For those of you that enjoy supporting and keeping your teammates alive in New World, rather than ensuring that your foes aren’t, the Life Staff is for you.
If you’ve played as a healer in other games, then the support character role that the Life Staff revolves around is going to feel very familiar in terms of: dealing AoE heals, cleansing/dispelling debuffs and damage over time effects, providing nuke heals, and applying various buffs and boons to your allies. So, if you enjoy playing characters like Mercy in Overwatch, White Mage in Final Fantasy, Enchantress in Dota 2, or the Priest in World of Warcraft, then investing in the Life Staff skill trees is going to be exactly what you’re looking for gameplay-wise.
The weapon mastery system within New World allows the player to pick and choose between two different skill trees for their chosen weapon. Rather than selecting a class and then having your skills based on choices within that class, New World is much less restrictive, allowing for the wielding of two weapons and their corresponding skill trees to mix and match from.
This doesn’t mean that two players who choose the same weapons will perform exactly the same since even with completely leveling a weapon to max, you will not have enough points to select every skill, augment, and passive from both skill trees. So, your skill preferences will set you apart from other Life Staff-wielding players.
In that vein, I have decided to put together overviews for each of the weapons and their skill trees, based on information gathered during the closed beta. That allows players, like myself, who enjoy planning a build the opportunity to see each of the skills that are offered and make their priority and skill slot decision prior to the game’s launch next month.
Over the course of the series, we’ll be looking at every weapon type that’s available and how to accentuate them with your statistical decisions. So, if we haven’t covered your preferred weapon type or character archetype yet, fear not! I’m going to do them all!
As far as the attribute that’s going to make your Life Staff more potent, the weapon relies purely on the Focus attribute and gains no benefit from Strength, Dexterity, or even Intelligence.

While it’s true that the Life Staff is the only weapon that scales off of the Focus attribute, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t worth investing in if you have an Intelligence-based character. So, if you want to use the Life Staff as a secondary weapon to either the Ice Gauntlet or the Fire Staff, well, you won’t be wasting points investing in Focus where you could be spending them on your primary weapon’s scaling attribute in Intelligence.
Why is this the case, and how does Focus help a weapon class that benefits solely from Intelligence? Through the benefits that come from having a high Focus stat:
- 50 Focus: +10% mana regeneration rate, +10% fishing line tension.
- 100 Focus: +20 to mana pool, +10% yield increase when salvaging.
- 150 Focus: +20% healing output, -10% decrease in weight of fishing items.
- 200 Focus: +20% duration on casted buffs, +10% fishing line tension.
- 250 Focus: +30 mana on any self or group kill, +10% increase to caught fish size.
- 300 Focus: When mana hits zero gain 200% mana regen for 10s (60s cooldown), 10% cooldown reduction for Inn fast travel.
As you can see, not all of these benefits will apply specifically to your Intelligence-based character, but a lot of them will provide you with enough to make the Life Staff a consideration when choosing a secondary weapon. So, don’t fear that investing in Focus will be a waste just because the Life Staff is the only weapon that it scales from because you’ll get the mana and cooldown benefits from hitting the stat points above.

Now that we’ve covered your statistical decisions and alternative weapon choices, we’re going to look into the aforementioned skill trees and how they differ. The leftmost skill tree is referred to as “Healing”, and unsurprisingly this tree focuses heavily on healing as many people for as much health as possible. The rightmost tree is referred to as “Protector” and while this tree does have some healing capabilities, the focus is more on granting buffs.
We’re going to take a look at the active abilities of the Healing skill tree first, and then the augmentations that you can select along with those actives, before swapping over to the Protector tree and doing the same, and then going over the passives for both of those trees:
Healing


Active Skill 1: Divine Embrace
Heal the target for 150.0% of your weapon damage.
Cost: 25 Mana
Cooldown: 6 Seconds
Divine Embrace Augments:

Privilege
Reduce mana cost to 20.

Shared Struggle
If the target recipient is below 50.0% health, then heal a nearby (8.0 meters) ally for the same amount.

Rebound (Requires Shared Struggle)
If the second recipient is also below 50.0%, then heal a third nearby (8.0 meters) ally for the same amount.

Active Skill 2: Sacred Ground
Create an AoE at the target that lasts 15.0 seconds and heals those inside for 20.0% of your weapon damage every second.
Cost: 15 Mana
Cooldown: 20 Seconds
Sacred Ground Augments:

Holy Ground
Regenerate mana and Stamina 100.0% faster, whilst inside the AoE.

