New World: How To Maximize Build Damage? - Empower Cap Explanation

Here, I want to talk about a feature in New World called Empower. As a PVP and PVE player, it’s important to understand this.

Weapon Empower & Empower Cap Explained

I’m sure you’ve heard of this mechanic. Every weapon has some type of Empower in the skill tree. For example, Evasive Tactics can deal 15% extra damage for 5 seconds after evading.

Basically, the way to know if it’s Empower is to see if it applies a buff to the bottom of your bar. If we hover over it, it will say it increased your damage by 15%. This is how you test it on every weapon in the game.

But your powers don’t actually inherit from the weapon. For example, when I switch weapons or put away my weapons, you’ll see my Invasion Tactics implemented. So you can’t transfer Empower to other weapons, which also means there’s no need to invest too many New World Coins in the same weapon.

Unfortunately, there is an Empower cap in this game right now, which is 50% in total. This means you cannot exceed 50% Empower or it will negate all damage. And you don’t get any extra damage, which is very important, especially for players who like to use Void Gauntlet. Because it has so much Empower in its kit.

What Counts Toward Empower Cap?

So what else actually counts towards the 50% Empower cap now besides the weapon passive itself?

The first thing we want to look at is armor. As you can see here, I have an Electrified Elemental Ward that increases my lightning damage by 2%.

Since Runeglass and all other Elemental Runeglass will count towards our Empower Cap. So if your Runeglass has 5 lightning damage, that’s 10%. So that’s 10% Empower for your character.

There is also some damage that doesn’t actually count towards Empower Cap. This is usually 1% area damage and melee damage.

Because Armor itself is a Harnessing Perk. Therefore, Lightning Harnessing used specifically for this piece also counts towards Empower cap. So, if you have 2% each, like I said, then your Armor and Runeglass already have 20% Empower.

Some other things that now count towards Empower are ring damage. As you can see, Lightning damage plus 7% counts toward Empower, and Powerful Honing Stone counts toward Empower, so that’s another 7%. So we’ve got 34% Empower from the equipped gear and Ring and Honing Stone that pop up. So when we were creating builds for Empower, this was something we had to keep in mind.

Build Guide Examples

I will get 50% Empower on top of 34%, which brings my Empower to 49%.

There are also some passive skills on the skill tree now. For example, on a Dexterity node, 10% Empower for 3 seconds also counts as Empower. So if I were to trigger this, I would actually only get 1% Empower instead of 10% Empower.

Essentially what it does is give you 4% Empower after using Evasive Tactics up to four times. So 16% Empower is good. This tells me that if I want to play this, I can use Defensive Perk instead of Lightning Harnessing. Because it takes us to Empower Cap.

Artifacts Are Not Empowering

It’s worth noting that most Artifacts don’t count as Empower unless specified on Artifact itself. These damage-increasing weapons don’t actually increase damage. Since these are base damage increases, you don’t have to worry about them being counted against your Empower Cap.

Base Damage Increase Explained

For example, if you deal 50% extra damage to a target below 50% of health, this property is unspecified. So it will give you an Empower, but won’t apply the buff at the bottom. This means it most likely won’t count towards your Empower Cap.

Weaken VS Empower

So in PVP, many weapons, especially the newest weapon Flail and Shield, have a lot of Weaken. The effect of weakening is to deny your Empower. So this means that if your Empower was capped at 50%, then your Empower was weakened by 20%, so it will now be 30%.

This isn’t a base damage reduction weaken, it’s just a reduction in your Empower, and it goes in the opposite direction. So I believe Weaken can only reach 50%.

That’s basically what you want to know. Even if you outgrow Empower Cap, it may actually be beneficial for PVP melee builds. Because the enemy may weaken you, but you still have maximum damage time.