New World Best Hatchet Builds: Tank, Life Staff And Bow

Although the Hatchet has its plus points, it offers no range or multiple target damage. So, you should have a well-rounded build if the Hatchet is your weapon of choice. This guide will give you the Best Hatchet Builds in New World for both PvP and PvE battles. Many players like to use the Hatchet for solo exploration and single-target damage.  

Related: New World Best Bow Builds

Hatchet: Overview and Skill Trees

Before we go any further, let’s briefly overview the weapon and its skill trees. As mentioned before, the Hatchet is an excellent choice if you are not interested in a weapon with reach and can hit more than one target. Hatchets scale primarily with Strength and dexterity, and they have two skill trees, Berserker and Throwing.

Berserker

It has one of the best abilities in the game, the Berserk. As you unlock Berserk and its perks, the Hatchet will give you a 20% damage increase, a 20% increase in movement speed, health regeneration, and much more.

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Hatchet (Drawbacks) 

Although it is possible to perform a ranged attack with your Hatchet using the throwing ability, it does not give you more than low or medium range. The damage upon throwing is also not as impressive. That is why you should pair it with another weapon that gives your character more versatility.

Tank Build: The Great Axe and Hatchet

The best way to build a tank with a hatchet is to pair it with the Great Axe. Combining these two weapons makes the best tank build for DPS (damage per second) and melee attacks, which is why this build is a great choice for PvP and PvE battles.

Attributes: You would always want to split your points between Strength and Constitution for this build. By reaching level sixty, you will have 200 points in Strength and 200 points in Constitution. The Strength attribute is important because both weapons will scale primarily with Strength.

Similarly, the Constitution attribute will give you a larger overall health pool. It will also allow you to sustain more damage before dying. That is why this attribute plays a crucial role in every tank build.

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The Hatchet

Before we get into the Great Axe skill tree, we shall discuss the Hatchet skill tree for this build. All the skills mentioned below are well suited to make a hatchet tank build and are particularly oriented for this tank build.

The Hatchet has two skill trees, Berserker and Throwing. Here are our recommendations for developing these skills to complete your build.

Berserker Skill Tree

Berserker Tree: Main focus for tank builds, enhances damage and health regeneration.

• Berserk: Boosts damage by 20% for 12 seconds; compatible with Taunt gem.
• Breserking Refresh: Restores up to 30% max health during Berserk.
• Feral Rush: Leap attack with two strikes, increases damage on low-health targets.
• Raging Torrent: Four quick attacks, activates Haste on hits.
• Final Blow: Adds an extra attack post-Raging Torrent.

Throwing Skill Tree

Initially, you would only need one ability from this skill tree to complete your build.

This completes all the hatchets skills that you need for this build. From here, you can upgrade as you wish.

The Great Axe

Great Axes are huge two-handed weapons that can pull targets toward the player. They also allow the wielder to use charging attacks to close the distance between them and the target. The main selling point of the Great Axe is that they trade speed for brute force, which is why it is perfect for melee and tank builds.

The Great Axe has two main skill trees, Reaper and Mauler. Here are our recommendations on developing these skills to use with the Hatchet. Feel free to experiment with these skills if some other configurations are better, in your opinion.

• Skill Trees: Reaper and Mauler.
• Reaper Tree: Ideal for pulling and critical hits.
  • Reap: Pulls enemies, can be extended for greater range.
  • Charge: Long-range charge attack, enhances damage based on distance traveled.
  • Critical Gains (Passive): Heals a portion of damage dealt on critical hits.
  • Keen Edge (Passive): Increases critical damage.

Mauler Tree: Focuses on crowd control and damage reduction.

• Gravity Well: Creates a vortex that pulls and slows enemies, deals burst damage.
• Enduring Strike (Passive): Adds Girt to heavy attacks, reducing damage taken during these attacks.
• Unyielding: Provides damage reduction to allies within the vortex’s effect.

The Life Staff and the Hatchet

Unlike the Great Axe and Hatchet, the prime focus of the Life staff and Hatchet build is survivability. Although not a Tank build, it can still inflict serious damage in PvP battles. This build heavily relies on the attack range of the life staff, while the Hatchet is used primarily for close-quarters combat.

Attributes

Suppose you start from level zero. Begin by solely increasing your focus. Once you have increased your focus to 150, move on to your Constitution. When you reach level 60, make sure you have 300 points in focus and 100 points in Constitution.

As far as your gear is concerned, you need to equip yourself with medium-category gear. The best gear setup for this is:

• Helmet: Heavy
• Chest Armor: Heavy
• Gloves: Medium
• Pants: Light
• Boots: Medium

This setup will give you a total of 22.9 kg weight,, which is below the heavyweight category.

