Ah yes, a ranger skill is what makes musketeer good.
Allow me to really blow your mind:
Musketeer will be just fine without armor break. Musketeer will be just fine with 5 levels of snipe. Musketeer will be just fine without running shot.
Armor break is another great example of a thing which completely trivialized PVE content to the point of absurdity. Running shot and AA musket builds were always counter intuitive to me, because you are using lazy AAs on a class with some of the highest SFRs in the game. Muskets are still going to be exceptional, we will continue to be a hard counter to the defensive stat meta in PVP, we will continue to be long range death machines.
New sapper skill looks amazing, though I feel like detonate lost a lot of its effectiveness since so few defensive magic circles are left in the game.
Appraiser adjustments look like a very good supporty choice for musket, especially in group content, since they fixed overestimate and moved the squire durability skill over to appraiser–and its other skills are still good.
Aiming still exists and piper remains mostly unchanged, making falc and piper an exceptional support choice as well.
Hunter seems much improved but the jury’s still out on if the abilities work on bosses–this of course will still be a valid option for PVP musket if the AI is fixed, and fleshes out other options with QS for personal defense in PVP, though I don’t think QS has enough yet to justify it as a choice.
Wugushi is still a valid DPS choice for musket–and that’s before the new class (which I am calling grenadier in my build plans, since I think that’s the only lol lore thing I can think of that would know how to use both a musket and a cannon, and I am still operating under the assumption that it’s a combined class), which I think will also be an excellent damage boost for both musket and cannoneer, depending on the direction they take.
Right now I’m most likely to do appraiser piper musket as a best of everything option, because the one thing I dislike most about playing musket but having a support piper in PVE content was that the piper often did not time Weltblum to my highest burst, which would be exceptionally hard to do. So, I still get the PVE party buffs, still get the great PVP appraiser and piper debuffs/CC for PVP, and my musket playstyle remains mostly completely unchanged (I’m a2 sapper1 scout2 appraiser piper1 musk3 right now).
Some builds I think will be great:
Appraiser Falc Musket (PVE support A)
Falc Piper Musket (PVE Support B)
Wugu Falc Musket (PVE DPS Hybrid)
Sapper Wugu Musket (PVE DPS)
Hunter Appraiser Musket (PVP)
Piper Appraiser Musket (PVP)
Hunter Piper Musket (PVP)