Life Staff/Hatchet PvE Build New World

Build Written By: Dottz Gaming – PC NA

Role: Healer

Purpose: PvE

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Setup
   1. Gear
   2. Attributes
   3. Skill Tree
   4. Consumables & Heartgem
3. Rotation & Tips
4. Contact Info
5. Update Log

Introduction

Welcome to DottzGaming.com’s Life Staff Hatchet New World PvE Build! This build is intended for general overland PvE and expeditions!

The Life Staff is the primary healing weapon in New World, so every healing build will have it equipped. Where a lot of the flexibility comes in is with the secondary weapon. For this setup, we decided to pair the Life Staff with the Hatchet, due to it being a strong weapon that brings a ton of benefits to the table, and allows us to play solo. This build is setup to play both in groups and solo content; all of the healing abilities are focused around healing an area, making sure we can keep as many of our allies healed up as possible, while the hatchet is oriented towards giving us as much damage as possible!

Keep in mind that builds are very personal. This is what worked for ME. If you don’t like something about it, change it to fit your playstyle.

Setup

Gear

NOTE: Ward refers to any of the defensive wards for mob types, such as “Corrupted Ward.” More details can be found below under “Perks.”

Gear Explanation

• Equipment Load (Light): Light armor, in my opinion, is the best equipment load for the build. Light armor gives us the biggest increase to healing, plus access to a very strong dodge roll. Even thought medium and heavy armor give more defense, the healing throughput and dodge roll i-frames outweigh the raw mitigation.
• Name/Set: We run a combination of set types in order to help us hit 3 attribute breakpoints: 200 focus, 100 strength and 100 constitution. While leveling, focus on Focus, while making sure you have at least 50 constitution for the boost to your consumables.
• Perks: For jewelry, Health tends to be the best Amulet Perk to help pad your max HP. Refreshing Toast is used for our Earring Perk, to allow us to use our potions much more frequently, thus increasing our HP/MP sustain by a ton. Finally, we go with Keen Awareness on our ring for more crit chance. We choose our defensive ward perk based on the PvE instance we are doing (mob type we will be fighting), and Refreshing for some cooldown reduction! In terms of skill perks, we want to utilize Fortifying Sacred Ground to keep high fortify uptime on people we heal! Otherwise, we want whatever other skill perks we can get to enhance the capabilities of our build. Secondary perks to consider would be freedom, vigor, invigorated, elemental aversion, and physical aversion. Weapon wise, you want Blessed for your healing weapons, and on offensive/utility weapons you want the bane perk for the mob type you’re fighting. The other weapon perks are up to personal choice!
• Gems: For this setup, we went for a mixture of Malachite and Diamond gems in the armor. This will give us boosts physical damage reduction and elemental damage absorption, giving us a good spread of damage reduction for the game’s varied enemy types. We also use 1 Carnelian gem to make sure we keep our aggro low, so we arent attacked by enemies while healing. Amber is used for primary focus stat scaling on our Hatchet, while the Diamond is used to help give us a healing boost on our life staff bar.

Attributes

All points into Focus.

Skill Tree

NOTE: Click here to view the skill tree calculator.

Consumables & Heartgem

• Heartgem
  • Cunning Heartrune of Stoneform
• Consumables
  • Health Potion
  • Regeneration Potion
  • Focus Food
  • Mana Potion

Rotation & Tips

• While healing with your life staff, your goal is to cycle between your AoE heals as your allies require healing. Every heal in the build is an AoE, so you’ll always be able to heal multiple people at once! If your healing abilities are down and someone still needs help, use your light attacks to heal your allies. If no one currently need healing, weave in heavy attacks against your enemies to proc the Intensify passive, allowing any future heals to get a significant power boost!
• The Hatchet offers a lot of self healing, CC immunity, and even a cheat death effect. Utilize Berserk to break yourself out of crowd control, heal yourself, increase your damage and make yourself uninterruptable (since it has so many effects, use it as the situation calls for it). Once you’re buffed with Berserk, use Rending Throw to apply Rend to your opponents, followed up by Feral Rush to get on top of your opponent.
• As you start taking damage, use your regeneration potion. This will help keep your health topped off.
• When you take a big burst of damage, use your health potion to help recover!
• If you are in a desperate need for health and your potions are on cooldown, get some distance from your opponent and eat food. As long as you dont take damage, your health will quickly regenerate. Once your health gets to a respectable amount or a potion comes off of cooldown, feel free to re-enter the fight!
• When your mana gets low, use your mana potion!

Contact

If you have any questions about the build, join our discord server and ask @Dottz about the build!

Update Log

10/21/2021 – Build created
1/1/2022- build perks added
9/19/2022 – updated gear
5/8/2023- heartgem added