New World Bow and Spear Build Guide: The Skirmisher (PvP)

This New World build guide features the Bow and Spear. The Skirmisher Build focuses on damage as its primary playstyle.

The Guide is up-to-date for Patch 1.9.2

These weapon pairings are building off our other Weapon Guides, so if you’re not entirely sure why are or aren’t recommending a certain passive, be sure to give those a look as they give a lot of context to the decisions made for these builds.

The Skirmisher Build Playstyle
Bow
Spear
Stats and Gearing
Perk Options
Skill Rotations and Combos

The Skirmisher Build Playstyle

This build is another popular pairing that’s been around in the game for a long time, though has received plenty of changes, due to both weapons receiving a decent amount of changes since launch.

The Skirmisher tends to be more focused on PvP as the name implies, performing well in most non-War situations. It can handle PvE decently well, but generally requires a respec of one or both weapons to be fully effective.

The Bow provides most of the damage for this build, while the Spear gives you better combat options when things get a little too close. The Bow packs a decent amount of burst potential on its own but opts for a more DoT-heavy build for greater consistency. The Spear functions well on its own with his build, having plenty of power but also plenty of crowd control to make a close-range fight easier.

Bow

The Bow is the star of this build, as it has the most damage potential while keeping a safe distance. It’s not useless at close range, but can be a bit unwieldy without practice. This practice is still good to get in, so you can more readily apply your DoTs and debuffs to boost the damage output of your Spear as well.

Its main skills are Rain of Arrows, Poison Shot, and Evade Shot. This gives it a good balance of damage and utility overall, which makes it a very reliable weapon.

New World Bow and Spear Build Guide - Bow Skill Tree choices

Rain of Arrows is a really solid catch-all for the build, giving us an additional source of Bleed and Slow for the build. This allows it to synergize with well with both the Spear as well as a Malachite gem.

The Skill Tree itself focuses on increasing your survivability and damage, making you a bit less vulnerable but amping up your damage potential significantly.

A large part of our survivability comes from Evade Shot’s passives and our multiple Slowing tools for kiting. Evade Shot’s upgrades make it a fantastic option for when we don’t want to switch off the bow but still need to create a bit more distance for our safety. With good access to Slows from Knee Shot, Rain of Arrows and Impale, we have enough slows to be able to kite while still dealing decent damage.

Being a ranged weapon, we’re going to take full advantage of the Bow as a damage source but stacking up passives like Mark, Long Range, and Concussion to spike our damage up higher. Mark will be applied any time our DoT abilities are ticking away, making it free damage. Long Range helps to boost out damage when we’re able to keep our distance. Concussion makes those well-placed shots hit quite a bit harder, also giving a slight boost to the sustain from Hawkeye.

For additional information on the Bow, you can refer to our Bow Weapon Guide. This guide goes in-depth on all of the Bow’s passives and skills while also offering some optional leveling builds.

Spear

The Spear plays more of a defensive role in the build, covering for the Bow’s lack of reliability at closer ranges. It’s still set up to deal plenty of its own damage and be a threat on its own, despite the more defensive nature of the skills.

The Spear’s main skills for this build are Sweep, Skewer, and Vault Kick. This allows the Spear to be exceptionally defensive, while still being a high-damage threat for those that dare to get close.

New World Bow and Spear Build Guide - Spear Skill Tree choices

Sweep is a great multi-purpose skill, being a quick crowd control skill or a high damage skill depending on if we choose to use the Coup de Grace upgrade. Skewer is a great damage option as it’s only a single hit for its full effect, and includes a DoT which happens to be one of the stronger DoTs in the game. Vault Kick is mostly a defensive tool, but can also be used to set up combos.

This setup takes heavy advantage of the combination of the Evasive Maneuvers and Aggressive Maneuvers passives. This pair of passives allow you cheaper backward dodges, which can also refresh your cooldown by following the dodge with an ability.

Beyond that combination, we make use of Exploited Weakness, Merciless Strength, and Exposed Wounds to boost our damage. Exploited Weakness allows both Skewer and the effect from our Bow to boost our damage whiles our enemies take various DoT effects. Merciless Strength primarily boosts Coup de Grace when we make use of it, but provides a hefty bonus to any follow-up to Sweep. Exposed Wounds allows Skewer to apply another buff to us, allowing us to crit more often while the bleed is in effect.

