New World Weapon Mastery Guide Part 4 – Spear

Welcome to Part Four of the weapon mastery guide that I’m putting together for the new MMO from Amazon, New World. Today we’re going to look at the two-handed weapon, the Spear. If you’re unfamiliar with how weapon mastery works or is going to work when the game launches in late August, essentially, the more that you use a specific weapon type, the more experience your character will earn towards the weapon’s mastery. Once you hit certain checkpoints while gaining experience, you’ll be rewarded with points to augment your weapon and character’s performance with skills and passives based on that weapon type.

The purpose of having these guides prior to the game’s launch, based on information that MGN was able to obtain during our time with the invitational beta of the game, is so that players can plan how their character will be specced with a particular weapon.

Why is this necessary? Well, the weapon mastery system isn’t as straightforward as “power-level a specific weapon until you unlock all the perks”, no. You won’t be able to unlock every single thing in both skills trees for your weapon and you’ll have to choose between them based on their performance and your playstyle.

So, I’ve decided to put out overviews and guides on every single weapon type in the game. That way, you can plan which pathway you would like your character to go down, evaluate your options for your chosen weapon, and just have a general idea of what’s on offer in the game.

Over the course of the series, we’ll be looking at every weapon type that is available and how to accentuate them with your statistical decisions. So, if we haven’t covered your preferred weapon or character archetype yet, fear not! I’m going to do them all!

A speared explorer attacks a bear in the woods outside of a fort
Keep the enemy at arm’s length and dish out the hurt with your Spear!

Now that we’ve tackled the why, and how you can use the guide, let’s look at the actual weapon. The Spear, in general, has a very long attack length even for regular attacks and can take advantage at melee range any of the potential crowd control you can dish out in the game. Keep the enemy far enough with your CC and attack from arm’s length with your long-ass spear – perfect combination!

As far as statistical attributes that you should be aiming for, if you’ve decided to wield a spear as your main weapon, the spear will benefit most from having a high Dexterity stat but having Strength from your weapons or level choices will help as well, just not as much as Dexterity would. Along with those two, it’s never a bad idea to grab some Constitution along the way or take it up in items, because if you’re within melee range, you don’t want to be taking heavy damage every time you’re close to an enemy.

As far as your secondary weapon goes, I’ll have to go with the Musket for a few reasons:

  • The first being that you can pull mobs to yourself with the Musket shot, and by doing so engage in multiple mobs at the same time, and engage a closer mob with your Spear. This is great because you can be fighting several enemies at the same time with your Spear’s AoE Skills.
  • The second is that using the Musket as your secondary will give you access to the “Trapper” tree, which provides roots and slows that will GREATLY aid in keeping your foes at arms length whilst you engage them with your lengthy spear skills and attacks

The skills trees for Spears are very telling in their name and how that tree’s playstyle will go down:

The leftmost is referred to as “Zoner” and how that is applied is pretty varied. This tree has your AoE pushes, your Crowd Control effects, and those at-length abilities that I mentioned earlier that go well with the Musket’s root, with the throwing of your spear. (Just as cool as it sounds.)

Spears have some of the best weapon design in New World!

The rightmost tree is referred to as “Impaler” and as the name suggests, this tree focuses more on getting closer to your foes to put the Spear through them in the most gruesome way possible. This tree’s abilities are about getting your character on top of the foe, and then following up with debilitating debuffs and high damage attacks.

We’re going to take a look at the active abilities of the Zoner skill tree first, and then the augmentations that you can select along with those actives, before swapping over to the Impaler tree and doing the same, and then going over the passives for both of those trees:

Zoner


Active Skill 1: Javelin

Throw your spear and deal 125.0% to the enemy, whilst also inflicting stagger.

Cooldown: 15 Seconds


Javelin Augments:

Forceful Impact

Targets who are hit are knocked down.



Refreshing Precision

Headshots with the Javelin reduce its cooldown by 50.0%.



Deadly Distance

Additional 2.50% damage per meter the Javelin travels – to a max of an extra 100.00%.


Active Skill 2: Sweep

Sweep the target enemy’s legs out, dealing 75.0% weapon damage and knocking them down.

Cooldown: 10 Seconds


Sweep Augments:

Tenacious Sweep

Sweep gains GRIT, becoming unblockable.



Coup de Grace

Pressing light attack during the Sweep animation will cause the player to follow up with a powerful stab that deals 125.0% weapon damage.


