Ultimate Spear Guide (Updated up to 1.3.4 patch)

The Spear is a melee weapon with plenty of crowd control options, and one of the strongest Rend applications in the game. Since Spears have more range than any other melee weapon, you're encouraged to manage your distance during an engagement.

Introduction

The Spear is a melee weapon with plenty of crowd control options, and one of the strongest Rend applications in the game. Since Spears have more range than any other melee weapon, you're encouraged to manage your distance during an engagement.



The Spear[nwnews.info] is a weapon that has two types of crowd control: Knockdown and Stun.

Knockdown comes from Sweep and Javelin and knocks foes affected by it onto their backs. This effect does end early though if they take any damage.

Stun is exactly the same as Knockdown with the exception that it goes through Grit. Grit provides almost total immunity to crowd control and displacing effects but stuns like Vault Kick will still apply.

Attributes

Spear is a mixture of a melee weapon and a throne weapon so if you're going to use it as a main weapon focus primarily on Dexterity unless you want to mix the Spear with some sort of Strength weapon.


Constitution is a decent secondary Attribute, especially for PvP, 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 Consitution food.


Minmaxing your character for endgame PvP you can also reach 200 Constitution breakpoint for a 20% armor increase.

Builds for Spear

Choosing the exact build mostly depends on how you use Spear, as a main or a secondary weapon.

• If you use Spear for PvE or character leveling as a main weapon you want as much damage as you can get.

In this build we don’t use Deep Wound since short cooldowns will let us reset bleeds fast enough. You can use Deadly Reach instead of Exacerbating Crits if you are doing a right rotation to apply debuffs before they take off.
For PvP Unerring Precision is an option since you’ll probably meet Great Axe and War Hammer users pretty often.

Leveling

Start off with grabbing Skewer, Perforate, and Vault Kick to have a nice 3 Ability kit.
Next take Aggressive Maneuvers, Relentless Blows and Continuous Motion to empower our Vault Kick and reduce cooldowns even more. Try to dodge before using each Ability to help reduce all your Spear cooldowns.
Then Precise Jabs, Refreshing Jabs, and Exposed Wounds to help give you a lot of crit and cooldown reduction.
Rupturing Strikes is next for the Rend increase, this unlocks Exploited Weakness which is a nice damage increase against foes we have debuffed.
Next take Deadly Ambush and Follow Through to empower your Skewer.
Finishing Blows to help do more damage against low life foes. Exacerbating Crits will extend the duration of your debuffs allowing you to get more mileage out of Exploited Weakness.
Lastly finish up with Deadly Consistency, Evasive Maneuvers, Refreshing Reach, and Impactful Strikes.

• In PvP Spear is mostly used as a secondary weapon, so this build is concentrated around mobility and defense. While it’s possible to level with this build, it’s extremely single-target focused which can make it very slow going. It’ll be reasonably safe with the amount of crowd control it has, but it does lack the raw damage of the PvE Builds.

The usage of Refreshing Precision and Deadly Distance in PvP is pretty hard, but you can use this option if you feel confident with it. Unerring Precision is also optional, you can take any other passive you like.
As for rotation, it’s possible to stunlock your opponent in PvE with this build. The rotation is pretty simple: Sweep, two light attacks, dodge, Vault Kick, two light attacks, dodge, Sweep and again.
The reason we don't pick Coupe de Grace is because you will not be able to do two light attacks if you Sweep someone, so this actually makes your dps go down. But if you don’t use stunlock rotation you can take it instead of Deadly Consistency.

• If you prefer more survivability, you can take Perforate instead of Javelin and combine it with Fortifying Perforate perk.

• For mass PvP like wars you might want a full crowd control build with the Cyclone.

• If you want a ranged attack in PvE you can use this build.

• You can take Refreshing Precision and Deadly Distance instead of Deep Wound and Defensive Stand, for example, since it’s easier to land a headshot in PvE.

Or take Deadly Consistency and Deadly Reach instead.

Optional Passive Skills

A bit of explanation about arguable skills.

Deadly Consistency

This passive can stack for an additional 30% damage for however long you choose to spam the heavy attacks. It doesn't matter which type of heavy attack you do, both are going to count.

Deadly Reach

Since the auto attack range is 4 meters you have only 1 meter window.

Strong Conditioning

Stamina regeneration is pretty fast by itself, this skill will only grant you 1 second faster stamina regeneration, but you can use this skill if you need points to get to Reserved Strength.

Unerring Precision

Can be useful mostly dealing with Hatchet, War Hammer and Great Axe players, but since these weapons were buffed in patch 1.2, this ability becomes more necessary in PvP.

Spear Active Skills

Cyclone

Decent damage, knock back, and the strongest slow in the game in a single skill makes this highly valuable for maintaining your spacing in PvP and still a decent PvE skill. Strong Momentum also adds Grit to this ability which allows you to avoid crowd control.

