Venom DPS Build – New World Season 9
This Venom DPS build for New World Season 9 focuses on playing to the strengths of the Venom artifact (heavy attacks), and how to best support it for high DPS. The spear is a key role in raid groups because of its consistent Rend applications, allowing your team to do higher damage, while also doing great damage on its own through various abilities and combos. With the illegal perk combination of Trenchant Crits and Trenchant Strikes, the artifact is begging you to lean into a heavy attack playstyle – so that’s what we focus on in this build.
Mainhand Weapon
Venom with Enfeebling Skewer
Note – While Coup de Grace is technically a heavy attack and can benefit from Trenchant Crits and Strikes, the abilities activation time is very long, while cyclone does comparable damage and has life steal utility with Leeching Cyclone.
Offhand Weapon (options)
Offhand should really only be used to apply debuffs and or attack from a distance. Hatchet fills both these needs, which is why it is my preferred offhand for Venom.
Hoplite Hatchet with Keen Berserk and an elemental gem.
Footfall with Sundering Stacks and an elemental gem.
Attributes
| Strength | fill the rest |
| Dexterity | 350 |
| Intelligence | 50 |
| Focus | 25 |
| Constitution | 25 |
Armor
Prioritize armor perks in the following order:
- Enchanted Ward
- Refreshing 4x
- Weapon Perks
- Vital Synergy
Jewelry
Pick the best Protection amulet that matches the most common damage you will be taking in the activity you are in. For example, Echidna from Hive of Gorgons uses Strike Damage, so you’d want a Strike Protection Amulet.
Ring options are usually Elemental Band, Azoth Crystal Ring, or an equal Gorgon ring.
Perks to aim for in a ring:
Hearty
Keen Awareness
Leeching
Perks to aim for in an earring:
Nimble
Refreshing Toast
Empowering Toast
It’s important for the Earring to be Dexterity in this build to hit the correct attribute splits.
Heartrune
Brutal Heartrune of Grasping Vines
Typical Buffs and Trophies
In order to do maximum damage, the correct trophies and damage boosting buffs should be applied. The example below is for the Hive of Gorgon’s Raid, where you should ideally have 5 buffs above your health bar, and Major trophies at each of your 3 houses matching the enemy type.
- 3x Major Angry Earth Trophies – 3×5%(15%) Angry Earth Damage
- Infused Angry Earth Coating – 15% Angry Earth Damage
- Infused Angry Earth Ward – take 10% less damage from Angry Earth enemies
- Powerful Honing Stone – 7% Empower
- Desert Sunrise – reduce duration of incoming DoTs by 25%
- +48 food
How to Play
Start with offhand/ Hatchet.
- Rending Throw
- Infected Throw
- Swap to Spear for Heavy attack
- Perforate
- Skewer
- Cyclone
Rotate Heavy attack and abilities when they are off cooldown.
Empower details
| Mortal Power | 12% |
| Follow Through | 20% |
| Empowering Toast | 10% |
| Powerful Honing Stone | 7% |
| Elemental Affinity x1 | 4% |
| Total | 43% |
Overall Empower is lower on spear builds, but with a solid team you can frequently rely on Oblivion for +15% and Leadership for +10% Empower to keep you at Empower cap. To know where your current Empower total stands, check out the Empower Calculator.
Tips to remember
Hatchet in this build is used for quick application debuffs, and Keen Berserk is only for situations where you need to range attack with thrown hatchets.
While it can be tempting to just spam heavies with Venom due to the Deadly Consistency passive in the skill tree, the abilities and utility they provide to the team are more valuable, and should be applied whenever available.
Build made using the free tools at New World Buddy.
For unfamiliar terms, please refer to our terminology guide.
