Season 3 of New World has brought a renewed focus on PvE content, making it more important than ever to have a well-optimized PvE build. In this guide, we'll explore a unique combination of the bow and spear that not only deals massive damage but also keeps you safe in various PvE encounters. If you're looking to excel in mutated dungeons, boss encounters, or group activities, this build has got you covered. 

• Armor
• Notable Armor Perks
• Gem Slotting
• Weapons
• Jewelry
• Skill Trees
• Attributes

↖ Armor

The choice of armor is crucial for any build, and for this PvE Bow + Spear build, we recommend the following attributes:

• Health: Having a good amount of health is essential for surviving PvE encounters.
• Enchanted Ward: This is a powerful ability that still applies to PvE. It provides valuable protection against damage, especially in difficult PvE scenarios.
• Nature Damage: Boosting your nature damage is crucial for enhancing the poison damage over time effect.
• Weapon Perks: Don't overlook the importance of weapon perks in PvE. These can significantly enhance your damage output.

↖ Notable Armor Perks

• Enfeebling Poison Shot: This perk causes a poisoned target to deal 16% less damage for 6 seconds. When combined with abilities like the Void Gauntlet tether, it results in nearly a 50% damage reduction.
• Thrust Resistance: Primarily, focus on thrust resistance to mitigate incoming ranged damage. PvE encounters often involve elemental damage, so it's wise to be prepared for a variety of scenarios.

↖ Gem Slotting

Consider slotting gems based on the weekly mutators. For example, if the mutator is fire-based, use fire gems. Adapt your gem choices to optimize your resistance in various situations.

↖ Weapons

For this PvE build, we'll focus on a spear with specific perks:

• Trenched Strikes: Aim for a spear with the Trenched Strikes perk, which increases heavy damage for sweep attacks.
• Keenly Jagged: This perk causes bleeding on the target. In Season 3, it deals 28% weapon damage over time every second, making it incredibly potent.
• Bleeding Sweep: Use the Bleeding Sweep skill to deal substantial damage over time to your enemies.
• Gambit: Equip a Gambit that offers a 15% bonus damage when your stamina is not full. In a light armor build, your stamina should rarely be full.

The bow is where you'll make up the bulk of your damage output. Use the following perks:

• Keen: This perk increases your critical hit chance, helping you deal more damage.
• Penetrating Rapid Shot: This is an essential perk for the bow in PvE. It provides a 35% armor-piercing bonus, which synergizes well with other damage modifiers like Rend.

↖ Jewelry

The jewelry selection for this build is relatively straightforward:

• Health: Boost your survivability with health perks on your jewelry.
• Thrust Proc: To counteract ranged DoT effects.
• Cleanse: This perk helps you remove DoT effects like burns and bleeds more efficiently.
• Bloodletting: This perk makes your bleeds last longer, increasing your damage output on targets afflicted by status effects.

↖ Skill Trees

Bow

• Closing In: This perk reduces all bow cooldowns by 5% when you hit a foe below 50% health. Combining this with Rapid Shot's cooldown reduction on hit is a game-changer.
• Rapid Shot (Skill): The Rapid Shot skill itself is vital for this build, as it allows you to keep firing arrows continuously. The second perk for Rapid Shot is also crucial. When all three arrows hit the same target, it reduces the cooldown by 50%, effectively making your Rapid Shot infinite.
• Rain of Arrows (Skill): Rain of Arrows now hits like a truck in Season 3 and should be included in your PvE skill rotation.
• Poison Shot (Skill): Use Poison Shot in conjunction with your increased nature damage for an added DoT effect.

Spear

• Invigorating Crits: This perk helps with stamina regeneration and ensures you can use your abilities consistently.
• Invasive Maneuvers: Reducing stamina consumption on dodge is crucial, allowing you to perform dodges after using abilities like Skewer and Perforate.
• Righteous Stand (Skill): This skill increases damage on targets for each debuff they have. Stacking up to 30%, this buff is particularly helpful for PvE encounters.

↖ Attributes

Allocate your attributes as follows:

• Strength: 100 points for physical damage, heavy attack damage, and light attack damage. This also benefits your spear damage.
• Dexterity: 350 points to unlock all the bow perks in the Dexterity tree.
• Intelligence: Distribute points to get the 5% damage bonus to targets afflicted with damage over time. This will proc from Keenly Jagged on both your bow and spear.
• Constitution: Aim for 105 Constitution to reach the maximum health threshold. The Banana Parfait consumable can provide a temporary boost to Constitution.

Conclusion:

This PvE Bow + Spear build offers a versatile and potent combination of weapons and abilities, making it ideal for tackling challenging PvE content in New World's Season 3. By carefully selecting your armor, perks, gem slots, weapons, and attributes, you can maximize your damage output while ensuring your survivability.