New World: Best Life Staff Build Guide

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Reviewed by Benjamin Barr

The gamer’s paradox is that every party needs a healer, but few players want to play that healer. If you’re one of those brave few, and you play New World, then the Life Staff is the weapon for you. Today, we’ve put together this Life Staff build guide to give you an overview of the Life Staff skills and recommend a few of the best builds.

Let’s get started!

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The 6 Basic Life Staff Builds

First and foremost, the Life Staff is a magic weapon designed for support. You use it to heal/buff allies. You can play the Life Staff as a solo weapon, but we don’t recommend it. As such, this guide will exclusively focus on builds for team play. We’ll break the Life Staff into a pure healer build, as well as a bit of a hybrid build.

But first, as always, let’s look in depth at the skills.

1. Divine Embrace

Divine Embrace is the first row active skill of the Healing skill tree. It’s your basic single-target heal. Heal your target for 120% weapon damage at a cost of 25 mana. This comes at a 5.9s cooldown.

This is your best burst heal effect, good if one ally is low on health and in immediate danger. Unfortunately, at 25 mana, Divine Embrace is your most expensive Life Staff active skill. It’s a bit of a steep cost, but worth it for a solid heal.

2. Sacred Ground

Sacred Ground is the second row active skill of the Healing skill tree. It sets a 3m radius circle on the ground where you target. The circle lasts 12s and heals 16% weapon damage ever second to each ally in the circle. This costs 15 mana and has a 19.6s cooldown.

It’s a solid DOT heal, and you can get a massive amount of value for the cost. It does require everyone to stand in roughly the same place to get maximum value out of the ability, but that’s not much of a downside. Overall, well worth the mana and cooldown.

3. Splash of Light

Splash of Light is your third row skill of the Healing skill tree. It’s a burst heal AOE, and you always need a burst heal AOE. Heal yourself and all allies within 100m for 60% weapon damage for 15 mana and a 14.7s cooldown.

The range on Splash of Light is great for a burst of that sweet healing magic. There’s not a lot bad to say. The amount of healing is a bit low for a burst effect, but the range makes up for it. It’s easy to hit your whole party with the effect.

4. Orb of Protection

Orb of Protection is the first row active skill of the Protection skill tree. It damages, it heals, it buffs! Shoot a projectile that grants 10% fortify for 20s. It heals a hit ally for 8% weapon damage. If it hits an enemy, deal 146% weapon damage. This costs 16 mana and has a 9.8s cooldown.

Having variable options is nice, and the damage is pretty solid for a support skill. On the flip side, the healing is pretty low. it’s alright, but I wasn’t overly happy with this skill. You have better things to spend your skill points on.

5. Light’s Embrace

Light’s Embrace is the third row active skill of the Protection skill tree. It’s a single-target burst heal with good protection synergies. Heal the target for 80% weapon damage +15% for each buff on the target. This costs 18 mana and has a 3.9s cooldown.

It’s a solid burst heal if you spec more into the Protection skill tree. The 3.9s cooldown is great, but the 18 mana puts it at the second most expensive Life Staff skill, which counteracts the spaminess of the 3.9s cooldown. Overall, though, it’s a solid choice that gets really good with a heavy spec into the Protection skill tree.

6. Beacon

Beacon is the second row skill in the Protection skill tree, and is a solid combo of damage and healing. A ranged attack that hits for 156% weapon damage. The projectile attaches to the target and lasts for 10s, healing all allies for 16% weapon damage each second. This costs 16 mana and has a whopping 34.4s cooldown.

It’s a solid DOT heal that also does damage to enemies, but the cooldown is brutal. We feel it’s worth the points and the steep cooldown, especially good if you hit a boss monster with this attack. Free healing while your party wails on it!

Best Life Staff Builds for New World

Now that we’ve covered the skills, let’s get into the best Life Staff builds for New World!

1. The Pure Healer Life Staff Build

This build focuses almost exclusively on the Healing skill tree. This is when you want to maximize healing at the cost of DPS.

The Attributes

The Life Staff scales off Focus, so that should be your primary attribute. Constitution is a good choice for a secondary attribute (you don’t want your healer going down!).

The Equipment

Both light and heavy armors can be fine, but I recommend going full heavy armor for this build. Ideally, you’ll be hanging back and firing off healing effects. Having to worry about dodging is not what you want.

Remember that the Life Staff is a magic weapon. Your attacks, as well as your active skills, all cost mana. That being the case, you want to make sure you carry lots of mana potions with you. You do recover mana every second, but you don’t want to run out at a critical moment.

The Active Skills

You’ll want all three active skills from the Healing skill tree for this build. This gives you a wider range of good healing options covering most situations your party will be in.

The Passive Skills

First off, you will want to fully upgrade each of your active skills. Divine Embrace gets turned into a multi-target heal if your allies are at low enough HP, healing up to three people. Sacred Ground can buff your other healing as well as mana regen, and Splash of Light will heal more, as well as healing debuffs.

Absolved is a must-have skill for this build. While you are heavily weighted towards healing, even in this build, you still want to be doing some DPS. Not having to pay mana for light and heavy attacks means you can fire away without using up your precious healing resources. The two follow-up skills, Blissful Touch and Mending Touch, are also quite nice, as they add some incidental healing to your attacks.

Finally, Bend Light and Defensive Light from the Protection skill tree could be decent picks, as they boost healing and mana regen, respectively. Spirits United is another great skill from the Protection tree, since it boosts your and your ally’s mana regen by 3%. However, it is a fifth row skill, meaning you just don’t have the skill points to pick it up in this build.

The Capstone

Obviously Divine Blessing is the choice. Aside from the healing boost being solid, you won’t invest enough points in the Protection skill tree to unlock their capstone anyway.

2. The Hybrid Life Staff Build

This build focuses more on the Protection skill tree, adding buffing and DPS into your rotation.

The Attributes

The attributes are the same for this build as for the pure healer build.

The Equipment

I offer the same recommendations for equipment as for the pure healer build. Wear the heaviest armor you can and pack lots of mana potions.

The Active Skills

Both Beacon and Light’s Embrace are definite picks for this build. They grant you a solid healing/damage balance. The third skill I recommend to round out your active skills is either Sacred Ground or Splash of Light from the Healing skill tree. Both are solid and the choice of which to pick is up to you.

The Passive Skills

Fully upgrading all three of your active skills is a good starting place, though the passive skill you want first is Absolved from the Healing skill tree. No mana cost to attack is too good to pass up.

All the passive skills in the Protection skill tree are good choices. However, you want to prioritize getting Spirits United. Giving yourself and all your allies a 3% increase in mana regen is super solid.

The Capstone

Magnify is the better choice for this build. The increase to buff durations just outplays the healing boost of Divine Blessing here. Also, you’re not going to invest enough points in the Healing skill tree to unlock Divine Blessing, so it’s a moot point anyway.

Join the High Ground

And there you have it — the best Life Staff builds in New World! Let us know your thoughts in the comments, and stay up to date on the latest New World content by subscribing to our newsletter.

Happy gaming!

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