Flail Healer Build

Overview#

Welcome to a fresh take on healing in New World! This build focuses on being the ultimate team supporter, combining powerful healing with strategic buffs and debuffs.

Instead of the traditional VG setup, we’re wielding a flail to amplify our team’s effectiveness. Our goal? Keep allies alive while making enemies more vulnerable through coordinated debuff extensions such as weaken, rend, and DoTs.

This build maintains the core strength of pure healing while adding tactical advantages through fortify buffs for enhanced team survivability. With over 17k health and massive armour and fortify boosts, you’ll stay alive to keep supporting your team through any challenge.

Perfect for both veterans and newcomers, this build emphasises reliability and team synergy. The focus is on creating a stable foundation for your group’s success through strategic healing and buff/debuff management.

If you want the super quick TL&DR:

Gear#

Import on NW-Buddy

Hoplite Hat

MAG Medium

• Enchanted ward: -4% damage from light and heavy attacks.
• Keen Beacon: When Beacon heals a player, they gain 6.69% critical chance for 6s.
• Health: +2.4% max health.

Featherweight

MAG Light

• Weightless: This armor is weightless.
• Physical Aversion: Receive 4.5% less damage from ranged, physical attacks.
• Refreshing: Reduce max cooldowns by 4.01%.
• Health: +2.4% max health.

Hoplite Gloves

MAG Medium

• Enchanted ward: -4% damage from light and heavy attacks.
• Refreshing: Reduce max cooldowns by 4.01%.
• Health: +2.4% max health.

Hoplite Legguards

MAG Medium

• Enchanted ward: -4% damage from light and heavy attacks.
• Refreshing: Reduce max cooldowns by 4.01%.
• Health: +2.4% max health.

Gorgonite Sandals

FOC Light

• Enchanted ward: -4% damage from light and heavy attacks.
• Mending Vortex: Every 2 hits with Vortex will heal you for 45% of the base weapon damage.
• Health: +2.4% max health.

Gorgonite Amulet

FOC Amulet

• Void Protection: Receive 14.99% less Void damage.
• Empowered: Empower you apply lasts 35.11% longer.
• Health: Increase max health by 7.7% of the base value.

Gorgonite Ring

FOC Ring

• Healing Breeze: On Heal: For 6s heal target for 16.02% weapon damage each second. (10s cooldown per target, healing breeze base potency reduced by 35% if applied to self).
• Sacred: +9.55% outgoing healing efficiency.
• Hearty: +10% max Stamina.

Hoplite Earring

MAG Earring

• Refreshing Toast: Consumable cooldown 10% faster.
• Healthy Toast: When you drink a Mana potion, gain 15% of your base Health.
• Refreshing: Reduce max cooldowns by 4.01%.

Hoplite Life Staff

FOC Life Staff

• Blessed: +12% outgoing healing efficiency.
• Fortifying Sacred Ground: Allies healed by Sacred Ground gain Fortify, increasing armor by 10.64% for 5s.
• Refreshing Move: Light and Heavy attacks reduce your active weapon cooldowns by 2.5% (0.2s cooldown).

Power Stone

MAG Flail

• Heavy Burden: If health is above 90%, attacks cause 20% Weaken for 5s. (5s cooldown on each target)
• Refreshing Move: Light and Heavy attacks reduce your active weapon cooldowns by 2.5% (0.2s cooldown).
• Enchanted: Light and Heavy attacks deal +5.33% damage.
• Powerful Eruption: Eruption hits deal 10.17% increased damage per stack of Impairment on the target.

Import on NW-Buddy

Spinweave Helm

FOC Light

• Enchanted ward: -4% damage from light and heavy attacks.
• Keen Beacon: When Beacon heals a player, they gain 6.69% critical chance for 6s.
• Health: +2.4% max health.

Featherweight

MAG Light

• Weightless: This armor is weightless.
• Physical Aversion: Receive 4.5% less damage from ranged, physical attacks.
• Refreshing: Reduce max cooldowns by 4.01%.
• Health: +2.4% max health.

Azoth Crystal Gloves

MAG Light

• Enchanted ward: -4% damage from light and heavy attacks.
• Refreshing: Reduce max cooldowns by 4.01%.
• Health: +2.4% max health.

