I would love to make a character that primarily utilizes the rope dart, and I can't decide which class to pursue toward that end.
Functionally, I see the rope dart as a delivery system for other damage, facilitated through the ninja's sneak attack, the vexing daredevil's painful stare, deadly aim, ect...
The rope dart's distracting quality looks nice at first, but RAW doesn't let ranged weapons take advantage of feint until Greater Feint is acquired, or one uses the mesmerist's misdirection trick-though multiple uses of misdirection in combat practically remove the move action benefit of Improved Feint.
The vexing daredevil acquires Greater Feint at 6th level, while the ninja gains access at 8th through ninja trick.
Now, I'm not sure if this is correct, but I read on the forum somewhere that you can't use a ranged weapon to fight defensively. I haven't found anything in the rules to substantiate that, blocking on the rope dart would be useless if it were true. Let's say that it's not true for now.
Fighting defensively, plus blocking, plus Combat Expertise makes for a pretty impressive AC boost. The ninja seems to have a better time of using this, as they need to pick up Combat Expertise on their way to Improved Feint anyway. The vexing daredevil doesn't seem to want to take the feat at all however, as it's a very aggressive archetype and relies primarily on feinting/attacking/painful stare; not to mention one of their class abilities allows them to skip it entirely.
Any thoughts or advice?
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I wouldn't be surprised if a developer mused online about fighting defensively not working with ranged weapons, but a rope dart looks like it'd be a special case even if that made it into FAQ/errata.
The other quality on a rope dart is of course monk. Which means with a monk dip you could flurry with it.
I haven't yet seen the vexing daredevil so can't offer anything on the merits of it vs. ninja. There's also the option of an unchained rogue to add debilitating strike debuffs though.