New World: Season 5 Artifact Changes

 New World has an update on the public test realm (PTR) for the new artifacts coming in Season 5 (March 2024).  The biggest change is to Phoenix (the new amulet artifact).  The changes are covered in the following YouTube video from TrickTrick.

 As noted the big change is to Phoenix.  The initial version had a perk that was a copy of the original Defy Death ability for Hatchet.... which was long ago nerfed out of existence in the game. As expected there was an uproar in the community that it would be coming back on an amulet that anyone could use.  Fortunately the developers changed how it will work with Phoenix.  The new PTR wording is below:

Phoenix Vengeance: When you receive lethal damage, avoid death and become invulnerable for 4s, after which you die. (180s cooldown).

 The last part is the key: the player will die no after the four seconds expires giving them a last hurrah before taking their dirt nap! However, as noted in the video there is a way on PTR using Ice Gauntlet's Entombed ability for a player to avoid the "die" portion.  That has to be fixed or this is going to be abused.  Even with that oversight fixed this is still going to be strong; especially for those players that love diving into piles knowing they are going to die anyways and just want to take a few folks down with them.

 The spear artifact Venom was changed to only trigger on heavy melee attacks from the other equipped weapon.  Previously it included ranged attacks so, as an example, bow heavy attacks triggered Venom.  Ranged weapons are already very strong in the game and this would of made them even stronger.  This is a good change.

 The third artifact changed was the Tempest Fury Great Axe where Keen Speed was replaced with Refreshing Move.  This was a sensible change since the weapon already has a ton of speed boost built into it and didn't need anything extra.  Refreshing Move is a sought after perk on Great Axes for bruiser builds in war and as called out in the video by TrickTrick this will likely see some action in wars.  Personally I am going to try a "spin to win" build with the Fortifying Whirlwind aspect.