Below is a running list of changes for each patch for all things relating to the Sword and Shield in New World. The most recent patch is listed first and then in descending order by date.

July Update Summer Medleyfair – July 27th, 2022

• Fixed an issue that caused Defensive Formation to not trigger when you blocked immediately after dodging.
• Fixed an issue that caused sword heavy attacks to not obtain Grit from the 300 Strength Attribute bonus throughout the duration of the attack.
• Updated Defiance Stance ability description to correctly match the 8s taunt duration.
• Fixed an issue that caused the longsword’s Empowered Whirling Blade to not provide any more bonuses until the weapon is re-equipped after failing to hit 3 targets at the same time.
• Fixed an issue that caused the sheathing Sword/Shield animation to pause when players started to run.
• Fixed an issue that caused players to gain an armor bonus from the Shield without having a Sword equipped.
• Leaping Strike: Adjusted hitstun and recovery so that it is no longer a guaranteed combo with other attacks.
• Cowardly Punishment: Removed backstab condition and reduced Slow from 50% for 8s to 30% for 3s.

May Arenas Patch – May 26th, 2022

• Leaping Strike: Fixed an issue where this ability triggered two stacks of the “Blood Offering” mutator effect.

April Bugs and Balance Patch – April 25th, 2022

• Fixed a desync that could occur when the camera swung quickly at the start of the Whirling Blade ability.
• Fixed an issue where shield attribute bonuses were only applied when the sword and shield were unsheathed. You still need to have a sword equipped in order to gain shield bonuses.

Heart of Madness Patch – March 30th, 2022

• Leadership: Fixed an issue which caused this passive to deal durability damage to the equipped weapon when swapping.
• Leaping Strike: This ability now ends early if it traverses into deep water.
• Counter Attack: Fixed an issue that caused this ability to stop functioning and display 0s for all of its values.

Bug Fixes Patch – February 28th, 2022

• Shield Rush: The hitbox of this ability has been moved closer to the player to prevent situations where the the ability could hit targets that appeared to be out of range. The distance traveled by the rush has been increased to compensate for this loss of range.
  • Reverse Stab:
    • Tactician: This upgrade will no longer reduce the cooldown of Reverse Stab. It will still reduce the cooldown of other sword abilities when triggered.
  • Leaping Strike:
    • The leaping and attacking portions of this ability now have separate properties for their homing and movement in order to improve the overall accuracy based on distance.
    • Adjusted homing for better translation against distant targets.
    • Adjusted homing for more accurate and consistent tracking against closer targets.

Mutators Patch – January 25th, 2022

• Fixed an issue causing desyncs when using shield bash while moving.

Winter Convergence Patch – December 16, 2021

• Heavy Attack: Reduced recovery time by .15s.

Into the Void Patch – November 18th, 2021

• Fixed an issue where basic attack buffers and cancels weren’t working properly during the Sword heavy attack.
• Fixed an issue where the fully-charged Sword heavy attack had different timings than the regular heavy attack.
• Shield Rush
  • Improved Rush: Increased Weaken duration from 4s to 10s.
• Leaping Strike
  • Reduced cooldown from 25s to 18s.
  • Increased damage scaling from 135% to 150%.
  • Sped up the recovery after using Leaping Strike to make it easier to transition into other attacks.
  • Cowardly Punishment: Updated the description to include the slow percentage value.