Ultimate Sword And Shield Guide (Updated up to 1.3.4 patch)

The Sword offers many strong defensive options, and it's the best weapon for tanking; besides, only Shield can block ranged attacks.

Introduction

The Sword offers many strong defensive options, and it's the best weapon for tanking; besides, only Shield can block ranged attacks.


The Sword and Shield[nwnews.info] combo can be built for either DPS or tank roles, depending on what players prefer or what a party requires. The Sword levels a bit more slowly than the purely DPS-focused weapons. The light attack is slashing, the heavy attack is a thrust, and the abilities using shields are strike damage. This is great since it can be used effectively in every dungeon.

Attributes

Sword and Shield scales with Strength and Dexterity. If you're going to use this weapon to deal damage, you’d focus on obtaining Strength unless you want to mix it with some sort of Dexterity weapon.


Once you reach the endgame and are able to have 300 Strength, you will have Grit during light and heavy attacks to avoid crowd control, which is extra useful in any situation.


50 Dexterity is also good for damaging to gain +5% Crit Chance with all Weapon types, but if you do want to make a DPS build, 300 Strength with Grit is way better.


Constitution is the main and the only Attribute for tanking. Even if you’re going to play as a DPS, 50 points will be enough to unlock 20% effectiveness to all health consumables, but you can get those 50 points with your gear or using +40 Constitution food.


150 Constitution breakpoint is also very useful, especially for PvP. It reduces the critical damage taken just like the perk Resilience does.


Min-maxing your character for endgame content, you can reach 200 Constitution breakpoint for a 20% armor increase.


So for a DPS (or mixed) build you can get 284+ Strength and 176+ Constitution with your Gear as a final DPS build. You’ll get 300 Strength and 200 Constitution breakpoints with food bonuses, for example, Turkey Thigh with Pan Gravy and Spiced Wild Berries which gives +24 Constitution and +16 Strength.

Or you can reach 300 Strength and 160 Constitution and use Roasted Rabbit with Seasoned Vegetables, which gives +40 Constitution, to reach 200 Constitution.

Food choosing mostly depends on your server prices, so other combinations are also possible. More about food will be listed below.

Taunt Mechanics

Taunt forces PvE foes to focus on you. But enemies will frequently finish up any animations or attacks they are already performing against other targets first before turning their attention to you. If the taunt worked, you’ll see the border around the enemy's health bar will turn red.


Shield Bash and Defiant Stance can taunt, but only if you have a Carnelian Gem socketed in your Sword. Damage you dealing also increases your Threat. Use everything to maximize the threat since your role as a tank is to keep all mobs on you and not let them damage other players in your group.

Builds For Sword And Shield

There are two build options for players who like to use the Sword and Shield in New World, one that relies on offensive DPS-based gameplay and another that focuses on playing as a Tank. Most tank builds rely on Reverse Stab since if you hit 4 enemies with it, you’ll constantly refresh all cooldowns except the Reverse Stab itself.

Another important thing is Mobility using. Combining it with Sure Footing weapon perk you can move 53% faster when blocking. The following builds don’t use this skill because not every encounter needs it, but you can take it if you want. For example, on the first Eternal Pool boss this combination is very useful.

• This tanking build is made for hard tanking situations with heavy incoming damage.

Here you don’t have Shield Bash with additional taunt and crowd control, but instead, you have Improved Rush, an ability from Shield Rush tree, which gains 10% weakens to all enemies within 5 meters for 4 seconds. Synergizing it with a Tactician, you can constantly reduce all incoming damage by 10%. It also synergizes with an equipment perk, Fortifying Shield Rush, to get an additional Fortify, which is always nice.

Rotation

The basic attack is going to be started off with a heavy attack, two light attacks, then you could block and hit them with the Shield Rush. Next, use the Reverse Stab to refund your cooldowns if needed, or use Defiant Stance if it’s not on a cooldown.

• If you do want more crowd control and, more importantly, more taunt abilities, you can use this build with Shield Bash.

