basic attacks (you’d need to drop a skill to free up a skill slot for basic attack) and 0/5 also if you are using pistol + shield instead of bow, otherwise could be worth maxxing.

Firestorm

Gives a chance for a fireball to drop onto a burning enemy when you hit them with an attack. Enemies should basically always be burning and you can get a lot of hits on a single target via Targeted Strikes or using an AOE like Explosive Arrow. Max 5/5

Cloak of Flames

Cloak of Flames drains your Relic energy when activated. While active it burns nearby enemies while boosting your damage and evasion. The skill provides useful buffs and gives you something to use your Relic energy on, prefer this over Sword Smash or Flaming Pillar.

Build up your Relic energy by fighting enemies then activate once you a decent pool of energy pooled. Then once you run out of Relic energy, rebuild your energy back up and repeat the process.

Recommend at least 3/10 for the extra radius. If you want to keep Cloak of Flames up more often, then you might want to go 6/10 for the second tier bonus to lower the skill’s Relic energy drain.

Energizer

Boosts Relic energy Charge Rate by 25%. Can be an useful dump skill at game end but not required. Better relic energy generation helps through if you want to keep Cloak of Flames up more often.

Summing Smash

Flaming Destroyer’s ultimate skill, can be used you’ve collected 200 Relic energy, Summing Smash summons six flaming swords in a circle around you that then falls for heavy upfront fire damage and burning DOT damage. Fun to trigger a big damage type ability, you need to run near enemy pacts so the swords can hit them through.

Recommend 1/10 or 3/10 at most for Tier 1 bonus. I’d save points for other skills as you can’t really use this that often.

Nimble Flames

Blast enemies with a pair of Fire novas and, for a short time, gives you a big boost to your evasion chance while triggering additional novas when you evade attacks. Should make for an additional effective survivability tool if you feel like you want another.

If you want to take Nimble Flames then I’d recommend dropping Summoning Smash. The rest of the skills in build are too useful or important to pass up in comparison.

Musketeer’s Robe and Hat are both generally nice as they increase your Adventurer and Precision skills respectively by 1 (or 2 if you have three Musketeer’s pieces equipped). Preferably you’d wear these instead of choosing them in the Legendarium. To get the full benefit you’d need three Musketeer pieces equipped so it’s best to have these two set pieces equipped along with a random third piece of the set to get +2 to skills. This also saves you the slots in the Legendarium for something else.

Ryeful of Leedarshap – Imo it’s a mandatory pick. It upgrades Goblin Legion to also summon three goblin gunners. With maxxed out Goblin Legion this gives you six minions on summon + potentially up to three more with the Adventurer’s bonus. This makes Goblin Legion an absolute meat shield of a skill.

Shasta’s Promise – Recommended option for your second pick. It upgrades Loyal Shasta to increase her damage by 100% and heals you for 10% every time Shasta taunts. Shasta taunts every 8 seconds or on initial summon so you can use Shasta to consistently heal minor damage taken by resummoning her when needed. Just use Reload to remove Shasta’s cooldown, then resummon her and get your free heal and refreshed tank.

For your final pick, the following are a few possible options:

Lil’ Drake – Updates Sacrifice to Goose to leave a burning area for a short time after impact. You should be firing Sacrifice to Goose whenever you trigger Reload for the damage vulnerability debuff so should get excellent value from this.

Herman’s Masterwork – Updates Explosive Arrow to cause three smaller explosions randomly in the area. Good if you want to spam Explosive Arrow a lot for large crowds.

Musketeer Gloves – Summons extra support minion when casting Summoning Smash.

Chronometer – Reduces Reload’s cooldown when using an Adventurer skill. It’s okay early on but once you max Reload you should be able to recast it pretty quickly without Chronometer’s aid.

My Lil’ General – Nice damage and damage resistance buff to you when you reach max Relic energy.

Boneblocker / Bonerazor – Similar to Musketeer Gloves but spawns multiple cheap minions when using Summoning Smash.

Wideload’s Cavebreaker – Has a chance to drop Stalactites on enemies on hit for 30% weapon damage. Should be fairly easy to trigger with Targeted Strikes.

Generally you want to work towards unlocking skills and reaching the skill’s Tier upgrades. Individual skill ups provide rather marginal gain outside of the Tier upgrades so I’d expect you to be aiming to have your skills at level 1 (just for unlock) or 3, 6 or 10 (for Tier upgrades).

