Rapier Weapon Guide and Builds in New World

With Patch 1.1 of New World having been released on the 19th of November, we have prepared patch notes with commentary for the Rapier weapon. Please follow the link below for more information.

Quick, agile, and elusive: these all describe the Rapier. Evade allows players to move around their foes with ease and Riposte allows you to counter attack almost anything in the game.

The Blood Tree focuses on applying bleeds and extending their duration for as long as possible before consuming them for instant damage with the Tree's Ultimate Mastery, Bloody End. The Grace Tree focuses around being light on your feet and having extremely short cooldowns. Its Ultimate Mastery, Momentum, grants a damage bonus on your next Basic Attack after performing an ability. The Rapier excels at moving quickly in and out of melee range, and whittling down their foes while avoiding taking damage. Light and Heavy attacks deal Thrust damage.

The Rapier scales primarily with Dexterity and secondarily Intelligence, so you can effectively use either Attribute. Each of the Dexterity breakpoints provide a substantial benefit to your damage or survivability, with the final breakpoint guaranteeing a critical strike after dodge rolls. It is somewhat important to get some Constitution, especially if you plan to PvP, because you will eventually take damage and we recommend looking out for gear that provides a mix of Dexterity and Constitution.

Faction armor in particular does a good job of providing a balance of Dexterity and Constitution. If you want to use Light armor, you can change the Attributes on the Faction armor by using a Seal such as the Syndicate Brigand Seal. Take this Seal and the piece of faction gear that you want to Attribute swap to its corresponding crafting bench and there should be a new recipe for you to complete.

In PvE, your role is to deal out damage to foes and avoid taking damage yourself. The Rapier is not a great weapon for hitting multiple foes, but does excel at single target damage. For this build, we are using Flurry, Evade, and Fleche to melt through foes quickly. When playing in a group, a full five thrusts from Flurry into the back of an enemy should deal devastatingly large amounts of damage. Combined with Red Curtains, Fleeting Strikes, and Refreshing Strikes reducing the cooldown by a staggering 65%, this Ability should be off cooldown frequently. Evade, Momentum, and Light Edge should make your Light Attacks hit extra hard, which only reduce your cooldowns even more if you are backstab-critting. The best gem for your Rapier is Cut Pristine Diamond, because with your ability to Evade damage and Dodge Roll you are likely to be at full health while fighting.

For armor gems we recommend either Cut Pristine Onyx, Cut Pristine Malachite, or Cut Pristine Diamond to provide generic damage absorption.

We recommend taking the following Mastery Points:

• Breathe In
• Allegro
• Adagio
• Crescendo
• Quick Lunge
• Interruption
• Red Curtains
• Momentum
• Overwhelm
• Fleeting Strikes
• Light Edge
• Refreshing Strikes
• Perfectionist
• Engarde
• Desperation

In PvP, you want to pick your moment to unleash on your foes. A typical fight should be extremely frustrating for those you face, while incredibly fun for you. Since you can avoid damage with both Evade and Riposte, single foes are basically yours to play with. Try to hold Fleche to either escape bad situations or to chase down your foes. If you do not like having to time your Riposte and want a bit more damage, you can switch to Flurry, but be careful of taking too much extra damage while using the Ability. The best gem for your Rapier is Cut Pristine Opal, because you will likely be not at full stamina most of the time when fighting due to Dodge Rolling.

For armor gems we recommend either Cut Pristine Onyx, Cut Pristine Malachite, or Cut Pristine Diamond to provide generic damage absorption.

We recommend taking the following mastery points:

• Breathe In
• Allegro
• Adagio
• Crescendo
• Quick Lunge
• Interruption
• Momentum
• Insult to Injury
• Priority
• Red Curtains
• Refreshing Strikes
• Perfectionist
• Engarde
• Desperation
• Lasting Consequence

The Rapier, like all other weapons, has six abilities; however, you can only use three abilities at any give time on your action bars. While you can spend Mastery Points on more than 3, it is a waste of points since respeccing is rather cheap to do.

Tondo — Slash so quickly that it extends the reach of your blade up to 5 meters. This strike deals 50% direct weapon damage but also applies a bleed that will deal 85% weapon damage over 12 seconds. This can stack up to 3 times, refreshing previous applications. This Ability places Bleeds on foes hit by it, which synergizes with the rest of the Blood Mastery Tree. This Ability does not really shine though without combining it with Flourish and Finish.

Flourish and Finish — Flourish performs an attack knocking back enemies. Pressing "Light Attack" at the end of Flourish will continue this ability by automatically performing "Finish". Finish lunges forward, consuming all Rapier Bleeds on any target hit, dealing 110% of their damage immediately. 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 instantly do 150% of the Bleed's damage. We do not recommend taking this Ability without also using Tondo.