• Of course, you can just grab every skill in Defender tree, for example, for solo bosses or PvP where you cannot fully realize the potential of Reverse Stab cooldown reduction or if you don’t like to use it.

• To run Arenas and Expeditions fast you need an aggressive support tank, having pretty much of defense and offence, and a panic button Defiant Stance in addition, for example:

You can switch between Achilles’ Heel, Confidence, Mobility in Swordmaster skill tree and Defensive Training, High Grip and Final Blow in Defender skill tree depending on what you need most.
It might perform pretty well in a group due to Leadership buff, giving high AoE damage resetting the ability cooldowns with Tactician (that’s why you don’t need Tactical Strike). But this build is definitely not recommended for solo playing since it has neither damage of pure DPS weapons nor the surviving of tank builds.

• If you’re playing as a tank in a ranged group and do want Leadership since Defensive Formation is not so useful, you can take it for the price of reduced Stamina damage.

Of course, you can take Sturdy Grip instead of Defensive Training or Freeing Justice instead of Counter Attack for PvP.

• Leaping Strike PvP build.

This build is for duels and PvP only, and assuming light or medium armor equipment. This is a totally different side of Sword and Shield. Combined with Keen, Vicious perks on weapon and ring, Refreshing, Refreshing Evasion, and Rogue on both Sword and Shield, Leaping Strike can one shot enemies with HP less than 30%.

Putting 150 points into Dexterity, plus having both Hearty and Nimble allows you to perform 4 dodges wearing medium armor. Otherwise use light armor and put 150 Attribute points into Constitution and all the rest into Strength (you’ll get around 320+).

Sword and Shield Active Skills

Reverse Stab

Reverse Stab is the hardest-hitting skill for the Sword and Shield. But the most useful thing in it is the passive ability, Tactician, which reset your cooldowns (except the Reverse Stab itself) for 25% with a successful hit. This applies multiple times with multiple enemies, so you can basically fully reset your cooldowns by attacking 4 enemies at once. Usually, this can be the core skill of the whole build.
Another passive, Unstoppable Stab, adds Grit to this skill and lets you skip some boss mechanics in dungeons.

Whirling Blade

Pretty nice AoE skill with high damage, useful for both DPS and tank builds. The quick animation and Grit makes it useful in mass PvP.

Leaping Strike

Leaping Strike might be useful for the duels with patches 1.1 and 1.4 changes. It’s a short range to where you’d almost have to be on top of someone to land the hit. It deals okay damage with the upgrades, but the usefulness of the weak slow is questionable. The leaping and attacking portions of this ability have separate properties for their homing and movement since patch 1.4.

Shield Bash

It's your main aggro tool as a tank. Taunts all foes for 6-seconds if you have a Carnelian Gem equipped in your Sword. There’s almost no circumstance where you wouldn’t run this skill. It’s a very quick stun, which helps you set up for huge backstab damage in both solo PvE and PvP. It only gets stronger when upgraded.

Shield Rush

Knocking back foes generally only cause issues for the rest of your group. But this skill has a great passive ability, Improved Rush, which gains 10% weakens to all enemies within 5 meters for 4 seconds. Synergizing it with a Tactician, you can constantly reduce all incoming damage by 10%. It also synergizes with an equipment perk, Fortifying Shield Rush, to get an additional Fortify, which is always nice.

Defiant Stance

In PvE, this skill lets you do your job as a tank with little worry. You’ll get to shrug off a huge portion of incoming damage, which makes this ideal to use against large groups where that extra defense is necessary. Taunts all foes within 8 meters for 6-seconds if you have a Carnelian Gem equipped in your Sword.

In PvP, however, the short duration combined with the insanely long cooldown makes this great to use when you’re anticipating heavy damage, like a Hatchet rushing you with Berserk or other similar situations. Otherwise, it falls short as your opponent can just choose not to interact with you during this skill and, then, you have a long wait before it back up.

Gear

Light armor gives you +20% damage bonus and the best amount of movement with a quick roll.

