Quite possibly lol. I can’t say i’ve tried that one.Against mass elites, Bill Hook’s reach makes it very strong/safe in group play.
I’m having trouble understanding. Isn’t riposte the crit on block? Why would you block a Rat Ogre? Why would you block a Chaos Spawn? I could see it being good against mino, but even then Bill Hook would do more damage.
I do think Rapier has some advantages. The dodge range is huge. Rapier is very easy to stay alive with. It just doesn’t really compete for DPS. So once you can stay alive with Bill Hook there is never really a niche for Rapier.
That’s a decent armor dps combo, but that isn’t crit-fishing which is the point of the conversation you quoted. I use Special Attack > H2 in mixed hordes to focus an elite if the situation calls for it. However, if I’m “crit-fishing” then I would be using the push attack chain.
Sorry, I forgot to mention that riposting bosses is really only for solo contexts or the Minotaur.
You can riposte between every single one of the Chaos Spawns running attacks (even during the combo attacks) because of it’s attack speed. The only attack you can’t (excluding high damage through block/high knockback attacks of course) attack in-between and then parry for another riposte is the double axe attack from the Minotaur. This can’t be done with the Billhook.
It’s higher boss damage for a few reasons. The crit full charge on the rapier will do a little bit more damage than the crit heavy stab on the Billhook.
The full charge is fast enough to be used in-between the attacks of some of the boss combos. The partial works better for weaving in attacks during faster boss attacks, and the lights, particularly the incredibly fast push light, can be used during the fastest boss combos.
I concede to you’re point about the Rat Ogre. I don’t think there’s anyway to quickly bait out it’s running attacks unlike the Chaos Spawn.
Rapier riposting works well on Skarrick, Bodvar and Nurgloth’s third phase(small arena/not all attacks send players flying).
Riposte also gives you infinite crit pushes that don’t consume the buff (not sure on how much this increases the stagger strength but it does increase it) for the duration of the buff and crit stagger for your attack.
I’m not arguing that the rapier is better than the Billhook. Nor am I suggesting that Riposte is good for normal play. There are however instances in which the rapier does more and safer damage than the Billhook (when solo), like in the many weaves that spam elites, FOW, where the Rapier has a better ttk (for the elites) than the Billhook.
You can attack between each of the monsters attacks during the triple slam? Interesting. I would still be suspect as to whether that’s actually better dps than properly dancing the spawn. With Bill Hook range, you can spam attacks during the mino heavy phase. With rapier, you can only get the one heavy off, I’m pretty sure. I would have to test some of the riposte memes to be sure, but if your’e relying on hit trading, I wouldn’t say that works outside of the keep.
I will. It’s cool but doesn’t hold up in teams at all (except for the Mino) because of aggro unless everyone else has mace and shield levels of monster dps. It can still be done with team members, but the dps is lower than the Billhook because of the downtime caused by having to move over to the side the player that currently has the bosses aggro is on. It becomes even harder if said player is good at dodging dancing and keeping the boss in place.
If only they combined Riposte and Deathknell into one talent. Might almost be half as good as Flense.
Even in the context of solo:
Rapier crit lights deal ~36 body dmg/ 49 HS to a chaos spawn (I assume you’re riposting two lights and a final heavy at best?), billhook crit heavy 1 deals 142dmg body, 187 HS, and it is possible to riposte two attacks of the triple slam with heavies. Proof
QQ cancelled H1 is pretty much the same speed as fully charged rapier heavies but there is a range difference that probably makes it harder to pull off for rapier.
Looking at non-ripostes, billhook H1 deals 106 damage on headshots vs 76 on fully charged rapier heavies… I think billhook has a pretty sizeable lead in monster damage.
QQ cancelling ewwww. Jokes aside, you have proven me wrong. Thank you for testing this.
Do you have numbers for the attack speed? I know you can dodge sideways with the rapier + charmed life during the triple, so range isn’t an issue. I believe you can get two rapier heavies in with side-dodging.
The Chaos Spawn has another combo (four attacks) that’s faster than that slam. I made a mistake earlier by referring to the triple slam. Not sure if that changes anything but it may. Probably depends on the distance it covers with it.
Actually, it looks like the rapier can only do more damage if it can somehow get in two full charge attacks, or two partial charge attacks + one full charge. May be possible, but it certainly pushes the limits of human timing.
It’s not used for Cata+ either lol. Flense is the pick in pretty much every situation. At this point, it’s just about learning stuff from other people.
People have a strange idea about what the “dull” weapons are… Nerf Billhook and A&F?! Two of those few good and balanced weapons?
Both only do their job: pure DPS weapons (one has easier combos, the other more mobility). I repeat: DPS, just their work… For example Rapier is better as defensive weapon, Flail and 2H Sword are better as staggering/crowd control weapons.
The truth is that certain players are never satisfied about how much the game has to be hard… And when they find a weapon that simply works (as said Billhook and A&F have their niche with pro and cons… They aren’t the best option in every “sector”), they call for a nerf… Don’t get me wrong, I completated cata FoW, 120 weaves, cata final events challenges, twin cata, cata Twitch… But for who wants an extreme experience there are specific mods (cata3, particular combinations, etc etc).
I mean… The real dull weapons are the useless ones.
It’s true, A&F totally destroys Falchion… But even if we nerfed A&F, Falchion would remain a pretty bad weapon.
The good ones are the minority… Then we have tons of dull, flat, overshadowed, boring weapons and we must start buffing them (weapons I haven’t never seen since day one… without a space/niche… without any reasons to exist)… And not annoying the only fun and working ones.
Fair enough, rapier is best in defence, but is billhook bad as a defensive wep? Billhook is not that far behind and it’s safer to use because of alt attack and extra reach. Purely blocking enemies, yes rapier is better. But i wouldnt say defense is a con for billhook.
I don’t know if I’d say Billhook is balanced. I do think A+F is in a fairly nice spot and would perhaps like to see buffs to his weaker weapons (like falchion–so I agree with you here), but I’m not nuanced enough to really say what that needs, so will leave that to those who like numbers.
That said, the reason Billhook is usually considered OP is, at least in comparison to A+F, it has a higher dodge count, way better reach, and good cleave/control. I think, at the very least, those dodge counts need to be taken down; there’s not really any real reason (in my opinion), a melee weapon needs 99 dodges (at least you can’t block with BoP).
I agree, that weapon has no business having an infinite dodge count. Its dodge range is fine because it kind of looks like a very light weapon to hold anyway, but the dodge count should be tanked to be on the level of other two handed weapons.
And uh, doesn’t it also have some innate block cost reduction? Or was that kruber’s spear? Or was it both?
Neither of them should have that, either.
