New World Season 3 Best Flail Builds for PvE & PvP - Top 5 Best Weapon Combos for Season 3

New World Season 3 Best Flail Builds for PvE & PvP - Top 5 Best Weapon Combos for Season 3

10/11/2023 3:13:50 PM

In this New World flail build tutorial, we are going to present top 5 best flail builds for PvE & PvP in Season 3, with discussing all of the perks, attributes, and gears & gems. We also show you the gameplay for different tank weapons and tell what abilities to use on your enemies. Whether you are a PvP player or a PvE one, this guide will have an appropriate flail tank build for you.

New World S3 Flail Changes

Some changes that were announced or shown on New World database a few days ago, none of these changes are affecting what we would do in terms of build, but they make things a little bit weaker, for example, we have a little bit less damage on Arcane Vortex, we have a slightly shorter duration on the cleans of the same ability especially that's a very major one, but it's still going to be very good to have the cleanse and the maximum duration is still 5 seconds, so it's still very much an excellent perk to have. The self heal on supportive blessing is slightly reduced, and the healing on Better Together is reduced with the timing between takes now being 3 seconds. So generally some small changes here and there probably a few smaller ones that we've missed as well, but overall nothing that will affect any of the builds.

Ability & Weapon Perks Overview

GukeSloth tested a lot of different flail builds on the PTR and also did some theory crafting to tell us what he thinks are some very solid builds that are useful for PVE and PVP.

Here’s a quick ability overview & weapon perks:

Arcane Smite - Burdening Smith
Arcane Vortex - Mending Vortex
Arcane Eruption - Powerful Eruption
Barrage - Accelerating Barrage
Trip - Thwarting Trip
Warding Bludgeon - Crowded Bludgeon

New World Season 3 Best Flail Builds for PvE & PvP - Top 5 Best Weapon Combos for Season 3

#1. Flail PvE Tank Build with Perk

Now let's look at the builds. This is a PvE build but many of the things will also apply for the PvP builds. This and all other builds assume that you're running at least a kite shield or a tower shield, as well as at least medium armor or heavy armor.

Arcane Smith

This is the ground debuff damaging ability, just a very quick animation is very effective.

Epic Flail: The first perk epic flail reduces its own cool down by 5% per target hit, so up to 25% cool down reduction on a already relatively short cool down of 18 seconds.
Ironclad Superiority: This works well with both the kite shield and the tower shield. The kite shield will now step dagger on hit, but the damage is reduced in return to 90% weapon damage, or with a tower shield, you get 30% fortify for 6 seconds.
Deflecting Frailty: For the last perk, you have deflecting frailty. The last perk here is a buff for allies if they step into the circle, they will then weaken the person, attacking them and they also gain life steal if they're getting attacked. So quite a few nice benefits here since the duration scales with focus, this can actually last almost as long as the ability cool down if you have enough cool reduction.

Arcane Vortex

The second ability is Arcane Vortex. High damage and empower by default and grid, so very nice, also just a 16 seconds cool down.

Flailbird: The first point gives us the chance to root targets for 1 second if we hit them with all four hits. In PVE, this is easily done. In PvP, most of the time this won't be happening because it's not very hard to get away from.
Accelerated Advantage: With the next perk, we get 7% haste per hit, as well as allies getting 25% haste right away for 5 seconds. T
Flailing Stability: Flaming stability provides all of the allies near you with a cleanse and crowd control immunity for root stunts and slows for 2 seconds by default, and then scales up to 6 seconds with your focus. It also heals allies inside for 65% weapon damage.
Better Together: The capstone we're using is better together which provides you with passive AOE healing every 2 seconds for 60% weapon damage. The big advantage of this one is just that it's a lot more consistent, the up time is generally better and also it applies for everyone around you and not just one target. So you don't have to be as selective as who you're trying to help.
Oppressive Advantage & Happy Flails: Oppressive advantage and happy flails are mainly PvP perks, they don't really do anything for us here.
Weighted Superiority: It gives you either cool reduction for blocking when in heavy or for dodging when in medium. 1% for blocking or 5% for dodging.
Vital embrace: 3% lifesteal, below 50% is not that important for us, but rather the while above 50% health, all flail attacks extend the duration of damage over time effects on target by 7%.
Spiky Impairment: In order to get some more damage over time, this perk is fantastic. When you block a melee attack while above 90% health, inflict a stack of impairment the debuff that deals damage to enemies and gives them % weaken.
Cursed Flailment: This gives you impairment when using a heavy attack after an ability, so this is a bit more consistent in that regard. But one is more for group scenarios, the other one is more for solo scenarios.
Lead of the Pack: This gives you 10% more base damage when you're alone. And if there's an ally nearby, it provides them with 5% EMP power.
Vital Suppressant: It gives us 4% straight up damage reduction above 50% health, always very nice to have.
Reductive Superiority: The next points we have to take if we want to reach the other ability without going into any of the other abilities which is reductive superiority. When using a kite shield, this reduces the duration of debilitates.
Warding Bludgeon: It is a very useful ability to have, is very quick, is your taunt for tanking and it also comes with some fortify.
Stable Impairment: After using this ability, you want to go ahead and block.
Best Friends: This ability also creates a link between you and a nearby ally, giving them a 15% in power and giving both of you 10% damage absorption for 8 seconds. So very effective.
Mitigated Protection: It which gives us extra mitigation while blocking stacking to up to 9 seconds. The exact mitigation depends on your current health as well as your equip load. So in heavy, you immediately get 5% absorption and then that scales up to 20% as health decreases in medium it's three down to 13.