Azoth Crystal Pants

MAG Medium

• Elemental Aversion: Receive 4.5% less damage from ranged, elemental attacks.
• Refreshing: Reduce max cooldowns by 4.01%.
• Health: +2.4% max health.

Azoth Crystal Shoes

MAG Light

• Enchanted ward: -4% damage from light and heavy attacks.
• Mending Vortex: Every 2 hits with Vortex will heal you for 45% of the base weapon damage.
• Health: +2.4% max health.

Mythril Amulet

INT Amulet

• Void Protection: Receive 14.99% less Void damage.
• Empowered: Empower you apply lasts 33.91% longer.
• Health: +7% max health.

Mythril Ring

FOC Ring

• Keen Awareness: +6.99% critical chance.
• Sacred: +9.55% outgoing healing efficiency.
• Hearty: +10% max Stamina.

Yuanqi Earring

MAG Earring

• Refreshing Toast: Consumable cooldown 10% faster.
• Refreshing: Reduce max cooldowns by 4%.
• Empowering Toast: On Potion Drink: Gain 10% Empower for 8s (10s cooldown).

Corrupt Progenitor Life Staff

FOC Life Staff

• Blessed: +12% outgoing healing efficiency.
• Fortifying Sacred Ground: Allies healed by Sacred Ground gain Fortify, increasing armor by 10.64% for 5s.
• Refreshing Move: Light and Heavy attacks reduce your active weapon cooldowns by 2.5% (0.2s cooldown).

Power Stone

MAG Flail

• Heavy Burden: If health is above 90%, attacks cause 20% Weaken for 5s. (5s cooldown on each target)
• Refreshing Move: Light and Heavy attacks reduce your active weapon cooldowns by 2.5% (0.2s cooldown).
• Enchanted: Light and Heavy attacks deal +5.33% damage.
• Powerful Eruption: Eruption hits deal 10.17% increased damage per stack of Impairment on the target.

Build Choices#

Loadout Weight Class#

Firstly, we’ve chosen to go with the light loadout for the +30% healing output bonus as well as the 15% bonus base damage. It is true that we are going to take more damage as a result but we have accounted for this with the CON and additional armour in this build. As you get more comfortable with mechanics and the build it will be possible to drop your CON even lower.

Armour Artifact#

Let’s dive into one of the most important choices you’ll make for your build - selecting between the only two viable light armor artifacts for healers: Grey Wizards Hat and Featherweight. This decision will significantly impact your playstyle and survivability, so let’s break down each option in detail. Spoiler alert - for this build, Featherweight wins, and it’s not even close.

Grey Wizards Hat - The Stat-Heavy Option

This artifact gives you an impressive 50 stat points (compared to Featherweight’s 38), but they’re locked into Intelligence (INT). Furthermore, since it would push our INT to 55, we effectivly lose 5 of those points anyway. Since our build already invests points into INT, this creates an interesting opportunity - we can redistribute our existing INT points into either Constitution (CON) for better survivability or Focus (FOC) for stronger healing output. Think of it as getting free INT points that let you reinvest your other points elsewhere.

Featherweight - The Flexible Armor Option

While Featherweight offers fewer total stat points, it brings something else to the table - the ability to mix in medium armour pieces without penalties. This flexibility is a game-changer for survivability. By using three medium pieces (including pants) and one light piece along with a round shield, you’ll significantly boost your armor rating.

Grey Wizards Hat vs Featherweight Comparison:

Now, let’s break down why Featherweight consistently outperforms Grey Wizards Hat in real gameplay situations. The key lies in the armor rating difference - Featherweight’s ability to incorporate medium pieces results in a substantial increase in armour and therefore damage mitigation (31.7% vs 25%). You can see the difference in armour yourself using our armour calculator. This difference becomes particularly noticeable in challenging mutation or raid content where incoming damage is significantly higher.

Desmos Armour Mitigation Chart

You might be wondering about those extra stat points from Grey Wizards Hat. Even when we take those 12 additional points and put them into Constitution for maximum survivability, we still end up with lower effective HP (22,556) compared to Featherweight (24,042). The math simply favors Featherweight’s superior damage mitigation over the extra stat points.

In practical terms, Featherweight’s higher effective HP means you’ll have more room for error when dodging mechanics, better survivability during heavy damage phases, and more time to focus on keeping your team alive rather than worrying about your own health pool. This becomes especially crucial in M3 and raid content where a single mistake can be fatal. You can’t heal anyone if you’re on the floor or dead.