The Spear doesn’t really have great defensive passives, outside of Evasive Maneuvers which we can take advantage of using multiple perks. The only other defensive perk that’s worth considering is Invigorating Crits, which can help keep our Stamina from getting super low and leaving us in a bad spot.

For additional information on the Spear, you can refer to our Spear Weapon Guide. This guide goes in-depth on all of the Spear’s passives and skills while offering some optional leveling builds.

Stats and Gearing

This section will go into detail on how to set up this build. We’ll be talking about armor, gems, and attributes here.

Armor Choices

Medium Armor is the best option here. Being a PvP-focused build, Light Armor can leave you too frail, even when using a Bow. Medium gives you a bit more defensive power, without sacrificing much mobility. It also makes your dodge ever-so-slightly cheaper, and combined with Dexterity bonuses and Evasive Maneuvers, we’ll be able to evade attacks frequently.

Light Armor is also still an option, and despite not having the greatest defensive potential, the Light Roll dodge can often help you out quite a bit more. We won’t get quite as many dodges, but they cover a larger distance allowing you to create space much easier.

Attribute Points

Both of our weapons scale heavily with Dexterity, so most of our stat points will be put there, with some remaining points being put into Constitution. We don’t want to go full glass cannon, otherwise, we won’t get as much value out of the Spear. We can go above the soft cap if desired, but ideally no more than 50 additional points. This makes our ideal stat spread 300-350 Dexterity and 150-200 Constitution.

New World Bow and Spear Build Guide - Stats and Gearing Recommendations

There is one other optional stat that can be of use, Strength. We don’t want to heavily invest in it, but adding just 50 points can give our Spear a nice damage boost, both as a secondary stat and the 50 Strength attribute bonus

Gems

For our weapons, we’ll make the best use of a Pristine Opal in our Spear and a Pristine Malachite in our Bow. We’ll be dodging often enough with the Spear to make great use of an Opal’s bonus damage while not at full stamina. Our Bow has great access to Slows, as well as extended debuffs to make excellent use of a Malachite.

For our Armor, our gems will be the standard mix of defensive gems for PvP. This consists of 4 Pristine Onyx, 3 Pristine Opals, and a Pristine Moonstone. While this is more standard for War scenarios, it’s a good baseline that gives well-rounded defenses. If you want it even more balanced, you can drop the Moonstone for an additional Opal.

New World Bow and Spear Build Guide - Gems recommendations

The standard mix gives us 15% Slash Resistance, 10% Resistance to Thrust and Strike, and 7.5% Resistance to all elemental damage. When upgraded to rune glass, these will instead lower our resistances slightly, depending on which gems we swap.

When considering Runeglass gems, since we’re using a ranged and a melee weapon, it’ll be harder overall to settle on just one upgrade in particular, but that lands us on the elemental gems. In this case, Arboreal is going to be a great option for us, if we want to use just a single upgrade for our Armor. This strengthens our Bow heavily, due to the way we’ll be setting it up, in addition to boosting poison Shot.

Our weapons however are a little different. Since our Bow already has Poison Shot, it doesn’t make sense to further stack the weapon Arboreal Runeglass on top of this. Ideally, we can stack another elemental DoT of a different type, just so one resistance won’t protect from the majority of the Bow’s damage. This would make any other Element a decent choice, but I feel like going for Runeglass of Electrified Malachite is a solid choice for the Bow. This is because no weapon currently deals Electric Damage, so most players would be limited to their general elemental resistance to mitigate it.

If we want to go all in on Nature damage, we can opt for slotting a Runeglass of Arboreal Amber in our Bow instead, converting a portion of damage to nature, as well as adding another Nature DoT.

Our Spear will actually work well with Runeglass of Energizing Opal, helping to further maintain a steady supply of stamina to make use of our passives as well as the Opal inside the Runeglass. While it’s only granting an additional 4 Stamina on hit every few seconds, it’s enough of a boost to be a worthwhile option.

