New World Rapier Guide

Introduction

In this guide we will go over the rapier’s mastery trees, recommended abilities for different scenarios, and tips to optimize the use of the rapier. For all this and more, check out our New World Rapier Guide

General information

The Rapier is a very fast melee weapon that is focused on a variety of quick lunge attacks. It scales primarily on dexterity and secondarily on intelligence. The rapier excels at outmaneuvering opponents and applying damage over time in the form of bleeds that will gradually drain your target’s health. There’s also the option of some burst damage when consuming the bleed. The rapier has many abilities that require precise timing, and if you can time the abilities correctly you will be rewarded for your efforts.

The Rapier has a 3 swing light attack chain and deals thrust damage. The first attack in the chain deals 100% thrust damage, and the middle swipe deals 66%. Performing a heavy attack with the rapier will deal 133% thrust damage.

Rapier Mastery Trees

The Rapier mastery trees consist of the Blood and Grace trees.

Blood Mastery Tree

The blood tree focuses on damage over time, as well as burst damage. The three active abilities in this tree consist of Tondo, Flourish and Finish, and Flurry. There is not a separate key passive for this tree, instead, the Flourish and Finish ability can be further enhanced. It’s important to point out that, just like any other key passive, you still have to have at least 10 points in the Blood tree prior to being able to take the last upgrade to the Flourish and Finish ability.

Tondo

Tondo is a melee ability with the rapier that has an extended range and applies a bleed. The bleed can stack up to 3 times which will refresh the previous application of the bleed. As you progress further into the Tondo tree you will be able to significantly reduce the cooldown on the ability, and improve your direct damage from the ability significantly the further away you are from your target when hitting them with Tondo.

Flourish and Finish

The staple ability of the Blood Tree is Flourish and Finish. This ability synergizes with Tondo and deals quite a bit of damage and provides some decent mobility. Upon using Flourish and Finish you will knock back your enemy and can activate a second step to the ability by pressing light attack at the end of flourish. This will then perform the “finish” part of the ability. Finish will lunge forward and consume all of the rapier bleeds and deal 110% of their damage immediately providing for some good burst damage potential.

As you progress to the first upgrade of Flourish and Finish you will gain grit on the ability. This will allow the ability to be uninterruptible. You will also gain stamina upon successfully landing the ability and can reduce the cooldown of the ability for each tick of damage from Tondo’s Bleed.

The last upgrade (considered the key passive for the Blood Tree) increases the damage output of the “Finish” portion of the ability significantly. Your Finish will now do 150% of the rapier’s bleed damage instead of the previous 110%. This allows for huge burst damage potential and will help you finish your target off after applying significant pressure with bleeds throughout the duration of the fight.

Flurry

The last ability in the Blood Tree is Flurry. When activating Flurry you become immobile while unleashing a series of five quick thrust attacks. Each thrust deals 60% weapon damage. You can dodge out of the ability at any time. As you progress through the Flurry abilities you will be able to enhance block damage for each hit of Flurry, reduce the cooldown of the ability, extend your rapier bleed from Tondo, and the last hit of Flurry will cause a stagger to your target.

The remaining passives in the blood tree focus on reducing your cooldowns and enhancing the bleed damage.

Grace Mastery Tree

The Grace Tree is focused heavily on outmaneuvering your opponent. The abilities require timing in order to be used effectively. Three active abilities are Riposte, Evade, and Fleche. The Key passive in this tree is called Momentum.

Riposte

Riposte is an ability that requires a little bit of skill from the player’s standpoint. In order to use this ability properly you have to time it just right. Upon activating riposte you will enter into a defense stance, and if you are hit during that time you will then counter your attacker and stun them and will be briefly invulnerable upon a successful Riposte. If you are not successful at timing the ability correctly then you do not stun your target and you have to wait for the ability to come off cooldown to use it again. This ability is also taunt gem compatible.

Evade

The next ability is Evade. A movement ability that will allow for much more mobility when using the rapier. This ability allows you to perform a small sidestep in your current movement direction that will cancel any activity and provide you with brief invulnerability. Your light attack’s speed will also be greatly increased during an evade.

