Ultimate War Hammer Guide (Updated Up To Patch 1.3.4)
- Attributes
- Builds For War Hammer
- Optional Passive Skills
- War Hammer Active Skills
- Gear
- Gems
- Equipment Perks
- Consumables
- Weapons To Combine With
- FAQ
War Hammer is a two-handed melee weapon in New World. This heavy weapon is a valuable asset for tanky players, as well as well-balanced for PvP and PvE content. It has high HP and defense, great crowd control, and AoE skills, but its attacks are slow and easy to miss, and it has no movement skills.
With plenty of crowd control skills, access to Rend, and other armor reducing or ignoring effects combined with rather medium damage, War Hammer is often used as a secondary weapon to bring more utility to the team. It deals strike damage with its basic attacks and most skills.
Attributes
The War Hammer scales only with Strength. Once you reach the endgame and are able to have 300 Strength, you will have Grit during light and heavy attacks, which is useful for avoiding crowd control.
Constitution is a decent secondary Attribute, especially for PvP, 50 points will be enough to unlock 20% effectiveness to all health consumables, but you can get those 50 points with your gear or using +40 Consitution food:
Minmaxing your character for endgame PvP you can also reach 200 Constitution breakpoint for a 20% armor increase, but in this case, you’ll have 300 Strength only if you use buff food.
Of course, if you’re going to play as a tank, you should concentrate on Constitution only.
Builds For War Hammer
1. Crowd control build, which is usually being used to debuff your opponents and then switch to your main weapon, especially in PvP.
Instead of Power Through Pain, where the 1-sec damage window is not always easy to utilize, you can take Epitome of Bonk! or Exhaustive Attacks for PvP. Facilitated Expedition instead of Guarded Sprint is also an option.
Acceleration can be taken if you don’t have any perks for heavy attacks and are going to use light attacks instead.
Or you can take Clear Out instead of Wrecking Ball:
The goal of this build is to pressure backlines and be disruptive on point. You do your best damage by weaving light attacks, dodges, and heavy attacks together. You will use your abilities to set up kills for others with AoE and crowd control abilities or to stay on target better. As long as you don’t overextend too far and position yourself well, you’re very hard to kill and you still have the ability to solo kill people.
2. For open-world and one-to-one scenarios, this damage-oriented build can be used. It concentrates on heavy attacks and doesn’t really have a lot of haste or survivability:
Taking Armor Breaker instead of Mighty Gavel will make you more single target oriented, but grants with Rend and Armor Penetration:
Since you don’t have Aftershock in this build, Exhaustive Attacks will give you a debuff to increase your damage by 15% for Concussive Impact. These skills should be taken together. Instead of Facilitated Expedition, you can take Epitome of Bonk!, Guarded Sprint, Acceleration, or Stimulated Reduction.
3. This glass cannon build can be used for PvE solo target and Expedition, where you can find hard bosses.
It concentrates on heavy attacks and skill attacks. So to get the highest damage, you might want Trenchant Strikes or Thwarting Strikes. For Thwarting Strikes, you need Grit, which can be obtained by achieving 300 Strength breakpoint or by getting Hardened Steel.
There’s a lot of variability in this build. You can take Hardened Steel, Prevail Spirit, or Epitome of Bonk! instead of Meteoric Crater or Power Through Pain.
Optional Passive Skills
A bit of explanation about arguable skills.
1. Exhaustive Attacks:
This will make your opponent wait about five seconds to go from one stamina to a hundred instead of four seconds, which sounds pretty useless.
But Exhaust counts as a debuff, and it works great with Concussive Impact to increase your damage by 15%.
2. Facilitated Expedition:
Only 15% haste for 3 seconds isn’t worth a skill point in most cases.
3. Resurgence:
This might be useful in mass PvP, Wars, but there are more useful abilities.
4. Power Through Pain:
This skill sounds really useful, but it can be hard to utilize since most War Hammer attacks are pretty slow.
