Guild Wars 2

After playing it a while, I think If unravel hexes worked as stated –
meaning condiclear every 0.5s in superspeed, it would already be a lot more enjoyable. 600 leap on sword fire/air 2 and reduced cast times. We already have to deal with global cd, the skills should be near instant considering the risk involved.

But maybe it is that way because core trait lines are going to be buffed somehow?

Sunshine.5014:

Also, consider that a single press of Arcane Shield blocks almost the same amount of damage given the new burst from Holosmith, stun break, and even explode damage back. Blowing everything to create a subpar barrier is just not worth it.

Arcane Shield never leaves my bar, and that’s not changing. I must be misunderstanding the purpose of barrier. I get that it’s a demo weekend and numbers are subject to be tweaked, but the numbers are so far off from usability that I can’t see a situation where ele is able to self sustain through it.

Preliminary review so far. Stances are ok, could do with some condi clear with all the new condi’s coming to game. New elite is rather nice. But that about all I can say for positive for now.

Now the negative. Like EVERYONE is saying the cool down on attunements need to be taken out back and shot. It takes so long to get to any 3-5 skill, which is all of our survival skills. With the weaver based sololy on combining and switching attunements there needs to be NO cool down on swapping. If they need to adjust cool down on skills or damage so be it.

I have mainly been playing with staff weaver, and alot of the 3 skills feel really bad. First they are beyond slow. There have been times my char can out run the skill. The few time I have been able to hit someone, it seems to really lack any power to them.

Speaking for PvE. I like the staff weaver. The fire, earth and air combos are great. With arcane and alacatry you can keep lava font up 24/7 and still use GoS in air and get firefield+blast combos with earth. Sword feels really bad. Low dps and attunement recharge just dont go well together.

Every single new elite spec discussion thread is just full of people complaining. Neckbeards will never be satisfied

Stacwad.8250:

Every single new elite spec discussion thread is just full of people complaining. Neckbeards will never be satisfied

There’s a difference between complaining for the sake of it and complaining because something is categorically worse in every way than what we already have.

Take aquatic stance, it is categorically worse than every other heal an ele has access to, except maybe arcane brilliance if it hits nothing and is combo’d with nothing. The sword auto attacks chain is the longest in the entire game as they take 2s in total cast times and that’s not counting the aftercasts which would bump it to nearly 3s to do a full chain.

But yeah call everyone complaining a neck beard, was only 5 months ago you picked up GW2 again and were what many would consider trash.

Xillllix.3485:

Sunshine.5014:

Axl.8924:

Thats actually not true.If you use earthen elemental barrier plus the earth elemental attack and double dodge you get up to 8k barrier.

Right, the mighty 8k barrier that disappears after 3 seconds, leaving you with no defensive option left since you blew everything trying to create that barrier.

Any thief will just eat a weaver alive in 2 seconds.

Utter rubbish. I made it to eight.

After playing more with Weaver I have been having some results with damage on the class – but it is 100% condi damage and feels like a core burn guardian. (with all of its weaknesses)

Using the combo of Earth / Air 3 – Switch to Fire – Fire / Earth 3 – Fire 2 with Primordial Stance anywhere in the middle (and if you want more damage at the cost of losing survivability switch to Fire/Fire) does insane amount of condi damage, but you only do Burning and Bleeding, with Bleeding being almost a cover condi.

The class also has a balance problem on this – Primordial Stance + Lava skin do a lot of damage without needing any button press by the player, so with Fire / Earth with Focus off Hand, you are pulsing almost 3 stacks of burning per second for the entire duration of Obsidian Flesh and 2s more (a total of 15+ burning stacks in 5 seconds on an AoE – which you can also do an immediate second burst of ~12 burning stacks with a second use of primordial stance, so more easily catching people off guard).

When obsidian flesh also goes down, all you have to do is do the same combo, but now with Twist of Fate (you still pulse with it).

I am running Fire 1-3-2 / Earth 2-3-1 / Weaver 3-1-3.

I find myself mostly just camping Fire / Earth and doing insane condi damage whilst having access to Earth 4 for condi cleanse and projectile denial, Ether Renewal and Cleansing Fire for dealing with condi and Twist of Fate and Earth 5 for dealing with bursts.

Think the weaver could probably do a little less condi damage (or at least not so frequent bursts, but with more cover condi), do better power damage and incentivize eles do jump around attunments more – as is, camping feels like a better option.

