Mage Build Guide in New World (Fire Staff & Ice Gauntlet)

The combination of the Fire Staff and Ice Gauntlet (also known as a Mage build) makes for a high-impact toolkit of damage, crowd-control, and defensive cooldowns. Mages are essential in PvP, playing a vital role in controlling the battlefield in Outpost Rush and pressuring capture points in wars.

Whilst the potential that the Mage can bring is immense, it can also be tricky to play and a difficult combination of weapons to master, requiring practice and knowledge of how to use abilities properly to be truly effective. You can expect to find a spot in wars as a Mage, and in many instances the top place on the leaderboards will be Mages, owing to their potential to output millions of damages across a full 30 minutes.

In this guide, we will be going through some of the must-know tips on how to play a Mage from experts who have mastered the Mage build, having played thousands of hours in-game.

Strengths

• High area of effect and burst damage
• Strong area and crowd control abilities
• Good defensive toolkit
• High skill cap

Weaknesses

• Lack of self-sustain
• Gear-dependent
• Mana-dependent
• Limited mobility

Before we delve into the Weapon Skill Trees for the Fire Staff and Ice Gauntlet, and as a word of caution, some of the things we will be doing relate to the present state of the game and how bugs impact gameplay. As such, you may see skill tree decisions which at first might seem puzzling or counter-intuitive to existing players. Often, the tooltips in New World are misleading or at times just wrong. Many abilities and perks do not interact together as intended, and it is left up to the player to do much of the testing themselves in terms of how things work. We will explain the rationale behind these decisions and provide a full explanation as to why these decisions have been taken as we go through the guide.

With the Fire Staff, we will be taking Pillar of Fire, Fireball, and Incinerate as our three abilities. We will not be upgrading either Pillar of Fire or Fireball for two reasons: firstly, we will need the points in the Pyromancer tree, and secondly, the upgrades are either not worth taking, or just not working correctly.

For example, the Scorched Earth talent on Fireball is bugged and actually reduces the damage of your Fireball, whilst Catch offers only a minor benefit. Instead, we will pick up Watch it Burn, which is an extra 18% damage over time to your light attacks, Kindle, which increases the duration of your burn by 20% (an extra 3.6% damage to your light attacks) and Let it Burn, which gives you 10% fortify whenever burn deals damage.

The full list of Mastery Points we take for the Fire Staff is:

• Pillar of Fire
• Spell Focus
• Fiery Restoration
• Clear Mind
• Singe
• Fireball
• Spellslinger
• Clear Casting
• Prophet of a Fire God
• Flare
• Runes of Helios
• Pyromania
• Incinerate
• Let it Burn
• Scorched
• Kindle
• Cauterize Wounds
• Watch it Burn
• Flame out!

With this build, we are constantly applying burns to enemies with our light and heavy attacks, as well as our abilities such as Fireball and Incinerate. This gives us a near-permanent uptime of 10% Fortify.

On the Fire Mage tree, we pick up some of the best passives of any weapon in the game. Spellslinger increases our chance to critical strike by 15%, and Prophet of a Fire God increases our critical strike damage by 20%. This gives our attacks some incredible burst potential.

Some of you may be asking why we have not picked up Burnout and have instead chosen Incinerate. The answer is that although both abilities are good choices, Incinerate is one of the highest damaging abilities in the game, hitting for 332% weapon damage on a normal attack. It is also invaluable when trying to capture or defend a point in either a War or Outpost Rush, as the combination of the pushback from the ability and the pure damage potential make it an incredibly powerful ability in your toolkit when used effectively.

With the Ice Gauntlet build, we will be taking Ice Storm, Ice Shower, and Entombed as our three main abilities. These offer a combination of offensive AoE, crowd-control and defensive cooldowns which complement and can be used in conjunction with the burst damage abilities of the Fire Staff.

Punishing Storm, the final passive for Ice Storm in the Ice Tempest tree has the effect of removing your Ice Storm when swapping weapons. This removes the synergy between your Fire Staff and Ice Gauntlet, preventing the weapons from being used together effectively. Therefore, Punishing Storm is not taken, and instead we take Ice Spikes to unlock Ultimate Chill as the final passive, even though we do not use Ice Spikes as one of our main abilities.

The full list of Mastery Points we take for the Ice Gauntlet is:

• Cold Reach
• Ice Spikes
• Critical Rejuvenation
• Energized Critical
• Ice Storm
• Gathering Storm
• Weakening Gust
• Critical Frost
• Storm Summoner
• Heavy Freeze
• Ultimate Chill
• Quick Frost
• Ice Shower
• Enduring Shower
• Entombed
• Quick Shower
• Strengthened Tomb
• Frigid Showers
• Defiant Freeze

There is some flexibility in taking the final few points of the Builder tree. For example, you might change Defiant Freeze for Frozen Touch or Refreshing Frost depending on your playstyle and the enemies you are fighting.