Medium armor will give you more protection, +10% damage bonus, and +10% length of the crowd control debuffs, but you’ll not have a quick roll. Hearty perk on your ring combined with 150 Dexterity breakpoint allows you to perform 4 dodges in a row, which actually covers the distance of 3 rolls with light armor.

Heavy armor offers the best protection and +20% length of the crowd control debuffs for the price of lower mobility.

Armor choosing depends mostly on your playstyle and content preferences. Of course, heavy armor is the priority, if you’re a tank.

But builds with medium and even light armor are also possible for dueling, questing or leveling.
Look for Armor with Strength and/or Constitution on it for the best results.

Armor Type	Light	Medium	Heavy
Head	1,5 lbs	2,6 lbs	4,7 lbs
Chest	3,5 lbs	6,2 lbs	11,0 lbs
Gloves	1,5 lbs	2,6 lbs	4,7 lbs
Pants	2,0 lbs	3,5 lbs	6,3 lbs
Boots	1,5 lbs	2,6 lbs	4,7 lbs
Shields	2,7 lbs (Round)	5,4 lbs (Kite)	11,0 lbs (Tower)

Also, you can combine different types of armor, light with medium, staying under 13 kg, or medium with heavy, staying under 23 kg. You can change your armor type by simply replacing 3 parts.

Maxed Medium Armor 22,9 lbs build (1L + 2M + 2H): Heavy Chest, Light Pants, 2 Medium and 1 Heavy piece.
Alternative Maxed Medium Armor 22,9 lbs build (2L + 1M + 2H): Heavy Chest, Heavy Pants, 1 Medium and 1 Light piece.
Maxed Light Armor 12,7 lbs build (4L + 1M): Light Head, Medium Chest, Light Gloves, Light Pants, Light Boots.
Maxed Light Armor 12,6 lbs build (3L + 2M): Light Chest, Medium Pants, 1 Medium and 2 Light pieces.

If you need more in-depth information, how tankier you would be wearing a certain kind of armor of a certain Gear Score, feel free to use the New World Calculator[docs.google.com] by Mixed Nuts (copy the link into your browser, for some reason Steam marks google.docs as a suspicious link).

Jewelry

The Infinity Crystal is a 570 amulet that has both Divine and Health and Strength as a main stat. This is the best in the slot for a fresh 60 level. It comes from a quest in Shattered Mountain, “Madaki’s Stratagem”. This quest chain starts from “Shadows Cast By a Final Salute”, taken from James Sexton, Eastburn Outpost, Great Cleave.


Ill-gotten Gain is a 499 Earring, which gives 20 Constitution, Refreshing Toast, Regenerating and Duplication Toast. Great for fresh 60 leveled players, can be dropped from Foreman Harold[mapgenie.io] in Lower Slag Mine, Edengrove.

Sword

As for the weapons for tanking, look for the Sword with Strength and/or Constitution on it, preferably with perks you’ll find below. For example:


To deal as much damage as it possible with Leaping Strike in PvP you need something like this:


There are also a number of Legendary Swords, for example:

• Pit Lord Dominator with 15 Constitution and Vicious, Mortal Lifesteal and Lifesteal can be obtained from Pit Lord Daehi[mapgenie.io] in West Illurmin, Shattered Mountain.
  
• Infernus with 5 Constitution, 10 Strength, and Refreshing Move, Enchanted and Lifestealing, can be obtained from Disciple of Disorder[mapgenie.io], in Upper Harrow, Myrkgard, Shattered Mountain.
  
• Timekeeper’s Hand with 15 Strength and Refreshing Move, Keen and Enchanted, can be obtained from Leviathan of the Deep[nwnews.info] in Scorched Mines, Ambusti Superior, Shattered Mountain.
  
• Primordial Edge with 15 Dexterity and Keen, Rogue and Keenly Jagged can be obtained from the Blighted Greenskeeper in the Garden of Genesis.
  
• Curiosity, Greed with 15 Constitution and Hated, Keenly Fortified, Keen can be obtained from mobs and bosses in the Lazarus Instrumentality.
  
