Introduction
The fire staff is a mana-based weapon in New World Aeternum that scales with intellect. The fire staff has a great single target and AOE damage making it a solid DPS weapon. In this guide, we will discuss the fire staff’s mastery tree and techniques to optimize the use of this weapon. We will cover all this and more in our New World Fire Staff Guide.
General Information for the Fire Staff in New World
The strength of the fire staff is its ability to deal area of effect damage in many different forms, decent range, ability to utilize light attacks by using zero mana when taking certain passives, and short cooldowns. However it does lack crowd control and self-healing, and it requires the use of skill shots.
The fire staff deals fire damage with light attacks dealing 100% fire damage and heavy attacks dealing 140% fire damage.
The fire staff in New World uses mana when using both light and heavy attacks, and abilities. Light attacks cost no mana and heavy attacks cost 5 mana. Mana does not regenerate while you are attacking, however there are ways to manage your mana, and there are mana potions that can be consumed to recover mana quickly.
Some attacks will apply a burning debuff to the target named Smolder. Smolder applies a percentage of your weapon damage to your target and the damage tick applies every 1 second. Also, smolder provides multiple benefits across the skill tree, buffing damage and increasing burst.
Fire Staff Mastery Trees
The two skill trees for the fire staff are Fire Mage and Pyromancer.
Fire Mage
The fire mage tree is centered around increasing critical strike/damage and improving mana management. The abilities in this tree are a mixture of single target and AoE.
Meteor Shower is a channeled AOE DOT ability with a small amount of built-in sustain, that can allow you to rain down damage on your enemies. Once the channeling is completed, you can’t move the AOE.
Pillar of Fire is an ability that has a medium AOE with a very short cast time. The ability is a skill shot, so it’s possible to miss if you aren’t careful on the cast. However, the cast time is rather short so the chances of having the enemy run out of it in time is small.
Fireball is a high damaging ability that leaves behind an Area of Effect, Burning Field, that does burning damage over time. It can be upgraded to increase the duration of the damage over time.
Passives
The key passive in this tree is the Rune Of Helios. After casting a fire staff ability, Rune of Helios applies a 4m rune to the ground that increased your spell damage by 20% while standing in the Rune. The rune lasts for 7 seconds and has a cool down of 30s, creating a 23-second down time. This combined with the Clear Mind and Clear Casting passives, creates the opportunity to open any fight with a massive amount of damage.
The remaining passives in the fire mage tree are centered around mana management, increased damage and cooldown reduction.
Pyromancer
The Pyromancer skill tree and its passives are centered around Damage over time and Defense. All of the abilities on this side of the tree apply burn and have passives that support the damage over time effects. The three abilities in this tree are Incinerate, Flamethrower, and Burnout.
Incinerate is an AOE ability that affects the area around the player when cast, and also knocks back any enemies inside the AOE. The base ability also adds Grit and adds a smolder stack. Incinerate’s upgrades cause incinerate to double up on smolder, receiving stacking empower of 3% up to 5 stacks for each target hit.
Flamethrower creates a narrow cone AOE that deals 50% of weapon damage each second, catching enemies on fire for 5% weapon damage per second for 6 seconds. With the upgrades, Flamethrower can deal massive amounts of damage over time. When fully upgraded this ability has no cooldown.
Burn Out is a mobility spell that allows players to dash forward, dealing damage to any enemy they hit. Burnout allows you to dash through your targets, dealing both weapon damage and applying smolder. Burnout also reduces the cooldown of your abilities. The final upgrade for the ability also adds an AoE explosion at the end of travel.
Passives
The Key Passive in the Pyromancer is Backdraft. Backdraft will consume all the stacks of smolder on a target when hitting them with a heavy attack if they have 3 or more stacks on them. This triggers an explosion that deals 150% weapon damage to all targets within a 2m radius.
The remaining passives in the Pyromancer tree are centered around increased damage and defense.
Fire Staff Recommended Roles
The recommended roles for the fire staff are DPS and PvP.
The fire staff has many high damaging abilities making it a solid option for a DPS weapon in some expeditions. You can reference our “Damage Type vs Mob Type” guide for more information about which monster types are more susceptible to fire damage. The fire staff also has some very effective AoE and DoT damaging abilities making it an effective source of DPS.
