Setting aside the musket (which is in a class of its own), lets take a look at dexterity in PVP.
The majority of PVP is focused around Intelligence, strength and focus builds with dexterity taking a back seat. It has been this way from the beginning of the game.
Why? Because most of the dexterity weapons have not been balanced properly to fit their intended role.
A recent exception to this is the spear. The devs understand that the intended role of the spear is to have a good CC package with quick burst damage. And they have improved the spear to reflect this style of play. However, it is still not a very popular weapon because people don’t have a good secondary weapon to pair it with.
So this leaves us with the rapier and the bow.
When most people think rapier, they think escape, run away. A secondary weapon used to get out of sticky situations. BUT WHY? When the devs made the rapier, was this their intended use? Of course it wasn’t.
The rapier is a light melee weapon. Like an assassins blade, it should be used to get in and out of fights quickly with high burst damage but also high risk.
-Think Arya Stark with her needle
For those of you who think rapier is in a good place, how many times do you get killed with it in OPR? Maybe one time for every 200 kills by any other weapon in the game? and this is a conservative estimate.
I dont care that devs nerfed the rapiers ability to run away. This is not the weapons intended use. It should be used to punish unsuspecting or unprepared victims with extremely high damage.
And finally the bow. There have been so many topics on the bow posted in this forum, what more is there to say?
But lets not forget what the role of a bow should be. It should be your typical glass-cannon weapon. If you get caught with the bow, you are probably dead. But if you are skillful enough to stay away from your attackers, you should be doing some of the highest damage in the game.
rapier is very high risk weapon that is only good to survive , either by fighting or running. it has
very little to no chance to make a kill on experienced player and dmg is a joke.
absurd right dmg tree and very strange perks.
staple of dex builds bow rapier light is so bad no one uses it any more.
literaly no one.
I was just thinking about my rapier experience this afternoon during an OPR.
Leveling up early on after trying several weapons I settled on musket and rapier or hatchet. I loved the aesthetic and had a lot of fun with all three. But today it dawned on me that I hadn’t used rapier for anything but a (not always successful) escape button.
Now if someone here can offer a build that makes rapier worth the amount of deaths you get when you get too close, then I would love to try it out.
Or even better a rework/balance of the rapier would be welcome.
For now, it’s just a button and not one that always works. (Roots are a discussion for another time.)
The effort required to make it work for the rewards it puts out in a format that doesn’t play nicely to chip damage means it wont see anything close to main stream appeal.
without a true burst potential or if healing potential got reduced significantly then we may see it. (even if all that does is buff every other melee weapon) (so really the only way to go is the buff the burst potential)
Really would be a nice change for the Rapier in particular if some changes like those I have in a previous post were put into reality. Need to make Tondo have play with Momentum while at the same time giving access to a kitey, dueling build when paired with Evade. Tondo being coded as a light attack would shake up a lot of things and would give it the purpose and play it needs.