Grey Wizard’s Hat Build – New World Season 9

This Grey Wizard’s Hat build was constructed to utilize the 25% reduced charge time of heavy attacks as the new perk for Grey Wizard’s Hat in Season 9 of New World. While any of the ranged mode weapons would work, Fire Staff continues to provide the best dps of mage weapons. There are a few variations of how this build can be played, but the focus was for Heavy Attack utilization first, then abilities, then survivability and mana regen. 

Mainhand Weapon

Hoplite Fire Staff – easy to obtain. BiS Fire Staff would be a custom Gorgon’s Fire Staff that will likely cost a ton of gold. Next best option would be A Mad House (700GS). 

Offhand Weapon (options)

Rapier (Finisher) – best when paired with Hoplite weapons since they come with Keenly Jagged, even though it’s not an optimal PvE perk since it can only be applied on an enemy once (even if multiple teammates have it).

Void Gauntlet (Lifetaker)

Ice Gauntlet (Deep Freeze)

Blunderbuss (Pestilence)

Attributes

Strength	50
Dexterity	50
Intelligence	500
Focus	25
Constitution	Fill the rest

Armor 

Armor for this build will prioritize perks in the following order:

Refreshing x4

Enchanted Ward

Weapon Perks

Fill with perk of choice: Health, Annointed Lifesteal, Vigor

Jewelry

Since this is a Ranged build, prioritize amulets with ranged protection like Thrust, still have an amulet for each damage type on standy. Thrust Amulet example:

Tanglevine Amulet

Ring options will be the following:

• Elemental Band
• Azoth Crystal Ring

Ideally aim for Keen Awareness unless you need help hitting Empower Cap from Fire Damage perk. 

Heartrune

Any ranged or utility Heartrune works well for this build. Fire Storm is one of the obvious choices, but Grasping Vines can still save your life and help rend. 

Typical Buffs and Trophies

In order to do maximum damage, the correct trophies and damage boosting buffs should be applied for the type of enemy or boss you are facing. You should be able to count 5 buffs above your health bar before boss fights for example. Below is an example for Hive of Gorgons. 

• 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 17.5% 
• +48 food

How to Play

1. Meteor Shower to start gaining Empower
2. Fire Ball
3. Pillar of Fire
4. Heavy Attack until all 3 abilities are off cooldown
5. repeat

Empower details

Empower Cap is fairly easy to hit, which is why I don’t go for the Runeglass or Fire Harnessing at all in this build.

Mortal Power	12%
Empowering Meteor Shower x10	21.4%
Clear Mind	5%
Clear Casting	5%
Rune of Helios	20%
Elemental Affinity x1	4%
Empowering Toast	10%
Total	77.4% (27.4% over cap)

To know where your current Empower total stands, check out the Empower Calculator.

Tips to remember

With the amount of variation you have to hit Empower Cap on your own, you should very frequently be at cap. Since Runes of Helios has 7s of uptime and a 30s cooldown, and Mortal Power unobtainable for most bosses, the extra avenues for Empower all help for different fights. If you want a little extra room for Empower Cap protection, you could switch to Lifetaker and use Oblivion.

This build prioritizes Heavy Attacks, so holding off spamming abilities immediately when they are off cooldown is important.

Rapier can be used as a defensive weapon with Riposte, and immunity frames from Flurry.

If you are using this build for higher level Mutations, consider swapping Watch It Burn for Flare to do AoE damage with Heavy Attacks on clumps of mobs. For boss fights, it’s better to leave the skill tree as is.

If you really want to push the damage, add in Runeglass of Sighted Onyx to the armor, since it adds base damage instead of Empower damage.

Build made using the free tools at New World Buddy

For unfamiliar terms, please refer to our terminology guide.