Best Fire Staff Builds In New World (2023)

The Fire Staff has been a very popular weapon during the closed beta of New World. Even after New World's initial release, the Fire Staff still stands as one of the game's most powerful ranged weapon archetypes. It has great AoE spells, high damage output, and even a few ways of enhancing your character's mobility.

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We'll cover the best weapon to pair the Fire Staff with, the weapon's abilities and what they do, as well as general playstyle tips for both PvE and PvP. The Fire Staff puts out a lot of damage, but due to its high mana cost, it can be tricky to use. Here's how to get the most out of it.

Updated November 19 by Harry Alston: Uh oh, here comes the 1.1 balance patch for New World. There's a mix of both nerfs and buffs to the Fire Staff, but overall this feels like a nerf. Here's a closer look at the changes.

Patch 1.1 Changes To The Fire Staff

Overall, there is a bunch of damage nerfs to the Fire Staff, mostly in the form of its passives. Your auto-attacks will now hit much less hard and without as high a crit chance. That being said, some of the abilities have received some buffs. It's an attempt to make the Fire Staff feel more like a mage weapon rather than just a stick that fires high-damage blobs of fire.

• Pillar of Fire damage is increased from 134 percent to 174 percent and Flame Thrower damage is increased from 34 percent to 50 percent for scaling. Both of these are pretty positive changes. Also, this comes with a few bug fixes for the Pillar of Fire.
• Here are the major nerfs to the Fire Staff passives: Clear Casting damage reduced from 10 to 5 percent, Clear Mind's Empower bonus is reduced from 10 to 5 percent, Runes of Helios reduced damage bonus from 30 to 25 percent, Prophet of a Fire God crit reduced from 20 to 15 percent, Spellslinger crit chance bonus reduced from 15 to 10 percent and no longer grants crit for regular attacks, and Pyromania has its damage bonus reduced from 20 to 15 percent.
• That was a lot. Basically, the Fire Staff has been hit hard across the board, with a focus on reducing crit damage and general damage scaling.

The impact of these changes still isn't clear, but overall it seems like the Fire Staff will now be much weaker at combating Heavy Armor users.

Best Fire Staff Build In New World

There are three builds that have seen a lot of use with the Fire Staff: the Fire Staff and Ice Gauntlet combination, the Fire Staff and Rapier combination, and the Fire Staff and Musket combination. These builds have distinct playstyles. We'll cover all of them here.

Before we cover these builds, it's important you understand the basics of each Fire Staff tree.

1. Fire Mage: Focuses on high-damage AoE spells.
   1. Passives assist with mana sustain and critical hits.
2. Pyromancer: Focuses on applying burn debuffs and mobility.
   1. Passives enhance the burn debuff and grant haste.

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Fire Staff and Ice Gauntlet Build

We've gone into more depth about the Ice Gauntlet in our best Ice Gauntlet build guide, but we'll go over why the Fire Staff and Ice Gauntlet pair so well together, mostly for PvE, with some use in large-scale PvP.

Ice Gauntlet Setup

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The Fire Staff and Ice Gauntlet combo is all built off of one active ability in the Gauntlet's Builder tree: Entombed. Entombed freezes you inside a tower of ice (it can be destroyed) that greatly speeds up mana regeneration.

Due to the mana costs of the Fire Staff's abilities, this is a great ability that keeps you in the fight for longer.

Entombed can also be used as an "uh oh" card, to use when you find yourself surrounded by enemies during PvE. It will give you a brief moment to let your cooldowns recharge.

So what about the Fire Staff? What abilities work well alongside the CC of the Ice Gauntlet and its always-damaging Ice Pylons? This is what we like to call the Burn Build.

Fire Staff Setup

Pillar of Fire is great for dishing out a high amount of damage over a small area. It does take a little bit of getting used to, requiring good pre aim to properly catch enemies in PvE and PvP. If you don't like Pillar of Fire, you can use Fireball instead. Pillar of Fire is better for single-target PvP, whereas Fireball is better for PvE. Mix and match to see what works best for you.

Incinerate is your hard-hitting skill for this build. It deals immense damage with Flame Out allocated. The Cauterize Wounds passive in the Incinerate tree also provides a bit of sustainability, granting HP based on how much damage Incinerate dealt

Flame Thrower and Incinerate are your main source of Burn damage. Use this to punish aggressive PvP players, melee enemies in PvE, or use it at the start of a fight to deal solid chip damage.

Best Attributes And Gear

• Attribute: Intelligence
• Armor: Light

Your best bet is to wear Light Armor and focus on Intelligence for max damage with the Fire Staff. Any intelligence gem can be a huge boost to your fire and burn damage. Keep your eyes open for any weapons or armor pieces that enhance your burn debuff in some form.

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Fire Staff and Rapier

The Fire Staff and Rapier is an excellent choice for PvP, especially single-target and one-on-one duels as you run around the world with your PvP flag held high. We've covered the Rapier in-depth here if you want to read more about one of the best PvP weapons in the game.

Rapier Setup for the Fire Staff

The Fire Staff is your main damage source in this build, and as such, the Rapier is used primarily for evasion and kiting during fights.