For Wars and Outpost Rush, the sweet spot for Mages is around 100 to 150 Constitution. The 150 Constitution passive is currently bugged and gives a flat 10% damage reduction rather than only a reduction in critical strike damage, which is something to bear in mind. The remainder of your points should go into Intelligence, although some Mages pick up the 5% critical strike chance bonus from 50 Dexterity if their gear allows it. Ideally, you should only take the 50 Dexterity passive if you are comfortably at or above 300 Intelligence and 100 Constitution.

Mages can use several consumables to enhance their builds even further. Make sure to bring a Powerful Honing Stone, as they are a flat % damage increase to both weapons. In addition, you can use stat food for 40 additional stat points. We recommend using Steamed Abaia Serpe which gives 40 intelligence, although you could also use Pork Belly Fried Rice which gives a mixture of constitution and intelligence or Roasted Rabbit with Seasoned Vegetables for constitution only. You should also use Energizing Hearty Meal as these increase your mana regeneration significantly.

When doing PvP, bring a health supply of Tier 5 Infused Health Potion, Infused Mana Potion and Infused Regeneration Potion. These potions do not share any cooldowns, although you can only drink one potion at any one time.

We recommend aiming for a medium armour weight for the Mage. The easiest way to achieve this is to have a heavy chest, light legs, and at least one heavy gloves, helm, and boots, with the others being medium. You can go heavy in wars, and you may wish to go for a light armour build for open world and/or 1v1s.

Mages should initially aim to get their faction gear and change it to the Occultist stat points, which is a combination of Intelligence and Constitution. Faction gear has Refreshing and Resilient, two very important perks for a Mage.

Although you can only get Resilient on armour, Refreshing can be found on Weapons, Armour, and Jewellery. On your Fire Staff, you should ideally aim to get Refreshing Move, as this is the best perk you can pick up. On your Jewellery, you should aim to get the Health perk on your amulet which increases your maximum health. On your ring, you should get Keen Awareness, which increases your critical strike chance. On your earring, although less important, Nimble, Healthy Toast and Refreshing Toast are good perks to aim towards.

Many of the Fire Staff and Ice Gauntlet weapon perks are currently not working correctly, or as intended. Once they are fixed, this guide will be updated. In the meantime, avoid the weapon perks except for Healing Tomb, which is worked as intended.

Given the way gems are currently not working as intended, the best gems to use for the Fire Staff and Ice Gauntlet are Tier 2 Intelligence scaling gems. These gems have a 200% intelligence scaling, so provide a 10-15% net damage increase. We recommend using the Cut Flawed Sapphire gem in both of your weapons, as this will also improve the damage you do against Corrupted type enemies. In your armour and jewelry, you should aim for full Cut Pristine Onyx, as most of the damage you will be taking is Physical Damage, although Cut Pristine Diamond or Cut Pristine Malachite gems are also acceptable.

Mages are most effective when coordinated together. A volley of Fireballs or Pillar of Fire timed correctly into an ally's Gravity Well can bring about the demise of even the most tanky players on a capture point. Equally, your Incinerate can act as a zone control ability, forcing players inside or outside of a capture point depending on the situation. Your Fire Staff is your main go-to weapon, and you should be trying to always have burn stacks up on targets to have a good uptime of your Let it Burn 10% fortify buff.

Ice Shower is a fantastic ability to use to prevent rotations in wars, or to trap players from entering a base in Outpost Rush. This ability also provides Rend, which increases the damage on targets effected for all allies. You should try and use your Ice Storm on targets with low or no stamina. This way you will be able to catch them more easily in a chain-root with your Heavy Freeze passive by using a heavy attack. Be mindful that your Ice Storm does not stack with other Ice Storms. This should guide you in your placement and timing of the ability.

Entombed can be used both offensively and defensively. Not only is it a great panic button, but it can also be used to secure capture points, and even hold choke points for a brief duration if placed correctly. Another move that you can also take advantage of is to eat food prior to using Entombed, which will give you health ticks until the Tomb breaks you take damage.

In all, the Mage build offers a strong and well-rounded toolkit which enables it to have a high impact in a variety of scenarios. The Mage lacks sustain, but this can be mitigated somewhat through use of potions and food, as well as the Healing Tomb weapon perk. Mages should find themselves with consistent spots in wars, as well as being a very fun build to play.