New World Great Axe Build - Create the Best Two-Handed Weapon
The Great Axe is one of the best melee weapons in New World. This is a good choice for beginners who want to perform heavy attacks and heal themselves at the same time. The Great Axe is also a good armor breaker and can deal huge critical damage with Masteries. In this New World Great Axe Build article, we’ll address the best builds for this weapon in New World.
Table of Contents
Great Axe Overview
The Great Axe is a two-handed tank weapon focuses on slash and devastating melee damage in a combination of basic attacks and active skills. The Great Axe deals damage to multiple enemies, so it provides a good crowd control that makes it perfect for both PvE and PvP.
The Great Axe performs self-healing buffs, so you can enter the heat of battle performing heavy attacks without worrying about your HP. This is a big difference between this weapon and others like the War Hammer.
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Strengths |
Weaknesses |
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Great Axe Attributes
The Great Axe scales with strength, so it’s fundamental to focus on developing these stats by distributing your points smartly. The idea is to provoke as much damage as you can, so strength is a priority.
Constitution may work as a decent secondary attribute, but only Strength will increase the damage dealt.
The 50 Strength breakpoint will increase the damage of your light attack by 5%, while the 100 Strength breakpoint will do it by 10 %. Once you reach 300 Strength, you’ll have Grit during light attacks and heavy attacks. This is very useful to avoid crowd control.
The Best Great Axe PvE Builds
There are a few options when choosing the role you want to fulfill with this two-handed weapon: DPS and Tank. Below, you can check the recommended build for each role, with both active and passive skills.
Tank Build
Tank is very likely the role autonomy of the Great Axe and one that it performs very well. For tanking, we recommend pairing the Great Axe with the Sword, as it is the best tanking weapon. Since the Great Axe offers a good area of crowd control, it works very well with the Sword, as the latter lacks it.
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Gravity Well is the right choice to lock down crowds of enemies. Since Gravity Well creates a vortex that pulls targets closer, it’s very difficult for the enemy to escape from it. The only way is by using a Dodge Roll. Gravity Well can even stop charging foes such as Elk or Bison in their tracks.
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With Reap you extend your axe 5 meters, pulling foes to you with a damage of 110%. Reap also will heal you if you hit a lot of foes, so you can use it as an emergency heal. Reap can apply to Taunt as long you have a Carnelian gem attached to it. Hunger is the recommended Mastery for Reap since it heals for 30% while enduring strike.
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Charge is a great choice since it can be a lifesaver after receiving huge damage, as you can quickly get away and recover your health. Besides, you can damage multiple targets in a row if you know how to manage this ability.
DPS Build
Your primary role as a DPS is to provide light crowd control and terminate several enemies. To do this, the best abilities to use are Charge and Reap. These abilities will allow you to close the distance to do much area damage. On the other hand, if you want to focus on single-target damage, then switch Reap out for Execute.
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Execute will provide you with an overhead attack dealing 200% weapon damage. In addition, it will deal 300% weapon damage to low-health enemies, more precisely, foes below 50% health. Execute can give you a great advantage when you’re fighting in PvP scenarios and achieving a successful hit.
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Insatiable Gravity Well is a great perk choice on your weapon or gear because it gives a great damage booster. It´s not mandatory, but if you can get it, it will be very useful.
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Regarding gems for DPS build, the best is Cut Pristine Diamond since it provides 15% damage and outgoing healing. Thanks to this, you’re likely to keep full health while fighting. This gem also provides generic damage absorption. For gear, Cut Pristine Onyx is another good choice to absorb physical damage.
The Best Great Axe PvP Builds
With a Great Axe, you can provide huge damage through melee attacks on the battlefield by creating a good PvP build. The Great Axe will help you to pull foes to you and push players off of objectives. In this regard, the charge will help you chase down enemies and prevent them from escaping. With Charge, you’ll approach enemies and attack them early.
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The Collector is another ability we recommend you to pick in the Great Axe Reaper tree. This ability increases the Reap range to 8m.
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Fatal Attraction is also a good choice if you combine it with Gravity Well since after you pull enemies, you do a spin attack dealing 115% weapon damage.
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Regarding Passives, Critical Gains will help you to heal yourself for 10% of the damage dealt. Feed also heals you for 10% damage when your attacks against foes are below 30%. Finally, Death’s Embrace will increase armor penetration by 10% against foes below 50% health.
Great Axe Abilities
All weapons in New World have six abilities. You can only use three abilities at the same time on your actions bars. For this reason, it’s fundamental you decide well on what you’ll spend your Mastery Points regardless of respeccing.
