Ultimate Rapier Guide (Updated Up To Patch 1.3.4)
- Attributes
- Builds For Rapier
- Rapier Active Skills
- Gear
- Gems
- Equipment Perks
- Consumables
- Weapons To Combine With
- FAQ
The Rapier is a melee single target weapon. With extreme mobility, plenty of damage, and damage-over-time active skills, the Rapier is best suited for gamers that prefer not getting hit rather than trying to soak up the damage:
The rapier doesn’t offer too much in the way of crowd control or area of effect skills – it’s best suited to one-on-one situations.
Attributes
The Rapier scales from the Dexterity primarily at x0.9 and has a secondary stat of Intelligence (x0.6):
First of all, the choice of the main Attribute depends on what weapon you’ll use as a primary and secondary one. If you’re leveling with the Rapier, you’d better put all your Attribute points in Dexterity to get maximum raw damage.
If you’re going to use it pairing with Musket or Fire Staff / Ice Gauntlet, hybrid Intelligence build is also possible. Using the Gems in your weapon will let you convert your damage partially to the magic one, cover the weaknesses of the bosses and match the elements where you need them. For example, Corrupted enemies are rigged to Arcane damage; Fire is good against Angry Earth.
Constitution is a decent secondary Attribute, especially for PvP, 50 points will be enough to unlock 20% effectiveness to all health consumables, but you can get those 50 points with your gear or using +40 Consitution food:
Minmaxing your character for endgame PvP you can also reach 200 Constitution breakpoints for a 20% armor increase:
Builds For Rapier
Due to the pretty straight skill trees and a low number of passives, there’s not so much variability in Rapier builds.
1. This build fits most for solo open world and leveling.
The last passive point is actually pretty arguable. You can take Desperation, but since you have a lot of ways to regenerate Stamina, it’s pretty useless.
Controlled Breathing regenerates 3 stamina on every hit and can be used for PvP to dodge more often. Swiftness doesn’t reset the 4-second timer on every stack but grants you a bit of mobility.
Leveling:
If you’re focusing on PvE content, you grab all three skills with your first three points. After that, you grab the additional two passives for Flurry, Red Curtains, then Max Evade, followed by Fleche. Finally, you grab the Momentum Ultimate.
In the end, you can pick passives from the Blood skill tree – Refreshing Strikes, Engarde, Light Edge, take Overwhelm, and Fleeting Strikes in Flurry tree; since you don’t have blood debuffs you don’t need to max it. Then, Perfectionist and the last passive you chose.
Rotation:
This build is fairly straightforward, with no complex or complicated skill usages or rotations to maximize damage.
In PvE, Evade and Flurry should just be used off cooldown. Evade to reposition for Flurry and try to get as many backstabs as you can. Fleche can be used off Cooldown too. When solo, you’d be aiming to Fleche through a target and get backstab with Interruption before carrying on with Evade and Flurry spam. In groups, you ideally want to Fleche into the enemy’s back, but not through them, landing both parts as backstab.
In PvP, the usage is very similar, though Evade should be used more tactically. Since it can be spammed though, you should be trying to use it often to abuse Momentum while avoiding key abilities and trying to land backstabs. Flurry and Fleche are still used pretty much the same way; just need to be careful with timing their usage.
2. This build is often used for PvP or if you have a Rapier as a secondary weapon to increase your mobility and for having close combat attacks.
3. Blood build can be used for PvP with a Rapier as the main weapon or for bursting single target damage in Expeditions.
The last passive skill of Tondo is pretty hard to use since it works if you’re more than 4 meters away from your enemy, while the range of Tondo is actually 5-6 meters. To finalize, the final passive of the Flurry tree is also pretty arguable. So you can take 3 passives from the Grace skill tree or simply pick up all skills in the Blood skill tree since there’s no reason to waste skill points on a rather useless first passive ability in the Grace tree just to pick up Perfectionist.
Rapier Active Skills
The range doesn’t change with Proper Spacing ability. The Bleed can be extended through passives and has a maximum duration of 20 seconds.
