A couple quick items to meet my "post a day" quota for today.
New World lessons learned
First, Scot Lane has a guest article posted on Venture Beat: New World: What we’ve learned during our first year. I will have some more thoughts on this article to post later this coming week, but for now I am really glad to see this quote up front:
There is a saying that live games are owned by the development team
until launch, and then at launch they become the players’ game. I
couldn’t agree more.
I couldn't agree more myself and feel this is how the New World team has and continues to handle this game.
Warhaven
Second, I caught wind of a game called Warhaven that is in a free beta period. Ironically it caught my attention because of New World and the below video posted by Atlas Fishmo on Youtube. What I like about what I've seen so far, and I hope to play it later today after it downloads, is that the combat has weight to it.
This isn't the rollie pollies combat of New World; this is medieval combat with some heft and weight to it. Fights are up close and personal and attacks and abilities are highlighted so the player can understand what is going on without having to rely just on catching an animation or sound clue. I will share thoughts this week on my experience.
I watched this video (embedded at the end of the post as well) on YouTube for a unique build combining the Warhammer and Firestaff in New World PvP. It caught my attention because it focuses on the incinerate skill which brought back memories of my first "build" I played at launch to level from 1-60. At the time I rolled around in heavy armor with a firestaff and sword/shield; incinerate skilled out for life gain.
The flow went: run around and get the attention of twenty mobs, pull them all together, and slam down incinerate and regain a bunch of health and watch everything burn to death. Rinse and repeat. To be honest had I connected the dots with warhammer's area of effect stun with shockwave back then I would have dropped sword/shield.
Fast forward to now and I play a heavy melee sword/shield and hammer build, but have been looking for something new to give a whirl because, to be honest, playing heavy melee is just penalizing yourself in the light-armor-dominant PvP meta. I also don't want to just jump on the flavor of the moment builds or abuse the broken weapons like rapier. I want something unique and thus I want to piece together the build from this video and got some insight from the related Reddit thread.
Attributes
Based on the video we can estimate
CON: 150 (up to 200) INT: 300+ (i.e. everything else) Assuming nothing is added to strength; hammer is just for the stun and not for any damage.
Weapons
Warhammer with the Sundering Shockwave perk to maximize damage
Firestaff with Stable Incinerate (gives you grit so less likely to be interrupted) and Thwarting Strikes (gives more damage when you have grit.. which you get from the stable perk)
Weapon Skill Trees
Hammer is focused on Shockwave, Wrecking Ball, and Clear Out. All compliment the main concept of getting in, locking down targets, and dropping the bomb. Clear Out I think is interesting to send everyone flying with burn stacks.
Firestaff is focused on the left side of the tree for incinerate and the rune to place on the ground to max out damage. Fireball for some damage and Burnout as well.
Armor
Armor will be light as the light dodge is critical to get in and out to drop the bomb. Light armor also gets +20% damage.
Armor perks
5x Resilient (required for PvP)
2-3x Freedom (assume critical for getting in and out and minimizing effect of CC abilities)
Shirking Fortification is probably worthwhile here since you are up close and personal
Shirking Energy would be good since its available to light
As far as weapon perks on armor Empowering Fireball is the only one that jumps out at me
For fun maybe Repulsing Clear Out to send folks flying even farther after incinerate
Amulet/Ring/Earring
Not sure here; don't know whats considered good for mage. Will have to research this.
Second, I caught wind of a game called Warhaven that is in a free beta period. Ironically it caught my attention because of New World and the below video posted by Atlas Fishmo on Youtube. What I like about what I've seen so far, and I hope to play it later today after it downloads, is that the combat has weight to it. 
