Now that New World has been out for a little bit the meta is starting to form and everyone is working on finding their favorite playstyle. The builds I am going to talk about here are more for solo play and PvP as opposed to group PvE. Group PvE has an optimized list of builds for tanking, healing, or dpsing whereas solo play and PvP gives us more room to be creative.

Ranged Strength Build

a. Weapons

• Hatchet
  • Use the Throwing skill tree to synergize well with the spear abilities we are going to talk about below. The throwing axe, while not favored by many, is a potent mid range weapon that allows you to stack a number of conditions on the opponent.

• Spear
  • Use the Zoner skill tree for this build. The offered abilities will both help you initiate combat as well as keep opponents at a good range to swap back and forth between your weapons.

b. Where/ How to use

• This is one of my favorite all around builds to use. It allows for good single player PvE leveling and farming as well as a unique way to PvP. It is by no means the most optimal PvP build but it will throw your opponent off guard.
• Learning to start the fight with your spear throwing ability then quickly switching to your axe to apply conditions is vital to the playstyle of this build.

Icy Hammer

a. Weapons

• Ice Gauntlet
  • Use a mixture of both skill trees for this build. The skills you will need are: Ice Storm, Ice Shower, and Entombed. The ice gauntlet is your setup and utility part of this build.

• War Hammer
  • Use mainly the Juggernaut skill tree. You will want to grab all three skills from this tree. The war hammer is your main damage dealing part of this build.

b. Where/ How to use

• This is a solo PvE build where you expect to run into open world PvP and need to be able to react to a changing or even unknown threat.
• This build requires you to have an ice damage socketed War Hammer. You will also focus your attributes into strength opposed to intelligence. Remember, your damage is mostly coming from the war hammer.
• Fighting with this build is all about getting the chill effect on your opponent either through Ice Shower or Ice Storm. Once they are chilled. Swap to the war hammer and unload a full combo of abilities. You will want to keep swapping back and forth to maintain the chill effect. If things start to go south or you run out of mana use Entomb to get your bearings and plan a strategy.

DoTs for Days

a. Weapons

• Rapier
  1. This build is more nuanced than the other two. The skills you want to use are: Tondo, Flourish and Finish, and Riposte. This is all about PvP survival and maintaining your bleed.

• Fire Staff
  1. For this build you will focus mainly on the Pyromancer tree but also venture into the Fire Mage tree a bit for some passive abilities. The build is all about survival and maintaining your burn DoT.

b. Where/ How to use

• This build is mainly for PvP, however it can be used in PvE as well if you are doing open world PvP.
• Your goal is to stack as many damage over time (DoT) effects on your opponent as possible AND to sustain those effects. To achieve this you need to effectively swap between both weapons as abilities are off cooldown. When everything is on cooldown use your rapier for close range light attacks.

These are by no means the best possible builds you can use in New World. If you are looking for min/max bleeding edge builds there are dozens of sites and databases to find those. Instead I have shown you a few out of the box options. The way New World plays allows us to have some fun with these odd builds. I encourage you to not just copy paste these builds but experiment with them. Tell us how you would improve them or the unique ways you like to play!