In PvP, it can be used for 50v50 Wars, as it can apply to many targets at once with good spacing. For PvE, it can be also applied to many targets and can be your primary AoE option.
The Ability pairs together with Tondo to create a Bleed-stacking playstyle.
Tondo’s bleed does 85% weapon damage over 12 seconds and, with Bloody End, you can consume it to do 150% of the Bleed’s damage instantly.
With passives that extend the Bleed duration to the max of 20 seconds, each stack detonated can deal up roughly 185% weapon damage. Detonating, this still has the same 1.1 multipliers per stack. With all three stacks being detonated, it can deal up to 555% weapon damage.
This skill is what makes Tondo viable in any sense, especially for PvE. In PvP, however, the reliance on both Tondo and successfully landing Finish makes it tougher to perform well.
Each of Flurry’s strikes deals 46%, 52%, 56%, 62%, and 82% weapon damage for a total of 298% weapon damage.
Since each attack of Flurry is considered a Light Attack, this gives it a lot of synergies with Perks, like Enchanted and Refreshing Move. For Anything PvE, Flurry does incredibly high damage, and with certain passives, can reset itself entirely or almost entirely, making it highly spammable.
This skill is just as strong in PvP for the same reasons. However, since half of its damage is located in the last two strikes, it’s hard to land it fully.
Riposte is a very situational skill in both PvE and PvP. In PvE, since it can be used with a Carnelian Gem, it does enable you to be a bit of an evade tank giving you a very necessary Taunt to use to pull aggro. It’s a much stronger PvP option; it is Rapier’s only hard crowd control effect.
This Ability allows you to do a miniature dodge on command. Once you have unlocked Crescendo paired together with Momentum, it makes possible an extremely fast and light playstyle.
In PvE, it lets you fight any enemy in the game 1v1 with very little issue.
The fact that it’s a readily available and free dodge to use, though with much fewer invulnerability frames, makes it exceptionally powerful in PvP.
You can change the direction of your dash in the middle of it. While it does have a slight delay before activation, this Ability is great for getting out of difficult situations and preventing you from being body blocked into a corner.
This skill is a strong repositioning tool as well as a general mobility tool for the Rapier, which makes it worth slotting in when traveling the open world, despite its long cooldown.
After it’s fully upgraded, though, it becomes a damage threat like most other skills. Being able to Fleche, through a tar upgraded, get and throw them off balance by forcing them to do a quick turn to face you is quite nice.
Gear
Light armor gives you a +20% damage bonus and the best amount of movement with a quick roll since, normally, you don’t soak damage:
Also, you can combine different types of armor, light with medium, staying under 13 kg, or medium with heavy, staying under 23 kg. You can change your armor type by simply replacing 3 parts.
Maxed Medium Armor 22,9 lbs build (1L + 2M + 2H): Heavy Chest, Light Pants, 2 Medium and 1 Heavy piece.
Alternative Maxed Medium Armor 22,9 lbs build (2L + 1M + 2H): Heavy Chest, Heavy Pants, 1 Medium, and 1 Light piece.
Maxed Light Armor 12,7 lbs build (4L + 1M): Light Head, Medium Chest, Light Gloves, Light Pants, Light Boots.
Maxed Light Armor 12,6 lbs build (3L + 2M): Light Chest, Medium Pants, 1 Medium, and 2 Light pieces. If you need more in-depth information, how tankier you would be wearing a certain kind of armor of a certain Gear Score, feel free to use the New World Calculator by Mixed Nuts.
Armor Type | Light | Medium | Heavy |
Head | 1,5 lbs | 2,6 lbs | 4,7 lbs |
Chest | 3,5 lbs | 6,2 lbs | 11,0 lbs |
Gloves | 1,5 lbs | 2,6 lbs | 4,7 lbs |
Pants | 2,0 lbs | 3,5 lbs | 6,3 lbs |
Boots | 1,5 lbs | 2,6 lbs | 4,7 lbs |
Shields | 2,7 lbs (Round) | 5,4 lbs (Kite) | 11,0 lbs (Tower) |
Look for Armor with Dexterity on it for best results, or with Dexterity and Constitution if you need 50 points to unlock 20% effectiveness to all health consumables.
