Warhammer Leveling Guide
Table of Contents
Introduction
The warhammer is a top tier leveling weapon due to its hefty strong attacks, large crowd control toolkit, and health regeneration mediated by the passive Prevailing Spirit (5). Although players may find the warhammer basic attacks and abilities to have slower animations than other weapons, they will quickly learn to time their abilities correctly and weave abilities and attacks together to make the warhammer a formidable weapon.
Clear Out
Clear Out (2) is the bread and butter of warhammer leveling abilities. With a large and forgiving swing path, decent damage scaling (115%), and a knockback and knockdown effect, Clear Out (2) should be used by warhammer players to animation cancel heavy attacks and batter their opponents.
Passives
- Power Cleaner
- Hitting a target with Clear Out grants Fortify, providing a 10% defense bonus for 4 seconds to all friendlies within 6 meters.
- Clean and Refreshed
- Clear Out’s cooldown is reduced by 5% per enemy hit with the ability.
- Swing Away
- Using Clear Out on a target grants haste, increasing movement speed by 30% for 3 seconds.
All three Clear Out (2) passives will be amazing last minute pick-ups in this leveling build. Due to the amount of use that this ability will get, squeezing out every last bit of value will be crucial. After all three passives are taken, not only will Clear Out (2) deal damage, knockback, and knockdown, it will also help mitigate damage with Power Cleaner (15). Come off of cooldown faster when fighting many monsters at once with Clean and Refreshed (16), and lastly, give the warhammer player an amazing burst of speed to chain together monsters or approach knocked down targets.
Shockwave
Shockwave (3) is the meat and potatoes of what the warhammer does best; whittling down and destroying large packs of monsters. Warhammer players should look to use shockwave (3) as an animation canceling ability after a heavy attack to ensure that the maximum amount of damage is being generated.
Passives
- Frailty
- The trauma of the attack causes weaken, decreasing the damage dealt from the target’s attacks by 10% for 5 seconds.
- Meteoric Crater
- Expands the effective range of the shockwave to a 4 meter radius.
Frailty (11) will decrease the damage that monsters do, giving the warhammer user a bit extra survivability and in turn, increasing leveling speed and efficiency. Frailty (11) will also be an additional activator of the passive Concussive Impact (12).
Path of Destiny
While Path of Destiny (4) is used as a gap-closing and interruption tool (with Seismic Waves (13)) in PvP, for leveling it is used as an extra AoE ability to burn down several monsters at once, while also keeping the warhammer player’s health topped-off through Prevailing Spirit (5). In its most effective form, Path of Destiny (4) should be used to hit as many monsters as possible since the hit limit is uncapped.
Passives
- Seismic Waves
- Path of Destiny now staggers all targets in its path.
Seismic Waves (13) gives Path of Destiny (4) a bit of extra utility in the form of a stagger that will interrupt many enemies’ attacks. Although this passive proves more useful in combat with other players, the small bit of value that it does bring to a leveling build is enough to take the passive a bit later on in weapon progression.
Playstyle
Warhammers are at their most effective when used to burn down many enemies all at once. With Path of Destiny (4), Shockwave (3), and Clear Out (2) all being AoE style abilities without hit limits, the build’s fundamental function should revolve around hitting as many enemies as possible. Because all three abilities function similarly and apply some form of crowd control to enemies, the rotation of abilities used while leveling is not as important as weaving each ability with a heavy attack. An example of a rotation while fighting a single or pack of monsters is as follows:
Heavy Attack → Clear Out → Heavy Attack → Shockwave → Heavy Attack → Path of Destiny
When each ability is used to cancel the recovery animations of the warhammer heavy attacks, the warhammer rises from being something extremely sluggish to feeling fairly dexterous. There are a few passives that are taken in this build that warhammer players should take careful note of to maximize the damage that they are dealing. Warhammer users should make sure that the Hammer Time (1) empower bonus is active at all times while fighting monsters. Players should also realize that Concussive Impact (12) is activated by both the Frailty (11) and Aftershock (18) debuffs. Warhammer players should also always be thinking about passive Power Through Pain (10) and how they are utilizing the 1 second of 20% increased damage. Players should realize that this increase in damage will also amplify and synergize with passive Prevailing Spirit (5). After a player is hit they should try to use an ability rather than a heavy attack to regenerate extra health, unless they are already topped off. With all of the debuffs the warhammer applies, Prevailing Spirit (5) health regeneration, and the immense amount of crowd control that the weapon provides, the warhammer should help players dominate their leveling experience.
Attribute Distribution
The warhammer fully scales with the Strength attribute at 1.0X. This means that for every point that a player puts into Strength, the warhammer will gain 1 full weapon damage.
Understanding that the warhammer is a melee weapon and that monsters in New World are unlike players and their attacks home-in on the players position, Constitution becomes an incredibly valuable attribute. The most important Attribute Threshold Bonuses are listed below:
Strength
- 100 Strength
- +10% damage to melee weapon heavy attacks.
- 200 Strength
- +10% damage to stunned, slowed, or rooted enemies.
Constitution
- 50 Constitution
- All consumables are +20% stronger
- 100 Constitution
- Increase max health by 10% of physical armor
- 150 Constitution
- 10% reduction to crit damage taken
- 200 Constitution
- +20% increase to armor
Getting to both 100 Strength and 50 Constitution as quickly as possible is important for getting off to a good start with the warhammer. 50 Constitution is valuable early on because it reduces the amount of consumables that a player will need to use by a significant amount. Heavy attacks will be the dominant basic attack used on the warhammer, so 100 Strength will give players a large boost in leveling speed and performance.
Weapon Ability Perks
Weapon Ability Perks are generated perks that can be found or applied to:
- Weapons
- Chests
- Helmets
- Gloves
- Pants
- Shoes
These weapon ability perks augment the power level of a weapon ability in a positive way. Currently, each weapon has 6 ability perks available to players, one for each active ability. Below are all of the weapon ability perks currently available to the warhammer and pertain to this build.
Shockwave applies Rend, reducing the target’s damage absorption by X% for 10 seconds.
Clear Out now knocks targets back an additional X%.
Heal for X% of the damage dealt from Path Of Destiny.
Both Leeching Path Of Destiny and Sundering Shockwave are viable leveling weapon ability perks. Sundering Shockwave is especially powerful because it is an AoE ability that applies a debuff, helping warhammer players to apply rend to all engaged enemies, making follow up AoE attacks much more powerful. Leeching Path Of Destiny is also a great perk for leveling, multiplexing the healing received from perk Prevailing Spirit (5).