The fire staff is a great option for mid-range PvP. It can be paired with weapons like the Ice Gauntlet to kite your enemies while dealing good amounts of damage. Abilities like flamethrower can be very effective at close range and against melee targets, and the burnout ability can provide your build with good mobility.
For specific DPS and PvP builds you check out the fire staff builds in our builds section.
Recommended Weapon Pairings with the Fire Staff
The Fire Staff scaled primarily off of Intelligence, so pairing the fire staff with another weapon that scales of off Intelligence is recommended. The following weapons are recommended pairings for the fire staff in New World.
Ice Gauntlet – The Ice gauntlet primarily scales off of Intelligence, making this a great pairing with the fire staff. The Ice gauntlet can provide you with additional AoE, mana regeneration, and crowd control.
Void Gauntlet – The void gauntlet primarily scales off of Intelligence and secondarily off of focus, making this a decent pairing with the staff. The void gauntlet can provide you with buffs, debuffs, and AoE damage.
Rapier – The rapier scales primarily off of dexterity and secondarily off of Intelligence, making this an okay pairing with the staff. However, the rapier is a great back bar defensive and mobility weapon.
Blunderbuss – The Blunderbuss scales primarily from Strength and secondly, Intelligence. This gives you the ultimate DPS pairing with the Fire Staff.
You can reference our builds section for specific Fire Staff pairings and builds.
Fire Staff Perks
Every Weapon Ability in New World has a corresponding Perk that can be found on armor and weapons. Most of the perks scale in power with the Gear Score of the item they are on. It’s important to note that you can only benefit from one instance of a weapon ability perk at a time. You can obtain the weapon perks randomly from drops or you can craft gear with the specific perk on it. You can enhance your chance at obtaining a specific perk by utilizing timeless shards.
Some perks can be applied to both weapons and armor. Other perks can only be applied to one or the other. There are also weapon-specific perks for each weapon. Weapon-specific perks have increased effectiveness if they are applied to your weapon vs your armor. However, there are situations where you do not want to have the weapon perk on your weapon, but instead on your armor.
You can reference our builds section for specific fire staff pairings and builds.
Fire Staff Perks & Crafting Mods
| Weapon Ability Perk | Description | Armor | Weapon | Crafting Mods |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Accelerating Flamethrower | Using flamethrower against a target with 4 stacks of smolder grants Haste, increasing movement speed by X% for 2s. Burn from Flamethrower lasts X% longer. | 20% / 16% | 20% / 20% | Reinforced Starmetal Fire Staff Charm |
| Empowering Incinerate | Incinerate deals +X% damage to targets with Burn. | 20% | 40% | Reinforced Steel Fire Staff Charm |
| Fortifying Burnout | Burnout applies a stack of X% Fortify for 5s for each target hit (Max 3 stacks). | 13% | 22% | Reinforced Orichalcum Fire Staff Charm |
| Refreshing Pillar of Fire | Reduce Pillar of Fire’s cooldown by X% per hit (Max 2 hits). | 10% | 16% | Steel Fire Staff Charm |
| Empowering Meteor Shower | When Meteor Shower hits, gain X% Empower for 6s (Max 10 stacks). | 2.1% | 3% | Starmetal Fire Staff Charm |
| Empowering Fireball | Fireball impact deals X% damage, and an additional X% to targets above 50% Health. | 8% / 12% | 14% / 21% | Orichalcum Fire Staff Charm |
Recommended Fire Staff Gems
The type of gem you will want to slot into your fire staff is heavily dependent upon your build and what you’re trying to accomplish. It’s also going to vary based on PvP vs PvE activities You can check our quick reference guide for gems for a full list of gems and their effects.
Enemy types the Fire Staff is strong/weak against
Angry Earth are the monsters most affected by fire damage. Fire also does the most damage to them than any other damage type in the game. Also, check our Damage Type vs Mob Types Quick Chart guide as a complete breakdown for every weapon.
- Angry Earth: Takes 30% MORE damage from fire attacks
New World Fire Staff Guide Conclusion
That concludes our New World Fire Staff Guide. Also, for more on where to level your Fire Staff, check out our Weapon Leveling Locations. For more New World Aeternum guides be sure to check our comprehensive guide library!