I’m not 60 yet, only 55, but I’m starting to question the reason for dexterity weapons as a bow/rapier user. For PvE two out of four enemy types are strong against dexterity builds since we only have thrust damage. Unless you use sword/hatchet but those are not “main” dex weapons. I’m guessing they’re suppose to be best at single target? Without testing dex weapons at end game against other weapons I can’t say for sure but I seems like ice/fire and various strength weapons do just as well or better.
For PvP Ice/Fire seem superior in every way (when not bugged). Easier to hit autos that hit harder with a higher rate of fire. Int seems to have better AoE, better mobility, better CC and better sustain. Str seems to have better mobility and better sustain which is fair, but the damage seems to be just as good while being easier to land.
I very well may be missing something but most dex weapons just seem to be “hard mode” with no real payoff to back it up. Don’t get me wrong, I love the play style of bow/rapier but I’m failing to see any benefit of playing them other than just liking the skills/theme.
I’m a musket/rapier user. I thought that I’d be able to be fairly effective with a combo of weapons that keyed off the same stats. It’s fine for soloing, but not nearly as effective as other weapon combos that I’ve seen in groups/dungeons. Both of these need some serious work IMO and they level very slowly. I’m level 46 currently.
I’ve found that a Dex build with Spear is one of the best options right now for single target DPS. Corrupted enemies make up most of the enemy you’ll be farming at end game which thrust is strong against. Plus the Rend debuff spear can apply and the exploited weakness trait in Impaler tree often makes up the difference for the enemies who are resistant to thrust.
Only against Angry Earth do I swap to hatchet for the damage type bonus but that’s also because berserk is so powerful in general. Against lost type enemies I still find spear and rapier to out DPS the strength weapons and fire staff because of the attack speed.
Also Rapier specifically I can solo some bosses. Evade is very strong against some enemies who have some time in between attacks. For example the Lost Ogres/Brute types I can solo without taking damage sometimes because I can simply evade the attack and keep poking.
Just go bow/musket in dungeons. Your tiny rapier isn’t impressing anyone and the ranged cooldowns for each weapon basically run into the next.
Edit: Double ranged dex has 3 dots and 3 aoes, so it offers a lot of versatility to a group.
I also want to point out that dungeon roles aren’t divided by Str or Dex, they’re divided by Tank, Healer, Melee, and Ranged. Going half melee half ranged into a dungeon isn’t doing your party any favors.
That’s good to know. I don’t run spear currently but I know it has the best rend application so I can see how that’s useful plus all the CC. I mainly opted for rapier for the mobility and thinking it would offer better survivability but I’m starting to see it’s not really the case. With spear you don’t really need the mobility with being able to peel for yourself and having so many stamina bonuses for dodging. Plus the stun is more reliable, you have better reach and arguably better AoE so I may switch back to spear. I still think rapier would be better for PvP though so idk.
As far as Rapier I don’t see evade as being anything special for survivability in PvE, it seems better to just spam it on CD for the dps increase. I usually have more than enough stamina regen to just dodge roll those abilities, which seems to have a more reliable evade frame. I suppose if I was on point with Evade my damage up time would be higher but I’m not sure as that would require me “holding” it so I have it up for those moments vs just spamming it for the extra damage then just dodge rolling when needed.
I mean I’m not running it to impress anyone? I just like the weapons play style. I’ve tried bow/musket and I could see it being good for dungeons but anything else it seems kind of redundant/bad. I know they have AoE skills but wouldn’t ice/fire just be better?
If you have a tank glued to your hip while playing I could see it but otherwise you’re going to spend most your time running in circles hoping you don’t aggro to many enemies while you wait for CDs. In PvP, for wars it might be good but any situation where someone notices you exist you’re going to just be running for your life.
