We are going to be talking about the Fire Staff and the Abyss Combo. This was a very famous combo from the season 3 patch, and now it is making a return for New World Season 4. Fire Staff is in such a great spot in the PVP meta currently, and comboing it with the Abyss provides so much more damage and mobility. So, with that being said, let’s talk about the best in slot gear, attributes and skills to run for Season 4. If you have enough New World Coins, just follow my build.
Skill Trees
Starting off with the Fire Staff, we have a standard Pillar of Fire, Fireball, and Burn Out. We need to make sure that we take most of the passives on the left side of the Fire Staff tree so we can open up the Runes of Helios.
For the Great Axe skill tree, we are using Charge, Reap, and Execute. The reason we take Execute in this build is that, since we run Crippling Reap on the Great Axe, we can pretty much guarantee ourselves a free 200% weapon damage. This damage is increased to 250% weapon damage when hitting a target below 50% health, and if they are below 30% health, we get a 100% critical chance with this ability.
Additionally, we also take Blood Lust in this build to run 20% faster when chasing targets, and it helps to do 15% more damage for free.
Gear
Next, let's talk about gear. Starting off with the helmet, we are using Health Shirking Heals, and Refreshing Shirking Heals are going to be a big part of this build. It is what is going to allow us to do so many crazy plays. We do want to run Featherweight with this build because the Fire Staff and Abyss do not need more damage from any other artifact like Tumbler Footwraps.
For the gloves, we just have something simple with Empowering Fireball. We have some more Shirking Heals on the legs and feet, and this is the Fire Staff that I am currently using, but it is nothing best in slot. The main perk that we do want is going to be Alacritous Punishment, and instead of Keenly Jagged for the proc, we want to have Plagued Crits.
Here is my Abyss, and we talked about Crippling Reap again. The reason we take Crippling Reap is that it is going to slow whoever we target with this ability by 50% for 4 seconds. The slow cap in this game is also 50%, so we pretty much slow cap any target that we hit with this ability.
For the Heartrune, there is nothing better than Stalwart Heartrune of Stoneform. It simply provides us with so much more healing and survivability in this build. For the amulet, I am personally using Tanglevine with Champion’s Ring and also Endless Thirst.
Attributes
Let’s talk about the attributes that you can run with the rest of the best in slot gear. Unfortunately, in this build, we do have a lot of magnify because the Frigid Dawn gear that is best in slot for OPR and 33s does come with 32 magnify. On top of the magnify from Featherweights, the magnify from our amulets, the magnify from our earring, and the magnify from our Abyss, we are at six magnify. That means that we only have two attribute options that we can run.
One of the attribute options that we can run is going to be the 200 con, 400 int. If you try to put any more points out of intellect into strength or dex, you are not going to be able to with six magnify. If you wanted a little bit more damage on your Abyss and Fire Staff, you could also drop your Constitution to 150 and then bump your strength up to 50. At 25 strength, you get 5% light attack damage, and at 50 strength, you get 10% heavy attack damage.
Both of these modifiers apply to both your Great Axe and your Fire Staff and do actually increase your damage quite a bit.
Next up, talking about the perks that we are running. Once again, we are trying to run 5 Shirking Heals, 4 Elemental Aversion, and 2 Enchanted Ward. The only way we are able to fit 2 Enchanted Ward into this build is by using the freedom pieces of armor that you can get from the Glacial Tarn Mutation dungeon. If you play a lot of Outpost Rush, this is going to be your absolute best in slot gear. And putting Shirking Heals on it is going to fit in every single one of your Outpost Rush builds. Once again, Shirking Heals is just absolutely massive in this patch for 1vX situations. Even though Plagued Crits and Plagued Strikes are currently meta and do reduce the heal of Shirking Heals, it is still absolutely the best perk to take in this game for small-scale PVP.
Tips And Tricks
Let's talk about how to actually play this build. If you are new to the Fire Staff, you really need to get the hang of getting your light attacks in between your abilities. This is actually a massive DPS increase as it applies a ton of Smolder stacks. Ideally, you really want to be abusing your heavy attacks for the cooldown, but if you can get a few light attacks in between your casts of abilities, you are going to see a massive DPS increase. The same thing applies to your great axe as well. Before you Reap, you really want to get in that auto-attack before and after because you do get that free extra weapon damage.
One thing to note as well: your main combo with the Abyss is really just going to be the reap into the auto-execute. Now, you only want to do this combo when they have zero stamina. You also have the auto-charge combo. Other than that, there's really nothing else to talk about with this combo. You have your Execute, you have your Charge to escape, you have your Burn Out to escape or go in, and it is the Fire Staff, so it's really not that hard to get the hang of after a few games.