War Hammer Active Skills
1. Armor Breaker:
This Ability is fast, making it a good follow-up to Basic Attacks. In PvP, this is extremely difficult to avoid if executed at melee range. However, the short-range of the ability makes it harder to use properly.
Being high single target damage with armor penetration makes it excellent for holding boss aggro if you decide to tank with the War Hammer or use it as a supporting weapon.
2. Mighty Gavel:
While it’s not always an optimal choice for PvE or PvP, given that the War Hammer is more specialized towards area damage, it’s a strong enough ability, especially when upgraded, that it can earn its place with good usage.
In PvE, it’s a very high damage output skill, making it a viable choice as a DPS weapon. In PvP, it’s more a dedicated Block Breaker, as the first hit can very easily break someone’s block.
3. Wrecking Ball:
A decently hard hit and a crowd control effect that can’t be reduced can make this an ideal combo starter if you can land it.
In PvE, this skill can deal decent damage, and the Flatten can provide a little extra safety or interrupt enemy attacks as it “flattens” the enemy in place for a short time, which means you can hopefully land some extra heavy attacks or an Armor Breaker.
In PvP, the extra crowd control can be nice, but this skill’s long windup can make it easier to evade.
4. Shockwave:
It is important to note that Stun in New World will be broken on taking damage, so make sure you follow up this Ability with a big hit. This Ability is also somewhat telegraphed, making it easy to be dodged in PvP.
The AoE stun and taunt make it great for what you want to do as a tank. The same Stun can also give it quite a bit of impact in PvP. Add in the utility of the upgrades and it’s great in situations where you get outnumbered.
5. Clear Out:
This Ability is fast and hits several foes in front of you; however, displacing foes in a group is typically more bad than good for your group. This really only has some slight niche use in Wars to knock people off capture points. Beyond that, it doesn’t offer much in terms of damage or decent utility.
6. Path Of Destiny:
This is one of the longest-range skills across all melee weapons. It covers a massive area, which makes it incredibly potent in 1vX situations while also just generally giving you a wider range that you can threaten.
It has no limit on how many enemies it can hit. And with the final mastery passive, Stimulated Reduction, you can get a serious cooldown buff if you land a hit against multiple enemies, which makes it useful for both PvE and PvP.
Gear
Light armor gives you +20% damage bonus and the best amount of movement with a quick roll.
Medium armor will give you more protection, +10% damage bonus, and +10% length of the crowd control debuffs, but you’ll not have a quick roll.
Heavy armor offers the best protection and +20% length of the crowd control debuffs for the price of lower mobility.
Also, you can combine different types of armor, light with medium, staying under 13 kg, or medium with heavy, staying under 23 kg. You can change your armor type by simply replacing 3 parts.
Maxed Medium Armor 22,9 lbs build (1L + 2M + 2H): Heavy Chest, Light Pants, 2 Medium and 1 Heavy piece.
Alternative Maxed Medium Armor 22,9 lbs build (2L + 1M + 2H): Heavy Chest, Heavy Pants, 1 Medium, and 1 Light piece.
Maxed Light Armor 12,7 lbs build (4L + 1M): Light Head, Medium Chest, Light Gloves, Light Pants, Light Boots.
Maxed Light Armor 12,6 lbs build (3L + 2M): Light Chest, Medium Pants, 1 Medium, and 2 Light pieces. If you need more in-depth information, how tankier you would be wearing a certain kind of armor of a certain Gear Score, feel free to use the New World Calculator by Mixed Nuts.
Armor Type | Light | Medium | Heavy |
Head | 1,5 lbs | 2,6 lbs | 4,7 lbs |
Chest | 3,5 lbs | 6,2 lbs | 11,0 lbs |
Gloves | 1,5 lbs | 2,6 lbs | 4,7 lbs |
Pants | 2,0 lbs | 3,5 lbs | 6,3 lbs |
Boots | 1,5 lbs | 2,6 lbs | 4,7 lbs |
Shields | 2,7 lbs (Round) | 5,4 lbs (Kite) | 11,0 lbs (Tower) |
Look for Armor with Strength or with Strength and Constitution if you need 50 points to unlock 20% effectiveness to all health consumables.