During the game you can earn Respectacles from Contracts or purchase them for 2500 gold from vendor. They’re fairly expensive to buy from the vendor so I’d expect most to store them up from Contracts. I have large stockpiles of these now. You can use them to respec out of skills you no longer require or if you want to move the points into a newly available skill instead. Otherwise if you don’t want to use Respectacles to respec spent skill points you can instead save the skill ups until the later skill is available.

One possible leveling path, feel free to try skills out in different order if some skills appeal to you more, long term you’ll eventually max your main skills anyways:
Level 2 – unlock Goblin Legion to serve as your meat shields
3 – unlock Ignition Source to give you chance for burn and extra evasion
4 – upgrade Goblin Legion to level 2
5 – unlock Ghostly Visage to get your movement skill and Targeted Strikes to serve as your primary attack; if you have a Respectacle you can refund Tight Grouping now if you want to and use another of the main skills or drop one point into Onslaught for AOE until Explosive Arrow becomes available later
6 – unlock Magma Burst
7-8 – upgrade Targeted Strikes to level 3 for Tier 1
9 – upgrade Goblin Legion to level 3 for Tier 1
10 – unlock Reload so you can use Targeted Strikes consistently and Sacrifice to Goose for its debuff
11 – unlock Cloak of Flames so you finally have something to use Relic energy on
12-15 – upgrade Reload to level 6 for Tier 2
16 – unlock Explosive Arrow (or move point from Tight Grouping/Onslaught here) for spammable AOE fire themed attack
17 – unlock Firestorm to give you chance to trigger affect
18-19 – upgrade Targeted Strikes to level 5
20 – unlock Loyal Shasta to use as secondary taunting tank and upgrade Targeted Strikes to level 6 for Tier 2
21 – unlock Summoning Smash
22-23 – upgrade Loyal Shasta to level 3 for Tier 1
24 – upgrade Goblin Legion to level 4
25 – upgrade Sacrifice to Goose to level 3 for Tier 1
26-27 – upgrade Goblin Legion to level 6 for Tier 2
28-30 – upgrade Reload to level 10 for tier 3
31-34 – upgrade Targeted Strikes to level 10 for Tier 3
35 – upgrade Ghostly Visage to level 3 for extra charge
36-37 – upgrade Explosive Arrow to level 3 for Tier 1
37-39 – upgrade Goblin Legion to level 9
40 – upgrade Goblin Legion to level 10 for tier 3 and Ignition Source to level 2
41-43 – upgrade Ignition Source to level 5
44-46 – upgrade Firestorm to level 5
47-50 – upgrade Magma Burst to level 5
51-53 – upgrade Explosive Arrow to level 6 for Tier 2
54-56 – upgrade Loyal Shasta to level 6 for Tier 2
56-58 – upgrade Cloak of Flames to level 3 for Tier 1
59-60 – upgrade Summoning Stash to level 3 for Tier 1

These are my final skill trees and gear setup at the end of Fazeer’s Dun’djinn:

Precision and Adventurer skills have +2 to skills from Musketeer set.

For my pet, I choose the Fire Fox to go with the whole ‘fire’ theme I have going with the build. Of the four auras I like the Defender aura the most but you can also go the Critical Strikes one if you like. For your pets non-aura skills, I’d say Battle Cry is a must, nice little boost to damage. Using Vampirism to help sustain pet’s health. For my final slot I’m using Assemble! as I liked adding a few extra ghostly summons. You could swap this out for whatever skill you like, stuff like Defensive Posture, Dasher, Healing Friendship, Immoblizing Strike, etc.

For gear, I generally like to get Defence on as many pieces of gear as possible, like to have more survivability. Need at least one piece with Electric, Fire and Poison resistance. End game you can use Enchant slots of add a missing resistance if required. Health is nice as well but usually put Defence first.

Other things to look out for endgame are buffs to skill levels so you can get free points to spend on other skills, buffs to skill damage, critical damage, evade, block, etc. Kept a couple of old Musketeer pieces on as I preferred having the skill up to get all the skills.

General gameplay loop goes as follows. Activate Goblin Legion and Loyal Shasta to get your initial summons out. Use Sacrifice to Goose to apply vulnerability and start firing Targeted Strikes. Whenever you run out of Ammo, activate Reload so you fire more Targeted Strikes. Resummon Goblin Legion and Loyal Shasta to refresh their summons and reapply Sacrifice to Goose. If Targeted Strikes is blocked, use Explosive Arrow.

You can also trigger Reload if you want to resummon Loyal Shasta to force her to trigger taunt to heal you if you have Shasta’s Promise legendary affect.

When you have built a decent pool of Relic Energy you can activate Cloak of Flames. Use Ghost Visage when needing to reposition, remember Reload refills all of it’s charges so should have excellent mobility.