Rapier feedback/bug thread

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After about 100h played on almost exclusively Rapier and Ice Gauntlet, I’ve noticed many issues with both the weapon’s basics and its talents and haven’t seen any thread with everything in it.
I will try and fail to make this feedback as orderly, concise and easy to read as possible.
Feel free to add to this if you think I’ve missed something, as I’ve mainly played the Grace tree and not the Blood tree.

— 1. Basics —

  • Normal and Charged attacks
    First and foremost, the normal and charged attacks on the Rapier are almost impossible to land on a moving target.
    The tracking often forces you to strike in the wrong direction as it is incredibly slow to rotate.
    Moreover, the reach of the Rapier itself feels on par with the Hatchet, and definitely shorter than the Sword, while lacking the width of those weapons.
    The tracking also doesn’t allow you to change direction after the first strike, so if a target moves after your 1st attack, your 2nd attack will 100% miss and expose your back, even if you’re following the enemy correctly on your end.
    Finally, ironically the Rapier is the only weapon with almost no movement on Normal attacks. For comparison the Greataxe attacks will move your character for a distance that is able to catch up with a light armor roll (please nerf it), and is able to track the enemy movement in a curve sticking to them like glue.
    The charged attack also has shorter range than the Sword, and the tracking forces you to miss if you’re trying to catch a target out of their dodge roll/step.
    Either the tracking needs to be removed, or it needs to be on par with other weapons for effectiveness.

As a sidenote, hitting a target that is running away with a normal attack is completely impossible even with Haste on, I’m playing on 20-35 ping and I doubt it’s lag, but this is an online game so I’m not sure if anything can be done about it other than adjusting the distance covered by attacks, or the range of them.

— 2. Grace tree Abilities —

  • Evade (Partially Broken)
    This is a very powerful DPS ability for PVE, because of its animation cancel, however the actual evading portion is impossible to actually use.
    Because of the game’s inherent latency, a mere handful of iframes is almost entirely useless as you basically have to not only pop the evade before the attack connects, but also have to time it to match the ping, which is not always the same.
    Very seldom, this ability may work as a sort of RNG evasion if you’re just spamming it, but if the intended use is to actually evade with it, this absolutely does not work and will always be worse than a roll/step.
    Most importantly this ability has also massive issues with movement and tracking.
    A forward evade will move you past the enemy even if it’s an NPC slowly walking to the side, every single time. A side evade on a stationary enemy works fine (although it doesn’t reach all the way to their backside) but on an enemy moving at any speed it seems to just fling you in some direction and sometimes even exposes your back to the enemy.
    Needless to say, if this was meant to enable Rapier tanking, it cannot possibly be half as successful and reliable as simply holding a shield.
    The omnidirectional evade perk is absolutely required to use this in PVE.

  • Fleche (Mostly OK)
    Fleche is one of the movement abilities with the shortest range, but once you unlock the last perk it offers great tech and versatility.
    Other than the relatively short distance covered, this works fine and is very fun once you get the timing right.
    I would be lying if I said it didn’t bother me that once again, Greataxe’s Charge ability moves you twice the distance of the ability of a weapon that is supposed to be all about mobility and finesse.
    EDIT: I cannot believe this skipped my mind, but Fleche actually does have a pretty significant bug. That being, Fleche will completely miss a target if initiated from too close to the target. Heavy Attack> Fleche works most of the time, but Light>Fleche or Light>Light>Fleche often doesn’t hit. This becomes very apparent when trying to use Fleche as a finisher, or when trying to escape through your attacker in PVP.

  • Riposte (Fundamentally Broken)
    This ability is the reason I’m making this thread at all.
    Riposte is reasonably powerful when it works, if coupled with a sideroll in light armor and a heavy attack (otherwise it’s not worth the slot in med/heavy armor).
    But it doesn’t work most of the time.
    First and foremost, the same issues with Evade apply (although mitigated by the longer duration), mainly that you can’t use it reactively and are forced to use it preemptively.
    This is so bad on Riposte that the ability might go off and go on cooldown, but you can get hit a couple frames before the parry ‘state’ comes into effect, effectively interrupting it and putting it on CD.
    After that, there’s the issue of replies to Riposte in PVP.
    Riposte’s 2nd half is a stunning punch, the range of which is absolutely pitiful and borderline impossible to land in PVP against certain weapons like Sword or Spear.
    This stunning punch is so slow to come out that it can be countered by simply blocking or dodging and then leaves you completely exposed.
    Let me repeat this again: YOU CAN LAND A PARRY BY SUCCESSFULLY READING YOUR ENEMY’S NEXT MOVE, AND BE REWARDED FOR IT BY GETTING HIT.

