The new Stabbing&Pierce are amazing,though:
Hoplite Changes
[C1 Skill] Stabbing
- Faster consecutive piercing hits.
- Damage increases with the number of consecutive piercing hits.
[C3 Attribute] Stabbing: Onslaught NEW
- Increases the max. number of Stabbing hits according to attribute level (max. 10 hits).
[C1 Skill] Pierce
- Cooldown decreased from 30 to 20 sec.
- Overheat increased from 1 to 2.
- New C2 attribute ‘Pierce: Repeated Shock’.
[C2 Attribute] Pierce: Repeated Shock NEW
- Applies +2 hits on enemies affected by the Shock debuff.
[C2 Skill] Spear Lunge
- Cooldown reduced from 24 to 20 sec.
First, the piercing hits of ‘Stabbing’ are getting twice as faster, with more and more damage applied according to the number of consecutive hits. Not only that, the new Circle 3 attribute ‘Stabbing: Onslaught’ is going to increase the number of hits by 1 per attribute level, up to a maximum of 10 hits. These skill changes, combined with the new attribute, are expected to boost the DPS of ‘Stabbing’ by about 3-4 times, helping cement its place as another essential Hoplite skill.
As for ‘Pierce’, which deals more damage on larger enemies, we’re cutting the cooldown from 30 to 20 seconds and increasing the overheat from 1 to 2. The new ‘Pierce: Repeated Shock’ Circle 2 attribute also adds +2 hits to the skill on enemies affected by the Shock debuff.
Circle 2 skill ‘Long Stride’ is going to increase damage by up to +100% according to the weight of your character’s inventory. Meanwhile, the skill’s range is increasing significantly, as well as the number of targets (5 to 10), with cooldown also being reduced from 49 to 30 seconds. Adding to this, the new Circle 2 attribute ‘Long Stride: Stun’ will have a 100% chance of inflicting Stun for a duration proportional to the attribute level.
‘Spear Lunge’, which is used to increase pierce damage, is also seeing its cooldown reduced from 24 to 20 seconds.
As Fencer has a lot of skills but most of them either lack damage or lack appropriate CD time, I think Hoplite is going to become a good alternative to what else is there for Fencer at C3-5 (mainly Highlander, which isn’t that good, or Peltasta,which is more defensive).
With Hoplite, you can utilize Spear Lunge to boost your piercing attack power, Spear Throw to immobilize monsters and Long Stride to advance onto them quickly with the possibility of 2,5 seconds stun(all these skills require a spear to use, but you can just swap weapons to spear to use these utility skills and then swap back to your rapier for e.g. Stabbing&Pierce).
Stabbing deals up to 25 hits a at leat 170% at level 15, with each of them dealing more damage, so the least damage possible would be 4250%. If we take into account that the developers state the old damage is increased by 3-4 times [which is currently 2550%], the average damage of Stabbing should now be somewhere between 7650%-10200% without enhancement attribute, which is a lot stronger than any Fencer skill and also benefits a lot from Fencers buff skills.
The same goes for Pierce, if you calculate the possibility of Highlander C1 in the build for Crown to trigger the 2 additional hits, the skill deals at least 3 hits against small monsters[1206%], 4 against medium[1608%], 5 against large monsters[2010%] and 6 against boss monsters[2412%].
With 20 seconds CD and 2 overheat the skill is quite good to deal additional damage against large&boss monsters. It’s stronger than most Fencer skills against bosses and cheaper to attribute.
My guess for a good Fencer build would be Sw>HL/Pelt/Sw2>Hop3>Fencer3>Matador with extra damage coming from Matadors Class attribute Picador. Highlander would be in there to boost Pierce with Crown for shock debuff and could be exchanged for SW2 (longer PB, better Gungho/Concentration) or Peltasta [mainly to utilize shield block and Guardian for def boost/ Swash Buckling for another taunting skill (as Capote isn’t that good)].