Gems
Your Rapier Gems can change your playstyle a lot, and you should become comfortable switching between them depending on the situation, if you’re using the damage convert Gem to make your Rapier damage scaling with Intelligence or Focus.
For using Rapier as the main weapon:
1. Cut Pristine Diamond:
It fits more for a group play since you are likely to be in full health.
2. Cut Pristine Emerald:
This one will help to execute enemies running away.
3. Cut Pristine Opal:
In PvP, you might be dodging a lot in addition to your positioning skills.
If you’re mainly fighting against one enemy type or using the Intelligence hybrid build due to your main or secondary weapon, you can use it to convert your damage:
1. Cut Pristine Amethyst to fight against Ancients:
2. Cut Pristine Aquamarine against the Lost:
3. Cut Pristine Ruby against Angry Earth:
4. Cut Pristine Sapphire against Corrupted:
5. Cut Pristine Topaz against Ancients:
Damage Effectiveness | Slash | Thrust | Strike | Fire | Ice | Nature | Void | Lightning | Arcane |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Ancients | -15% | +20% | -40% | +15% | +30% | ||||
Corrupted | +20% | -15% | -40% | +15% | +30% | ||||
Angry Earth | +20% | -15% | +30% | -40% | |||||
The Lost | -15% | +10% | +15% | +30% | -30% | ||||
Beast | +20% |
Corrupted refers to enemies covered in a black and/or red glow. Corruption Breaches are the most common source of Corrupted enemies.
Angry Earth enemies are nature-themed enemies mutated with bark-like skin and similar nature-themed traits.
The Lost are glorified citizens and spectral enemies that inhabit most of Aeternum’s ruined towns, farms, and cemeteries.
Beast refers to any of the wild animals that roam around the New World’s various zones. Wolves, Bears, and Lynxes are just a few enemies that fall under this category.
For Armor gems, you can use Cut Pristine Emerald for PvP, while fighting mostly against Bow and Musket users:
If you’re already at level 60 and farming chests or mobs for gear, you need a Lucky Gem:
For other situations to provide generic damage absorption:
1. Cut Pristine Onyx:
2. Cut Pristine Malachite:
3. Cut Pristine Diamond:
Equipment Perks
1. Rapier Skill Perks
These perks can be found on armors and weapons, but often slotted on Armor as Weapons have access to better perks overall.
1. Energizing Flourish:
Combined with Fuel, it’d restore to max 39 Stamina if both parts of Flourish and Finish connect. Given Flourish and Finish is primarily a PvE Skill, there’s little reason to use this perk.
2. Keen Tondo:
In PvE, it helps with making it a little easier to proc Red Curtains more reliably when solo.
In PvP, it adds a bit of utility to Tondo, which can make Tondo decently viable for PvP. Again, it’s not a great solution as there are other perks that do this easier and without Tondo, but if you wanted to stack Crit for a build, it helps enough to warrant using at higher Gear Scores.
3. Leeching Flurry:
In PvE, this makes solo play significantly easier. It has a nice benefit of being able to help you maintain Perfectionist for the extra damage easier. However, in groups, it’s pretty useless as a healer will be more effective. Since flurry isn’t a single hit and will likely have to fight against Fortify and similar effects, it’s not going to be as strong in PvP.
4. Omnidirectional Evade:
If you’re running Evade, this will always be worth a pickup. Being able to use Evade to the side or even for a quick step back and still get Adagio’s 15% damage boost is really nice.
5. Refreshing Fleche:
It’s slightly weaker in PvE, except when used as an opener, but it’s hard to backstab. In PvP, getting backstabs in 1v1 with Fleche can be tough, but this rewards you for pulling them off. If you manage to land both Fleche and Interruption as a backstab, that’s 38% of the cooldown refunded.
