Originally posted by jonnin:

Their #1 issue is they need a replacement for higher level content. The dual dagger sorta does this, but its not fist.

In future, yes, but not in the immediate present. Even if a new variant possessed effective anti-seeker damage type, it'd still be pretty impractical to put to use against seeker soldiers, and short reach of fist weapons is not very useful against regular seekers either. So it's perfectly fine that the only available fist weapon is lagging a bit behind. If anything, there could be an earlier version of it available at some point so players can train their punching skill before accessing the rippers so they don't feel like lackluster weapon. But the flipside to that is again that there are already many perfectly viable weapons available in various stages of progress.

But yeah, rippers are actually very powerful overall. Good DPS for stamina cost, high attack speed, slashing damage works in the biome it's available in as well as the next one. Animations are recycled from regular unarmed attacks, but those animations are decent enough to begin with. Having other animations available would kinda warrant having them made for other weapons too. Just because you have claw weapons made of wolf-theme materials doesn't make you pounce around on all fours, humans don't do that. Kicking retains its decent stagger value, it's very reliable to stagger fuling with for example. Since the rippers' class is inherited from the unarmed category, they also don't slow down the character when the weapons are drawn out, meaning you'll always be ready to kick a troll in the buttocks and deal huge amount of sneak attack damage as you're dashing through the forests and swamps. With high enough block skill you can even parry the likes of abominations or deathsquitos or fulings.