In the end, while Grey Wizards Hat might seem attractive due to its higher stat allocation, the superior survivability and practical benefits of Featherweight make it the clear choice for this build. The extra armor rating translates directly into more consistent performance in all content types, from regular expeditions to the highest level mutations, and even the most difficult raids.

Perks#

The first required armour perk to get is always going to be Enchanted Ward. The reason for this is that thanks to the amazing work of Ginie at nw-buddy we know the majority of the attacks mobs do are counted as either a light or heavy attack and very few are counted as ranged + magical which is what is required for Elemental Aversion to apply.

For the ring, we choose hearty because it is mandatory for every build. The extra stamina allows us to double dodge if needed and not stam cap ourselves. We choose Sacred for more healing output, and finally we choose Healing Breeze to keep HP topped up which helps a lot on those dot damage mutations.

Fortifying Sacred Ground is put on the weapon as we always want our team to have the most fortify they can so they have the best chance of surviving and doing damage.

Keen Beacon is chosen to give our DPS more crit chance, boosting their damage by a significant amount, especially on bosses that don’t have a back (which is always a critical hit) like Cilla or Chardis in Lazarus.

Powerful Eruption on our Power Stone as it is a significant boost to our damage rotation.

We want to have Mending Vortex as the extra self sustain is nice to have.

Gems#

For M3’s specifically you should always be using the mutation specific gem as per the table below. This also applies to the protection on your amulets and as of Season 7 (Season of Conquerers), AGS has adjusted the protection perks so they no longer exceed the 50% clamping.

What that means is that we no longer take the protection on our shield as it would exceed the cap substantially as well as swapping two gems (on our jewelry) for Onyx to give us a little bit more protection against physical attacks.

There will be situations where you will want to swap sets to another protection for specific bosses because they don’t get the split damage from the mutation. That is outside the scope of this guide but we will have guides for each expedition coming out soon.

Life Staff#

You will always use a Diamond in the life staff. You can, at the moment, put the Diamond in a Runeglass case because there is a bug where the runeglass case isn’t reducing the healing like it should be. Just be sure not to overlap the runeglass case element with your teammates if you can help it. Putting the Diamond in a runeglass case will help charge your heartrune faster.

The perks won’t change on your lifestaff but there are a couple of different lifestaff’s you can get.

Duneborn Illicium

FOC Life Staff

• Blessed: +12% outgoing healing efficiency.
• Fortifying Sacred Ground: Allies healed by Sacred Ground gain Fortify, increasing armor by 10.64% for 5s.
• Refreshing Move: Light and Heavy attacks reduce your active weapon cooldowns by 2.5% (0.2s cooldown).

Gorgonite Life Staff

FOC Life Staff

• Blessed: +12% outgoing healing efficiency.
• Fortifying Sacred Ground: Allies healed by Sacred Ground gain Fortify, increasing armor by 10.64% for 5s.
• Refreshing Move: Light and Heavy attacks reduce your active weapon cooldowns by 2.5% (0.2s cooldown).

Corrupt Progenitor Life Staff

FOC Life Staff

• Blessed: +12% outgoing healing efficiency.
• Fortifying Sacred Ground: Allies healed by Sacred Ground gain Fortify, increasing armor by 10.64% for 5s.
• Refreshing Move: Light and Heavy attacks reduce your active weapon cooldowns by 2.5% (0.2s cooldown).

Ritual of the Hereafter

FOC Life Staff

• Blessed: +12% outgoing healing efficiency.
• Fortifying Sacred Ground: Allies healed by Sacred Ground gain Fortify, increasing armor by 10.64% for 5s.
• Refreshing Move: Light and Heavy attacks reduce your active weapon cooldowns by 2.5% (0.2s cooldown).

Fire of Life

FOC Life Staff

• Blessed: +12% outgoing healing efficiency.
• Fortifying Sacred Ground: Allies healed by Sacred Ground gain Fortify, increasing armor by 10.64% for 5s.
• Refreshing Move: Light and Heavy attacks reduce your active weapon cooldowns by 2.5% (0.2s cooldown).

Flail#

The Flail choice was made because it has a lot of Empower and Fortify for the team as well as apply Impairment stacks, weakening the enemy as well as applying a damage over time. The reason we chose to put Powerful Eruption on the Flail is for more damage when using Eruption which is our highest damage skill.