• Promise of Power with 15 Strength and Refreshing, Keenly Empowered, Lifestealing can be obtained from Oro, Joven and Isabella in the Mutated Dynasty Shipyard.

Shield

The Shield offers an additional equipment slot, and all of the Attributes on both the Sword and the Shield are half of what you would get from the same Gear Score Weapon of a different type.

Sword and Shield's combo also grants you 6 total Perks, 3 on every item. You will only gain Attributes and Perks from your Shield when you hold it in your hand.

Shields have damage numbers on them because this is what is used to calculate the damage dealt by Shield Bash and Shield Rush. Shields are also heavy and will affect your equipment load while it is equipped.

There are three types of shields: Round, Kite, and Tower.
Round Shields have the best damage and the lowest block stability.


Tower Shields has the highest block stability and the lowest damage.


Kite Shields are the middle ground.


Block stability shows how much Stamina damage mitigation you will have when blocking with this weapon. Round Shields all have block stability of 30%, Kite Shields has 40%, and Tower Shields has 50%.

So, if you are looking to maximize the damage you are doing with your Shield-specific skills for either PvP or sheer threat generation, then you want to go with Round Shields. If you are looking to have an easier time absorbing damage, then you will want to use a Tower Shield.

For tanking you should look for the Shield with Constitution on it, preferably with perks you’ll find below. For example:


For PvP using Leaping Strike build you might want something like this:


There are five craftable Legendary Shields for the current moment: Soaked Round Shield, Graverobber’s Round Shield, and Dryad’s Shields (Kite, Round and Tower). All of them are crafted at level 200 Weaponsmithing, the recipe can be obtained from the Package of Specialized Weaponsmithing Materials. More about it you can read in our Weaponsmithing Guide[nwnews.info].

Gems

Weapon Gems

If you’re a tank, the only option is Cut Pristine Carnelian since Sword and Shield is basically a tanking weapon.


If you want to play as a DPS, for various situations and builds you can use in your Sword:

• Cut Pristine Jasper

Can be used for both tanking and damaging since you'll get hit pretty often.

• Cut Pristine Opal

Blocking and dodging require Stamina - so this one can be used depending on build and preferences.

• Cut Pristine Diamond

Fits more for a group play, if you can keep at full health.

If you’re fighting mostly against one enemy type, for example, farming something, or completing the Mutated Expeditions[nwnews.info], you can use to convert your damage:

• Cut Pristine Amethyst to fight against Ancients.

• Cut Pristine Aquamarine against the Lost.

• Cut Pristine Ruby against Angry Earth.

• Cut Pristine Sapphire against Corrupted.

• Cut Pristine Topaz against Ancients.

Damage Effectiveness	Slash	Thrust	Strike	Fire	Ice	Nature	Void	Lightning	Arcane
Ancients	-15%		+20%	-40%			+15%	+30%
Corrupted		+20%	-15%		-40%	+15%			+30%
Angry Earth	+20%	-15%		+30%				-40%
The Lost		-15%	+10%		+15%	+30%	-30%
Beast		+20%

• Ancients are the skeletal enemies adorned in regal clothing. You can find them guarding obelisks and other large-scale ruins found throughout Aeternum.

• Corrupted refers to enemies covered in a black and/or red glow. Corruption Breaches are the most common source of Corrupted enemies.

• Angry Earth enemies are nature-themed enemies mutated with bark-like skin and similar nature-themed traits.

• The Lost are glorified citizens and spectral enemies that inhabit most of Aeternum's ruined towns, farms, and cemeteries.

• Beast refers to any of the wild animals that roam around the New World's various zones. Wolves, Bears, and Lynxes are just a few enemies that fall under this category.

Armor Gems

For Armor gems, you can use Cut Pristine Emerald for PvP if you’re meeting lots of Bow and Musket users in PvP:


If you’re farming something, you might want a Lucky Gem. More about how Luck works you can find in this common Guide[nwnews.info] and this specific Luck Guide[nwnews.info].


