Fellowship Guide | Best Mara Build & Rotation

This quick-start guide focuses on Mara, a stealth-based assassin who blends subtlety and poison mastery to deliver exceptional burst and sustained damage. 

You will learn how to leverage stealth-applied poisons, manage energy and combo points, and execute optimal single-target and AoE rotations so you can enter Fellowship and perform at a high level immediately.

Mara Overview

Mara functions like a hybrid of subtlety and assassination archetypes, built around Stealth, poisons, an energy bar, and combo points. 

You generate combo points with abilities like Widow's Bite and Backstab, then convert them into powerful finishers such as Queen's Fang for single-target pressure or Arachnid Assault for wide-area burst. 

Stealth entry empowers poisons that key off the first ability used when you break Stealth, allowing you to tailor your opening to the situation.

Unique Mechanics & Core Abilities

When you enter Stealth, your first attack determines which poison or opening effect applies. You maintain an energy resource and build combo points, then spend them for big finishers. 

Backstab functions similarly to an ambush-style strike and deals significantly more damage from behind, so positioning matters. Widow's Bite is a multi-charge combo generator that strikes with both weapons, typically granting two combo points per hit and sometimes three on a critical strike, enabling instant six-point openers when both strikes crit. 

Fan of Knives offers reliable AoE generation and rapidly spreads poison effects. Abilities like Skittering Blades and stealth-openers provide damage-over-time poisons, while Fan of Knives can blanket enemies with Deadly Poison. Random acrobatic flourishes sometimes occur during combat animations and do not affect gameplay.

Single-Target Rotation

Open from Stealth with Widow's Bite to apply its poison-based bleed and immediately generate combo points. If the opener does not crit enough to reach six combo points, use Backstab from behind the target to finish building to six. 

Spend your first six points on Haemorrhaging Strike to establish a long debuff that inflicts significant bleed damage and scales with combo points, then maintain this bleed throughout the fight by refreshing it before it expires. 

After the bleed is active, funnel your combo points into Queen's Fang for maximum single-target damage, weaving Widow's Bite and Backstab to rebuild points and re-entering Stealth in combat as needed to reapply potent poisons before continuing your finisher cycle.

Multi-Target (AoE) Rotation

Begin in Stealth and use Skittering Blades or Fan of Knives to immediately seed poisons across the pack and build combo points quickly. 

Apply Haemorrhaging Strike to multiple enemies by tab-targeting and spending six-point finishers to spread bleeds where practical, then convert subsequent combo points into Arachnid Assault for heavy AoE burst. 

In fast-dying packs where bleeds cannot fully tick, simply cycle Fan of Knives into Arachnid Assault, injecting Widow's Bite when a quick burst of combo points is needed. When combo points dip, trigger Skittering Blades again to refill and continue the assault.

Poisons, Bleeds, and Stealth Re-Entries

Stealth re-entries act like a vanish, letting you reset the poison you want to apply on your next Strike. Use this to keep Volatile Poison, Haemorrhage, and Seething Poison effects aligned with encounter needs. 

Maintain Haemorrhaging Strike on priority targets, and during mixed packs, keep the primary kill target fully debuffed while opportunistically spreading bleeds to secondary enemies for extra pressure.

Ultimate Usage

After completing a few dungeons, you unlock Mara's ultimate. For the next twenty seconds, Queen's Fang summons two shadow clones that replicate the finisher for full damage, drastically amplifying single-target output. 

Use the ultimate on bosses to supercharge Queen's Fang, or drop it into large AoE pulls and convert your combo points into repeated Arachnid Assault casts. If energy runs low during the window, continue weaving Queen's Fang because it has no energy cost, keeping damage high while energy regenerates.

Stat Priority & Early Builds

Stacking Haste feels natural because it accelerates energy regeneration and smooths the rotation, especially when chaining finishers and re-entering Stealth to reapply poisons. 

Critical Strike works really well with Widow's Bite, because double critical hits can give you six combo points right away, which lets you spend those points right away. In early gearing, focus on what you have access to and lean toward Haste for stability or Critical Strike for powerful openings.

Practical Combat Tips

Always attack from behind to maximize Backstab damage and reduce parry risk. Keep Haemorrhaging Strike active for its long-duration bleed and damage amplification cadence, refreshing intelligently rather than clipping early ticks. 

Use Fan of Knives liberally to maintain widespread poison coverage and to harvest combo points in multi-target situations. Re-enter Stealth mid-fight to switch poison modes and re-engage with empowered openers, and incorporate Kick to manage enemy casts when coordinating interrupts so you do not overlap with teammates. 

Movement abilities like Shadow Step enable rapid repositioning, but avoid double-tapping if stability issues arise in your environment.

Putting It All Together

Start in Stealth with Widow's Bite, build up to six combo points, and then use Haemorrhaging Strike to get a high-value bleed. You can cycle Queen's Fang for single-target damage or Arachnid Assault for area damage, applying poisons again through Stealth re-entries as required.

On boss encounters, activate the ultimate and funnel finishers for massive spikes, sustaining pressure with poison upkeep, disciplined energy use, and precise positioning behind your target.

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