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Due to New World's class-less system, there are actually several ways to play as a tank. Different weapons provide you with different advantages and different styles of play. The classic tank build favors the Sword and Shield and Warhammer, but the SnS also works with weapons like the Great Axe and the Hatchet nicely.
This guide covers some core fundamentals of all tank builds and five of the best tank builds in New World. We'll be looking at good weapon combinations, Masteries, attributes, and tips on how to take these builds to their limit.
Updated September 13, by Harry Alston: We have updated this guide to include more up-to-date information ahead of the Brimstone Sands update! This includes a look at the reworked gems, the best gear, attributes, weapons, and more.
Best Tank Build In New World
General tips:
- Everyone needs a tank. Builds like this always have a space in Expeditions. There is currently a tank shortage across the board.
- Heavy armor is recommended for endgame expeditions. Less mobility, but you can tank damage and block the rest with your shield.
- Strength/Constitution is the most popular attribute distribution for a classic tank (our favorite build, the SnS/Hammer build), but this can change depending on which weapons you're taking into an expedition.
- Play what you think is fun - our tank guides here are designed to give you LOTS of options for the different endgame expeditions.
- Tanking is all about positioning - it's important to manage the boss' movement so the DPS players are getting backstab bonuses, learning various mob mechanics to understand when they're about to smack you, and when to use potions or wait for your healer.
Sword, Shield, And War Hammer Tank Build
The Sword and Shield are the very first weapons you'll get in New World, which means you can start stacking mastery points and attributes pretty much right away. We've paired the Sword and Shield successfully with the War Hammer for a good balance between sheer defense and CC. This is probably the classic tank build in New World.
Best Active Skills and Masteries For The Sword
Skill | Effect | Recommended Masteries |
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Shield Bash |
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Defiant Stance |
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Reverse Stab |
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The Defender Tree is a good place to start for the Sword. You should pick up Shield Bash and Defiant Stance in this mastery tree, then opt for the Whirling Blade mastery from the Swordmaster tree.
Shield Bash is an excellent taunt skill to use against bosses and a solid stun against fodder enemies. Keep in mind that the stun from Shield Bash is removed when that target takes damage. Use this window to swap weapons or recover your resources.
Defiant Stance is your bread and butter. You gain massive damage resistance, taunt every enemy within proximity, and it even heals you once the ability ends. Use this to aggro fodder packs in Expeditions or to gain DR during a boss fight.
Pick up the majority of the passives from the Defender tree, including valuable assets like Recuperation, which increases incoming healing by 10%—ideal if you're running with a dedicated healer—and One With The Shield, reducing shield cooldowns by a small amount each time you block an attack.
Best Active Skills and Masteries For The War Hammer
Skill | Effect | Recommended Masteries |
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Shockwave |
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Clear Out |
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Armor Breaker |
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The War Hammer is the CC weapon of choice in New World. It can deal massive damage and control huge areas, especially if you spec into the Crowd Crusher tree. Yes. Literally the CC tree.
Shockwave is a powerful AoE skill that can also taunt enemies. It covers a sizable radius, deals great damage, and reduces the damage enemies deal if Frailty is allocated.
Clear Out, a knockback AOE attack, are your best bets for causing pure chaos in PVE or PVP. Its wide swing makes it rather forgiving to use, and the movement speed buff from Swing Away is incredible for repositioning in PvP.
Armor Breaker, an ability from the Juggernaut Tree, deals immense damage that penetrates some of the target's defenses. You'll be using this to inflict Rend from Lasting Trauma, reducing the target's damage absorption by 15%.
Essential passives for the Crowd Crusher tree include Facilitated Expedition, to increase movement speed, and Prevailing Spirit, which grants you 35 percent of your health back after you've activated a Crowd Crusher ability.
Best Attributes And Gear
- Attribute: Strength (300), Constitution (200) - this is done to maximize your damage while still maintaining that heavy tank feel. You can even have lower a constitution if you're in a comfortable group with full Warded gear
- Armor: Heavy
- Gems: This will depend on which Expedition you are currently running, for Genesis you'll need Angry Earth Ward, Tempest you'll need Corruption, etc
- Best Perks: Refreshing Ward (reduces cooldowns after you get hit), a Ward to reduce incoming damage, and Invigorated, which causes status debuffs to run down 10% faster (three perks only available on Legendary gear)
This build works particularly well in Lazarus and Starstone Barrows.