For additional information on Runeglass Gems, check out our Runeglass Gems Guide. This guide covers Runeglass in-depth from crafting to usage.

Perk Options

Perks are a big part of the weapons in New World, they take some of the more unimpressive skills and make them into much bigger threats. Which perks you take and where you place them can alter how a skill gets used.

There is also some rarer named gear that can be found in New World that can have perk combinations that makes them stronger than any gear you could craft, or at the very least give you an alternative way to get a great gear. These notable items will be listed in their respective sections after the general perk layout is covered.

Weapons

For our Bow, we’d be looking to get Enchanted and Energizing Evade Shot at the very least. Enchanted is a great perk for the Bow as outside of DoTs, all of its damage will come from basic attacks. Energizing Evade Shot Is a super great perk as well, refunding a ton of stamina and cooldown when Evade Shot connects.

The Third bow perk depends on if you want to go all in on Arboreal Runeglass. Arboreal Attunement will be Best-in-Slot if you are committing to Arboreal Runeglass. If you’re not committing to it, Refreshing Move is a great option for more uptime on your debuffs. Alternatively, Keenly Jagged or Keenly Empowered can be decent damage increases

For our Spear, we’ll want Thwarting Counter, Enfeebling Skewer, and Shirking Nature. Since this weapon is more a defensive option against melee attackers, we want to further boost that identity.

Since a lot of melee threats are high Strength builds, Thwarting Counter is a great option for us to take advantage of their Grit for more damage to them. Enfeebling Skewer gives us an edge in 1v1s, as if we land Skewer, this will massively reduce their damage. With our passives, Skewer can maintain this with nearly 100% uptime making it a great defensive tool. Shirking Nature is the ideal version of SHirking to get, at least with Arboreal Runeglass. If you don’t have Arboreal Runeglass, any Shirking will do.

Notable Weapons

For Bows, though it’s not perfect for the overall build, the Lazarus Bow is always going to be a fantastic bow to get your hands on. Due to its unique and impossible-to-craft combination of Enchanted, Keen, and Vicious.

The Lazarus Bow drops from Cilla in the Lazarus Instrumentality Expedition. Additionally, it can be crafted using Lazarus Materia.

As far as Spears go, if you can get your hands on a Burial Spear from the Starstone Barrows Mutated Expedition, that’s pretty close to being perfect, just having Enchanted instead of Shirking Nature.

The Burial Spear is a drop from Simon Grey in the Mutated Starstoen Barrows Expedition. Additionally, it can be crafted with Mutator Materia and Amrine Materia.

Accessories

For our Amulet, we’ll want Stamina Recovery, Health, and Refreshing. Being a Medium or even Light build means we’ll be relying quite a bit on Evading attacks and using plenty of stamina to try and keep our distance, which Stamina Recovery helps with. Health and Refreshing are pretty standard as Health gives us a bit of extra health to work with, while Refreshing lowers our cooldowns.

For our Earring, we’ll want Refreshing, Regenerating, and Refreshing Toast. Earrings are disappointingly static, which means these are almost always the go-to perks. Regenerating gives us a bit of health regen, slowly healing us even if we’re in combat. Refreshing Toast lowers the cooldown

For our Ring, we’ll want Thrust Damage, Leeching, and Refreshing. Since both of our weapons use Thrust as their main damage type, this is a solid damage boost. Neither weapon has access to reliable really sustain, so Leeching helps fix that, allowing both weapons to leech from damage. Refreshing just further lower our cooldowns.

If you want an alternative for Refreshing… You’d want to look towards Blood Letting for extra damage, Crippling to give the Malchite Bow more Slow uptime, or Hearty for additional Stamina. All of these are great options for different reasons, so if you don’t feel like Refreshing is as helpful, feel free to choose one of these options if you can get it cheaper.

Notable Accessories

For Amulets, it’s not BiS, but the Champion’s Amulet from the PvP reward track is pretty decent if you don’t mind a bit of a grind. It comes with Health and Stamina Recovery, with Shirking Empower as a third perk. It even has Constitution as a stat, which makes it useful to a lot of PvP builds.

For our Earrings, we can get the Invoked by Her Two Lands earring, as it is a perfect named piece that can be used if you don’t want to craft one. It’s the equivalent of a Dexterity version of Doom’s Chance.