For Mutated Expeditions you’ll use, depending on the weekly affixes, Cut Pristine Ruby for Hellfire Mutation and Cut Pristine Amethyst for Eternal Mutation.

For other situations to provide generic damage absorption:

• Cut Pristine Onyx

• Cut Pristine Malachite

• Cut Pristine Diamond

Sword and Shield Skill Perks

These perks can be found on armors and weapons but usually slotted on Armor, as Weapons have access to better perks overall.

Fortifying Shield Rush and Empowering Whirling Blade are currently the best perks. Empowering Leaping Strike fits for duels only.

Weapon specific perks don't stack, so you need to have each of them only once. For example, if you have two armor pieces with Empowering Whirling Blade, the damage increase will be still 20%.

Contagious Reverse Stab

It doesn’t have much if any use in PvE though, since most enemies in PvE don’t really debuff you too often outside of Disease or a DoT effect.
In PvP, using Reverse Stab alongside Shield Bash can be a great way to turn an opponent’s freshly applied debuff on them. In a lot of cases, even some DoTs can be valuable to transfer, as the Sword doesn’t have much damage on its own. But it can more potently be used to turn a debuff like a Rend or Weaken against your enemy if done right.

Empowering Whirling Blade

With Whirling Blade being your main AoE tool, this helps a lot with holding pack aggro. For PvP, it’s mostly limited to large scale PvP. Even in those situations, it may be tough to consistently get 3 or more enemies caught in Whirling Blade.

Empowering Leaping Strike

It only increases your damage against foes that you hit in the back with Leaping Strike, which is not a great skill on its own. It’ll be very rare to be able to use Cowardly Punishment in PvE, it’s next to useless there.
PvP is where this can shine the most, assuming you’re running Leaping Strike. Using the same Shield Bash setup, you’ve made it easier to kill your enemy. If you manage to get this off, followed by Shield Bash and then a Damage skill as a back stab, this gets high value.

Repulsing Shield Bash

This Perk is occasionally nice as it allows you to reposition foes. However, if playing with melee DPS, this might cause them to have to reposition themselves as well.
In PvE, the only niche application this has is to push weaker mobs away from you and stun outside of your attack range. This means you take less damage, and they can stay stunned for the full duration while you continue to hit the boss.

Fortifying Shield Rush

Gaining Fortify is always nice because it reduces the damage you take. In PvE, even as a DPS, using Shield Rush generally means knocking most enemies out of your range. It’s a decent effect if you’re already using Shield Rush, but doesn’t make Shield Rush a particularly strong skill.
In PvP, it has a bit more value, as any retaliation from an enemy will deal less damage. It’s also not rated highly due to the short duration, which does mean they can space you out until the effect ends.

Accelerated Defiant Stance

In PvP, it can help you to avoid foes or catch up with them. The Haste effect is generally unnecessary in PvE as most enemies will be coming to you after using Defiant Stance.

Equipment Perks

Armor Perks

Refreshing and Resilient is a universal choice. Refreshing lowers base cooldown, shawn in the tooltip, no matter if the weapon is currently equipped or not. Since these perks stack, you need at least 3 armor pieces with Resilient for PvP.



Refreshing Ward

Pretty useful perk for tanking, especially in AoE situations, but only if you don’t use Reverse Stab. It stacks, so you can have it on your Shield, Sword, Armor and Jewelry.

Refreshing Evasion
Its useful if you’re dodging a lot and don’t have an opportunity to utilize Tactician fully, for example, on single target encounters. It also stacks, so having it multiple times on your armor and jewelry can grant up to 7.6% skill cooldown for the currently equipped weapon every time you complete a dodge animation. Note: if you dodge multiple times in a row, you only get it on the last one.


Freedom and Invigorated are both universal, but not mandatory perks for PvP. Freedom does stack, so collecting a special set with 5 pieces of it will make slow, stun, silence and root (which is not in the tooltip) expire 37.5% faster.

For Weapon Perks

These skills fit mostly for tanking.

Sturdy

Nice perk for a Shield since you’ll be using block as a tank pretty often.

