One of the most interesting aspects of Amazon Game Studios' New World is that it's an MMO that inherently wants its players to play the game as they want, offering all sorts of ways to level up and tackle the content. This shows when some players prefer to find creative ways to reach level 60, like never killing anything for the whole playthrough or jumping off a cliff to kill a turkey in a dramatic way, only to get that missing one experience point to level up. Of course, another big part of the experience is fighting enemies both in PvE and PvP, taking on the hardest Expeditions and Dungeons the game has to offer, or taking part in Faction Wars and Outpost Rush.
As such, an important aspect of this comes from the selection of weapons each player can make, which consists of using a combination of any two from a selection of eleven total. This is what makes up the classless system in New World, as the choice is not something players make at the very beginning, but rather they can switch between any weapon at will until they find the perfect combination that clicks for them. While there are plenty of options for builds, with even the option to go for hybrid builds that favor combos like Great Axe and Life Staff, all of New World weapons could use some changes to an extent in order to promote more diversity, ranging from the least to the most powerful ones.
New World's Dexterity Weapons Need Buffs
Right now, the weapons that are considered to be the worst in New World are all those based on Dexterity, which means the Spear, the Rapier, the Bow, and the Musket. This is because they generally tend to either lack the damage, crowd control abilities, versatility, or self-sustain capabilities to make up for intense damage coming from tough combatants in PvE or other players in PvP. Generally speaking, these weapons tend to be focused on a mix of skirmish playstyle and minor debuffs to inflict most of the damage with rotations that shorten cooldowns or damage over time.
The Musket tends to suffer the most in all scenarios due to it requiring constant reloads and aiming for headshots to maximize damage, and its skillset is lacking variety and effectiveness. The same applies to the Bow, but drawing arrows is less problematic than reloading the Musket with bullets, and the Bow has stronger skills that help its intended playstyle shine more. The Rapier is intended to be played with combos of attacks that apply bleeds on enemies and then consume them for big hits or playing around with evades and counterattacks, which sometimes feels like a less effective Sword and Shield build.
The Spear is the last Dexterity weapon to cover, and it is very well versed in applying crowd control to enemies, but they are effective against a single enemy, and DPS with the Spear is still not on par with weapons like the Hatchet or the Great Axe. Overall, none of the Dexterity weapons excels at anything in particular, and they are largely considered to be subpar options in most activities. Another big issue with Dexterity weapons is that they promote a playstyle that's more centered on mobility, and they would definitely benefit the most from the 20% damage buff coming from wearing Light Armor, but New World can be punishing for those who don't use Heavy Armor, instead.
This means that this category is the one that needs the most changes out of all others, possibly by buffing the damage increase from Light and Medium Armor. This doesn't mean that New World's other weapons should be nerfed, however, but rather that non-Strength weapons should be brought up on par with them for utility and DPS alike.
New World's Issues With Magical Weapons and Hybrid Builds
Unfortunately, some weapons in New World are affected by glitches that prevent them from dealing damage to enemies on some conditions, and the most notable examples come from the Ice Gauntlet and the Fire Staff. These weapons have AoE skills that are cast by the players at a particular location of their choice, and then proceed to deal damage instantly or over time within the area. When enemies are laying down and not engaged in combat, and also during some scenarios where the spells would be cast on the ground, these enemies take no damage.
This is considered one of New World's biggest problems, and both these magical weapons are considered very potent in theory, but less so in practice. At least, until the bugs affecting them are fixed. However, they make for great weapons to use in combination with others that scale damage off of the character's Intelligence, like the Rapier, making the Ice Gauntlet and Rapier a popular combination for damage and crowd control at the same time.
Still, hybrid builds are also a great solution for players to check out, and they can open up different combinations of weapons that might just work very well with one another. These are often among those builds that shine the most when New World players get their Gear Score to 600 or as close to it as possible, and of course, they benefit from the attribute points available at level 60. A popular example comes from the Life Staff, which normally is the only weapon that scales off of Focus, but with Amber gems slotted in any other weapon, it's possible to make them scale with Focus as well as deal a percentage of their base damage as Nature damage.
However, hybrid builds are often outclassed by Strength builds because of how much damage those weapons deal when scaled with their natural attribute. That's why choices like the Hatchet or Great Axe are so popular and widely used, and both these Strength weapons can also provide some form of self-healing that others can't. That's why having every weapon apply a tiny bit of healing to the player would be beneficial, moving forward.
New World's Passive Trees Could Use More Variety
Speaking of Strength-based weapons, a notable one is the War Hammer. This huge blunt weapon makes for excellent attacks and some of the best crowd control abilities in the game, thanks to the AoE stuns, staggers, and flattening attacks. All of this makes the War Hammer a great pick for either the main damaging weapon or a support weapon that can help take care of enemies and prevent them from having too many windows of opportunity to damage the players. The War Hammer also has the benefit of featuring more passive nodes than average on its ability trees, which helps with build variety and customization more than weapons like the Rapier do.
This is another important point - the passive trees and what they offer. The way New World abilities function makes it so every passive choice matters a lot, from unlocking the main three skills the players will be using to picking up passive nodes that work very well with the concept of the build as a whole. Thus, each tree should include more passive options to enhance the experience and make every pick more worthwhile, considering sometimes it may be hard to pick something that's really useful to the build. When passive nodes are used to advance further down the tree, players might have to grab one out of two not-so-great options or be forced to take a node that doesn't serve them well.
While all weapons have two trees with a sort of capstone that can only be taken after spending 10 points in that tree, another issue is that some weapons have a capstone that acts as the final perk of a specific skill. This is an issue because, even if the capstone is still very desirable, it pigeonholes the players into using that skill as well, even if they don't like it as much as others. An example comes from New World's Ice Gauntlet and its right tree called Builder. The capstone is very powerful for Ice Pylon and acts as an enhancement of the skill itself, but it makes the entirety of the tree focused on one skill - an issue that affects the Rapier, the Life Staff, and the War Hammer as well.
And some capstones are blatantly more powerful than others, like the Hatchet's Defy Death, which essentially prevents the players from dying when it procs while not on cooldown. Others, like the Bow's Knee Shot, are still decent, but more situational - as in they serve a specific purpose that might not be as easy to trigger. Ultimately, more options on both trees for all weapons would be extremely valuable to New World players, even for weapons that are normally considered very strong.
New World is available now on PC.