The Hatchet

Since this build uses the Life Staff for ranged attacks, we don’t need to develop the Throwing skill tree. All we need for this build is the Berserker skill tree for the Hatchet. The development of the Berserker skill tree is the same as the Hatchet and Great Axe build. However, you can make your changes if you think some other configuration is better. The details are mentioned in the table below:

• Berserk: Increases damage by 20% for 12 seconds, compatible with a Taunt gem to focus enemy aggression.
• Berserking Refresh: Restores up to 30% max health while Berserk is active.
• Feral Rush: Leap attack with two strikes, enhanced damage to low-health targets.
• Raging Torrent: Four quick attacks, activating Haste to increase movement speed by 20% for 6 seconds.
• Final Blow: Adds a powerful attack following Raging Torrent.

The Life Staff

With the Hatchet out of the way, let’s move on to the second weapon, the Life Staff. There are two skill trees in the life staff Healing and Protector. We shall unlock abilities from both skill trees in this build, focusing on PvP and PvE battles. Towards the end, we shall also discuss why this build is one of the Best Hatchet Builds in New World regarding survivability.

• Healing Tree:
  • Absolved (Passive): Light and heavy attacks do not consume mana.
  • Sacred Ground: Heals allies in area, enhances stamina and mana regeneration.
  • Desperate Speed (Passive): Reduces cooldowns when healing low-health allies.
  • Revitalize (Passive): Reduces cooldowns with successful light attacks.
  • Intensify: Increases healing effectiveness with heavy attacks.
• Protector Tree:
  • Beacon: Projectile that damages enemies and heals allies.
  • Light’s Embrace: Heals target based on their buffs, effective in group support.
  • Protector’s Strength (Passive): Increases healing when buffed.

Equipping Gems

• Life Staff: Diamond Gem for increased effectiveness.
• Hatchet: Amber Gem to leverage Focus attribute.
• Gear: Onyx Gems for enhanced resistance.

The Hatchet and Life staff scale with different attributes for those who don’t know. Since our build is centered around the focus attribute, we can use these gems to change the attribute with which our gear scales. Due to this, we can do even more damage than normal builds.

Now that that wraps up, our second-best Hatchet Build in New World for healing and support. Let’s move on to the last build.

Bow And Hatchet

The Bow and Hatchet build is aimed at leveling and farming. This build relies on the Bow for ranged attacks and uses the Hatchet for close combat. This build is especially useful for fighting mobs and PvE scenarios. The main emphasis of this build is to keep a distance from your target and inflict damage from a distance; once your target closes in, use your Hatchet to mow them down.

Attributes

• Dexterity: Main attribute, start allocating points early and aim for 300 by level 60.
• Constitution: Start building after Dexterity, target 100 points by level 60 for increased survivability.
• Armor: Primarily light to enhance mobility, with a medium chest piece for balanced protection.

The Hatchet

The format of the Hatchet skill tree is the same as the one in the Life Staff and Hatchet Build. So to avoid repetitiveness use the table from the previous build as a reference.

The Bow

Like all the other weapons mentioned above, the Bow has two skill trees: the Skirmisher and the Hunter. The Skirmisher emphasizes passive abilities that continuously affect the enemy, while the Hunter skill tree is more damage-heavy. The piercing shot in the Hunter skill tree is easily one of the best abilities to have in all PvE situations.

The Skirmisher Skill Tree

This skill tree mainly focuses on giving you passive abilities during combat. Evade Shot and Poison Arrows are the only active abilities in this skill tree.

The description of all the abilities and their perks is as follows:

• Evade Shot: Leap back and shoot, dealing 125% weapon damage; 15-second cooldown.
• Evasive Tactics (Passive): Increase damage by 20% for 5 seconds after dodging.
• Impale (Passive): Slow targets at full health by 10% for 2 seconds upon hit.
• Dodge and Weave (Passive): Gain 10% haste for 2 seconds after dodging.
• Poison Shot: Shoots a poison arrow creating a toxic cloud that damages enemies over time; 30-second cooldown.
• Mark (Passive): Increases damage to debuffed enemies by 10%.
• Archer’s Speed (Passive): Gain 10% haste for 5 seconds when switching to the Bow.

The Hunter Skill Tree

This skill tree has one of the best abilities for PvP and PvE scenarios, the Penetrating Shot.

 The details of the abilities and their perks are given below:

• Penetrating Shot: Shoots an arrow that deals 150% weapon damage and passes through targets; enhanced damage at long range and to weakened foes.
• Blood Soaked Arrow: Increases Penetrating Shot’s damage by 10% after each hit, up to five stacks.
• Deep Strike: Boosts Penetrating Shot’s damage by 20% to distant targets.
• Long Range & Finishing Shot (Passive): Increases damage to distant or low-health targets.

Equipping Gems:

Use the following gems on your gear to ensure they level up with the right attributes:

• Bow: Opal Gem.
• Hatchet: Opal Gem.
• Gear: Onyx Gem.

This concludes our guide. Please let us know in the comments below if you found any of this information helpful.

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