Most of the time using Evade for DPS is optimal. The i-frame is very hard to time compared to just dodging, especially with latency. But I found in some cases like the mob mentioned in my first comment using evade is better because you can reliably evade the attack and keep attacking with that extra damage Evade gives you. You can do this in other scenarios too but for fighting 1vX it’s not as good. Rapier shines more in PvP (when game isn’t broke and unbalanced) than PvE.
Spear is good though. The bonuses are really strong for PvE and also Rend helps everyone else who is doing damage. Bow I have seen can be good but you need to build right and get all of those stacking bonuses. Even with a 500gs bow and not having all of the bonuses but some I can still hit 3k-4k headshots on corrupted and 2k bodies. Plus bow does have AoE and some good single target potential if you use rapid fire. I’ve seen someone with the right traits on bow hit corrupted enemies for 10k headshots so it can really get up there.
Speaking of bow and ranged in general though you also have to think about how many others you are partying with that are melee. Because of collisions your melee damage might suffer because too many other allied players are also trying to get in and melee and at that point ranged just is better simply because (as long as your aim isn’t bad) will be able to hit every time and not be fighting for melee damage positioning.
Musket sucks though, don’t use that in PvE right now. Even single target the bow does more DPS. You could use it in tandem with bow and only use Powder Burn and Shooter Stance and swap back to bow though.
I mentioned bow/musket 3 aoe and 3 dot to point out the versatility of a double ranged dex build. For pure aoe int build is for sure better, but when you’re running a dungeon like Dynasty you have plenty of aoe for the barrel fights, and way better single target damage for the boss fights with ranged dex than you do with the int weapons.
Keep at it friend, I too felt this as I approached 60. Since getting my gs up a little I’ve noticed my damage beginning to scale up in a much more noticeable way. Yes you will fail to do as much aoe but a lot of that can be made up for. Run rain of arrows, poison shot, and penetrating on bow for some pretty great aoe burst. I use spear as my melee weapon. Currently hitting around 6.5-7k crits with bow, and up to 2.5-3.5k light attack backstabs with spear, it feels really good to me. I’m almost always top 10 in performance and damage done in wars and invasions.
A solid 2/3 of endgame mobs are corrupted against which thrust does bonus damage. For the rest just stick a conversion gem in your weapon or run sword and board. The bonus damage to Angry Earth does a good job at outweighing the 65% scaling.
If you need sustain run a musket with traps. Free full-heal every 15 seconds against most enemies. Rapiers with Flurry also get a really good sustain perk on gear.
The only thing hard about dex weapons is hitting bow/musket headshots in PvP.
You mean like the baseline 1.4 crit damage on rapier, bunch of crit-centric passives on rapier and spear, headshot-centric passives on musket and bow, the increased crit chance from threshold passives and the ability to actually fish for backstab crits due to mobility and CC?
dex is struggling in part because many pve and pvp engagements are group fights where aoe and cc is strong. str and int do that better.
unfortunately this isn’t vermintide so i can’t easily stagger waves of enemies and cut them down with my rapier. i have to very carefully kite and space my thrusts, or more likely just switch weapons
maybe rapier will be better if/when blood tree is buffed, i like the tree except for the bleeding damage itself lol
You must be playing a different game, because both spear and musket have passives that are crit/headshot related. The entire Sharpshooter tree is about headshots.
I switched out my musket/rapier for bow/spear yesterday without a re-spec, so my DEX with gear is well over 200. It was a huge improvement pretty much immediately even with only a couple of skills from the tree. What a waste of time that first combo was…
Yeah, I’m late 40s and really starting to feel the limits to musket/rapier. I’m sticking with it though, mainly because I’m a stubborn git when it comes to concept.
One thing that I can’t quite get my head around is that the musket has no counters to heavy armour. There’s a reason why plate armour fell out of general use when muskets became commonplace.
It’s weird how the game has this cool 17th century fantasy setting but all the combat mechanics revert back to cod-Medieval gameplay. It feels like a huge failure of imagination.
Still, I’m enjoying it for what it is, missed opportunities and all.