Flurry — Enter a posed stance and unleash a series of five quick thrust attacks, with each strike dealing more damage. Flurry can be dodge-canceled at any time. Somewhat of an oddball Ability in the Blood Tree, Flurry unleashes a barrage of fast attacks that can drop a foe quickly. The major downside of this Ability is that you are left standing still, but can still Dodge Roll out.

Riposte — Enter into a defensive stance for 1 second. If struck during this ability, counter the attacker, stunning them briefly for 1.5-seconds. You are briefly invulnerable upon a successful Riposte. This Ability requires you to have expert timing, but when executed correctly nothing feels better. This even allows you to avoid extremely high damage in PvP and PvE if used just right.

Evade — Perform a small, reliable sidestep in your current movement direction that cancels any current activity and provides momentary invulnerability. 'Light Attack's made during Evade are performed exceptionally fast. This Ability allows you to do a miniature dodge on command which at first glance does not seem all that great; however, once you have unlocked Crescendo this ability makes you feel like a martial arts master from a movie. Almost nothing can hit you unless you let it or you mess up, that happens too. Paired together with Momentum this makes for an extremely fast and light playstyle that will leave your foes dizzy and full of holes.

Fleche — Leave the ground, lunging forward for 10 meters in a stabbing motion, piercing through enemies and dealing 145% damage. This Ability causes you to leap through the air and pass through any foes while you do a barrel roll. 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.

Like all other weapons, the Rapier has two Mastery Trees. You can spend Mastery Points in either Tree, but must have a Mastery from the preceding row to select deeper Masteries. Likewise if a Mastery has a vertical line connecting it to a Mastery above it then you must first select the higher Mastery in order to unlock the lower ones. These linked-together Masteries typically support Abilities which are denoted by a square-shaped icon. While you can unlock all six Abilities at once, you will only be able to place three Abilities on your action bar at a time.

It is unwise to invest in more than three Abilities, because it is easy to respec. The Ultimate Mastery point will unlock once you spend 10 Mastery Points in its Tree. You will be unable to add additional Mastery Points, respec your Points, change your action bar, and unequip your weapon while any Ability is on cooldown.

The Rapier is a bit different from other weapons because its Mastery Trees focus more on empowering its Abilities than any other weapon.

The Blood Tree focuses primarily on Bleeds with Tondo applying them and Flourish and Finish consuming them. Unerring increases the damage you deal against foes afflicted with Rapier bleeds, and Heavy Puncture extends their duration. The Ultimate Mastery, Bloody End, supports Flourish and Finish to increase the amount of damage that is dealt when Finish consumes Rapier bleeds.

The Grace Tree focuses on dealing out melee damage while at the same time being untouchable. Evade allows you to move around your enemy as you dish out loads of damage. Between Crescendo and Red Curtains, your Evade will have practically no cooldown. The Ultimate Mastery, Momentum, increases your damage with your next Light or Heavy Attack after each ability you use. Combined with spamming Evade, this Mastery gets a lot of use.

Every Weapon Ability in New World has a corresponding Perk that can be found on armor and weapons. Most perks scale in power with the Gear Score of the item they are on. You can only benefit from one instance of a Weapon Ability Perk at a time. These can be rare to find on gear and are mostly just a bonus.

• Keen Tondo — Increase Critical Strike Chance by a percentage against targets affected by Tondo's Bleed. This is a solid perk that boosts overall damage, especially if you are unable to perform consistent backstab-crits. If you are using Tondo, definitely look to get this Perk.
• Energizing Flourish — Gain some Stamina on hit with Flourish. Most Stamina-gaining perks are only okay and this one is no exception. If you are using Flourish and Finish, this can be an okay Perk, but is not game-changing.
• Leeching Flurry — Each hit of Flurry restores returns a percentage of the damage as health. Since Flurry forces you to stand still to dish out damage, this Perk can help mitigation some of the potential damage taken.
• Sundering Riposte — Riposte grants Rend, reducing damage absorption of target by a percentage for 10 seconds. Rend is a great debuff to get and if you are using Riposte you should definitely try to get this Perk on your gear.
• Omnidirectional Evade — Evade's Adagio upgrade is applied when evading in any direction. Adagio's damage increase normally only triggers when Evading forwards, so this adds a decent spike of damage after each Evade. Since your Evade will have an extremely short cooldown due to Crescendo, this Perk is rather nice but not mandatory. This Perk also does not scale with Gear Score, making it just as good on a starter item as an endgame item.
• Refreshing Fleche — Hitting a target via a backstab-crit with Fleche reduces this ability's cooldown by a percentage. Combining this Perk with Quick Lunge can allow you to have some extremely short Fleche cooldowns, but requires some precise timing. If you are already using Fleche, this can be a nice Perk to get on gear but is by no means game-changing.