For this ability to function in PVP at all against people who know what they’re doing it NEEDS to stun immediately on a successful parry, otherwise it’s simply not worth the slot for PVP, and only worth it for PVE with the Sundering Riposte perk.
Please fix this, it is immensely frustrating.

— 3. Grace tree passives —

  • Desperation (Fundamentally Broken)
    “Deal 10% more damage when your stamina is below 40”
    There is no instance where this passive would activate for a Rapier.
    Had it been “below 70” instead, it would have contributed to the Riposte>Side Roll>Heavy Attack combo, but with all the stamina regen on the Grace tree this simply doesn’t activate if you’re playing properly and not rolling yourself to 0 stamina.

  • Controlled Breathing (Niche but OK)
    “+3 Stamina on any hit”
    I haven’t personally found an instance where this is useful, as natural stam regen is very fast while attacking anyway. Perhaps this is useful for Blood, but I have no idea.

  • Perfectionist (Niche but OK)
    “Deal 10% more damage when your health is full”
    Mainly useful in PVE, could be good in PVP if Evade had proper iframes and Riposte was reliable. Although this is probably not intended for PVP in the first place.

  • Red Curtains (OK)
    “Critical strikes reduce cooldowns by 5%”
    Very powerful, mandatory, seems to work fine, but I haven’t checked how much CD is actually restored.

  • Swiftness (Bugged?)
    “+3% Haste for 4 seconds on any hit. Can stack up to 5 times.”
    This is completely useless, and most likely bugged.
    Gaining a stack will NOT refresh the duration of the buff, however for some reason as long as you attack your buff will never go under 1s.
    This is so specific that it makes me think it’s intended, but if it is intended then I don’t understand the point of the perk.
    I cannot use it to chase or run away because the moment I stop hitting all my stacks disappear within 1s.
    It does not seem to affect the distance covered by Evade, Rolling or Fleche.
    Is this bugged or is this intended?

  • Momentum (OK)
    “Gain 25% increased damage on your next light or heavy attack after performing an ability. Ends on hit or after 3 seconds.”
    The only complaint I have with this is that it is what makes Grace function in the first place, and it’s all the way at the bottom. Otherwise this obviously works great.

In conclusion:
First and foremost the tracking and movement on attacks absolutely needs changes.
This is relevant to both trees, and I honestly cannot believe it got shipped in this state, especially compared to other weapons and their level of polish.
This issue affects everything on the rapier except Fleche and the Riposte stun, which can be free-aimed. Needs a fix ASAP.
Riposte also needs help. It might seem extremely powerful if you don’t know you can just hold right click or dodge as soon as you hear the sound effect, but I promise you that if you know and are paying attention this ability is an absolute detriment to your effectiveness in PVP.
Evade’s issue with iframes might honestly just be intended as RNG type evade tanking, but in my experience tanking admittedly just a couple dungeons to test it, it doesn’t seem to be effective enough to mitigate damage.

Otherwise pretty fun weapon :slight_smile:

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From what i seen, all one handed weapons, 2 handed weapons, ranged, and magic… have their hit detection distance the same across their respective class. Rapier, Sword and Hatchet have same reach, different arcs, Hatchet is a narrow cone, sword is a wide cone, and rapier is a straight hit, but all the same distance outward.

Also all complaints for PVE i feel they wont fix. 80% of the PVE got added at the end, This game was supposed to be more like Conan Exiles style game, where it is 99% pvp and pve only to get resources. We can see that is still the case with how legendary level 60 dungeons weapons (that have like 0% drop chance) are are weaker than tier 5 crafting… and dont have abilities that make sense outside pvp.

