New World – Participating in the Arena has been a grueling experience, especially when the Life Staff is part of the equation, even when both teams have healers. I’ve been grinding a considerable amount in the Arena, aiming to reach that level 50 milestone for my Pestilence, and I’ve grown thoroughly exhausted with my Solo Queue consistently placing me in games with healers.
Many people believe that matchmaking will resolve this issue, but I’ll be candid – matches where both teams have a healer have been equally disheartening, albeit slightly less so than when our team lacks one.
The type of healing the Life Staff offers contradicts the very essence of how PvP unfolds in this game when it’s at its best. Instead of carefully managing your Stamina and your opponent’s Stamina while doing your utmost to avoid taking damage, the presence of healers completely alters this dynamic. Avoiding mistakes becomes less critical, and the match transforms into a chaotic competition to see which healer can maneuver skillfully with the Rapier or which team brings the most crowd control.
This shift strips away a significant portion of build diversity in the game, as it leaves only three viable strategies:
- Pray that the enemy team is uncoordinated and splits up, allowing you to eliminate them while the healer is out of sight, or that the healer isn’t proficient with the Rapier.
- Rely on Pestilence, which is an option that the vast majority of players won’t have access to for a considerable time.
- Embrace a crowd control strategy.
All other playstyles become obsolete:
- The evasive “pick off the enemy while minimizing exposure” approach becomes less effective because if you can’t secure a kill within a predefined crowd control window, your contributions diminish.
- Low DPS tanky builds lose their appeal since controlling battlefield damage becomes less advantageous.
- Ranged damage loses its effectiveness because you don’t benefit as much from healing unless your team sticks together.
As a World of Warcraft veteran with over 1000 hours of Arena experience, both as a healer and DPS, I am wary of the game’s combat descending into a similar pattern. Such gameplay isn’t enjoyable for the majority of players. Just take a look at the difference in the number of people queuing as healers in games like WoW and Overwatch, and how those games had to implement measures to increase queues for non-healer roles.
I understand that some players genuinely enjoy pure healer classes, but if this game’s Arena system is to have any lasting appeal, the Life Staff (and anything that heals as effectively as it does) needs to be reconsidered. Also, I am concerned about the market volatility of New world gold, the price fluctuation is very volatile, how do you guys feel?