The best spear build in New World

The spear has the largest range of any of the melee weapons available for players to use in Amazon Studios’ new MMO project, New World.

While other melee weapons with long reach like the great axe and the warhammer are focused on crowd control via wide swings and slashing damage, players who use the spear dish out thrust damage. But there are just as many viable options when it comes to crowd control or high damage output via the spear’s two skill trees: Zoner (crowd control) and Impaler (damage).

Just picking up a sharp spear and heading out to conquer this new world won’t ensure your success, however. You’ll want to put together the best complete build, which includes putting points in the right attributes, equipping the right armor and secondary weapon, and selecting the best active abilities from your weapon mastery trees.

Here’s everything you need to know to make the best spear build in New World.

Personal attributes

Dexterity is the primary statistic needed for players using the spear and should be the stat where you dump most if not all of your attribute points upon leveling up. Like with other builds, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to spend a couple of points every few levels on Constitution, just to keep your health looking good. But Dexterity is going to be your primary focus.

Once your Dex is maxed, then you can start investing points in Strength, the secondary attribute for using the spear. If you’re eyeing the Impaler tree and its damage-over-time abilities, you might want to consider balancing the distribution of your points between Strength and Dexterity.

Secondary weapon and armor

With the spear, you’ll be dealing lots of thrust damage while using abilities that emphasize either crowd control or extensive damage over time. For a secondary weapon, you’ll want something that either gives you some extended range or some defensive prowess. And with your attributes favoring Dexterity already, you have some viable options to pick from.

The musket’s crowd control tree, Trapper, is arguably the best option along with the spear’s damage-over-time tree of Impaler. With trap and knockback passive abilities, ability upgrades that can heal yourself and slow enemies, it has everything you need to pair with a spear ability set that’s focused solely on rending and devastating your opponents.

If you’re more inclined to use the Zoner tree for spears and focus more on stunning and staggering your opponents, then you’ll want a secondary focused more on melting your opponents once they’re knocked down. With a high Dexterity, something like the bow’s Skirmisher tree, the musket’s Sharpshooter tree, or the rapier’s Blood tree would be a great second option to inflict lots of damage on stunned opponents.

For armor, it will depend on which spear mastery tree you prefer, but Light or Medium armor weight will be the way to go. A Light armor weight would give you a 20-percent damage bonus, ideal for those focused on the spear’s damage-over-time abilities. A Medium armor weight gives you a 10-percent damage boost, but also causes your crowd control debuffs to last 10 percent longer, which is ideal for players using the Zoner skills.

Spear weapon mastery

The active abilities available in the spear mastery tree give you the choice of either going all-in with damage-over-time or crowd control or let you mix and match between the two.

From the Impaler tree, the name of the game is damage over time. Perforate is a flurry of three strikes that each deal 70-percent damage and rend the opponent so they absorb more damage, making it an ideal combat starter, especially with its upgrades. Skewer is a great follow-up, dealing 125-percent damage and causing the enemy to bleed for 10 seconds. Finally, Vault Kick sends your character forward to kick your target, dealing 75-percent weapon damage and causing a 1.5-second stun.

With the Zoner tree, your active abilities will keep your opponents stunned and staggered. Cyclone is a spinning attack that deals 100-percent weapon damage, pushes opponents back, and slows them for three seconds. Javelin lets you throw your spear, dealing 125-percent damage and staggering an enemy. Sweep knocks an enemy down while dealing 75-percent damage.

The ideal ability set should include Perforate, Skewer, and one of the crowd control abilities. Sweep disrupts the enemy for the longest time but doesn’t do as much damage. Javelin does more damage and can be upgraded to knock down enemies too, making it a viable third option in the spear ability rotation.