This PVP is gonna end up like Dark Souls and Conan Exiles. Where its based on reading where the opponent will move and not where they currently are to hit. Like casting fire spells in DS you have to know where their dodge will end at or the spell wont matter at all and will miss even if its AOE.

Current Rapier is post nerf. The weapon was absolutely busted in July testing. It got nerfed to the ground, just like how fire staff became more of a support weapon than a damage weapon do to how strong it was in PVP

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Are you implying that the useless evasion, passives that don’t have effective use 99.9% of the time and interactions that don’t work at all are acceptable? I can’t believe that people use conan s*it exiles as some form of inspiration while the game has been irrelevant for years and years, exactly because funcom has no idea of what they are doing.

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I don’t know what to tell you other than try playing it for 10 minutes.
Put on a sword or a hatchet, camera top-down, and fight some wolf enemies or whatever steps to the sides and back a lot, and watch the distance you slide across while simply spamming left click.
I tested Hatchet in particular right this moment against the dual wielding enemies in East Edengrove, whenever they dodge backwards, covering about the length of a roll, simply spamming left click on my Hatchet allowed me to stick to them like glue, not missing a single hit, even when they slide to the side the Hatchet simply Mario Kart-drifts me to them.
It is not even comparable how much more convenient and easy it is to use a weapon that almost teleports you to your target with barely any input, especially compared to how the Rapier will force your camera in the wrong direction when an enemy sidesteps you.

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I have every weapon at 10+ rapier and hatchet at 15 and Bow at 20… The thing with hatchet is that its a broken weapon and has desynced hit detection. it has since alpha. its the reason people use it in PVP, it can hit you even when dodging for no reason. Hatchet is the goto melee weapon for a reason in PVP

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Well put. Most of this is pretty much how I feel aswell. But I can also add some more too.

About riposte, it felt like it performed worse than it did in the betas and previews; glitching, getting cancelled, animation launching punch hitting but no effect and sometimes cooldown resets sometimes it doesnt etc. etc. I kinda put this as server side issue due servers coughing these days post launch and booked it for checking another date.

About light attack chain; first off let me summarise the light attack chain. stab-wait-wooshwoosh-wait-stab. Some odd thing happens there at the first wait. If you do the first stab and choose not to continue and try to move, you’ll find out that you’re snared. More like you don’t sprint but move at the normal speed that was before times when sprint was made permenant for about 1 - 1.5 second then you’ll start sprinting. That doesn’t happen if you stop your attack and try to move after wooshwoosh or if you move after the last stab.

Also just posted about Evade on a thread a bit ago, Ill copy paste that;
“There’s more issues to it. Using evade also inflicts you with a snare. Well not exactly a snare but try it. Normally now that our characters always run at sprint speed, when you drop evade, it locks your character in normal speed for about 1 - 1.5 seconds before they jump back into sprint speed again. The 3rd perk of Evade gives 20% speed on use which if you try it you’ll see that about half of it gets wasted while you’re snared down and you get the speed benefit for like a very very very small amount of time. That is also very insignificant to do anything considering characters has a aimaissist in melee that makes you slide across the floor; it won’t generate or close any significant distance that matters.”

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Good write up. Glad I searched first because I was just about to make a post asking what is up with the camera behavior when using Evade.

That camera behavior is my absolute biggest gripe. It works so weird and unintuitively. Once the camera locks on to a target, your mouse feels like it’s in quicksand. I think what makes the issue even worse is it doesn’t even require an attack for it to do it’s tracking thing, simply using Evade near your enemy will lock it on to them. This is completely backwards imo, since once of the things you SHOULD be using evade for is getting behind the target for a quick backstab. But if you evade behind the target, you’re facing the wrong direction and can’t get your character to turn around in time.

Lastly, while the whole camera tracking thing needs tweaked wholesale, I will say that Evade specifically should probably have the default behavior of BREAKING tracking, not initiating it. Popping Evade should instantly break camera target lock to facilitate mobility of your character.

Now to add on to some of your other points:

I think a creative way to make this skill better, especially in pvp, would be to have it proc when your stamina is fully depleted, and last for whatever the number of seconds it takes for a normal stamina bar to fully recharge to usable again. This would make it a sort of “passive riposte”, where if your enemy lays down so much burst that you’re required to dodge roll all your stam, your rewarded with a few seconds of follow up with increased damage. This would stack very well with Evade passives, and fits in with the whole theme of the grace tree, which is to let you punish your enemy for moves they make.

