How do you progress in PvP to be competitive enough to enjoy PvP as a bruiser?
TLDR: Focus on getting PvP track gear and practice in OPR.
I’m writing up my experience of becoming reasonably proficient in PvP because the pathway to progress now is different to what it was at earlier stages of the game. The simple response from players who have not thought about it much is that to be good at PvP then you simply need to ‘get good’. To get good now, with all the changes that have happened since launch, is a different prospect to what it meant to progress in earlier stages of the game. My account below is for players who are aiming to get into PvP now and have finished the GS grind and other aspects. (You should finished the GS grind first, run dungeons etc.) There is nothing hidden or secret about becoming proficient enough in PvP to enjoy it, so everyone should give it a go. My account is focused on being a bruiser because I play as bruiser. (I welcome other accounts to help players for other classes of build!)
I played open beta and then from day one. The current complaints about queues are giving me flashbacks to queueing for hours. I know how long I waited in New World queues because I started playing Death Standing solely while waiting to queue for New World (56.5 hours). I have screen capped my relevant Steam achievements below. You can see the difference in the number of players defeated. In the 11 or so months from the start of the game until 7 August 2022 I defeated 5000 players. In the two weeks from 7 August to 21 August I defeated another 5000 players, mostly in OPRs (75 OPRs between 17 August and 14 September; 0.7% of players have done 100 OPRs).
My goal here is not to present the equivalent of a get rich quick scheme. Rather, it is to present one example of how it is possible to enjoy PvP in New World when previously I had not enjoyed it in the slightest. Toxicity, stop-go animation wars, exploits, etc made PvP garbage. There is still the issue of immaturity, which manifests in different ways, but like most adults who enjoy playing video games I just suck it up and/or ignore.
I decided to give PvP a go for three reasons. First, I had completed pretty much everything else in the game. All missions, all skills, all drops, almost all achievements (except for the 300 standing, 1m repair, etc). Second, the toxic morons I encountered early in the game no longer played. Third, there was a sense of progress captured by the PvP track and associated rewards. The PvP track presented a pathway to gearing up that was not gamba (gambling through crafting RNG mechanics to get BIS). Although I have had some good luck recently with crafting.
Progress for me has occurred along two paths so far: gear and basic skill. There is a third path I have not yet pursued much, which is build. I play as a bruiser. Bruiser is a good example as it is a common build that is competitive enough it seems to enjoy playing PvP across all servers and their respective metas. Bruiser is ok for wars and OPR, but it is not really competitive in Arenas except when part of specific pre-made three person teams or I guess if you have freaky skill, which I do not have. If you want to create a character competitive for Arenas then you will need to create a specific build. This will likely come next for me, when I want to try something different.
Basic Skill
My basic advice here is to give it a go. Queue for OPR as a solo and try to follow the actual mechanics and basic strategy of the playing mode. If you are bruiser you are mostly playing around capture points (sun, moon or star) with some combat between points and then on the Baroness. My examples will come from OPR as that is where most people will develop their skills.
The core skill I had to learn was learning how to anticipate actions from other players. There is a small number of abilities that players will have based on their weapons and class. Being able to dodge successfully and knowing when to escape (aka play your life) are very important. Other players gave me this advice but I really figured it out to the extent of embodying it in muscle memory when playing OPR. I had previously defaulted to a playstyle that was 100% attack and spammed abilities, as this is the default for PVE. But, not attacking and pausing while players use their abilities is more important. You quickly realise when you are fighting someone who has not figured this out and you can literally step/dodge around them.
The closest equivalent to PvP combat in PvE for a melee/bruiser I think is the very early part of a Lazarus without a tank (door puzzle part) or in Genesis during the tree phase without a tank. Lots of people run these differently (i.e. spear meta) but the two basic mechanics of clumping and bursting and playing your life are common. I am pretty good for my class, melee DPS, across all types of PVE. I run Barnacles, Genesis and Lazarus M10s in light and corrupted expeditions in medium. In invasions I run a 5con light build and regularly score 2m damage, often 3m, and PB of 4.2m, which for melee with the current bow/thrust meta is not too shabby. I can run my light invasion build in corrupted expeditions (carrot cake, 50d, rest strength) and have a few times but my thoughts are being slightly slower with slightly less damage and more reliably be able to score gold is a better outcome. Not much of this matters for PvP, however, it is more so you can have a frame of reference of what it is like.
Clumping (i.e. gathering or lining enemies up so you are attacking multiple enemies at once) and bursting (i.e. saving specific abilities for clumps to do max damage) is the basic mechanic of bruisers. When you are playing alongside one or two other experienced bruisers, then you will likely get into a rhythm of using your abilities to clump and burst together to create CC chains and delete enemies. The more general point here is that you will learn how to sequence your abilities for max damage. The response from players has been to run bow/musket-based or hatchet-based builds. Hatchet melee can compete on point to actually win the match. Bow/musket-based builds, although the meta in some ways because of the damage-based point system of OPR, are very good at escaping and mostly rely on others (melee, BB/IG or certain mage builds) to capture points.
Armor weight matters because it affects your ability to escape and ‘play your life’. Beyond weapon perks, this is one of the strongest connections between basic skill and your gear. I first tried PvP as a heavy bruiser and quickly realised this was completely useless for OPR. Without a healer there is ironically no survivability for heavy bruisers as you don’t really have an escape. Then I tried medium, I found it slightly more rewarding and satisfying but again no inherent escape. Then I scored enough of the named light armor pieces from the PvP track to try light and I quickly realised how much more fun it was to play light in OPR (and how similar it was to that early section of Laz playing light bruiser for example).
