Introduction

This New World sword shield and hatchet build is intended for PvP. It is most suitable for outpost rush and 3v3 PvP arenas. This build excels at pressuring your opponents and dishing out high amounts of sustained damage. You can single out targets and take them down quickly.

Pros

• High single target damage
• Good mobility
• Decent single target crowd control
• Good survivability

Cons

• Lack of AoE abilities
• Can be burst down

Mastery Points

Sword and Shield

For this build you will utilize the sword and shield for a very good gap closer (or escape), to stun your target, to weaken your target, block, and to gain fortify and empowerment buffs. The recommended abilities are:

Leaping Strike

Shield Bash

Shield Rush

Leaping strike is a very strong gap closing ability. It has a very quick animation making it tough to dodge or predict. You will want to upgrade it fully in order to take advantage of the increased damage and slow the upgrades provide.

You only want to upgrade shield bash once. The increased duration of the stun does not help the build. Once you hit a stunned opponent they are free from the cc. Therefore, the increased duration will not help you set up kills or have much value. You will want to save that point for an additional passive that will have more value to the build.

Shield rush will provide you with some additional cc to help you control your opponent. It also provides you with some decent damage, and weakens your target. You will want to upgrade this ability further in order to enhance the cc capabilities even more with the slow the final upgrade provides.

Most of you passives will be placed into the swordmaster side of the tree. This is done so you can enhance you damage and reach the key passive called leadership. Leadership will increase your and your group’s damage by 10%.

The remaining passives you are going to take will enhance your damage and your damage mitigation.

Hatchet

For this build you are going to utilize your hatchet for damage, crowd control breaks, an additional dodge, and self sustain. The recommended active abilities for the hatchet are the following:

Feral Rush

Berserk

Social Distancing

Berserk is the staple of your hatchet abilities. You will want to fully upgrade this ability. By doing so you will gain additional speed, lifesteal, crowd control break upon activation, and uninterruptible attacks. You will want to upgrade Feral Rush to maximum as well. This will provide you with additional damage from the ability and root if you hit your target in the back.

Social distancing is a great ability to get yourself out of gravity wells and help dodge other abilities. You will want to upgrade it once to take advantage of the haste it provides when hitting your a target with an active debuff.

The hatchet has low blocking stability making this an ineffective weapon to block with. Therefore, you will want to forego your block in place of the aimed throw passive. This will provide you with a decent mid range option that can be used to take down fleeing targets. It can also be utilized to deal some poke damage at targets trying to kite you. You can utilize your shield to block attacks.

You will also want to take the defy death key passive or ultimate. This passive is incredibly strong. You can utilize to bait opponents into being overly aggressive, or get your self out of sticky situations.

The remaining passives will help increase your damage and mitigation.

Attributes

Both the hatchet and sword scale primarily from strength and secondarily from dexterity. Therefore, we are going to utilize a split stat option for this build.

You will want to push into 350 strength, 100 dexterity, and 150 constitution. This will give you tons of damage and some great bonuses from the attributes.

You have quite a lot of fortification, self healing, and defy death built into this build, so it’s not necessary to push constitution any higher. The main reason for 150 constitution is to ensure you are not blown up by critical hits.

Equipment

In this section of the Build, we will break down what equipment you will use. This includes armor perks, weapon perks, and equip weight.

You will want to be in the light equip weight category. This gives you additional damage and mobility with the light dodge roll. The way to obtain light equip weight for this build is the following:

Light chest, helmet, gloves, legs, and boots.

Round Shield

Barrier to Entry

Obtaining best in slot gear can is very difficult. The below recommendations are what you should shoot for, however, if you’re just getting started with the sword shield and hatchet build you would want 5 stacks of Health and the weapon perks of empowering leaping strike and fortifying shield rush. Ideally you will want to get empowering leaping strike on your sword at some point.

This will allow you to be competitive as you progress into better gear.

Armor

Artifact Armor

Currently, we recommend the following pieces of armor:

• Featherweight (Chest) – Weightless: This armor is weightless. Weightless allows you to potentially wear slightly heavier pieces while staying light, however, providing more resistances.
• Tumbler Footwraps (Boots) – Shirking Blessing: Successfully dodging an attack, gives you 15% empower and 25% fortify for 5s, you are also healed for 200 + 2% of your max hp.

Most of the armor you need to run the sword shield and hatchet build will be obtained through crafting or random drops. Below are the recommended perks for your setup:

• Freedom (4)
• Refreshing (4)
• Elemental Aversion (4)
• Crippling Feral Rush
• Diminishing Shield Bash (optional – replace with Elemental Aversion if not wanted unless you use Tumbler Feetwraps)

One of the key abilities to this build is your leaping strike. You will want to get empowering leaping strike on your sword versus your armor for the increased damage that you will receive when performing this ability. However, if you obtain a really good sword like the sword of the champion, having it on your armor is fine. It is a must have perk either way.

Fortifying shield rush is also a perk you will want on your shield versus your armor for increased fortify you will receive.