Just incase my own thread isnt gonna be read by anet im posting this here.
sorry for double posting!

I’ve tested out weaver for the past 2 days straight since the demo launched and i’ve found quite abit of issues with the Weaver.

To begin, weaver is supposed and quoted by the devs to be a “dmg dealing bruiser” yet it just feels like mediocre dmg with zero survivability at such a close range due to us not being able to pressure our enemies.

I’ve been practicing Weaver against a Deadeye, Holosmith, Mirage, Spellbreaker, Scourge and Firebrand.

So far the Weaver was able to deal a little bit of pressure against Holosmiths but in clear numbers, with the exact same amulet the holosmith did 4x more dmg in a single skill than any of the weaver skills this clearly is not a fair thing due to the fact that Weaver has pretty slow Cast times compared to the cast times of the other specs and we are the most squishy even when traited into more surviveable specs like water, earth or arcane. To add fuel to the fire weaver as a hybrid doesnt deliver enough conditions to keep up the pressured dmg for a decent high risk high reward playstyle, if we wanted to go condi based, we should honestly just play Tempest as it offers more conditions and more surviveability with auramancer traits.
To conclude the dmg is just lack luster.

Now lets move on to the survivability of weaver.

Weaver has 2 nice evades in the sword skills, and a nice evade in the utility slots aka being Twist of Faith, Riptide and Earthen vortex. In my opinion Weaver does not have any issues with the ICD atunement swapping, since we have enough evades/ when we get a dmg buff to dmg enough pressured dmg to wait out the 4 seconds to go into offhand earth for our obby flesh / magnetic wave, or other means of avoiding dmg.
The heal skill in my opinion actually does its job and provides allot of healing, though the initial heal might be a little low compared to like the warrior heal, maybe a 500+ health would do the trick already.
To conclude Weaver survivability WOULD be good if we had more dmg.

Now lets move on to the mechanics of Weaver.

I really enjoy how the Weaver offers survivability with the evades and heals though one thing im uncertain about it the Gale strike, which takes 3/4 seconds to cast and has a range of 170, it is just too slow of a hit for a stun which can be stunbroken.
Other than that the leaps feel abit short, though in my opinion it shouldnt matter TOO much, a s mall buff would be appericiated but not something of my concern.
The combat in my opinion is smooth for an ele, since i played d/d ele for most of my time on gw2 i can really relate to sword, its pretty much a better dagger main hand with no dmg.
The Flame Uprising skill is slow and does little dmg for the slow cast time, so that deffinitly should be buffed.
Overall the mechanics of weaver in my honest opinion feels good and right for the spec.

My final thoughts.
If Weaver got more Pressured power dmg, around a 25%-50% increase in flatt dmg, and maybe a slight buff in speed then the class would suffice as a nice bruiser, the elementalist class always was squishy, and i dont want that to be changed alhowever the current state weaver is in does not enough pressured dmg or gap closes to counter fact that the ele is so squishy, we were never ment to be able to face tank high bursts, and its a rewarding playstyle if you could dodge and avoid it, though at the moment Weaver has no Dmg to deal to pressure your enemy, so they can facetank our dmg whilst putting up 8-10k crits on us 2shotting a marauder build.

Two particularly important points that you raised MrAidenVoid.7416 that can’t be stressed enough:

- Sword attacks are weak (power wise) and slow, it needs a power damage buff and to have a shorter cast time (down to 1/2s), this would greatly improve the weapon (balance condi application with this in mind);

- Sword leaps need to have a slight longer reach and I would say that Earth #2 should be a leap forward as well – would make the attack much more reliable and useful.

Azel.4786:

Two particularly important points that you raised MrAidenVoid.7416 that can’t be stressed enough:

- Sword attacks are weak (power wise) and slow, it needs a power damage buff and to have a shorter cast time (down to 1/2s), this would greatly improve the weapon (balance condi application with this in mind);

- Sword leaps need to have a slight longer reach and I would say that Earth #2 should be a leap forward as well – would make the attack much more reliable and useful.

Yea it would be great if earth 2 was actually a movement skill as well…best if we can target it manually.

