When delving into mutations and seeking thrilling PVE experiences in the New World, my preferred choice is the Rapier Bleed build.

Enhancing its potential further elevates the overall performance, enabling players to push the boundaries and extract maximum efficiency. This optimization particularly caters to those striving for high-scoring runs. Without delay, let's delve into the intricacies of this formidable build.

Weapons

Rapier: The most important part of this build is the Rapier. Without a doubt, the best Rapier for this is the finisher as it provides a huge amount of damage to bleeding targets for the last perk on it.

Keenly Empowered is the best option as it greatly increases bleed damage and is incomparable to any other perk, the skill tree for Swordsman should be like this, the main ability is still the same.

Ice Gauntlet: To optimize our build, allocate points across the skill tree to bolster both our primary Rapier damage and secondary Ice Gauntlet prowess. When wielding the Ice Gauntlet alongside the Rapier, passive skills synergize to augment our overall damage output.

There exist 2 distinct builds tailored for different purposes. The first emphasizes Pylon Burst in conjunction with Ice Storm, amplifying AOE damage against clustered enemies. The second prioritizes maximizing Gauntlet damage potential, particularly beneficial in high mob density environments such as dungeons. This build necessitates investment in Ice Spikes, Ice Storm, and Pylon Burst.

For the latter build, selecting Keenly Empowered allows for seamless weapon swapping without losing the effect, facilitating optimal damage output with Ice Spikes. Vicious Ice Spike and Keenly Empowered emerge as the optimal choices. As for crowd control, Void Gauntlet users, typically healers, can provide crowd control support, while spear or great axe users employing Vines can also assist.

Musket: The Musket serves as another valuable weapon choice, proving its usefulness in various dungeon scenarios. Its long-range capabilities enable players to pull enemies from a distance, although it's important to note that its scaling parallels that of the Rapier, relying on both Intelligence and Dexterity for damage output.

Given our heavy investment in New World Coins in Intelligence and Dexterity, our Musket can deliver substantial damage. As for its skill tree, a quick reference to the one displayed on your screen suffices. To maximize damage, initiate with a sticky bomb shot followed by a Powder Burn shot, then swiftly dodge to trigger a passive skill for instant reload.

Furthermore, the Musket can serve as a primary damage dealer in certain situations, providing both survivability and added safety. For instance, it proves effective against the final bosses in dungeons like Depths or Dynasty. Since this is an ability, that’s why I recommend going with the Vicious.

Armor

Since we took a fast look over the weapons, let’s go over the armor perks and check what is necessary to get the best gear possible.

The Nimble Coat is our best pick from the armor artifacts because of the extra cooldown. There is currently no better option for the Rapier Bleed build. For the last perk on it, I always go with Flurry, as it will give me the necessary life and invulnerability in tough situations. The other perks which we want to have are the 4 refreshing, so we can guarantee the maximum cooldown reduction.

We also want to have as many as possible Enchanted Ward and heal perk, and everything else can be justly considered as a bonus. This is not always possible and not everyone has that much of resources to invest into a PvE build.

Jewelry

For jewelries, after extended testing, I found out that the flurry increases the duration of all previous bleeds and not only on itself. Therefore, you can actually hit the maximum of 20 seconds just by finishing your 3 combo bleed with a Flurry. With that in mind, we can already look to replace the Blood Letting from the ring with something more useful.

The best ring I use in this build is the Soulpollen, which would be a party for the extra stamina Thrust damage so we can gain that extra 7% of Empower and Leeching, so we can make sure that we maintain the full HP. So our diamond on the weapon will be in use.

For amulet, I choose the Waterlogged Amulet. I still consider health and Elemental protection, depending on the type of the mutation, to be the most important 2 perks. For the third one, you can choose from Refreshing, Empower or even Divine, but I personally like to go with refreshing as it will give me another open slot for defensive perk on the armor.

For earring, you can easily go with Endless Thirst and choose for last perk either Refreshing Toast or Refreshing. However, if you are missing this artifact. You can just aim for a normal earring that contains Refreshing, Toast Refreshing, and Empowering Toast Hearthrune.

Heartrunes

Going forward into the build, we cannot pass another damage source, and this is our Heartrune. Even after many nerves, I still believe that detonate is one of the best choices for Rapier Bleed players because while charging and using the Heartrune, you can still do damage with your Rapier.

This is not the case with some other runes such as Vines, Fire Storm, Cannon and others, and therefore I always go with the brutal Heartrune of detonate. Keep in mind that with this variation of the rune, you will deal extra percentages of damage, but during the time of charging, you will have your armor values reduced by 50% because of the attributes.

Attributes

I'd like to delve into another crucial aspect of the build: the attributes we'll be focusing on. My preference is to allocate 25 points to Focus for the additional cooldown reduction, 350 points into Intelligence to benefit from the various passives provided by Intelligence, and the remaining points into Dexterity. This distribution ensures that our secondary weapon also maximizes its damage potential, yielding even better results.

It's worth noting that investing only 5 points into the Constitution carries significant risk. For newcomers to the build or the game, I recommend starting with a higher value, such as 50 or 100. With time and experience, you can gradually reduce the Constitution level to achieve the desired balance.