Best Tank Build In New World

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Due to New World's class-less system, there are actually several different ways to play as a Tank. Different weapons provide you with different advantages and different styles of play. There is the classic Tank build that favors the Sword and Shield, the Tank with CC that plays with the Ice Gauntlet, or the sustainability build with the Hatchet and its very strong Berserk tree.

This guide covers the fundamentals of a Tank build, such as which Attributes work best, and which Armor to use, as well as some suggestions for weapon builds.

Best Tank Build In New World

Players have been experimenting with different Tank builds during the closed beta of New World. Everything might be subject to change when the game fully releases, but one of the most popular (although not necessarily the "best") has been the classic Sword and Shield build. Thanks to NewWorldFans for providing a useful platform for experimenting with builds. You can visit them here to try out your own builds.

Sword And Shield 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 damage.

Best Active Skills and Masteries For The Sword

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, and then opt for the Whirling Blade mastery from the Swordmaster tree.
Both the Shield Bash and Defiant Stance active skills are impacted by Taunt Gems (Carnelian Gems) which will drag pretty much all the aggro towards you during Expeditions.
Pick up the majority of the passives from the Defender tree, including valuable assets like Recuperation, which increases incoming healing by 10 percent, ideal if you're running with a dedicated healer, and One With The Shield, which reduces shield cooldowns by a small amount each time you block an attack.

Best Active Skills and Masteries For The War Hammer

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, AOE ability with a stun, and Clear Out, a knockback AOE attack, are your best bets for causing pure chaos in PVE or PVP. Match it with the Armor Breaker ability from the Juggernaut Tree and you'll be assisting your team in more ways than one.
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.

For this build, you want to put most of your points into Constitution. This boosts your overall health, but also comes with its own useful perks, like reduced incoming damage and health that scales off your armor points. You probably want to pick up the first Strength attribute perk to boost the damage of your War Hammer and Sword.

Sword And Shield With The Spear Tank Build

Another popular build during the closed beta 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 mobility and CC of the Spear. Here's an example build for the tanky Spear player.

Active Skills – You want to pick up Cyclone, Vault Kick, and Sweep. Cyclone is a useful AOE ability that knocks opponents back, Sweep with knock your opponents to the ground, and Vault Kick provides you with a little bit of mobility to disengage from an opponent.
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 percent damage to your attacks if the enemy is knocked down.
Spear is a Dexterity weapon, but you probably shouldn't spec into Dex. Stick with mostly Constitution with a few points in Strength. You're using the spear for its utility rather than its damage output.

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.

For this build, we've completely the ignored the Throwing tree. Although there are some good active skills and passive in there, the Berserker tree just covers everything you need for a succesful tank.
Active Skills – Berserk, Raging Torrent, and Feral Rush. Berserk is the key active ability and should be popped pretty much whenever you get a chance. It increases all outgoing damage by 20 percent, 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.
Essentially max out the Berserker tree for passives, either taking the final Feral Rush passive (Crippling Strikes) or one of the other passives of your choice.
The Hatchet scales off of Strength damage, which works well with the Sword and Shield, as well.

Any tank build requires as much as Constitution as you can get, Heavy Armor (this should be obvious from the boosts the Heavy armor set provides), and plenty of Taunt gems to draw aggro towards you in Expeditions.

You can check out some of our other build guides here: