Rapier Leveling Guide

Introduction

With quick and powerful attacks, the rapier stands as a formidable leveling weapon. All three of the abilities taken in this build, Flourish and Finish (2), Flurry (1), and Evade (3) are high powered offensive tools that will help rapier players eliminate single or small groups of monsters very effectively.

Weapon Abilities

Evade

Evade (3) is the rapier’s main damaging ability. With an already low cooldown and plenty of cooldown reduction passives, Evade (3) will be used every 2-3 seconds, amplifying the damage of the rapier’s light attacks and providing the player with a great dodging tool. Evade (3) also has built-in immunity frames that, when used correctly, will help rapier players mitigate lots of monster damage by evasion.

Passives

  • Breathe In
    • Gain +20 stamina immediately on use.
  • Allegro
    • Gain 20% movement speed for 3 seconds on use.
  • Adagio
    • Evading forward gains 15% increased damage on your next light attack. Ends on hit or after 1 second.
  • Crescendo
    • Individual successful light attacks reduce the cooldown of this ability by 30% each.

With Evade (3) being on such a short cooldown, the passive that the ability provides to a player is more than meets the eye. All four passives should be taken in almost any rapier build that has Evade (3) taken because the value generated is so high.

Flurry

Flurry (1) immediately gives players just starting New World the opportunity to demolish their foes from only weapon mastery level 2. With an impressively powerful 5 attack chain, Flurry (1) should be used on cooldown to eliminate small packs of monsters quickly.

Passives

Fleeting Strikes (6) is the main reason that a leveling rapier player will dive into Flurry (1) passives. If all 5 strikes successfully land, the cooldown of the ability comes back 35% faster. Because rapier players won’t be taking any bleeds in this particular build, passives To The Bone and Finalize are left out completely.

Flourish and Finish

The thought of taking Flourish and Finish (2) without having Tondo to accompany the ability may confuse a starter character since a portion of Flourish and Finish (2) works to consume rapier bleeds to deal massive damage to monsters. What is amazing about Flourish and Finish (2) and the reason that we take the ability in this build is the fact that the ability in itself is incredibly powerful, even without bleeds applied to foes. Leveling rapier players should use Flourish and Finish (2) on cooldown to deal massive damage to packs of monsters.

Passives

Since the ability’s animation is so long, With Flair (19) is a valuable pick-up, although much later in the weapon’s progression.

Playstyle

Because the rapier has no real forms of active crowd control or health regeneration, rapier players should be looking to fight single monsters or small groups of enemies in order to level efficiently and take as little damage as possible. Fighting small numbers of monsters will also benefit rapier players since all three of the abilities taken in this build are single-target focused.

To effectively whittle down opponents, rapier players should follow an attack rotation similar to the one below:

Heavy Attack → Flurry → Light Attack → Evade → Light Attack → Flourish and Finish

Rapier players should be looking to dodge as many monster abilities and attacks with Evade (3) as possible. The rapier has the highest skill cap of all weapons in New World in all types of content. Starter rapier players should not be discouraged if they find themselves leveling slowly towards the beginning of their adventure in Aeternum. As a player becomes more familiar with the rapier’s abilities, they will quickly become a monsters worst nightmare.

Attribute Distribution

The rapier scales with the Dexterity attribute at 0.9X and Intelligence attribute at 0.65X. This means that for every point that a rapier player puts into Dexterity, the rapier will gain 0.9 weapon damage and for every point that a rapier player puts into Intelligence, the rapier will gain 0.65 weapon damage.

The most important Attribute Threshold Bonuses to consider for the rapier are listed below:

Dexterity

  • 100 Dexterity
    • +5% thrust damage

Constitution

  • 50 Constitution
    • All consumables are +20% stronger
  • 100 Constitution
    • Increase max health by 10% of physical armor
  • 150 Constitution
    • 10% reduction to crit damage taken
  • 200 Constitution
    • +20% increase to armor

Getting to both 100 Dexterity and 50 Constitution as quickly as possible is important for getting off to a good start with the rapier. 50 Constitution is valuable early on because it reduces the amount of consumables that a player will need to use by a significant amount. Light attacks will be the dominant basic attack used on the rapier, so the 100 Dexterity attribute bonus will give players a small boost in leveling speed and performance.

Weapon Ability Perks

Weapon Ability Perks are generated perks that can be found or applied to:

  • Weapons
  • Chests
  • Helmets
  • Gloves
  • Pants
  • Shoes

These weapon ability perks augment the power level of a weapon ability in a positive way. Currently, each weapon has 6 ability perks available to players, one for each active ability. Below are all of the weapon ability perks currently available to the rapier and pertain to this build.

Energizing Flourish

Gain 19 stamina on hit with Flourish.

Leeching Flurry

Each hit of Flurry restores 28% of the damage as health.

Omnidirectional Evade

Evade’s Adagio upgrade is applied when evading in any direction.

Leeching Flurry is by far the stand-out weapon ability perk in the line-up. Leveling players benefit heavily from health regeneration since the journey through Aeternum is no easy path to walk. Because the rapier has no real forms of self-sustainability or crowd control, Leeching Flurry is almost imperative to a successful leveling experience with the rapier. Rapier players should be looking to craft their own weapons throughout their leveling experience to heighten their chances of coming across rapiers with this particular weapon ability perk.