Reaper Abilities
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Name |
Icon |
Description |
Charge |
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Charge 10m forward and deal 120% weapon damage when you reach a target. You can press LMB to stop charging and attack early. This is a great ability to reach most ranged enemies, cross waters, and for closing gaps. The best of this ability is that you can steer the charge by turning in the corner and going exactly where you want. |
Reap |
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Reap extends your axe 5m and pulls enemies to you, dealing 100% weapon damage. This ability provides light and heavy attacks and gains more range and life leech with Masteries. Reap will keep you healthy when you hit multiple targets due to its hefty leech. |
Execute |
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Execute provides a powerful overhead attack dealing 200% weapon damage. It can deal 300% weapon damage to foes below 50% health. This is great for PvE as Masteries allow it to crit versus foes on less than 30% health. Combined with other Masteries in the Reaper tree is both a great healer and powerful damage dealer. |
Mauler Abilities
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Name |
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Description |
Whirlwind |
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Whirlwind is a fast-spinning attack that deals 50% weapon damage to all the nearby foes. With Masteries, you spin again for a maximum of 7 spins when hitting an enemy. This ability has great potential in PvE groups, but still, it’s easily interrupted by attacks. |
Maelstrom |
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The Maelstrom is a spinning attack that pulls foes to you and deals 110% weapon damage. This ability destroys incoming enemies and gets an extra swing with Masteries. It deals a 360-degree arc around with two attacks, but it does not have the healing of Reap or the crowd control power of Gravity Well. Upgrade Maelstrom fully to get additional range, consume incoming projectiles, and more weapon damage |
Gravity Well |
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The Gravity Well throws your axe to create a vortex that pulls the target to its center, ending in burst damage that deals 125% weapon damage. This attack is powerful since enemies cannot walk out of it. This is a great ability for both PvP and PvE due to its strong area-on-effect crowd control. |
Great Axe Perks
All weapon abilities in New World have their corresponding weapon perks and armor perks. You can only benefit from one weapon ability perk at a time. Below you’ll find the best perks that can help you to improve your attack damage and general best Great Axe build.
Refreshing Charges
It reduces the cooldown of Charge by 15% when you hit a 100% health foe. It scales with Gear Score.
Crippling Reap
You slow foes for 2 seconds when you hit enemies whose health is below 50%. This is very useful to catch up with enemies trying to escape from your axe. The only problem, as you can notice, is that it works only when the target’s health is below 50%, which may be a little nuisance.
Mending Execute
Mending Execute heals you for a percentage of your maximum health when you kill a foe using Execute. This is perfect for PvE content since you keep yourself healthy by killing nearby foes.
Fortifying Whirlwind
This perk allows you to stack up to 50% damage absorption with Fortify. The only problem is it lasts 2 seconds and does not have Grit, so it can be interrupted by a simple stagger.
Enfeebling Maelstrom
The second hit of Maelstrom reduces the damage that enemies can deal with for a short time. This perk can be very useful if you know how to manage Maelstrom correctly to hit the second swing.
Insatiable Gravity Well
This perk grants damage leech as well as allows you to release a second damaging burst. It’s great for both PvE and PvP, and it´s mandatory to use it if you’re using Gravity Well.
Great Axe Weapon Combinations
The Great Axe gains different properties and enhances power depending on the second weapon you are equipped with. For example, the heavy attack is boosted by a Hatchet, and a Life Staff improves the health restoration.
Hatchet
This combination will provide you with the best self-healing in New World. The Hatchet gives a great health sustain through Berserk, allowing you to heal out of combat. With Feral Rush, you can also catch slippery enemies and it adds a ranged option to the melee features of the Great Axe.
War Hammer
This is another two-handed weapon that provides much crowd control and scales in Strength. The combination between the Great Axe build and the War Hammer Build will give you a heavy pull and strikes.
A good combination is to close the gap when the Great Axe pulls enemies and then knocks down the nearby ones. Besides, the War Hammer can help you deal with any Ancient-type foe caught thanks to Wrecking Ball and Mighty Gavel skills.
Spear
The Spear performs a good crowd control, so you can use the Charge and Blood Lust to approach enemies and then stun them with Vault Kick. You can even pair Spear with Execute to provide good hits in PvP, but due to Spear scales in Dexterity, it only will be capable of hitting successful light attacks.
Life Staff
For this combination, you can scale Focus instead of Strength and use a gem to change some of the damage scaling to Focus. The Life Staff can benefit from the Great Axe’s aoe skills from Gravity Well. Furthermore, this combination ensures you max HP during combat.
Great Axe Mastery Trees
The Great Axe has two Mastery trees, just like other weapons in New World. The more recommendable is to spend your attribute points in a Mastery from the preceding row to select deeper Masteries.
Reaper Tree
Reaper mainly focuses on health and hits foes below 30% health. Blood Lust, its Ultimate Mastery, will increase your movement speed by 30% and deal 15% more damage to enemies within 15 meters. This speed boost is a strong passive ability because it activates from any type of enemy, keeping up slippering targets without expending ability cooldowns.
Mauler Tree
Mauler Tree focuses on heavy attacks, targets hit by pull attacks, and buffs from being surrounded by enemies. Mauler’s Fury, its Ultimate Mastery provides a buff that increases your aoe damage on a hit by 3% with a maximum of 30%. This is great for PvE and boss fights.
Final Thoughts
Finding a good balance between abilities, strength, and speed is always a hard task, especially when it comes to a two-handed weapon such as the Great Axe. There are dozens of combinations you can do, both with skills and other weapons. Besides, a Great Axe with a higher gear score still can make the difference between a good performance and a deficient one.
But still, we believe that we’ve given you a quick close-up of general aspects of Great Axe builds and a good explanation of how to turn this weapon into an extremely strong death machine.
Besides, be attentive to the news for other weapon builds. We’re continuously uploading new info about New World by Amazon Game Studios and much more games!
Last but not least, keep in mind that MMOPixel offers New World Coins to improve your gaming experience on the front lines when you’re the center of attention. Buying items and equipment will allow you to perform a better battle against opponents. Get your Coins and conquer the Aeternum!