For more specific builds and tips with the weapons listed above, check out our weapon-specific build guides listed below:
Sword, Shield, And Life Staff Tank Build
It turns out being nearly invincible works brilliantly for a tank. Pair the Life Staff with your standard Sword and Shield set up to create one hell of a tank build. This works great for solo leveling, PvP (you're pretty hard to kill), and is useful during Expeditions and other PvE events.
This build does not work as well as it used to, as there are healing debuffs for wearing heavy armor now, but it is still a powerful build in certain situations.
Best Active Skills and Masteries For The Sword
Skill | Effect | Recommended Masteries |
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Shield Bash |
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Defiant Stance |
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Shield Rush |
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Shield Bash allows you to inflict a lengthy stun and taunt onto an enemy target, giving you time to swap weapons or inflict some damage.
Defiant Stance grants a large amount of damage resistance and serves as your main taunt ability. Use this when approaching a group of enemies to taunt all of them.
Shield Rush will briefly interrupt a target and deals a solid chunk of damage. Thanks to our Mastery passives, this ability also slows targets and reduces their damage.
Best Masteries For The Life Staff
Skill | Effect | Recommended Masteries |
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Sacred Ground |
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Splash of Light |
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Orb of Protection |
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Everything comes secondary to Sacred Ground. This provides excellent healing that synergizes well with your high Constitution stat. It also persists when you swap weapons, so place this down when you're getting ready to anchor somewhere.
Splash of Light provides an easy heal to you and your allies while also removing debuffs. It's fairly cheap and has a large radius. This is your panic heal button.
Orb of Protection offers a wide range of buffs and deals solid damage to enemy targets. Certain masteries allow it to benefit allies over a small area and give the Recovery effect, granting HP regen each second equal to 7.5% weapon damage.
One thing worth noting about the Life Staff is some abilities persist when you switch weapons. Sacred Ground, Orb of Protection, and Beacon persist when you swap weapons. Because of this, if you're playing solo or already have a good healer, consider replacing Splash of Light with Beacon to give yourself another buff when you swap back to Sword and Shield.
Life Staff passives are disabled when you swap weapons.
Check out our full Support healer build guide here for more information about the Life Staff.
Best Attributes And Gear
- Attributes: Focus (300), Constitution (200)
- Armor: Heavy
- Gems: This will depend on which Expedition you are currently running, for Genesis you'll need Angry Earth Ward, Tempest you'll need Corruption, etc
For this build, we recommend you spec for both Constitution and Focus. Focus is your primary stat, so you'll want to get that to 300 as soon as you can. You'll want to put any extra points into Constitution, preferably aiming for 200. This will make the potency of your heals pretty close to a dedicated healer. Heavy armor is required.
Sword, Shield, And Great Axe Tank Build
This is a build that has already seen a lot of use. It excels at PvP. The Great Axe deals massive damage in a short space of time - ideal for finishing someone off while in PvP - and the Sword and Shield provide the classic defensive stats expected of a tank. You can even turn this build into a PvE variant by investing in the Maelstorm tree for the Great Axe.
Best Active Skills and Masteries For The Sword
Skill | Effect | Recommended Masteries |
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Shield Bash |
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Defiant Stance |
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Shield Rush |
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This build requires you to stack heavily into the defensive capabilities of the Shield. Stack the Defender tree completely, aiming to pick up three abilities in that tree.
Shield Bash is great for taunting tougher foes and inflicting stun, giving you ample time to switch to your Great Axe.
Defiant Stance gives you a major damage reduction boost while active, allowing you to effectively tank when combat gets dicey. It's also great for taunting a group of enemies.
Shield Rush is useful for inflicting a quick stagger and for debuffing targets.
Best Active Skills and Masteries For The Great Axe
Skill | Effect | Recommended Masteries |
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Charge |
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Reap |
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Execute |
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Charge is a versatile skill that can be used as an opener, gap closer, or disengage tool. You can interrupt it mid-animation as well to throw your opponents off.
Reap is an AoE attack that also deals massive damage. Its secondary perks also increase your sustainability in fights, particularly the Hunger passive.
Execute is meant to finish off weak opponents, dealing massive damage if they're at 50% or 30% HP. It has a rather long windup, so only use this when you're sure it'll hit.