Refreshing will greatly help with your cooldown reduction. Having Berserk up as much as possible in order to CC break when needed or potentially life steal to stay alive during the fight is important. Also being able to utilize your leaping strike quicker is key as well.

Crippling feral rush will give you another nice slow to allow you to stay on your targets much easier. This will synergize well with the sword slows from you passives allowing you stay on your target with your light attacks.

Fortifying shield rush coupled with procing fortify with some of the shield perks will make you fairly tank despite being in light armor. Diminishing shield bash can be nice as well in order to reduce the buff durations of your opponent. This is useful for reducing the uptime of empower and fortify that you opponents may have.

Shield

You will be utilizing a round shield in this sword shield and hatchet build. The perks you will be shooing for on the shield are fortifying shield rush, refreshing, enchanted, keenly jagged.

If you can not craft the shield you can obtain several random round shield drops from running expeditions. They often drop with good perks. The perk pool for round shields is not huge so it’s fairly easy to obtain a good one.

Weapons

Artifact Weapon

Currently, most Artifact Weapons are not fantastic for this build. However, Freya’s Francisca, the Artifact Hatchet can be okay.

Hatchet

For your hatchet the following are all great options listed in order:

(1) Berserker’s Axe – PvP reward track (Recommended)

(2) The Tiger’s Instinct – Dropped from Borvarn

(2) Dreadwake – Farmed from the Dynasty Shipyard Expedition (mutated version only)

(3) Driftwood – Farmed from the Barnacles and Black Powder Expedition.

(4) Accursed End – Farmed from the Dynasty Shipyard Expedition (mutated version only)

Sword

Ideally you will want to have Empowering Leaping Strike on your sword or have the sword of the champion. Along with the weapon perk you would also want to shoot for Rogue and Refreshing Move.

If you can not obtain the above then you would want to have empowering leaping strikes on your armor in place of a refreshing move perk. There are some great alternatives that you can farm versus craft:

(1) Sword of the Champion – PvP reward track (Recommended)

(2) Slicing Zephyr

(3) Primordial Edge

Jewelry

Amulet – Shirking Empower, Divine, Health A good alternate option that is farmable is the Blessing of Forefathers Amulet. It can be farmed from the Depths mutation. For an artifact, we highly recommend “Ankh”.

Ring – For your ring, you would ideally want Mortal Empowerment, Slash Damage, and Hearty.

However, if you can’t get your hands on one then you can farm out Smooth Bone Ring from the Caretaker in Garden of Genesis or the Featherweight Ring from the Lazarus Instrumentality. However, you would ideally want slash damage on your ring in place of keen awareness. For that reason, both Herald’s Finger Curse and the Forgotten Vow are great options as well.

Earring – For your earring, you can farm out the Doom’s Chance from the Lazarus Instrumentality Expedition. However, you ideally would want to shoot for Nimble in place of Regenerating for the earring. “Endless Thirst” is a great Artifact choice too.

Gems

The types of gems you will depend upon the PVP meta. If in doubt, Onyx in your armor is the best choice since physical damage is the most prevalent damage type in New World. 

For your weapons you will want to slot an opal in both. You will be dodging quite a lot so the opal will enhance your damage output.

Runeglass Gem Upgrades

For you runeglass gems you would want to utilize the punishing variant to deal additional damage with your melee attacks.

Heartgem Rune

The heartgem rune of choice for this build is the Cunning Heartrune of Detonate. You can activate the heartrune and gain empowerment. This will allow you to start your combo with a lot of increased damage and then gain additional burst on the explosion of the detonate rune.

Consumables

You’ll want to utilize the following consumables for this build:

Honing Stone

Infused Health Potion

Infused Regeneration Potion

Hearty Meal

Banana Pudding

Along with a stat food depending on your attribute distribution from your gear. You can check a full list of consumables by checking out our consumables guide.

How to Use Build

This build is centered around high pressure high single target gameplay. You will want to open up with your leaping strike. Ideally you will want to hit your opponent in the back for massive opening damage. When hit in the back you do additional damage from your rogue or penetrating backstab perks and empowering leaping strike will enhance the damage even more.

Once your target has been hit with leaping strike they will likely dodge roll away. If they do, you then need to dodge roll after them and hit them with your shield rush. This will weaken them and grant you fortify giving you some much needed tankiness. You’ll then follow up with a shield bash, stunning the target. From here, switch to your hatchet, roll around to the back of your target and land your feral rush.

You will only want to utilize your social distancing to get out of CC or to create a gap between you and your opponent.

If you are caught in a crowd control ability during the fight you can utilize your berserk to break free. However, if you have already baited out all your opponents CC options then utilize the berserk for additional damage output and life stealing.

If you’re caught in a sticky situation you can also utilize your leaping strike to get away. You will utilize your shield to block attacks. It’s important to utilize during a fight to gain your empower and fortify stacks from your passives that you have taken. However, it is very easy to have your block broken leaving you vulnerable so make sure you are always aware of your stamina.

Also bear in mind that landing a heavy attack with the sword will also give you the empower buff. If you can weave one in during a fight that would be ideal.