When starting off with the Rapier, it might feel a bit slow and sluggish, but that feeling will fade as soon as you hit Mastery-8 and unlock Crescendo, so stick with it!

Starting off, we recommend taking Evade, Riposte, and Fleche to give yourself a nice Ability kit. Next, fill out all of Evade's supporting Masteries; you should be spamming this Ability to avoid attacks and put yourself in good places to land Backstab-crits. Once Adagio is unlocked, you may be tempted to Evade forwards for the damage buff, but most often it is just better to Evade to the sides to avoid taking damage; however, if you can time it perfectly, forwards Evade will provide a brief window of invulnerability that you can use to nullify incoming attacks.

After completing Evade's Masteries, we recommend completing Fleche's Masteries. Interruption can be used to land some sneaky backstab-crits, which pairs nicely with Backside for some burst damage. After that, get Momentum and you should really feel like you are dealing lots of damage with every Evade causing your next attack to deal additional damage.

Next up, grab Insult to Injury and Priority, but leave the last Riposte Mastery, Lasting Consequence, for later because Stuns in New World are broken on hit and extending Riposte's stun to 2 seconds does little for you at this time. Next, Red Curtains helps you get your cooldowns back even faster when you crit and Refreshing Strikes does the same for every hit. Perfectionist, Engarde, and Desperation all increase your damage when certain conditions are met. You do not have to worry about always having these conditions activated but these are a nice extra when they are. Lastly finish up with the Lasting Consequences that we left behind before.

• Bow — The Rapier is a pure melee weapon and does not have any ranged options; pairing it with the Bow helps to correct this issue. Where the Rapier is quick and evasive in melee, the Bow can deal lots of damage at range while keeping foes away. 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. We recommend this combination if you want to be extremely elusive in PvP and PvE, picking when you engage with those whom you are fighting.
• Musket — Similar to the Bow, the Musket provides ranged power to the melee-focused Rapier. The Musket excels at devastating ranged single-target damage and pairs well with the Rapier to annihilate single targets. One interesting option with this combination is that both the Rapier and the Musket scale secondarily with Intelligence, allowing you to go full Intelligence. You could even partially convert the damage to elemental by socketing certain gems in your weapons. Not having any area-of-effect abilities is a downside of this combo as well as both weapons dealing Thrust damage which is weak against Lost and Angry Earth-type foes.
• Ice Gauntlet — Scaling with Intelligence, this frosty weapon pairs nicely with the Rapier by capitalizing on the distance that Rapier can create to drop down brutal Ice Storms that force foes to fight on your terms. Ice Gauntlet provides nice mid-range damage that can keep foes at a distance for a good amount of time. Ice Shower can instantly Root foes, and then Heavy Freeze can keep foes stationary while you pelt them with Heavy Attacks. If they manage to close the gap, switching to Rapier can give you the time to avoid being damaged with Riposte and Evade until your Ice Gauntlet cooldowns are up. Since Ice Gauntlet scales with Intelligence we recommend focusing on this Attribute with this combination. One downside of this setup is that Ice Gauntlet only has limited area-of-effect damage and scaling Intelligence reduces Rapier's overall damage.
• Fire Staff — Where Ice Gauntlet lacks in area-of-effect damage, the Fire Staff explodes onto the scene with fiery Abilities like Pillar of Fire and Fireball. The Fire Staff can feel a bit lacking when waiting on cooldowns and the Rapier can offer something to do. Burn Out offers an additional escape or chase Ability to go along with or replace Fleche. As with the Ice Gauntlet, you should scale Intelligence with this combination. One downside of this setup is that Fire Staff offers no crowd control so you may become overwhelmed if set upon by too many foes.
• Life Staff — This combination is more about giving the Life Staff the tools it needs to stay alive in PvE and PvP. Healing, by its very nature, draws a lot of attention from foes in both PvP and PvE and having a secondary weapon like the Rapier is a great benefit. Fleche can move through enemies helping the Life Staff user to escape situations where they might become body blocked by foes. Riposte also allows them to stun and get some distance from foes who get too close. We recommend this combo for those who want to heal in both PvP and PvE, as it makes for a combination that is hard to catch and hard to kill. The downside of this combo is that you do not have any area-of-effect crowd control and must rely on allies to crowd control foes off of you while you run.

The Rapier scales primarily with Dexterity and with Intelligence secondarily.

Yes, you can scale with Intelligence and you can convert up to 50% of a weapon's damage to elemental to allow it to scale with Intelligence as well.

You can get your first Rapier either from killing enemies or from chests. If you do not find one, then you can craft it for yourself at the Forge. We recommend crafting a Rapier after completing your "craft a weapon" introduction quest if you have not yet found one. For more information about crafting, check out our Crafting guide.