Riposte is essential for PvP. If you manage to land it successfully, your opponent will be frozen in place for a short period, ideal if you can switch out to the Fire Staff and hit an ability while they're stuck.

Evade, when paired with the Light Armor mobility boosts, is basically the way you're going to avoid taking damage. Max out this tree.

You've got two options for your third active ability: Fleche or Tondo. Fleche gives you that extra mobility, whereas Tondo will apply extra bleed damage. Combine that with Burn and you've got a lot of stacking DMG, but Tondo is harder to hit if your opponent is playing ranged (most PvPers do.)

Fire Staff Setup With The Rapier

The Fire Staff is your main source of damage. Both your abilities and auto-attacks are going to melt through opponents if you can land your hits.

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Pillar of Fire serves as a high-damage AoE spell. Once you get used to casting it, you'll be able to deal immense damage to a small cluster of targets. Be sure to grab both mastery passives tied to Pillar of Flame to maximize its damage output.

Fireball is another AoE spell but is much easier to use. Its versatility is hard to match, capable of dealing high damage or locking off areas due to its burning field.

Burn Out is an incredible movement tool for this build, allowing you to flame dash through targets. While its damage isn't as great as Fleche on your Rapier, it covers more ground once you grab the Heat it Up mastery passive.

Crucial passives to pick up include Singe, which creates a burning effect after hitting a critical hit, Spellslinger, which gives you a better crit chance, and Prophet of a Fire God, for extra crit damage.

You're basically building a crit-heavy Fire Staff that can deal massive damage from range. Use your Burn Out to either engage or escape, and switch to the Rapier if your opponent gets close. There's a great balance here between mobility and damage.

Best Attributes And Gear

• Attribute: Intelligence
• Armor: Light or medium

This build focuses on scaling Intelligence as much as possible, although you'll want to invest extra points into Dexterity to gain additional critical chance at certain point thresholds. As for armor, light or medium work here. Light is best if you want optimal DPS in endgame PvE. If you play PvP or find yourself dying too much in the endgame, swap to medium armor.

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Fire Staff And Musket Build

Other than the popular Rapier and Ice Gauntlet weapon combinations, the Fire Staff and Musket has also seen a bit of play during the first week of New World. The Fire Staff scales primarily off of Intelligence, whereas the Musket has secondary Int scaling. This does make it a viable build. This build relies on the Musket's traps -- you want to place down a trap, snare your opponent, and then drop massive Fire Staff AOE on their head.

Best Masteries For The Fire Staff

Pillar of Fire deals great damage over a small area, making it perfect when paired with your Musket's Trap ability. CC the target, use Pillar of Flame, and repeat.

Incinerate is your main burst ability, dealing an immense amount of damage once you get Flame Out allocated. It also heals you when you grab Cauterize Wounds from the tree, making it a solid panic skill as well.

Meteor Shower is an underwhelming skill on the surface, but it works surprisingly well for this build. This is your answer to Zerg rushes, 50v50 PvP battles, and PvE encounters where dozens of enemies are stacked atop one another. Channeling this skill is quite risky if the target isn't stunned or isn't aggroed, so be careful when using this skill.

Mana sustain can become an issue with this setup. You have two ways of dealing with it:

• Pick up the Reheat capstone in the Pyromancy tree to increase your mana regen.
• Grab Spell Focus and Flare in the Fire Mage tree to gain mana through your Fire Staff's heavy attacks.

The former feels much smoother if you use your Musket more than your Fire Staff. If you prefer using your Fire Staff, consider the second option.

Best Masteries For The Musket

Stopping Power, in the most literal sense, stops enemies from moving. Its bonus damage doesn't match the damage of your Fire Staff, but its ability to stun targets shouldn't be overlooked. Use this whenever you fail to land a Trap.

Traps is the staple of this build. Enemies that are trapped can't move, making it easy to hit them with a Fire Staff AoE or a headshot from your Musket. Don't feel intimidated if you have a hard time trapping enemies in PvP. Using this ability takes a lot of practice.

Sticky Bomb is a rather fun skill, allowing you to stick a target with what's effectively a grenade. It deals great damage and pairs nicely with Traps. Once the target is rooted, throw the Sticky Bomb at them to apply a slow debuff. This gives you enough time to land one or two AoE attacks from your Fire Staff.

For passives, go for the Lethal Combo keystone in the Trapper tree for extra damage against trapped enemies.

Best Attributes And Gear

• Attribute: Intelligence
• Armor: Light or medium

Intelligence is going to scale your hard-hitting abilities from your Fire Staff. Your Musket does gain some scaling from Intelligence, but if you want it to hit even harder, consider applying an Intelligence-scaling gem such as Topaz or Amethyst. For armor, light or medium work well. Light is best for DPS, while medium armor is better for PvP or content where you need to take more punishment from enemies.

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In Closing

Credit to NewWorldFans for the mastery tree images. Visit their site to experiment with some builds of your own, as well as view the massive database of gems to customize your build with. You can check out some of our other build guides below:

• New World: Best Support Healer Build
• New World: Best Musket Build
• New World: Best Tank Build

NEXT: New World: Complete Guide And Walkthrough