Heartrunes#

There are a couple of options that you could use depending on your playstyle but most of the time Stoneform is going to be the correct choice if you’re new to the build or unsure about the expedition/raid mechanics.

Stoneform#

Stoneform is a great heartrune for fire mutations and getting used to running lower CON. Pop it just before you hear the explosions happen and while you might take some damage, you won’t be knocked down as you are CC immune for 5 seconds. Lastly, the heal over time (HOT) can also come in handy to keep you topped up during a fight.

Vines#

Vines is a great heartrune if you’missing some CC from the DPS. It gives some extra rend and weaken as well. The only things to watch out for are that you don’t vines before the mobs are clumped.

Bile#

Bile is nice for the additional healing and in nature weeks also some extra disease.

Detonate#

If you’re comfortable with the build and mechanics, Deto is a great heartrune to squeeze in some more DPS. This is a greedy choice however and should only be considered if you team doesn’t need the extra CC or disease from the other heartrunes.

Stalwart Heartrune of Stoneform

Default Choice

Stoneform: Harden yourself with layers of stone, cleansing all crowd control debuffs and granting immunity to both stagger and crowd control debuffs for 5s.

• Fortifying Form: Gain Fortify on activation, increasing armor by 10% for 5s.
• Mending Form: Heal for 75% Heartrune damage per second while active. Reduce outgoing damage by 20%.

Brutal Heartrune of Grasping Vines

Grasping Vines: Summon vines around you that deal 100% heartrune damage and root enemies within a 4m radius for 3s.

• Enfeebling Vines: Inflicts Weaken on hit, reducing the target's damage by 20% for 8s.
• Rending Vines: Inflicts Rend on hit, reducing the target's armor by 20% for 5s. Reduce your Stamina regeneration by 50% for 5s.

Stalwart Heartrune of Bile Bomb

Bile Bomb: Spit out a glob of corrosive bile that creates a 3.5m radius disease cloud on impact that lingers for 3s. Enemies that enter the cloud are afflicted with a debuff that deals 100% heartrune damage per second and reduces healing by 30% for 8s. Cloud sticks to enemies on direct hits.

• Crippling Bile: Inflicts Slow on hit, reducing the target's movement speed by 20% for 3s.
• Mending Bile: Players who hit the afflicted targets are healed for 20% of the damage they deal. Reduce healing reduction by 15% and DoT is removed.

Brutal Heartrune of Detonate

Advanced Choice

Detonate: Charge yourself with explosive energy for 3s and then detonate, dealing 100% heartrune damage within a 5m radius.

• Accelerating Charge: +30% movement speed while charging.
• Escalating Explosion: +20% Explosion damage. Gain Rend while charging, reducing your armor by 50%.

Stats#

The stat values should be considered a base to work from. If you need more CON because you’re going down then you should add more to CON. You can’t heal from the floor.

Weapon Builds#

Life Staff#

Import on NW-Buddy

Flail#

Eruption#

Import Eruption Version on NW-Buddy

Smite#

Import Smite Version on NW-Buddy

Ability Usage#

As a healer it is important for you to wait for your tank to be (or almost be) in position before you start casting your abilities. The reason for this is that healing causes a lot of threat and if you cast your abilities too early, you might stop mobs from getting taunted (because you pull them out of the taunt range). You can use this to your advantage though by casting your healing just before your tank is going to taunt which will put their threat even higher and it will be slightly harder for your DPS to take the aggro away from the tank.

• Tank gets into position.
• Cast Sacred Ground on the tank
• Light attack
• Cast Beacon on DPS
• Cast Orb of Protection on tank
• Wait for the DPS to group the mobs
• Light Attack
• Swap to Flail
• Bludgeon
• Heavy Attack
• Eruption
• Light attack
• Vortex
• Light attack 3 times
• Swap to Life staff
• Light attack twice

You should now have your Sacred Ground off cooldown and can go through the rotation again.

Try to play close to where the DPS are. Make sure you’re not on the same side as the tank.

Summary#

I hope this rundown helps you navigate the nuances of this flail healer build. Your feedback is invaluable to us, so don’t hesitate to drop your thoughts either on Discord or shoot me an email at feedback <@> 5con.club . Whether it’s a thumbs up or suggestions for improvement, I’m all ears!

Changelog#