Active Skill 3: Cyclone

A spinning attack that deals 100.0% weapon damage to enemies in the AoE, pushing them back 3.0% and applying a 50.0% slow for 3.0s.

Cooldown: 12 Seconds


Cyclone Augments:

Invigorating Combo

Restored 25.0 stamina per enemy hit with the Cyclone AoE.



Strong momentum

Applies GRIT to the Cyclone, making it unblockable.


Impaler


Active Skill 1: Skewer

Rush forward and Skewer the target with your spear, dealing 125.0% weapon damage and applying bleed – enemy suffers 10.0% weapon damage every second for 10.0 seconds.

Cooldown: 15 Seconds


Skewer Augments:

Deadly Ambush

Deal an additional 20.0% damage with Skewer against targets who are at full health.



Follow Through

Gain empower on Skewer critical hits, increasing your damage done by 20.0% for 10.0 seconds.



Deep Wounds

Bleed duration of Skewer increased to 15.0 seconds.


Active Skill 2: Perforate

Three quick piercing stabs that each deal 70.0% weapon damage and apply rend – reduces the target’s damage absorbption by 5.0% for 10.0%.

Cooldown: 15 Seconds.


Perforate Augments:

Rupturing Strikes

Rend reduction increased to 10.0% per Perforate stab against targets that have 50.0% or more health.



Impactful Strikes

Enemies hit with Perforate are staggered if hit with all three stabs.


Active Skill 3: Vault Kick

Use your Spear to prop you for a vaulting kick at your target, dealing 75.0% weapon damage and applying stun to the enemy hit for 1.50 seconds.

Cooldown: 15 Seconds


Vault Kick Augments:

Relentless Blows

Gain empower when you hit an enemy with Vault Kick that is below 50.0% health, increase your damage dealt by 20.0% for 5.0 seconds.



Continuous Motion

Cooldown for all other spear actives are reduced by 30.0% when you land a Vault Kick.


Passives


Refreshing Reach

Successful heavy attacks reduce all Spear cooldowns by 15.0%



Deadly Consistency

Additional 10.0% damage on consecutive heavy attacks against the same target.



Invigorating Criticals

Restore 20.0 Stamina with each critical hit.



Strong Conditioning

Additional 30.0% Stamina regeneration when Stamina is below 50.0%.



Deadly Reach

Additional critical hit chance with attacks on targets that are more than 3.0 meters away. (Just as insanely good as it sounds.)



Evasive Maneuvers

Dodging backwards consumes 20.0% less Stamina for 2.0 seconds after landing an attack.



Merciless Strength

Additional 25.0% damage against targets that are knocked down.



Defensive Stance

Gain fortify after landing a heavy attack, increasing damage absorption by 15.0% for 2.0 seconds.



Reserve Strength

Additional 25.0% damage whilst Stamina is full.



Precise Jabs

Additional 5.0% to critical chance on light attacks.



Crippling Jabs

The last hit of your light attack combo applies a 30.0% slow for 3.0 seconds when hitting targets below 30.0% chance.



Unerring Precision

Additional 20.0% damage against targets affected by GRIT.



Exacerbating Criticals

Landing a critical hit on an enemy will extend the duration of your debuffs and damage over time effects by 20.0%.



Refreshing Jabs

All Spear cooldowns are reduced by 10.0% on the second attack in a light attack combo.



Finishing Blows

Additional 15.0% damage against enemies with less than 30.0% health.



Aggressive Maneuvers

Landing an active within 2.0 seconds of dodging an attack will reduce all Spear active cooldowns by 20.0%.



Exposed Wounds

Additional 15.0% chance to land a critical hit when attacking targets with bleed.



Exploited Weakness

Additional 10.0% damage against a target, per active debuff – maxed at 30.0%.



Closing

That just about wraps things up for our overview of the Spear mastery for Amazon’s new MMO, New World. We hope that you’ve found the information useful in planning out your character and hope to see you online! If you have any suggestions or comments, we’d love to hear from you on the MGN.gg blog, our YouTube channel, of course, the new MGN Twitter @MGN_TV, and our Discord – links for all of which can be found within the description of the video overview.


Read Next:

New World Weapon Mastery Guide Part 5 – Hatchet

Credits

ProgramFounding Writers
AuthorLuke Cowling
PublisherMGN
GameNew World

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