Javelin

This Skill is excellent at attacking and knocking down enemies that are hitting you from range. It can be decent as a finishing option for someone attempting to run away.
Being one of the few high damage ratios on the Spear, this ability can really hurt with practice and getting those headshots. It will take awhile to build that consistency, but it can be worth it once upgraded.

Sweep

This crowd control move feels pretty fast and consistent; however, the Mastery Coup de Grâce is not that great because this is basically the same damage as a Heavy attack.
When activated, Sweep will knock your enemy's legs out from underneath them, disabling them for a short period. This is very effective in PvP.
It has a rather short cooldown, and you can reduce cooldowns further by Light Attacking, so you should be able to use this quite often.

Perforate

Perforate is one of those skills that you’ll always want in PvE, but will be a little dicey in PvP, if you don’t combine it with Fortifying Perforate perk. This Ability is the only one in the game that can hit the 30% Rend cap by itself. In PvP, it is rather hard to hit all three strikes because foes can just move away.

Skewer

Skewer is a pretty good ability, although this skill is fairly fast it is still rather hard to hit in PvP. It applies a Bleed that with just a bit of cooldown reduction can be maintained indefinitely. This Bleed is what gives it a spot on most builds, as it enables Exposed Wounds, which increases your Critical Chance, letting the weapon handle better when solo.

Vault Kick

This crowd control move is pretty great because it moves you forward and can Stun through Grit. In PvE this skill leaves a lot to be desired due to the narrow range that it hits compared to Sweep’s knockdown.
In PvP, this skill functions as both a Stun and a small gap closer. The most useful thing in this ability is it’s passive Continuous Motion which decreases cooldowns greatly and is a core of many builds.

Gear

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

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).

Look for Armor with Dexterity or with Dexterity and Constitution if you need 50 points to unlock 20% effectiveness to all health consumables.

Gems

Spear Gems

• Cut Pristine Opal

Since Aggressive Maneuvers reduces all Spear cooldowns for 20% after successful hit with an ability for 2 sec every time you dodge, you will find yourself on low stamina quite often. This option may give you the most all-around damage output anywhere in the game.

• Cut Pristine Onyx

You will be able to open with your most powerful ability against full health foes.

• Cut Pristine Emerald

This will help you to execute enemies.

• Cut Pristine Diamond

Fits more for a group play.

If you’re fighting mostly against one enemy type, for example, farming something, 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 while fighting mostly against Bow and Musket users:

• If you’re already level 60 and farming chests or mobs for gear, you need a Lucky Gem:

For other situations to provide generic damage absorption:

• Cut Pristine Onyx

• Cut Pristine Malachite

• Cut Pristine Diamond

Spear Skill Perks

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

Leeching Cyclone

If you are using Cyclone then this can be a nice self-heal that you should not pass up. Healing is decently useful in PvE, but the skill itself leaves much to be desired over other options. In PvP and War especially, this has a chance to really shine, as it can be a pretty strong boost of healing, while also applying strong crowd control and pushing targets away from you.

Sundering Javelin

Rend is a powerful debuff and if you are using Javelin then you certainly should try to get this perk for both PvE and PvP.
In PvE, you’ll be less likely to use Javelin, but this can also be a reason to slot it into a PvE build. Being capable of a near constant 30% Rend at all stages of a boss fight will be very noticeable.

Bleeding Sweep

This is one that’s simply not worth using in PvE due to duration alone, the low damage also makes it very unfavorable outside of using it in a PvP build in place of Skewer for a consistent Bleed.
The one saving grace this passive has is that it provides a consistent Bleed to set up Exposed Wounds. It’d still likely have to be paired with Keenly Jagged for a consistent uptime with Exposed Wounds, but outside of that it’s pretty lackluster effect.

Fortifying Perforate

This is one of the stronger self-Fortify effects. Granted it takes multiple hits for the full effect; at the higher end, it doesn’t need to be fully stacked to be useful.
Fortify is great in PvP, in skirmishes or wars you may even be able to get more value out of the skill by hitting multiple targets and stacking it up faster or higher.

Enfeebling Skewer

Reducing incoming damage is always nice and this perk is great for solo or group content. If you are using Skewer then this is a good pickup. While not a super potent Weaken, it’s definitely not a weak one either. Considering this comes attached to a skill that already inflicts Bleed, it’s another status that will count for Exploited Weakness. In combination with Fortify it can reduce incoming damage from a target.

Keen Vault Kick

In PvE, you’re less likely to use Vault Kick. If you do however, this can be a great perk to help with your DPS while solo. Thanks to Backstabs, you won’t need it much in groups.
In PvP you’re almost always going to run Vault Kick. It’ll also be much harder to get Backstabs in most PvP situations, so the increased Critical Hit Chance will be much more noticeable.