6. Sundering Riposte:
Riposte isn’t often used in PvE. In PvP, this can help offset Fortify effects while making the follow-up punishment from landing a Risposte Stun absolutely deadly.
2. Armor Perks
Refreshing with Resilient from the Faction armor is a nice combination:
Refreshing Evasion is useful because you’re dodging a lot:
Physical Aversion is useful for PvP against Musket and Bow users:
3. Weapon Perks
Rogue and Vicious increase your damage heavily, as you’ll almost always be dishing out backstabs in a group play:
Keenly Jagged is a good choice since you’ll crit a lot:
Refreshing Move helps a great deal with getting more skill rotations out, especially combined with Flurry:
Alternatively, you can use Enchanted (also synergized with Flurry) or Keen and get plenty of damage that way as well:
You can also go for Lifestealing if you want to gain health back on hit:
For PvP against healers, you can use Plagued Crits or Plagued Strikes. The maximum amount of healing decreasing is 24% for GS 600 weapons.
Plagued Crits require lowering the target’s health to 50% first:
Plagued Strikes don’t require anything but a heavy attack, but in PvP, it can be easily dodged, so both options are pretty situational:
Plagued Strikes can be combined with Trenchant Crits or Trenchant Strikes for more damage:
Trenchant Rend:
Or Trenchant Recovery for surviving:
4. Amulet Perks
Slash Protection and Thrust Protection cover most PvE and PvP incoming damage:
Divine will give you more healing and Health – more HP. Everything is simple here:
If you really want to heap on the defenses, Fortified Recovery grants a fairly strong – 30% Fortify for 5 seconds when it hits below 50% health, but has a 90 cooldown for effect.
5. Earring Perks
Beloved and Evasive can both help you mitigate aggro, making you less likely to pull aggro in expeditions:
Purifying Toast and Refreshing Toast are both great utility options for open-world PvP, where health consumables tend to be used more. These all also help in PvE:
You can also grab Refreshing here, as well, if you don’t manage to get it on your armor.
6. Ring Perks
Keen Awareness is a strong option for higher burst damage potential and Thrust Damage is a small damage boost in general:
Refreshing is also a decent Utility with the lowered cooldowns but that’s also available on armor:
Thrust Protection can be useful against other Rapier and Musket users:
Hearty will add you enough Stamina for one more additional dodge. If the player has 109.5 total stamina and each dodge takes 40 stamina with 150 Dexterity attribute bonus, they can dodge twice (leaving the player at 39.5 stamina), wait a fraction of a second for stamina to regenerate it to 41, then dodge twice more for a total of 4 dodges:
Blood Letting works great with Tondo, Flourish and Finish, and Keenly Jagged on your weapon:
You can also go for Leeching if you want to gain health back on hit:
Consumables
In this chapter, you can find information about endgame consumables because you don’t really need most of them on low levels. You can easily find the low leveled versions of them because the names only differ by one word, except food.
1. First of all, you need Health Regeneration Food:
Health Potions:
And Regeneration Potions:
2. Attribute Food.
As a DPS player, you might want to increase your Dexterity. This food gives you an option to put 40 points from Dexterity to another Attribute.
You can use food with both Dexterity and Constitution bonus to increase your health and damage at the same time.
Constitution / Dexterity combination with more Dexterity is also available.
Also, you can use Constitution food to maximize your health.
To find more food, for hybrid builds please check our Cooking Guide.
3. Powerful Honing Stone will increase your damage and, as a result, threat level. They can be bought or crafted at Smelter if you reach 170 Weaponsmithing level.
4. Powerful Gemstone Dust can be also bought or crafted at level 170 Jewelcrafting.
5. Powerful Oakflesh Balm can be bought or crafted at 170 Armoring level as well.
6. Powerful Incense requires 170 Furnishing level to craft. Otherwise, it can be bought for cheap from the Trading Post.
7. Weapon Coatings give a 15% damage bonus against certain types of enemies. These coatings are usually used in dungeons, where you’re fighting mostly against enemies of the same type, for example:
8. Ward Potions increase your damage absorption against certain enemy types. They can help you mitigate heavy incoming damage.
