Greatsword Tank Build – New World Season 9

New World Greatsword Build breakdown for Mainhand Greatsword and Offhand Greatsword specifications for Tanks. Ideal skill tree, weapons, rotations, and reasoning to use for different content in New World or different playstyles.

Mainhand Greatsword

For those of you who like to main Greatsword (GS) there’s a few options to run that depend on content difficulty and level of skill.

Defensive Focus

For hard to survive content like M3’s and Hive of Gorgons raid, or if you are just learning to use Greatsword as a mainhand on tank, and need more practice with the rotations.

Goal: Stay alive and maintain mob/boss aggro.

Weapon

Ideal weapon to use for this build: Warcry of the Sentry + Trenchant Recovery with a Cut Pristine Carnelian gem.

Attributes

• 350 Constitution
• 25 Focus
• Strength fill the rest

Armor Perks to use

Best in slot (BIS) gear will be the following:

• Head: Enchanted Ward, Refreshing, + Slowing Rupture/Slash Conditioning
• Chest: Void Darkplate, + Sturdy Energy
• Arms: Enchanted Ward, Refreshing, + Offhand Perk/Slash Conditioning
• Legs: Enchanted Ward, Refreshing, + Offhand Perk/Slash Conditioning
• Feet: Enchanted Ward, Refreshing, + Slash Conditioning
• Amulet: (dmg type) Protection, Health, Divine/Fortified
• Ring: Blooddrinker + Enfeebling/Keen Awareness
• Earring: Despised, Refreshing Toast, Fortifying Toast

Rotations

1. Relentless Rush
   • To get into position and activate Onslaught Stance
2. Roaring Rupture
   • To taunt, weaken, and pull enemies toward you (because of Onslaught Stance) when enemies are close enough
   • Defiance Stance will now be active
3. Spam heavy attacks
   • While in Defiance Stance, you will block incoming enemy attacks while charging your own heavy attacks via Guard Point
   • Blocks with Guard Point will inflict 5% Rend (up to 3 times) for 10s on melee attackers
4. Calamity Counter
   • Activate when stamina gets low, OR
   • When expecting a lot of incoming damage, OR
   • When needing to re-taunt straggling enemies
5. Rotate in Offhand skills when safe
   • Aim for in between boss mechanics
   • Be quick so you can get back to Greatsword
   • Should focus on abilities with Rend/Weaken/Crowd Control
     • Ideally in that order of importance

Reasoning

Since this build is a Defensive Focus, your goal is to do everything to stay alive, and maintain mob/boss aggro. Greatsword is meant to utilize heavy attacks and with Undying Defiance (5/15%), Trenchant Recovery perk on Greatsword (25%), Blooddrinker (32%) + (all *1.05) you heal for 65% of weapon damage on each swing, and when blocking with guardpoint following attacks heal for 75% of weapon damage.

*This is better because than the other option on a Defensive Focus would be to aim for the maxed Onslaught tree ability to reduce cooldowns by 10% per heavy . To do this you would lose: some DoT damage on heavy attacks. DoTs, healing, and AoE pull-in from abilities. Up to +12% damage and +15% healing per heavy attack. All for 10% cooldown reduction on heavy, some haste, +15% dmg when enemies are above 90% health, 10% crit chance, and guaranteed critical hit on Rupture. In my opinion, the losses outweigh the gains, considering you already have 21% CDR (from 4x refreshing and 25 focus) for the already short cooldowns for Greatsword abilities.

One of the struggles of Mainhand Greatsword is maintaining stamina. There are two ways in this build to help with that. First, weapon perk Energizing Counter, to restore 50 stamina when activating Calamity Counter. Second, chest perk Sturdy Energy to give a boost to stamina regeneration if stamina gets too low.

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Offensive Focus

If you can’t stand hitting small numbers, and have the skills to maintain mob aggro and not die, this is the spec for you.

Weapon

Ideal weapon to use for this build: Serenity + Gem slot for Cut Pristine Carnelian

Attributes

• 300 Constitution
• Rest in Strength

Armor Perks to use

Same as above, but Relentless Freedom can be used as an escape if you get caught in a Root or Slow

• Feet: Enchanted Ward, Refreshing, + Relentless Freedom/Slash Conditioning
• Amulet: (dmg type) Protection, Health, Empowered/Divine
• Ring: Blooddrinker + Enfeebling/Keen Awareness/Slash Damage
• Earring: Despised, Refreshing Toast, Fortifying Toast/Empowering Toast

Rotations

1. Relentless Rush
   • Get into position and activate Onslaught Tree
   • On multiple rotations, aim for mob kills with this, to reduce its cooldown
2. Roaring Rupture
   • Applies guaranteed critical hit from Onslaught Tree to an AoE ability
   • Applies 10% weaken, cleanse 2 debuffs, and 10% fortify self
3. Spam Heavy Attacks
4. Calamity Counter
   • Taunt enemies again
   • Quickly block a big incoming attack
5. Rotate in Offhand skills when safe

Reasoning

If you are skilled enough to forgo some defensive perks for damage perks, while not dying to enemies, the skill tree and passives selected still allows for 2 taunts and the rest will increase dps and with empower and critical chance. This will result in faster clear times for your team.

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Offhand

Offhands are almost always meant to be used to spam abilities or whatever the rotation consists of, then switch back to mainhand weapon. Greatsword excels as a tank offhand, providing a mix of rend, weaken, crowd control, and cooldown reduction with a quick rotation.

Rend

If you already have another hammer on your team, and do not have a Greatsword dps, tank should swap to offhand Greatsword. An ally using a Rend Bot build, is better suited to use the hammer since applying rend is their main task, while a tanks is staying alive and maintaining boss/mob aggro.

Weapon

Ideal weapon to use for this build: Footfall + Keenly Empowered/Plagued Crits

Attributes

Normally determined by mainhand weapon, but preferred would be the following:

• 350 Constitution
• 25 Focus
• Strength fill the rest

Armor Perks to use

Not required. But if you insist, put Slowing Rupture on a piece of armor with an open slot.

Rotations

1. Heavy attack
   • Enters Onslaught stance
2. Skyward Slash
   • Applies 2x rend 5%(10%) rend for 10s
3. Roaring Rupture
   • Applies a 10% AoE weaken for 10s
4. Steadfast Strike
   • 2nd hit of the ability reduces previous cooldowns by 25%
5. Switch back to mainhand

Reasoning

Other abilities either don’t provide enough benefit to team, or take too much time away from mainhand weapon.

Weapon 3rd perk of Keenly Empowered/Plagued Crits – after starting with a heavy attack, Skyward Slash is guaranteed to be a critical hit, so you can ensure to activate either of these perks. Other options would be attunement, or other ‘keenly’ perks.

Build made using the free tools at New World Buddy

For unfamiliar terms, please refer to our terminology guide.