Hated

Threat generation is very important for tanking. You can have two of them, one on the Sword and another one on the Shield.

Keenly Fortified

More Fortify is always great.

Refreshing Move helps a great deal with getting more skill rotations out.


You can also go for Lifestealing if you want to gain health back on hit.


Sure Footing works great with Mobility, and can be useful on certain encounters where you have to move fast while blocking.


Those fit more for damage dealing but your damage also increases your threat level, so these perks can be used in tank builds too.

Rogue and Vicious increase your damage heavily, as you’ll almost always be dishing out backstabs in group play. Of course, Rogue perk doesn’t fit for any kind of tank build. This perk can also be found on both Sword and Shield.



Keenly Jagged is a nice choice to apply one more debuff.


Enchanted or Keen gives plenty of damage as well.



Angry Earth, Corrupted, and Ancients Bane perks for Mutated Expeditions give a +14% damage bonus starting from 568 Gear Score, so you don’t really need an extra expensive 600 GS weapon.


For PvP against healers you can use Plagued Crits or Plagued Strikes. Maximum amount of healing decreasing is 24% for GS 600 weapons.
Plagued Crits require to lower the target’s health to 50% first.


Plagued Strikes don’t require anything but a heavy attack, but in PvP it can be easily dodged, so both options are pretty situational.


Plagued Strikes can be combined with Trenchant Strikes, Trenchant Rend or Trenchant Recovery. Of course, you can use them without Plagued Strikes in PvE, just remember, that Trenchant Recovery only affects one target.

Amulet Perks

Divine will give you more healing and Health - more HP. Everything is simple here, and these are the priority perks.



Slash Protection and Thrust Protection cover most PvE and PvP incoming damage.




Fortified Recovery grants a fairly strong 30% Fortify for 5 seconds when hit below 50% health but has a 90 cooldown for effect.

Earrings Perks

Refreshing is still one of the best options.


Purifying Toast and Refreshing Toast are both great utility options for open-world PvP where health consumables tend to be used more. These all also help in PvE.


You can also grab Refreshing here if you don’t manage to get it on your armor.

Regenerating is especially useful for tanking.


Despised

As a tank, you want as many threat generations as you can get.

Nimble helps the somewhat excessive use of Stamina from this build by boosting Stamina Regen slightly. Works great with Hearty perk on a ring.

Ring Perks

Refreshing is a decent Utility with the lowered cooldowns.


Hearty will add you enough Stamina for shield block.


Thrust Protection can be useful against Bow and Musket users.


You can also go for Leeching if you want to gain health back on hit.


For damage dealing, you can also use on your Ring:

Keen Awareness is a strong option for higher burst damage potential


Slash Damage for light attacks, Thrust Damage for heavy attacks, Strike Damage for shield attacks. The choice mostly depends on your secondary weapon.

Consumables

In this chapter you can find information about endgame consumables, because you don’t really need most of them on low levels. You can easily find the low leveled versions of them because the names only differ with one word except food.

First of all, you need Health Regeneration Food:


Health Potions:


And Regeneration Potions:


Attribute Food.
As a tank, you might want to increase your Constitution. This food gives you an option to put 40 points from Constitution to another Attribute.


You can use food with both Strength and Constitution bonus to increase your damage.


Constitution / Strength combination with more Strength is also available.


Also you can use Strength food to maximize your DPS.


Powerful Honing Stone will increase your damage and, as a result, threat level. They can be bought or crafted at Smelter if you reach 170 Weaponsmithing level.


You can use cheaper stones, like Strong Honing Stone, because the difference is only 1%.


Powerful Gemstone Dust can be also bought or crafted at level 170 Jewelcrafting.


Since they’re used in the Mutated Orb crafting, you can buy Strong Gemstone Dust much cheaper.


Powerful Oakflesh Balm can be bought or crafted at 170 Armoring level as well.


Powerful Incense requires 170 Furnishing level to craft.


Otherwise, you can buy it or use Strong Incense, which often costs much less.