I am learning more advanced skills now. This means how to delete certain classes of player (i.e. cc chain players so they can’t fight back), fight more than one player at once, how to fight or escape from assassin builds, and how to play your life to maximise the benefit for your team. The logic of New World is that dying only costs time, so sometimes it is worth tying up 2, 3 or even 4 players from an opposing OPR team to chase you around so your team has a numerical advantage somewhere else. (After I have 3k points for max reward, I bait and kite a couple of players so they use their abilities to chase me to isolate one of them, then I turn on them with CC abilities and delete; it is very satisfying. More often than not however, I am the one eventually getting deleted, but that is after the opposite team has wasted precious minutes on me.)
Gear
The revelation here has been the PvP track. You can comfortably get enough gear together to be competitive enough to enjoy PvP from just the PvP track and gear that drops in dungeons. The key difference between progress now and early in the game is that you only need gear good enough to play PvP modes to get enough PvP XP to get the drops in the PvP track. Once you have the drops from the PvP track you supplement pieces with relevant weapon perks and/or other perks, such as freedom or shirking fort.
There is a guide here for running the PvP quests to level up. I run them in Shattered Mountain. I used to do this for at least the first three daily bonus missions and my Topaz Gypsum on and off until about level 20. As I got more experience in OPR, and importantly assembled a light set, I did this less. I will still sometimes run a quick mission or two if I am near the end of a track but my company regularly runs influence, so I often progress that way.
Between levels 5 and 20 of the PvP track is the sweet spot where you should get many pieces of the named armor, jewelry and weapons. After level 20 you can get ‘prestige’ gear which arguably is not as good as the named gear most of the time. Admittedly you can get BIS prestige gear, but I have not yet. All the named armor is constitution based and shirking heals, resilient and then a variation of refreshing (refreshing, ref evasion, or ref ward). A hatchet and spear build, for example, could almost get away with a full PVP track armor setup. It depends on the weapons and perks, and the only problem is possibly too much constitution.
My gear screenshots below were created because I joined a company that actively encouraged players to participate in PvP activities, which forced me to think about my builds in a way that I had only done for PVE activities. (This may seem shocking for some players, but my first proper min-maxed set was for invasions.)
My first builds were screenshot in late July. First as a heavy bruiser was made up of two-perker gear July.
Heavy build July.
Medium build July.
You can see I was using Blackguard’s Warhammer and Raiders hat from Tempest, Doom’s Chance and Smooth Bone ring from Lazarus, and Blessing of the Forefathers from Depths. Thwarting strikes and refreshing move great axe cost me 80k. This were competitive enough for me to start playing OPR more regularly. I did my first war with the current company as a heavy bruiser.
By mid-August, so roughly a month later, I had already assembled competitive light and medium builds. You can see I had many of the pieces from the PvP track including the amulet and the ring.
Light build August.
Medium build August.
All of my income came from selling items I acquired from running M10s, one hammer I crafted that sold for cash cap, and a range of items that filled niches I identified in the market (i.e. light, Ancient ward, strength gear). My first sets (heavy and medium July builds) were funded by a VG that sold for 250k. That was basically a waste. I learned a lot during this time, but I had replaced pretty much all the gear in less than a month. Sometimes I was very lucky. The chain ice, thwarting strikes and keenly empowered hammer I have at this point is basically BIS. I bought this for 50k off the TP. On the other hand, the light freedom, resilient and sundering shockwave boots for my light OPR/influence pushing set cost 160k, which is probably still reasonable but on the expensive side.
My current medium setup incorporates shirking fortification for wars. I did have some two-perkers but quickly changed to three perkers when I realised how cheap they were in a relative sense. For example, you can get similar heavy chests on TP for around 30-40k.
Light build September.
Medium build September.
I only recently crafted the axe (which I crafted for a company member, and he swapped for one I crafted for myself: TS, RM, shirking lightening).
To be better than this would mean gear with a variation of refreshing, freedom and/or shirking fort. But these are over cash cap purchases or very rare gamba rolls. I have saved up templates from the event to give it a go once I have saved up enough asmodeum and other materials (and after things settle down with the Great Sword, see below)
Probably the most contentious part of my build is my earring. Some players will not like my earing, because of the nimble, but I like it! I anticipate the increase to the cooldown for cleanse pots will change the meta again (I have a plague crits, keenly jagged and thwarting strikes great axe ready to go, for example). I have another earring I crafted soon after getting to 200 jewel crafting several months ago with purifying toast but this is con based and for my light build I will have too much con to use. I can use it for my war build once the meta shifts.
Similarly, there could be a new war meta involving vicious beacon and vicious on weapons but it relies on a lot of things (healer running vicious beacon for starters and 4 or less resilient armor on enemies is the big assumption).
Furthermore, the Great Sword will shake things up. Note I only have weapon perks on three armor pieces, all Warhammer, and really only two useful perks at the moment, so I anticipate being able to use most of my gear if I shift to the Great Sword. (The Empowering Armor Breaker perk could be very useful against defensive stance great sword builds, for example.)
Conclusion
I hope this is useful for new and returning players. I am kind of new to PvP in this game but I am not new to the game.
- Everyone will have a different experience, but the PvP track presents a really good base for players looking to get into PvP.
- The PvP track levels 5-20 are the sweet spot where you should get many of the named items.
- I strongly recommend you do the initial GS grind to 590+ first, so the gear that drops in the PvP track can be upgraded.
