Deadeye - Pistol Pistol Payback Deadeye

The community gave this build a rating, making it top-tier: Great

Focused on: Strike damage

Designed for: Open World, Open World General and Open World Specialist

Expansions required:

Difficulty:

Easy

This build was last updated on August 08, 2025 and is up to date for the August 19, 2025 patch.

Overview

A power deadeye build that dual wields pistols and spams Unload. This build is absolutely fantastic for basic open world content, map completion, and story content, but has low AoE damage and is vulnerable to enemies that block or reflect projectiles.

When chain killing trash mobs, this build achieves permanent Quickness, Fury, and lots of Might. Killing your Marked targets triggers Payback which lowers all your cooldowns, letting you spam any skill such as Thieves Guild for friendly thieves to help you.

With little changes, the build can be adapted to provide permanent Quickness, Fury, and lots of Might to nearby allies, which is very useful when playing in groups. This is the quickness variant.

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Skill Bar

Pistol/Pistol

Shortbow

Utility

Weapon Variants

You don't really need a second weapon set since you're going to be spamming Unload on pistol-pistol. You can use shortbow for mobility, or whatever else you want.

Skill Variants

Heal Skill

Signet of Malice is suggested as it works great with the multihitting Unload attack.

• Hide in Shadows - defensive option
• Withdraw - low cooldown, good heal, evades, and disengages.

Utility skill

Shadow Flare is your only real AoE damage, it is advisable not to swap it. Haste and Shadowstep are both stun breaks and utility skills, but they are not mandatory. You can consider other skills:

• Binding Shadow boon removal, minor CC, and good vulnerability application.
• Infiltrator's Signet - good when chain killing trash mobs to teleport to your next target.
• Roll for Initiative - stunbreak, evade, and initiative.
• Shadow Refuge - long duration of stealth for channelling Hero Challenges.
• Signet of Agility - if conditions are a problem.

Elite skill

We recommend Thieves Guild for its great damage and crowd control, and allies that can tank for you. It also has superb syneryg with Payback allowing you to have permanent Thieves Guild when killing groups of trash mobs.

Specializations

Variants

• Invigorating Precision - little bit of sustain at the cost of damage and fury generation.
• Mug - when fighting low health enemies. For example, core Tyria map completion.
• Even the Odds - when fighting low health enemies, improves your burst.
• Improvisation - useful when killing low health mobs for more cooldown reduction on your utility skills like Shadowstep or Infiltrator's Signet for more mobility. Don't use it when fighting high health enemies.

Quickness variant

Provides permanent Quickness, Fury, and Might to yourself and nearby allies. See this section.

• One in the Chamber + Premeditation + Fire for Effect

Equipment

Ascended gear and stat infusions are not required; you can use exotic gear with the same stats.
This set uses gear similar to Daredevil - Power DPS, making it excellent for general PVE.

Head
Berserker

Shoulders
Berserker

Chest
Berserker

Hands
Berserker

Legs
Berserker

Feet
Berserker

Backpiece
Berserker

Accessory
Berserker

Accessory
Berserker

Amulet
Berserker

Ring
Berserker

Ring
Berserker

Pistol
Berserker

Pistol
Berserker

Sigil

Sigil

Shortbow
Berserker

Sigil

Sigil

Rune
x6

Relic

If you are gearing this character from zero, start with exotic quality gear. Search the trading post for "Nika" armor. Then search for the weapons you want to use: "Venomstriker" pistol, "Usoku's Needle" dagger, "Shattered Short Bow" shortbow. Upgrade to ascended gear as you progress. See also: Guide:How to Gear a Character.

• Note that you need 0% boon duration for the quickness variant to provide permanent boons.
• With Fury and Keen Observer you achieve 100% critical chance.
• You can use whatever sigils you want on the shortbow.
• Deadeye's Mark counts as a weapon skill so it triggers Relic of Fireworks.
  • For bosses and fights where you don't reset Deadeye's Mark, use Relic of the Thief for more damage, or Relic of Zakiros to trade a minor amount of damage for sustain, or Relic of Durability for a little extra defense.

Consumables

Budget consumables are acceptable for use in open world.

DPS

• Budget:
• Ascended: any Steak food.
• /
• /

Farming

• Prioritize Steak Ascended food.
• /
• (and variants)

Usage

Deadeye's Mark and Malice

The most important part of the build is correct usage of Deadeye's Mark. Make sure to mark your target before you start firing to deal extra damage to them, and receive less damage from them, due to Iron Sight. It also gives you Quickness from Be Quick or Be Killed, which increases your power and precision by 200.

By killing your marked target, you will proc Payback, which greatly reduces the recharge of your skills, most notably Thieves Guild and Shadow Flare. You also reset Deadeye's Mark, letting your mark your next target.

When killing groups of trash mobs, you will achieve permanent Quickness and Thieves Guild.

Priority

1. Deadeye's Mark
2. Thieves Guild
3. Shadow Flare
4. Unload spam this

Quickness variant

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The quickness variant provides permanent Quickness, Fury, and Might to yourself and nearby allies with 0% boon duration. It should be played when fighting with nearby players, or when fighting bosses and other durable enemies where you cannot keep refreshing your Deadeye Mark by killing enemies.

Change your deadeye traits to One in the Chamber, Premeditation, and Fire for Effect. Change your utility skills to Malicious Restoration, Mercy, Shadow Flare, and Shadow Meld, use whatever skill you want on the open slot, such as Shadowstep for mobility or Scorpion Wire for crowd control or Signet of Agility for condition removal.

Your Stolen Skill will always be Steal Time, which will provide the aforementioned boons to yourself and nearby allies. Using any Cantrip will give you another Steal Time thanks to One in the Chamber. This has a small delay so you can fire one Unload in between the Cantrip and the new Steal Time.

Opener

1. Deadeye's Mark
2. Steal Time
3. Shadow Flare
4. Unload
5. Steal Time
6. Unload
7. Shadow Meld
8. Unload
9. Steal Time
10. Mercy
11. Steal Time
12. Deadeye's Mark
13. Unload
14. Steal Time

This opener will give you and nearby allies very long durations of Quickness, Fury, and Might. Continue weaving Cantrips and Steal Times periodically through the fight to maintain these boons permanently.

Notes

• Try to stay above 50% health to benefit from Keen Observer and Twin Fangs.
• When fighting non-defiant enemies in a group, try to attack from behind to benefit from Twin Fangs.
• Each bullet from Unload has a 20% chance to be a projectile finisher so, when fighting with nearby players, try to make your bullets fly through a combo field for some additional bonuses.
• Never cancel Unload. Landing all 8 shots will replenish 2 initiative.
• The food provides a good damage boost when killing trash mobs and is very cheap.

Defense

The best defense is to kill your enemy before it can kill you. This build is very aggressive and has little defense.

• You are a fully ranged build, always keep your distance and stay on the move.
• Dodge incoming attacks.
• Disengage with stealth.
• Against trash mobs, you can always use Black Powder to blind them.

Crowd Control

• Head Shot - 2 second daze.
• If you need more crowd control, consider Scorpion Wire or Prepare Pitfall.