The best New World Bow build will have you sniping targets and feeling like your very own Robin Hood thanks to the weapon’s impressive skills and passives in its Mastery Tree.
New World is filled with 11 different weapons to choose from, which essentially make up its class system. But, few can hold up at a distance quite like the Bow can.
If being a Marksman with high Dexterity and long-range firepower is something that piques your interest, then this handy guide on the best ways to optimize the Bow will be right up your alley.
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New World Bow build
The Bow is one of the only two distance weapons that use Dexterity, alongside the Musket. While players have to take time and reload the Musket, the Bow is a much quicker and nimbler option at range.
Because it uses Dexterity, pairing it with another weapon in that attribute tree makes sense.
For those wanting to fight at both close and long-range, the Rapier and Spear could be solid options. Otherwise, full distance builds pairing the Bow with the Musket can be great, especially in certain Expeditions or Wars.
No matter what weapon you pair it with, the Bow offers a lot on its own thanks to its different Mastery Tree offerings.
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Bow Mastery Trees
With Bow in hand, ready to pull it back and fire away, we need to first take a look at each of the two Mastery Trees for the weapon: Skirmisher and Hunter.
Each tree is very different, so it’s important to understand what you’re looking to get out of your Bow build before allocating points either way.
| Mastery Tree | Description |
| Skirmisher | The Skirmisher Mastery Tree includes AOE damage, poison, and helps you to keep your distance from combatants. |
| Hunter | The Hunter Mastery Tree is all about precision and heavy DPS output, but can also help you to stay alive with some nifty skill perks. |
Best Bow skills
| Skill | Description |
| Poison Shot | Shoot a poison arrow that on hit or land creates a cloud of poison 3 meters wide that lasts 6 seconds. Foes entering the cloud are poisoned dealing 10% weapon damage per second for 20 seconds. |
| Rain of Arrows | Shoot a barrage of arrows 7 meters wide that deals 150% weapon damage. |
| Penetrating Shot | Shoot an arrow dealing 150.0% weapon damage that passes through targets and continues for 100 meters. |
- Poison Shot: Poison Shot is an AOE debuff that poisons targets that pass through its cloud. There is a passive perk in this skill that allows direct hits to also deal heavily increased damage, giving players the ability to use this for more than just its potent debuff. This is one that every Bow user should make sure and have unlocked.
- Rain of Arrows: Both Rain of Arrows and Poison Shot are great for providing DPS support at range, while your close-range brawlers are fighting it out on the front line. Rain of Arrows is much wider, however, which makes aiming with it more forgiving.
- Penetrating Shot: This ability is worth using on the Hunter side of the Mastery Tree because of its ability to burst down larger single targets. Alternatively, you could opt for Evade Shot to stay on the Skirmisher side of the tree, but only if you find yourself needing to escape often. We prefer Penetrating Shot, overall.
Best Bow passives
There are lots of passives that help enable Bow users to perform at maximum efficiency, however, we recommend making sure you’ve got Evasive Tactics, Battle Precision, and Bullseye. These will help make your debuffs really sting, and keep your damage output at an absolute high, especially after dodging.
- Evasive Tactics: After you dodge: Deal 20% more damage for 5 seconds.
- Battle Precision: Debuff and damage over time durations last 20% longer.
- Bullseye: Bow shots critical chance increase by 10%.
And, with that, you should have everything you need to get started using the Bow in New World. And, what’s nice, you can always Respec to try out other abilities that we may not have mentioned here, just to get a feel for how the weapon plays.
Or, if you’d prefer to try another weapon as you explore Aeternum, be sure and check out our other build guides!
Life Staff | Ice Gauntlet | Great Axe | Sword and Shield | Rapier | War Hammer | Hatchet | Musket | Spear | Fire Staff