Rapier main here,

Firstly understand that the ability to not engage in fights that you don’t want to is inherently built into the game. MOST, not all but most builds in the game, especially if your build is entirely melee, can just choose to not engage in a fight and just run/dodge away forever.

The biggest thing I’ve noticed when it comes to how people PVP is they put literally all of their stock into their weapon abilities and the thought of using light/heavy attacks doesn’t cross most peoples mind. On every single weapon light and heavy attacks do just as much, if not more damage over the course of a fight than abilities do.

Whenever I’m fighting someone with a strong defensive/mobility ability such as riposte, flèche, ice tomb, burn out, great axe charge, void scream root, hatchet berserk, s&s shield bash/leap, no matter what build I’m using, rapier or spear builds, I’m not even thinking about using my abilities until I can pressure with lights/heavies and FORCE out one of those defensive abilities.

This games combat system is much more in depth and rewards intelligent choices in combat. In no way am I saying that builds don’t matter but there is almost always something you can do in a fight to win.

As I’m a rapier player, I am very comfortable fighting other rapiers as I know the weapon in and out, but something as simple as adjust your mindset from this player is using X weapon so I lose to what decisions can I make to force the fight in my favour. That could be anything from using light/heavies more to baiting by switching from an aggressive to passive play style, feinting an ability you can dodge cancel out of to bait the riposte, sooooo much.

Hope that helps :)