As you upgrade the Evade ability you will also gain stamina immediately on use, which will provide for even more mobility because you will be able to keep your stamina bar full enough to dodge rolls more frequently. You will also gain a movement speed increase for a short duration, gain a damage bonus when evading forward, and your light attacks will reduce the cooldown of the ability by 30% each. This cooldown reduction allows you to use this ability very frequently, gain stamina, dodge roll, and use the ability again which provides you with some great mobility in battle.

Fleche

The final ability is Fleche. This is another movement ability that allows you to leave the ground and lunge forward for 10m piercing through your enemies and dealing an increased amount of weapon damage. When upgrading this ability you will receive a large cooldown reduction upon killing an enemy, increased critical strike damage on your next critical strike, and you will be able to light attack during the ability to perform a static attack with increased weapon damage.

Key Passive

The key passive is Momentum. It increases the damage for your next light attack or heavy attack after using an ability. This passive does not have a cooldown, but will end after 3 seconds or upon your next hit.

Rapier Recommended Roles

Currently, the Rapier is most frequently used in Healer and Assassin DPS builds. In almost all those cases, the rapier is used as a defensive/mobility back-bar weapon.

Recommended Weapon Pairings with the Rapier

The Rapier scales off of Dexterity, so pairing the Rapier with another weapon that scales off Dexterity is recommended.

Life Staff – The rapier is the most frequently used back bar weapon for healers. The Grace Mastery Tree Provides excellent mobility
Bow – The bow scales off of Dexterity, making this a great ranged choice to pair with the hatchet. With this combination, you can kite enemies well while shooting them with the bow, and if they get in range you will have your hatchet to punish them.
Spear – The spear scales primarily off of Dexterity and secondarily off of Strength, making this an ok pairing with the Rapier as well. The spear can provide you with quite a lot of crowd control options that can help you deal with foes that get too close, and can also provide you with some additional damage over time as well.
Musket – Similar to the bow, the musket benefits from having the mobility to kite enemies while dealing damage at range. both weapons will benefit from pushing your attribute points into the Dexterity attribute.

You can reference our builds section for specific Life Staff pairings and builds that other players in the community are using.

Rapier Perks

Every Weapon Ability in New World has a corresponding Perk that can be found on armor and weapons. Most of the perks scale in power with the Gear Score of the item they are on. It’s important to note that you can only benefit from one instance of a weapon ability perk at a time. You can obtain the weapon perks randomly from drops or you can craft gear with the specific perk on it. You can enhance your chance at obtaining a specific perk by utilizing mods. Additionally, you can enhance your chance at obtaining your perk with the right stats by using the timeless shards.

The Ability perks for the Rapier in New World are as follows:

Weapon Ability Perk	Description	Armor	Weapon	Crafting Mods
Keen Tondo	+X% critical chance against targets affected by and causes -10% weakness for 10s	13%	26%	Steel Rapier Charm
Deadly Flourish	Flourish deals +X% damage against targets below 50% Health.	27%	41%	Starmetal Rapier Charm
Leeching Flurry	Heal for X% of the damage dealt by Flurry. Also gain 1s of Vulnerability.	32%	60%	Orichalcum Rapier Charm
Sundering Riposte	Riposte inflicts Rend, reducing armor on the target by X% for 10s.	16%	25%	Reinforced Steel Rapier Charm
Omnidirectional Evade	+X% damage for 2s after using Evade. Adagio upgrade is applied when evading in any direction.	11%	20%	Reinforced Starmetal Rapier Charm
Refreshing Fleche	Hitting a target via a critical Backstab with Fleche reduces its cooldown by X%.	21%	40%	Reinforced Orichalcum Rapier Charm

Recommended Rapier Gems

The type of gem you will want to slot into your Rapier is heavily dependent upon your build and what you’re trying to accomplish. It’s also going to vary based on PvP vs PvE activities (You can check our quick reference guide for gems for a full list of gems and their effects).

Enemy types the Rapier is strong/weak against

With a Rapier the damage type you will be dealing is Thrust. Our Damage Type vs Mob Types Quick Chart guide as a complete breakdown for every weapon. Corrupted and Beasts will be the monsters most affected by this and is ideal to use against them.

Corrupted: Takes 20% MORE damage from Thrust attacks
Beast: Takes 20% MORE damage from Thrust attacks