Best Gear And Attributes
- Attributes: Constitution and Strength
- Armor: Heavy
- Gems: This will depend on which Expedition you are currently running, for Genesis you'll need Angry Earth Ward, Tempest you'll need Corruption, etc
Constitution and Strength are your most important stats. Focus on increasing your Constitution first to enhance your character's health pool and defensive properties. Try to get 300 points into Strength as well, enhancing the damage of your Great Axe by a significant amount. Heavy armor is recommended, though Medium or even Light can be good for PvP. For perks, look for anything that enhances the abilities used by this build, your maximum health pool, or your ability cooldowns.
For more builds and tips on using the Great Axe in PvE and PvP, check out our best Great Axe build.
Sword, And Shield With The Spear Tank Build
Another popular build has been the Sword, Shield, and Spear Tank build. You follow a very similar path to the Sword/Shield build above, but then spec into the CC of the Spear. Here's an example build for the tanky Spear player.
Best Active Skills And Masteries For The Sword
We'll be using the same tree from our last build entry. If you skipped it, click this link to learn how each ability and important mastery works.
Best Active Skills And Masteries For The Spear
Skill | Effect | Recommended Masteries |
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Cyclone |
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Vault Kick |
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Sweep |
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Cyclone is a useful AOE ability that knocks opponents back, giving you a moment to swap weapons or dish out some damage.
Sweep with knock your opponents to the ground. Use this as a CC tool when you're surrounded or get pushed by another player.
Vault Kick provides you with a little bit of mobility to disengage from an opponent. It can also taunt enemies if you have a taunt gem socketed in your Spear.
For passive skills, spec heavily into the Zoner tree, picking up Passives like Defensive Stance, which enters you into Fortify if you pull off a successful heavy attack, and Merciless Strength, which adds 25% damage to your attacks if the enemy is knocked down.
Best Attributes And Gear
- Attribute: Constitution
- Armor: Heavy
Like other tank builds, you'll want to focus on Constitution as your main attribute. For your second attribute, you can go with either Strength for its threshold bonuses or Dexterity for bonus damage. We're mainly using the Spear for its utility, so there isn't a major focus on increasing your Dexterity for this build. Heavy armor is needed to enhance your blocking capabilities. For perks, keep an eye out for reduced cooldowns and increased HP.
Sword, Shield, And Hatchet Tank Build
Even with its nerfs, we reckon that the Hatchet has been one of the stand-out stars during the closed beta. The Berserk tree is probably one of the best mastery trees in the game, thanks to its movement-speed boosts, sustainability, and the fact that you can finally have a chance of chasing down fleeing PVP enemies. It turns out the Hatchet works just fine with a Tank build, too.
Best Active Skills And Masteries For The Sword
Spec fully into the Defense tree for Sword. For a breakdown of this tree's skills and passives, click here. More in-depth Sword information can also be found in our Best Sword builds guide.
Best Active Skills And Masteries For The Hatchet
Skill | Effect | Recommended Masteries |
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Berserk |
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Raging Torment |
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Feral Rush |
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Berserk is the key active ability and should be popped pretty much whenever you get a chance. It increases all outgoing damage by 20% and is compatible with a Taunt gem. You gain movement speed with On The Hunt and sustainability with Berserking Refresh. Raging Torrent deals some fast damage and increases movement speed, and Feral Rush is a good mobility active skill.
Raging Torment outputs a solid amount of damage in a short timeframe and also increases your movement speed. Use this whenever you need to quickly inflict damage on a target.
Feral Rush is a great mobility skill for getting around the map, closing the gap in combat, or disengaging from enemies. This ability truly shines against retreating enemies, rooting them in place temporarily if you hit their back.
Essentially, max out the Berserker tree for passives, either taking the Crippling Strikes capstone or one of the other passives of your choice.
If you're looking for a build more focused on using your Hatchet, give our Hatchet build guide a look.
Best Attributes And Gear
- Attributes: Strength and Constitution
- Armor: Heavy or medium
- Gems: This will depend on which Expedition you are currently running, for Genesis you'll need Angry Earth Ward, Tempest you'll need Corruption, etc
Your two main attributes are Strength and Constitution. If you care more about being tanky than dealing damage, focus on Constitution first. If you care more about damage, go for more Strength. Your primary attribute should have around 300 points, and your secondary attribute should have around 200 at the endgame. Heavy armor is great if you're tanking. Otherwise, go with Medium.
For perks, you want anything that enhances your Hatchet abilities. Tank-focused setups should look for armor that increases your threat. Perks that increase your HP are also fantastic for this build.
This build works particularly well in the Genesis expedition.