I agree this seems bugged, but I just wanted to add on to this that the other passive, Haste after using Evade (allegro?) is basically useless because Evade locks you in to a combat stance for long enough that only .5s of the buff is left by the time you can leave the combat stance. It almost seems like there is a global timer for combat stance that starts when you initiate a skill, but doesn’t care when that animation ends, it’s just a set time it takes to get back to running. Evade, being so quick of an animation, leaves you stuck in that stance for longer after the skill is used, than say, spear’s whirlwind. This makes skills like allegro useless. Either the duration of that buff needs increased (easiest) or rework combat stance timers to take in to account the end of a skill’s animation (hardest).

Now, if the point of the skill is to simply facilitate faster combat stance strafing, well then it needs its haste bonus buffed massively, as it makes basically no appreciable difference in how fast you’re moving. This also runs in to the problem of the camera being completely borked for rapier, since currently strafing around your target is super clunky.

(also there’s a rant here about how most in-combat haste skills are nearly useless, resulting from what seems to be conscious decisions to slow down progression by limiting map traversal speed, but that’s off topic)

I’m ok with this being at the bottom since it stacks with adagio and synergizes with Evade. Whether you pop it at the front after a Tondo or let it stack with adagio, since light>evade>light is already ridiculously fast, the extra 25% being an ultimate feels right, at least to me.

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I never had any issues with the iframes of evade or the lunge forward placing me in a bad position, unless the enemy “charged” at me whilst I evaded forward.
Riposte sometimes goes on CD, without doing anything, but I have a feeling that it is a player issue with the timing and not with the ability being broken.
My biggest issue with rapier currently is the light attack chain. There is too much time between the first hit and the 2 middle strikes which take too long anyway. Somehow during the light chain you have lots of moments where you cannot dodge, even when you are not in an attack animation. Meanwhile with the hatchet and sword you can weave in dodges very fluidly. Maybe it is just personal taste, but using the rapier has a very awkward playstyle.

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This is something that happens with every MMORPG.
Beta netcode performance is always leagues above release performance.
You wouldn’t believe this if you played ESO right now, but the beta had unbelievably snappy and responsive combat with top notch feedback. It has felt like molasses ever since release.

Something I want to say though, I don’t mean for this thread to be a “BUFF MY WEAPON BECAUSE I PLAY IT” circlejerk.
Some things are obviously intended as part of balance, for example the delay between light attacks, or the end-lag of evasion (which matches the end-lag of dodging and is meant to provide a window of vulnerability so there’s counterplay potential against dodging).
Try to consider what is intended to be a vulnerability point and what is legitimately just not working.

For clarification about this, what’s your average ping?
Also, do you dodge towards the enemy, or to the side?
There’s an extra component of timing to evade, because you can essentially animation cancel half of your iframes by light attacking immediately. It seems like side-Evade has double if not more the iframes of a forward or backwards Evade, judging by the time you spend in the animation.
In other words, how do you usually play your Evades?
On 25-35 ping I have to be clairvoyant to properly evade even the basic enemies, but I don’t want to have that in the post if it’s just a problem with my own connection (although from what I hear, it seems to be everyone so far).

The camera and tracking issue however, does mess it up very often.
Just yesterday I ran the final boss of The Depths

(canonically known as “Plin Plin Plon Recorder Cover”)
and whilst wailing on him from the back he moved to the side just a tiny bit to start that sweeping laser attack, and my next forward Evade skipped him and popped me right in front of him, which instakilled me.
The moment I get a piece of gear with Omnidirectional Evade on it, the Forward Evade is going in retirement, because it doesnt even go far enough to actually close the gap from a distance, on top of the camera/tracking bugs.

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Swiftness passive would carry over with the bleed skill in rapier but as you stated it is bugged.
You gain a stack of speed per bleed damage but the duration doesnt last 4 seconds and seems to reduce a second per extra person it is stacked on for, when bleeding multiple people you get extra speed for as you said 1 second… which as you also said. Is completely useless.

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