As you level up in New World, you’ll likely be spending lots of time picking up new weapons and experimenting with them. As you level up your various mastery trees, you’ll have the benefit of being able to respec your attributes at any time for free, up to level 20.
At the end of the day, or more accurately at the end of your lengthy queue, you should play with the weapons and style that best suits you. But if you and your party or company find yourselves preparing for some of the endgame activities like Expeditions, Invasions, and Outpost Rushes, you’ll need players to start taking on the traditional roles of tank, healer, and DPS.
For those looking to deal as much damage per second, there are a plethora of weapon mastery trees built with this purpose in mind—and several of them mesh together quite nicely. Here’s a list of some of the best DPS builds you can make in New World.
Pure Strength – Greataxe (Reaper) and Warhammer (Juggernaut)
This one is a personal favorite of mine and one you can make very powerful early on because it focuses on just one attribute: Strength. Wielding both a Greataxe and a Warhammer simultaneously may seem like overkill, but the damage output potential is absurd and the combos are oh so satisfying.
For the Greataxe, your active abilities should be Charge, Execute, and Whirlwind. Charge is a great initiator, with upgrades that increase damage while its quick activation lets you get some more attacks off right away. Execute is essential for the late stages of fights since it deals extra damage to opponents under 50-percent health. Whirlwind upgraded with Gusting Winds can deal up to 350-percent damage and it will rinse through groups of enemies when fully upgraded.
As for your War Hammer, stick to the Juggernaut tree and its active abilities of Armor Breaker, Might Gavel, and Wrecking Ball. Armor Breakers obviously is tremendous against armored enemies, Might Gavel’s final upgrade Justice For All is wildly powerful, and Wrecking Ball gives you a crowd control effect that will help your solo play as well.
Shooty Speary – Spear (Impaler) and Musket (Sharpshooter)
For something with a little more range, the Spear and Musket combo is another excellent choice and will require you to focus your attribute points on Dexterity, with an occasional point or two placed in Strength and Intelligence.
Your Musket should be your opening weapon, letting you deal a plethora of damage before your target even reaches you with various damage-over-time effects. The Sharpshooter tree is your best path to this goal with the Power Shot, Powder Burn, and Shooting Stance abilities. Power Shot and Powder Burn’s overload effects don’t stack, but they’re both exceptionally viable and all three are even deadlier when upgraded. If your aim feels especially crisp, grab the passive ability upgrades that reward headshots.
If you’re light on ammo or your target has closed the distance, then it’s time to switch to your Impaler-tree Spear. Skewer and Perforate are great skills to open with since they drastically increase your damage over time with Bleed and Rend effects. Vault Kick doesn’t have the best damage output, but its Empower and cooldown reduction upgrades are must-haves.
Poke and Smoke – Rapier (Grace/Blood) and Fire Staff
This build is another great option that allows for ranged damage and high damage over time. It requires you to split your points between Dexterity and Intelligence.
Burn them all using the Fire Staff with Pillar of Fire and Fireball from the Fire Mage tree, and Burn Out. An upgraded Pillar of Fire is the perfect ability to initiate with due to its bonus against full health enemies, and both Fireball and Burn Out have great damage-over-time numbers.
For pure damage with the Rapier, you’ll want to ditch the evasive maneuvers and adopt a rotation of Tondo, Flurry, then Flourish and Finish. This trio has a high damage output and the upgrades are all designed to reduce cooldowns, turning you in a relentless poking machine. There are a great set of passive abilities in the Blood tree as well.
DPS gear
When it comes to gear, go with a light armor build to get that overall damage percentage increase. When you get into Stonecutting, you’ll want to equip weapons with gemstones like Malachite, Opal, or Diamond. For armor, you’ll definitely want to equip yourself with Carnelian to reduce your threat output.