All three types of armor can be used in every type of content, so it’s only your preference which one to choose.
Gems
Your War Hammer Gems can change your playstyle a lot, and you should become comfortable with switching between them depending on the situation.
1. Cut Pristine Carnelian:
If you’re a tank, this is the one you must have.
2. Cut Pristine Opal:
Fits more for PvP, where you’ll be dodging a lot.
3. Cut Pristine Jasper:
Can be used for both tanking and damaging since you’ll get hit pretty often.
4. Cut Pristine Malachite:
Since you have a lot of crowd control abilities, this is also an option.
5. Cut Pristine Onyx:
You will be able to open with your most powerful ability against full health foes. Works great with Armor Breaker’s Opening Act.
6. Cut Pristine Emerald:
This will help you to execute enemies running away. Works well with Mighty Gavel’s Summary Judgement and Contemption.
6. Cut Pristine Diamond:
Fits more for a group play, if you can keep at full health.
If you’re fighting mostly against one enemy type, for example, farming something, you can use to convert your damage:
1. Cut Pristine Amethyst to fight against Ancients:
2. Cut Pristine Aquamarine against the Lost:
3. Cut Pristine Ruby against Angry Earth:
4. Cut Pristine Sapphire against Corrupted:
5. Cut Pristine Topaz against Ancients:
Damage Effectiveness | Slash | Thrust | Strike | Fire | Ice | Nature | Void | Lightning | Arcane |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Ancients | -15% | +20% | -40% | +15% | +30% | ||||
Corrupted | +20% | -15% | -40% | +15% | +30% | ||||
Angry Earth | +20% | -15% | +30% | -40% | |||||
The Lost | -15% | +10% | +15% | +30% | -30% | ||||
Beast | +20% |
Corrupted refers to enemies covered in a black and/or red glow. Corruption Breaches are the most common source of Corrupted enemies.
Angry Earth enemies are nature-themed enemies mutated with bark-like skin and similar nature-themed traits.
The Lost are glorified citizens and spectral enemies that inhabit most of Aeternum’s ruined towns, farms, and cemeteries.
Beast refers to any of the wild animals that roam around the New World’s various zones. Wolves, Bears, and Lynxes are just a few enemies that fall under this category.
For Armor gems, you can use Cut Pristine Emerald for PvP while fighting mostly against Bow and Musket users:
If you’re already level 60 and farming chests or mobs for gear, you need a Lucky Gem:
For other situations to provide generic damage absorption:
1. Cut Pristine Onyx:
2. Cut Pristine Malachite:
3. Cut Pristine Diamond:
4. There is another option if you are going to farm the Expeditions as a DPS and have problems with getting the aggro, the Cut Pristine Carnelian:
Equipment Perks
1. War Hammer Skill Perks
These perks can be found on armors and weapons but often slotted on Armor as Weapons have access to better perks overall.
Empowering Armor Breaker:
This perk is not all that great because you do not want to break blocks with Armor Breaker. You want to apply Rend, which does not get applied if you get blocked.
Refreshing Mighty Gavel:
This perk is nice if you are using Mighty Gavel. This is easy and reliable to trigger in PvE, resulting in a lot of clearing power in both Open World and Expedition content. In PvP however, outside of Wars and Skirmishes, it’s unlikely you’ll ever get to trigger this effect.
Penetrating Wrecking Ball:
Penetrating armor increases the damage of your Ability depending on how much armor your target has. This is bonus damage to an attack that already hits hard and applies crowd control. If you’re using the ability, there’s no reason not to take it.
This will typically be more effective in PvP against the Heavy Armor players but can also have a good impact on how quickly you take down elite monsters as well.
Sundering Shockwave:
This perk is tremendously powerful because Rend increases the damage foes take. An AoE Rend on top of an AoE Stun and Taunt is a dream for any Tank, especially in PvP.