Blessed
Whilst allies are inside the AoE, they receive 50.0% more healing from all sources.

Active Skill 3: Splash of Light
Heal yourself and all allies within 100.0 for 50.0% of your weapon damage.
Cost: 15 Mana
Cooldown: 15 Seconds
Splash of Light Augments:

Shared Recovery
Healing a target that is below 50.0% health will grant you 3.0% of your max mana.

Purify
Splash of light now removes the first debuff from those affected.
Protector


Active Skill 1: Orb of Protection
Shoot out a ball of light that grants 15.0% fortify to allies hit for 20.0 seconds. Also heals those allies for 10.0% weapon damage and harms foes for 146.0 weapon damage.
Cost: 16 Mana
Cooldown: 10 Seconds
Orb of Protection Augments:

Protector’s Blessing
Hitting an ally with the orb grants them recovery for 10.0 seconds, which heals them for 7.5% of your weapon damage every second.

Shared Protection
Hitting an ally with the orb now grants you fortify and recovery, in addition to that ally.

Aegis
When the orb connects with any target, its effect is applied to all allies within a 3.0 radius.

Active Skill 2: Light’s Embrace
Heal the target for 100.0% of your weapon damage, with an additional 30.0% for each active buff they have.
Cost: 18 Mana
Cooldown: 4 Seconds
Light’s Embrace Augments:

Inspire
Receive 25.0 Stamina when healing an ally with Light’s Embrace.

Connection
When connecting with Light’s Embrace, gain 1.0% of your max mana for every buff the target has.

Magnify
Healing with Light’s Embrace active skill will extend all Life Staff buffs by 2.0 seconds.

Active Skill 3: Beacon
Shoot out a ray of light that deals 146.0% weapon damage to enemies hit, attaching to the target hit and healing all nearby allies for 20.0% of your weapon damage each second for 10.0 seconds.
Cost: 16 Mana
Cooldown: 35 Seconds

Beacon Augments:
Infused Light
Beacon AoE is now 50.0% larger.

Radiance’s Blessing
Beacon lasts 5.0 seconds longer.

Speed of Light
Targets healed by the beacon gain 20.0% movement speed for 3.0 seconds.
Passives


Desperate Speed
Healing an ally with less than 50.0% health will reduce your Life Staff cooldowns by 10.0%.
Cooldown: 5 Seconds

Sacred Protection
Whilst you wield a Life Staff, you and your allies gain 10.0% more base health.

Revitalize
Connecting with a light attack reduces your cooldowns by 5.0%.

Enchanted Justice
When you take damage, activate a healing AoE radius of 4.0 meters that heals you and your allies for 10.0% weapon damage each second for 6.0 seconds.
Cooldown: 2 Minutes

Intensify
Landing a heavy attack increases your healing output by 10.0% for 10.0 seconds, up to a maximum of 30.0%.

Divine Blessing
Healing an ally below 50.0% more increases the heal by 30.0%.

Bend Light
After a successful dodge, heal for 20.0% more for 5.0 seconds.

Defensive Light
Blocking a melee attack grants 5.0% of your max mana.

Protector’s Strength
Having an active buff on yourself makes you heal for 10.0% more.

Spirits United
Increase mana regeneration for yourself and group members by 3.0%.

Protector’s Tough
Life Staff basic and heavy attacks reduce your incoming damage by 15.0% for 3.0 seconds when successfully hitting a foe.

Balance
If attacked whilst below 50.0% health, gain 10.0% movement speed for 5.0 seconds.
Cooldown: 20 Seconds

Glowing Focus
Buffs you grant last 20.0% longer.

Absolved
Life Staff basic and heavy attacks no longer consume mana.
Absolved Augments:

Mending Touch
Life Staff heavy attacks now remove the first debuff from an ally, when passing through them.

Blissful Touch
Light Staff basic attacks now heal any ally they pass through for 20.0% of your weapon damage.
Closing
That just about wraps things up for our overview of the Life Staff mastery for Amazon’s new MMO, New World. We hope that you’ve found the information useful in planning out your character and we 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 9 – Fire Staff
Credits
Program | Founding Writers |
Author | Luke Cowling |
Publisher | MGN |
Game | New World |