Weapon Coatings give a 15% damage bonus against certain types of enemies. These coatings are usually used in dungeons, where you’re fighting mostly against enemies of the same type, for example:


Ward Potions increase your damage absorption against certain enemy types. They can help you mitigate heavy incoming damage.


Absorption Potions can help you not only in dungeons, but also in PvP against mages. They increase absorption by 15% against certain type of elemental damage, for example:


Corruption Tincture and Blight Tincture remove afflictions and give 97,5% resistance to these afflictions for 5 minutes.



Infused Encumbrance Potion will help you a bit with bringing your sack to the nearest warehouse. It lasts 3 minutes and increases the Encumbrance Limit by 100.
I know that feel, bro, even one Flint or Green Wood must not be discarded.


For more Potions you can check our Arcana Guide[nwnews.info].

Weapons To Combine With

1. Great Axe[nwnews.info] scales primarily with Strength and does a great job of gap closing and getting close to foes. It also has a taunt that heals you in Reap. Using Enfeebling Maelstrom perk on armor will let you decrease the incoming damage for the whole group by 14% with Maelstrom. Unyielding can grant 10% Fortify for your allies standing near Gravity Well, while you return back 49% of your damage as health with Insatiable Gravity Well perk. But both these weapons deal mostly Slash damage, so both will be weak when fighting Ancient-type foes.

2. Hatchet[nwnews.info]. The Hatchet does a great job providing health sustain through Berserk, which allows you to heal up out of combat. Feral Rush can also root enemies so that you can catch slippery foes. You can also make the Hatchet a throwing weapon, which adds a ranged option to your setup. One downside is that both weapons have relatively short-ranged melee attacks.

3. War Hammer[nwnews.info] has enough crowd control abilities. Armor Breaker allows you to get a quick attack off that applies a powerful Rend; you can combine that with the Sundering Shockwave perk, and you can easily hit the 30% Rend cap. With these two weapons, you can switch between attacking and defending in a pinch. This weapon is strong against Ancient-type foes, which covers up for Sword's inherent weakness against them. One downside would be that you have no movement ability.

4. Life Staff[nwnews.info]. Paladin-like build where you can tank and heal at the same time. Although being in a Light Equipment load does provide benefits to healing, you can still heal in Heavy Armor. This combination is all about throwing down persistent heals like Beacon and Sacred Ground and then tanking with the Sword and Shield.
The downsides of this combination include no movement skill and not really having much damage because you trade it for maximum durability.

5. Spear[nwnews.info]. This combination is mostly about tanking and applying Rend for your DPS to increase overall damage. Vault Kick can taunt foes and stun them, but since stuns and knockdowns are broken on hit, you cannot rely on this crowd control in group content besides as a temporary peel. The main problem with this combo is that you would not have any movement Abilities.

6. Void Gauntlet[nwnews.info] functions as a strong hybrid between both melee and ranged damage and support. It can be an amazing supporting weapon for a tank since Oblivion and Essence of Rupture don’t go away when you swap your weapon. By casting these skills and switching to Sword and Shield, you’ll get 20% Empower to you and your allies, 15% of target’s weakening, 20% recovering of your damage as health, or just get unlimited block regenerating +30 Stamina per second; nothing in New World can hit you hard enough to break the block.

FAQ

• How do you use a Sword and Shield in New World?

A primarily defensive weapon, the Sword and Shield combo is designed purely to protect your allies, whether in PvP or PvE. It can be used for damage dealing or dueling with a proper setup.

• Which attributes do I need?

As a tank, you need only Constitution. As a DPS, you need Strength.

• Which armor should I wear?

Usually, players prefer heavy armor.

• What is the best secondary weapon in New World?

Every weapon has its own preferences and can change your Sword and Shield build. You can use War Hammer for crowd control, Hatchet for PvE farming, Great Axe for mass PvP, Life Staff build to become an unkillable paladin, or Void Gauntlet to get more utility options.

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[Fall10]

Beautiful

[Zetafield]

I found this EXTREMELY helpful. Thank you. I started NW as sword and board and now I am seeing more possibilities with the info above. thanks!!!