Repulsing Clear Out:
This perk is nice for PvP if you are trying to clear foes off of control points, but besides that, it is more detrimental than helpful. Especially in group PvE content, using Clear Out can cause your allies to miss their attacks, and this perk only pushes foes even more out of position.
Leeching Path Of Destiny:
This perk is great if you are using Path of Destiny for the extra health sustain. This stacks with Prevailing Spirit, giving Path of Destiny the ability to easily recover 50% or more of the damage it deals. Against any decent-sized group of enemies, this can almost be a more offensive option over a potion.
2. Armor Perks
Refreshing with Resilient can be a universal choice depending on your secondary weapon:
Refreshing Evasion is useful if you’re dodging a lot in PvP:
Physical Aversion is useful for PvP against Musket and Bow users:
3. Weapon Perks
Rogue and Vicious increase your damage heavily, as you’ll almost always be dishing out backstabs in group play:
Keenly Jagged is a nice choice to apply one more debuff:
Alternatively, you can use Enchanted or Keen and get plenty of damage that way as well:
Thwarting Strikes can give you a lot of damage if you have 300 Strength or using Hardened Steel:
Thwarting Counter can be advised only if melees using Grit are extra popular on your server and you meet them in PvP very often:
Refreshing Move helps a great deal with getting more skill rotations out:
You can also go for Lifestealing if you want to gain health back on hit:
Hated:
This can be useful only if you play as a Tank. Up to +15% more threat generation.
Keenly Fortified:
More Fortify is always great, especially for tanking.
For PvP against healers, you can use Plagued Crits or Plagued Strikes. The maximum amount of healing decreasing is 24% for GS 600 weapons.
Plagued Crits require lowering the target’s health to 50% first:
Plagued Strikes don’t require anything but a heavy attack, but in PvP, it can be easily dodged, so both options are pretty situational:
Plagued Strikes can be combined with Trenchant Crits or Trenchant Strikes for more damage. Of course, you can use them without Plagued Strikes in PvE:
Trenchant Rend:
Or Trenchant Recovery for surviving:
4. Amulet Perks
Slash Protection and Thrust Protection cover most PvE and PvP incoming damage:
Divine will give you more healing and Health – more HP, everything is simple here:
If you really want to heap on the defenses, Fortified Recovery grants a fairly strong 30% Fortify for 5 seconds when hit below 50% health but has a 90 cooldown for the effect.
5. Earring Perks
Beloved and Evasive can both help you mitigate aggro, making you less likely to pull aggro in expeditions. Of course, if you’re a tank, you don’t need these options:
Despised:
On the contrary, playing as a tank, you need to increase your threat generation.
Purifying Toast and Refreshing Toast are both great utility options for open-world PvP where health consumables tend to be used more. These all help in PvE as well:
You can also grab Refreshing here if you don’t manage to get it on your armor.
Regenerating is especially useful if you’re tanking:
Nimble helps the somewhat excessive use of Stamina from this build by boosting Stamina Regen slightly:
6. Ring Perks
Keen Awareness is a strong option for higher burst damage potential with Thrust Damage being a small damage boost in general:
Refreshing is also decent Utility with the lowered cooldowns, but that’s also available on armor:
Thrust Protection can be useful against Bow and Musket users:
Hearty will add you enough Stamina for one more additional dodge. If the player has 109.5 total stamina and each dodge takes 40 stamina (with 150 Dexterity attribute bonus), he can dodge twice (leaving the player at 39.5 stamina), wait a fraction of a second for stamina to regenerate to 41, then dodge twice more for a total of 4 dodges:
Blood Letting works great with Keenly Jagged on your weapon:
You can also go for Leeching if you want to gain health back on hit:
Regenerating is especially useful for tanking:
Consumables
In this chapter, you can find information about endgame consumables because you don’t really need most of them on low levels. You can easily find the low leveled versions of them because the names only differ by one word, except food.
