THE BEST ARMOR IN NEW WORLD

As with any MMO when you’re starting out you just throw on any piece of armor that you come across. But over time you’ll start to wonder what’s the best armor to use?

In this guide I want to go through how the armor system works, what bonuses you get and what the best in slot pieces for your build.

To watch the video guide click on the thumbnail to the left

Light, Medium & Heavy Status

Your armor status is all down to the total weight of your equipped gear and a very handy tool tip which you might have missed, can be found next to your head slot at the top. You’ve probably missed the weight meter too but that’s fine. There’s so much to take on board when you’re playing a new MMO.

The tooltip actually says it all but let’s look through them now and help you decide which armor status you want to be in.

While wearing light light, your dodge is a quick roll that covers a lot of distance but more importantly you deal 20% bonus damage and healing, perfect for players that are not in the thick of combat.

While wearing medium armor, your dodge is a quick hop. You deal 10% bonus damage and healing and CC debuffs you apply last 10% longer. Gear for melee brawlers and PVP

While wearing heavy armor, your dodge is a slow sidestep. Your block stability is increased by 15% and crowd control debuffs you apply last 20% longer. Perfect for tanks and combat medics.

Armor Weights & Resistances

If you want to have the light armor status you don’t actually need 5 pieces of light. You can mix it up and have a mixture of heavy and medium too as long as the bar does not reach above 13kg. Medium armor is up to 23 and heavy is 23 and above.

The heavier the armor the more resistances you'll get so you want to max you weight in your armor category.

Best In Slot for armor

This depends on the content you’re going to play.

The general census for PVP is that a medium setup is best for mobility and offence but this is completely down to your playstyle.

For PVE ranged dps and ranged healers going light will give you the most amount of heals but your resistances will be low. So you want to avoid damage and stay at the back.

For melee brawlers the medium armour status will offer the better balance between armor and damage

And for tanks and battle healers going heavy will be the better option here.

So I should go full light for ranged DPS and Heals. Full Medium for melee DS and Full Heavy for Tank?

Well for tank heavy is your best option but for medium and light set ups if you’re not using a shield you can mix it up a bit.

Light Setups

Light builds are very basic and you dont have a huge amount of flexibilty as you need to keep under the 13 limit.

You can either go head and foot medium and the rest light or medium chest and the rest light.

I you want to run sword and shield you have to go full light as the shield will increase the armor to 12.7

Light setups are for damage dealers and healers that are at the back of the group and do not take any damage. If you run this in PvP be sure to have some big healing or get ready to dodge.

Medium Armor

Medium armor builds are the most popular at the moment due to the balance of resistances and damage with some flexibility to movement.

In order to maximise on the resistances you'll want to add some heavy and balance those with light.

Either 2 heavy 1 medium and 2 light or 2 heavy 2 medium and 1 light give the best out come of resistances keeping you in the medium armor group

If you want to use a shield then heavy chest, head and leg medium and foot and a light hand will hive you a total of 22.5

There is some flexibility to these sets so if you find a piece of armor that has the perfect roll and perk just play around with you build and till you get your status.

Just as a bonus tip I’d recommend to have a look at the trade centre as they’ll be plenty of armor available on their which will give you an idea on what’s on offer. You’ll notice that the attributes are not gear dependent so you can have strength on light armor and intelligence and focus on heavy giving you the option to play how you want.

Guide written by FragManSaul

FragManSaul creates content on New World and ESO and can be found on stream on his YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/fragmansaul