9. Absorption Potions can help you not only in dungeons but also in PvP against mages. They increase absorption by 15% against certain types of elemental damage, for example:
10. Corruption Tincture and Blight Tincture remove afflictions and give 97,5% resistance to these afflictions for 5 minutes.
11. Infused Encumbrance Potion will help you a bit with bringing your sack to the nearest warehouse. It lasts 3 minutes and increases the Encumbrance Limit by 100.
I know that feeling, bro, even one Flint or Green-Wood must not be discarded.
Weapons To Combine With
- Musket provides significant ranged damage. Both the Musket and Rapier scale with Dexterity and Intelligence, pairing them fantastically. This weapon combination is effective at every range and has a high Intelligence, single-target DPS. But, at the same time, they both get thrust type of damage weak against Undead type enemies and don’t have AoE options.
- Bow. You’ve got the extreme mobility of the Rapier paired with the ranged damage of the Bow. This build comes with more flexibility than the Musket, as you won’t be slowing down to take shots often. It’s really a fast-paced duelist PvP build. The Bow also has multiple area-of-effect damage options, which can help the primarily single-target-focused Rapier. One downside of this pairing is that both weapons deal Thrust damage, which is weak against Lost and Angry Earth-type foes.
- Spear. Scaling primarily with Dexterity, this is a strong crowd control and defensive weapon whose primary weakness is the lack of movement tools, which Rapier can offer. Both these weapons have thrust damage type.
- Ice Gauntlet. You can lock down foes with your Ice Gauntlet and burst damage with the Rapier. This build is more about dealing big damage while evading your enemy’s attacks. One downside of this combo is that you lose a small amount of damage with the Rapier since you are scaling Intelligence, but you can use Gem converting the damage.
- Fire Staff. You can use the Rapier to disengage or use Riposte to set up a devastating Pillar of Fire. Thanks to gems, you’ll be able to focus mostly on Intelligence to scale the damage to both weapons. This will give you enough AoE damage and mobility, combined with close combat opportunities. One downside of this combo is that you have limited crowd control.
- Hatchet is a great pick as it deals devastating damage up close while also packing self-healing abilities, so you don’t need to use restorative items like Potions or food as often. It also scales with Dexterity, so it shares Rapier’s points. This combination could be nice for PvE, but it doesn’t have ranged options important for PvP.
- Life Staff also can be mixed with Rapier, if you’ll place the Cut Pristine Amber in it making the damage to your Rapier scaling with Focus. It’ll give you lots of AoE offensive skills and high survivability. This combination is more about giving the Life Staff the tools it needs to stay alive in PvE and PvP. We recommend this combo for players who would like to heal in both PvP and PvE, as it gives a hard-to-catch and a hard-to-kill combination. One downside of this combo is that it does not provide any area crowd control or AoE damage.
- Void Gauntlet provides great utility, lots of buffs and debuffs for you and your team. Even more, it gives you the ability to cooldown your skills fast. The main downside of this build is the lack of crowd control and AoE, so this combo is mostly PvP and solo target oriented.
FAQ
Mostly, it is used as a secondary weapon due to its extreme mobility and single-target melee burst damage. The rapier doesn’t offer too much in the way of crowd control or area of effect skills – it’s best suited to one-on-one situations.
If you’re leveling with the Rapier, you’d better put all your Attribute points in Dexterity to get maximum raw damage. If you’re going to use it pairing with Musket or Fire Staff, hybrid Intelligence build is also possible.
This build is mostly about high mobility and damage, so light or medium armor is recommended. But you can mix different armor parts and find armor combinations that fit your own playstyle best.
Musket provides significant ranged damage. This weapon combination is effective at every range, has a high burst single-target DPS, but has no AoE damage.
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