1. First of all, you need Health Regeneration Food:
Health Potions:
And Regeneration Potions:
2. Attribute Food.
As a DPS player, you might want to increase your Strength. This food gives you an option to put 40 points from Strength to Constitution.
You can use food with both Strength and Constitution bonus to increase your health and damage at the same time:
Constitution / Strength combination with more Strength is also available:
Also, you can use Constitution food to maximize your health:
To find more food for hybrid builds, please visit our Cooking Guide.
3. Powerful Honing Stone will increase your damage. They can be bought or crafted at Smelter if you reach 170 Weaponsmithing level:
4. Powerful Gemstone Dust can be also bought or crafted at level 170 Jewelcrafting:
5. Powerful Oakflesh Balm can be bought or crafted at 170 Armoring level as well:
6. Powerful Incense requires 170 Furnishing levels to craft. Otherwise, it can be bought for cheap from the Trading Post:
7. Weapon Coatings give a 15% damage bonus against certain types of enemies. These coatings are usually used in dungeons, where you’re fighting mostly against enemies of the same type, for example:
8. Ward Potions increase your damage absorption against certain enemy types. They can help you mitigate heavy incoming damage:
9. Absorption Potions can help you not only in dungeons but also in PvP against mages. They increase absorption by 15% against a certain type of elemental damage, for example:
10. Corruption Tincture and Blight Tincture remove afflictions and give 97,5% resistance to these afflictions for 5 minutes:
11. Infused Encumbrance Potion will help you a bit with bringing your sack to the nearest warehouse. It lasts 3 minutes and increases the Encumbrance Limit by 100:
I know that feeling, bro, even one Flint or Green Wood must not be discarded.
For more Potions you can check our Arcana Guide.
Weapons To Combine With
- Great Axe. Scaling primarily with Strength, the War Hammer provides a lot of crowd control options while Great Axe adds some mobility. You can use the Great Axe to close the gap and then Stun and Knockdown your foes. Since the War Hammer deals Impact damage, it also helps cover for the Great Axe’s weakness against Ancient-type foes. The main downside of this combo is that you will have two slower-attacking two-handed weapons that have limited ranged potential.
- Hatchet. The War Hammer greatest weakness is its lack of gap-closing power, which Berserk can help remedy. The Hatchet does a great job providing health sustain through Berserk, which allows you to heal up out of combat. Feral Rush can also root enemies so you can catch slippery foes. You can also make the Hatchet a throwing weapon, which adds a ranged option to your setup. One downside is that both weapons have relatively short-ranged melee attacks, making it difficult to Backstab-crit against bosses with another melee present.
- Sword and Shield. This combination is mostly about tanking and applying Rend for your DPS to increase overall damage. It takes two weapons that scale well with Strength, using the best skills from both skill trees. With these two weapons, you can switch between attacking and defending in a pinch. One downside would be that you have no movement ability, and it’s neither the hardest hitter nor the tankiest tank.
- Life Staff. War Hammer provides several crowd control options for the Life Staff user. This combo is all about preventing your foes from doing anything while you continuously heal up. One downside of this combo is the lack of movement skills. For this setup, you would scale Focus instead of Strength and then use an Amber gem to change some of the damage scaling to Focus. While this combination does less damage than a pure Strength setup, it is incredibly difficult to kill.
- Void Gauntlet provides great utility and lots of buffs and debuffs for you and your team. Single target build for solo play is also possible. Even more, it gives you the ability to cool down your skills fast.
FAQ
War Hammer has enough defense, area-of-effect attacks, and decent crowd control skills, but it is pretty slow with long cooldowns. Mainly it’s used as a secondary weapon for providing crowd control and more utility for your group.
Strength for more damage and Constitution for surviving.
Whatever you need most, mobility or defense, but usually players prefer medium or heavy armor. You can mix different armor parts and find armor combinations that fit your own playstyle best.
Every weapon has its own preferences and can change your War Hammer build. You can use Sword and Shield for tanking, Hatchet for PvE farming, Great Axe for mass PvP, or Life Staff Focus build to kill elite monsters.
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