#2. Best PvE Flail Build with Arcane Eruption

The second PVE variant looks very similar but it uses Arcane Eruption instead. This will only be effective if we can apply the second hit of Arcane eruption consistently without significant issues. It doesn't come with the same debuff utility, but depending on the situation, maybe you might prefer it.

Crippling Strike & Deblitating Extension: It comes with a 40% slow for 3 seconds and you can extend the duration of debuffs on the target by 30%, not dots but all the debilitating effects.
Supportive Blessing: It also has a chain heal for the allies which ends up consuming one of the damaging procs that this ability stacks in the beginning. So you shouldn't use this if you're after DPS since they will just use up the stack, you just created. But on the other hand, it's a chain heal for 130% of the second attacks total damage as health for every ally chain to and 80% of the total damage to yourself.

#3. New World Flail PvP Build for Season 3

Then we have a PVP variant which is very similar to the first skill tree. The main difference is you're not taking spiky impairment because in PvP unless you have a personal healer with you, you're probably not going to be above 90% health as much and the 5 seconds cool down is also not that impressive.

Oppressive Advantage: This perk may gain some value by giving you multiple effects. When hitting a target with less than 50% health, you gain 5% anointed as well as 10% haste for 3 seconds. An anointed is in effect that increases the healing that you gain and the scales with focus as well is can be up to 20%. So you can get up to 20% extra healing.
Happy Flails: This can also be considered for PVP which applies exhaust two target, reducing the stamina damage by 15% for 5 seconds if you use a basic attack within 3 seconds of using an ability. it's not the best exhaust.

#4. New World Best PvP Flail Build for Tank in Season 3

This still has some flexibility, for example, you could put vital embrace into flail mary instead, you could put this point into spiky impairment. There's a lot of room depending on what perk exactly you after. But what's important here is that we're getting barrage which gives us the ability to charge out of fights. And along with that, we're also getting some extra effects. So defensive rush gives us a 30% fortify for 2 seconds when rushing out which is nice and more hits extend the duration. Then abiding superiority makes this particularly interesting with a tower shield because one of the problems that this ability or this escape has is that it doesn't have GD. But with a tower shield, barrage actually gains GD while active. Along with that, the kite shield version also gets a 20% slow if you're dashing through targets with the next point. And we have Bulldoze which gives us extra effect. So Bulldoze allows us to now block attacks while charging forward without consuming stamina. And it will push all enemies aside as well instead of just going through them. You just push everyone out of the way and just go in all aggressive, you can also take this last point out of bulldoze.

#5. New World Season 3 Best Flail Build for PvP

If you are not using a tower shield, so you are not getting grid, just do a 1 point barrage build. You get all the perks we’ve talked about before. But you also at the same time get the left side perks where you otherwise have to flex a little bit have to figure out which one you want to invest into more this, you can have all of them but your barrage just does a little less.

Gears & Artifacts (Odo, Wall, Michael) for All Flail Tank Builds

When it comes to weapons, Odo is definitely a solid choice, it depends a lot on if it can still have a gem slot. What you cannot get if you put a gem slot on this is burdening smite. So we would just sacrifice some damage and go for buring smite on Odo just so we can increase the cool down of your enemies. Alternatively, if you don't care about the self heal by 5% on block and that extra damage against stun target, you might also want to opt into something that just has blessed refreshing move and burning smite depends on how much you care about damage versus utility.

The best shield that you can get is the wall as a tower shield. Alternatively, as a very nice kite shield, there is Michael from the PVP track, this is coming with a cleanse but even without that you can just go for a kite shield that has healing defense and heal on block by itself. That is already pretty strong too, that way you could also get refreshing move on your shield and put something else on your weapon.

Attribute Split

The exact attribute split is up to yo,u there's many things that can be done here. A common spec will be primarily into strength because then you can use more strength off hands. But if you go more focused, you get a lot of utility out of that especially the longer cleanse which is very nice in PvP. So if you can make a 200 focus build happen for you with a little bit of strength and then a lot of con, that should be very effective. The exact stat distribution depends almost entirely on your offand and your overall build.