Invoked by Her Two Lands is a drop from the High Priest of the Twin Doors named mob, found in the East Wall of Nebet-Het Point of Interest in the Brimstone Sands.

For Ring, we can opt for the Heart of Aviva. This is a Dex ring that comes with Thrust Damage, Leeching and Blood Letting, making it a great option for the build. Unfortunately, this is a rare drop from Elite Chests in the Brimstone Sands, so it may take a while to acquire.

Armor

For Armor, we’ll be looking to achieve the following perks as a baseline across all our armor: 4 stacks of Resilient, and 4 Shirking Fortification. Resilient is great for mitigating critical hits, which can quickly destroy your health without the perk. Shirking Fortification adds a good chunk of defensive power.

For BiS Gear, we’d be looking to max out Resilient at 5 stacks and pick up 3 stacks of Freedom to reduce hard crowd control effects. Additionally, we can look at additional Weapon perks, or even move some recommended weapon perks here for a slightly reduced effect.

We’d at most only be considering Lasting Rain of Arrows, Energizing Rain of Arrows, and Keen Vault Kick. It’s better to keep Enfeebling Skewer on our Spear, as it’ll apply a near-maxed Weaken that way, but can be here if using a Spear without Enfeebling Skewer.

Lasting Rain of Arrows extends the Slow and Bleed upgrades, which are the main reasons we use the skill to begin with. While it’s much stronger on our Bow, we can deal with Energizing Evade Shot being on our armor instead, the biggest loss is the extra 10% cooldown reduction. Keen Vault Kick is entirely optional but increases your Crit Rate after landing Vault Kick.

Notable Armor

Like most Pvp builds that aren’t running Heavy Armor, Regular Pants are a great PvP item to pick up. Even though it’s Light Armor, it comes with Resilient, Shirking Fortification, and Rrefreshing which are all great perks. While Refreshing isn;t perfect it does still work with the build.

Regular Pants can be gotten as a drop from Heka of the Crossroads, found at the Heka’s Cauldron Point of Interest in Brimstone Sands.

Skill Rotations and Combos

Combos

Spear Combo

Skewer
Dodge
Sweep
Coup de Grace
Dodge
Vault Kick

This is the basic ability rotation that can be chained with little room for counterattacks when done right.

We lead with Skewer since it does bonus damage to a target at full health and applies a bleed. We quickly dodge to apply Aggressive Maneuvers with Sweep. Then we use Sweep to trigger Aggressive Maneuvers, reducing both active cooldowns by 20%. We then use Coup de Grace to trigger Refreshing Reach for additional cooldown reduction and deal extra damage. We dodge a final time to prep Aggressive Maneuvers again, this time to be applied by Vault Kick. This triggers both Aggressive Maneuvers and Continuous Motion to dramatically lower our cooldowns again, often resetting them.

Due to the resetting nature of this combo, it can be chained, though it’ll be difficult against any experienced PvPer. There’s a bit of downtime after Skewer goes off that breaks the stun, as well as the dodge if you can fit it in that leaves an escape window.

Rotations

This build doesn’t have a full rotation of skills that utilize both weapons, as you’ll either be using one or the other and rarely both.

This is the end of this very in-depth build guide for New World. With everything from the stat breakdown, skill choices, and the provided combos; you have everything you need to make this build work. We hope you enjoy trying this unique weapon pairing.

Here at VULKK.com we have a ton of useful New World Guides and more and more are being published regularly. We also have all of the news and updates covered to keep you up-to-date with all things New World!

Best New World Builds and Weapons Pairings

This list houses the best builds for PvP and PvE in New World. Here you will learn how to master a weapon and how to pair it with a secondary weapon to create a unique and incredibly powerful and versatile build. Some builds are PvE only, others focus entirely on PvP. And some are flexible enough that you can play them in both game modes.

These Build Guides are a continuation and follow-up to the more beginner-friendly individual Weapons Guides which you should start with if you are new to the game. We also have one massive collective guide to the Weapons in New World if you are just starting now and need a bit of explanation of how each weapon behaves and how they determine your gameplay and which should fit your play style.