Evade Rapier Build – New World Season 9 DPS Guide

The Evade Rapier Build is a top-tier DPS option in New World Season 9, emphasizing mobility and rapid cooldowns for Rapier abilities in raids and PvE. This guide covers everything from attributes to gear setups. Evade Rapier build is currently the most commonly needed slot filling Hive of Gorgons raid slots and provides some of the highest DPS possible while also being one of the easiest to obtain and more affordable builds. There are variations to this build depending on your current gear since items like Elemental Band can be hard to complete for some, but there are good enough alternatives that are easy to acquire.

Gear Score

Arguably less important, but having all 725 weapons and then the rest of armor and jewelry at 725 (except for 2 slots at 700) will allow you to hit the attribute splits highlighted in this build to do max damage. The difference is being able to hit 300 Intelligence for +7% base damage to targets below 50% health. So the focus should be on getting the correct weapons and perks across your gear first, then the higher gear score.

Attributes

STR	25
DEX	350
INT	300
FOC	25
CON	fill the rest

Mainhand Weapon

Finisher

This is almost non-negotiable as there are very few alternatives that can match its performance, and Finisher is very easy to obtain and complete for an artifact.

Added perk should always be Distained Infliction for the 5% bonus damage, increased DoT damage and duration because you are constantly applying bleeds to enemies with Flurry in this build.

Offhand Weapon (options)

• Void Gauntlet – mostly just for dropping Oblivion
• Ice Gauntlet – passive damage with Ice Storm and Ice Pylon
• Spear – 5% rend spear build to apply Rend
• Hatchet – Rending Throw + Infected Throw for weaken
• Fire Staff – apply quick ability rotation which stacks DoTs
• Bow – apply DoT abilities

All of the above are viable, but Spear, Hatchet, and Bow can alter what is needed in other areas of you build because they will change how your attributes are distributed. You need a minimum of 1 Intelligence Weapon or 2 armor/jewelry pieces (1 int + 1 split with dex/int works) with Intelligence to hit the correct Attribute requirements and not go over 350 Dexterity since that will give you diminishing returns in damage per attribute point.

Armor 

Your overall weight should always be Light in an Evade Rapier to do +15% damage. In this build I use 2 non-chest medium pieces to attain max defense possible in a Light-weight build.

The priority perks to aim for in armor (not weapons):

• Omnidirectional Evade
• Leeching Flurry
• 3-4x Refreshing (3 if using 1 refreshing on Jewelry)
• 3-4x Enchanted Ward
• Empowering Breaker on gloves
• Health to fill the gaps

Jewelry

Pick the best Protection amulet that matches the most common damage you will be taking in the activity you are in. For example, Echidna from Hive of Gorgons uses Strike Damage, so you’d want a Strike Protection Amulet. Luckily there are easily farmable amulets for the 3 main damage types in the Gorgon raid.

Strike Protection Amulet

Slash Protection Amulet

Nature Protection Amulet

Ring options are usually Elemental Band, Azoth Crystal Ring, or an equal Gorgon’s ring.

It’s important for the Earring to be Intelligence in this build to hit the correct attribute splits.

Heartrune

Typical buffs and Trophies

In order to do maximum damage, the correct trophies and damage boosting buffs should be applied. You should be able to count 5 buffs above your health bar before boss fights.

• 3x Major Angry Earth Trophies – 3×5%(15%) Angry Earth Damage
• Infused Angry Earth Coating – 15% Angry Earth Damage
• Infused Angry Earth Ward – take 10% less damage from Angry Earth enemies
• Powerful Honing Stone – 7% Empower
• Desert Sunrise – reduce duration of incoming DoTs by 17.5% 
• +48 food Steamed Abaia Serpe

How to play Evade Rapier

You should be spamming abilities as much as possible and when repositioning into doing damage spam offhand abilities.

1. Drop Oblivion, then immediately swap back to Rapier
2. Evade to get bonus damage and Empower going
3. Flurry
4. Light Attack to get Evade off cooldown faster until Flurry comes off its cooldown

When enemies move and if Oblivion is back up swap to Void Gauntlet and run back into place to drop Oblivion for the team and repeat the cycle above. Be aware if your healer drops Oblivion for you, this is not needed so you can stay on Rapier to DPS. Oblivion drops should ideally be rotated between this player and the healer.

Empower details

With Empower cap at 50% it’s important to know what you are utilizing to do as much damage as possible:

With a Thrust Damage Ring instead (Soulpollen) it would put you at 60% total or 10% over, meaning you could drop the Empowering Toast if you want, but you’d be missing out on critical chance from Keen Awareness. 

To know where your current Empower total stands, check out the Empower Calculator.

Tips to remember

• You have Riposte available to save you from any 1 attack in a 1s window
  • Great for Echidna’s tail swipes or slams
• Flurry has 0.5s of invulnerability when activated to also negate a single boss attack
• Make sure you you line up to attack behind the enemy to maximize damage output 
• Save your dodges for when you need them, but you gain stamina back very fast when attacking
• If you have time with your offhand (meaning you are not in melee range yet), using Refreshing Rupture with offhand void gauntlet on enemy can provide your team with high lifesteal for a short time.
  • For other offhands, consider when the best time for you to use their abilities would be. Each one will have a different sequence of abilities

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Build made using the free tools at New World Buddy

For unfamiliar terms, please refer to our terminology guide.