Equipment Perks

Armor Perks

Refreshing with Resilient can be a universal choice depending on your secondary (or main) weapon.



Refreshing Evasion is useful because you’re dodging a lot.


Physical Aversion is useful for PvP against Musket and Bow users.

Weapon Perks

Rogue and Vicious increase your damage heavily, as you’ll almost always be dishing out backstabs in group play.



Keenly Jagged is a nice choice since you’ll crit a lot. Besides, it’ll let you use Exposed Wounds passive without using Skewer.


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


Alternatively, you can use Enchanted or Keen and get plenty of damage that way as well.



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


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 lowering 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 Crits or Trenchant Strikes for more damage.



Trenchant Rend


Or Trenchant Recovery for surviving.

Amulet Perks

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



Empowered is nice as at the high end it can extend our Empower from Skewer by an additional second and a half.


Divine will give you more healing and Health - more HP, everything is simple here.



If you really want to heap on the defenses, Fortified Recovery grants a fairly strong 30% Fortify for 5 second when hit below 50% health, but has a 90 cooldown for the effect.

Earrings Perks

Beloved and Evasive can both help you mitigate aggro making you less likely to pull aggro in expeditions.



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 as well.



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

Nimble helps the somewhat excessive use of Stamina from this build by boosting Stamina Regen slightly.

Rings Perks

Keen Awareness is a strong option for higher burst damage potential and Thrust Damage being a small damage boost in general.



Refreshing is also decent Utility with the lowered cooldowns, but that’s also available on armor.


Thrust Protection can be useful against Bow and Musket users.


Hearty will add you enough Stamina for one more additional dodge. If the player has 109.5 total stamina and each dodge takes 40 stamina (with 150 Dexterity attribute bonus), he can dodge twice (leaving the player at 39.5 stamina), wait a fraction of a second for stamina to regenerate to 41, then dodge twice more for a total of 4 dodges.


Blood Letting works great with Skewer and Keenly Jagged on your weapon.


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

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 by one word, except food.

First of all, you need Health Regeneration Food:


Health Potions:


And Regeneration Potions:


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


You can use food with both Dexterity and Constitution bonus to increase your health and damage at the same time.


Constitution / Dexterity combination with more Constitution is also available.


Also, you can use Constitution food to maximize your health.


Powerful Honing Stone will increase your damage. 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. It also has cheaper analogs, but usually, they don’t cost too much, and you don’t use them too often.


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 feeling, bro, even one Flint or Green Wood must not be discarded.

Weapons to Combine With

1. Bow[nwnews.info] can deal massive damage at a distance while also scaling with Dexterity. This is an extremely flexible build that excels in some key areas: you have both ranged and melee damage, is effective for PvP as well as Expeditions, and has a fair amount of control and sustain.
One downside of this pairing is that both weapons deal Thrust damage, which is weak against Lost and Angry Earth-type foes. Besides, this build has few defensive abilities.

2. Hatchet[nwnews.info] is a great pick as it deals devastating damage up close, while also packing a movement skill and self-healing abilities so you don't need to use restorative items like Potions or food as often. It also scales with Dexterity secondarily so it shares the Spear’s points.
One downside is that both weapons are melee with limited ranged options.

3. War Hammer[nwnews.info]. This build uses the DPS and disables of the Spear and combines it with more crowd control and debuffs of the War Hammer. The War Hammer will make up for the Spear's lack of multi-target attacks and skills. But both these weapons are melee and don’t have enough movement skills or self-healing abilities.

4. Rapier[nwnews.info]. This build uses the huge single target potential of the Spear and the Rapier. The Rapier will be your opening weapon and will be used to deal damage and apply bleed, then follow up with the Spear's strong single target damage and disables.

5. Sword and Shield[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.

6. Void Gauntlet[nwnews.info] provides great utility, lots of buffs and debuffs for you and your team. Even more, it gives you the ability to cooldown your skills fast.

FAQ

• What is this weapon used for?

Mostly as a secondary weapon due to its crowd control and melee options. It also can be used for PvE with a certain build.

• Which attributes do I need?

The Spear scales with Dexterity mainly. Constitution is a decent secondary Attribute, especially for PvP.

• Which armor should I wear?

Depends on how you’re using this weapon. If you’re pairing it with a Bow, it is mostly about high mobility and damage, so light or medium armor is recommended. If you’re using it as a main weapon, you can try heavy armor for more defense and crowd control effects length. Also you can mix different armor parts and find armor combinations that fit your own playstyle best.

• What is the best secondary weapon?

The Bow provides a lot of ranged and area of effect damage with high mobility and shares Dexterity points.

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