MrAidenVoid.7416:

In my opinion Weaver does not have any issues with the ICD atunement swapping, since we have enough evades

are you serious? nothing close to this
99% people here said: weaver has issues with CD on attunement swapping.

evades? not enough, on most weapons just 1 or 2 evades with long CD, and inaccesible when really necessary due to attunement swapping CD.

so it’s just nothing.

i feel all problems with weaver is attuning so i suggest making elite 20 second CD. so you just keep comboing

Pro’s
One of the most beautiful classes i’ve ever played in an MMO, the animations are amazing, the effects the whole theme i love it.
Lots to learn but i made a spec i’m really comfortable with does nice damage and has good survivability.
Liking the charges on the utilities.
So much work went into this spec its pretty unbelievable.
The traits all gel nicely with other ele traitlines.

Cons
I don’t find the heal very useful at all.
Unravel would have been nice if it were an F5 skill next to earth but with charges and the same cooldowns. I don’t like the idea that they gave up a utility to ‘beginner weavers’ as stated in the live stream.
Sword could do with a little damage boost i suppose, but i suspect they purposefully under tuned some new weapons until they could see what people could do with them.
Biggest con – the stats im using on my weaver build aren’t available in open world >:C

Apart from that absolutely love the Weaver!

D/d seems like a real beast of a bruiser build with 3 blast its own water field and 3 evades. On-top of all the barroris its very hard to kill.

Sword feels more like an support wepon then a pure dmg tool. The water field 2 leaps and 1 blast gives it an aura support (non healing) feel.

Staff looks like it can be a real high dmg tool with aoe in mind. Pair it up with freash air you should be able to have high crit dmg as well as the +10% dmg for being doble swaped (swap to air 2 times during metor if you need to).

Scpter is a wepon i tend to stay away from so i do not know how it will work out.

Weaver seems better with dagger then any other wepon to me but that what i started wvw on many years ago.

Staff elementalist feedback here:

Bit more constructive feedback to weaver:
From a Staff ele’s view:

I had the feeling weavers are made mostly for melee fighting and melee weaponry, the utilities and elites are all heavily melee focused, the traitline felt dull and uninventive with little synergy to the rest of the ele traitlines.
It felt far more like a “off-tank” than a “mage class”, and was very disappointed as Tempest is purely melee focused so expected we wouldn’t get another purely melee focused setup.

Unreval: make it a Toggle at F5.
as you still have the GCD on all attunements being able to switch fully is in no way breaking the gameplay, however it does lessen the annoyance of using it and makes it more of a “fair balance” to get the skills you need.
As it is still preventing double field blast (earth->water->fire=fury+mights, etc. combo’s) it is still a pretty big sacrifice to gain the new skills.

dual cast skills:
All dual cast skills should be effected by CDR from their respective traitlines (or at least one of them, even with both on you don’t get CDR on dual skills).
Traits which adds attunements effects should add both effects, and double if fully attuned (you are giving up a full traitline for an awful one, I think this would lesson the hurt of that).

Staff dual cast Skill: (max targets of staff need to be increased x2 imho on all skills.)
Pressure Blast: only does slightly more damage than fireball, adds minor effects from dual cast and 15sec cd.
I Really feel like it need to be a Blast finisher as well as decreasing cast-time or increasing dmg or increasing aoe area+target hit.
Skill animation look kind of dull and PLEASE change the underhand, soft throwing of it. It looks really silly for a “big spell”.

Pyroclistic Blast: duration need to be increased on the after effect, it is very low now and doesn’t combo well with any of the finishers. Also add a KD/Daze effect on initial hit
Skill animation; please change the underhand throwing and the “curved” projectile angel, it looks like we are throwing a giant waterball with our muscles, not that we are magically creating a big spell and using magic to blast it at something.

Lahar: like the idea, staff ele need more lasting CC. think it would be better as a vortex spell which pulled enemies into the middle with each pulse. And/or don’t think it last long enough though and since it’s a field you can easily get out of it. Increase its duration and give it the field attribute.

Monsoon; this should be a KB skill on every hit, that knocksback the enemies as it goes through them, like a moving earth wall (gab-creator of which the ele currently has only 1). It’s width should also be increased 2-3 times.
Skill animation: pretty nice should be a big bigger.

Plasma Blast: of the the cooler looking ele skill; find it’s effect to be too low for how easy it is to evade, aoe area is quite small as well. Either increase the aoe or increase the Dmg or decrease the CD.
Skill animation; like the colour setup, beautifull explosion on it, only real improvement should be to the character models cast animation (arm moves to early and to slow, move slightly later and faster, like with flame burst.

Pile Driver: Cast-time is long, you are rooted while using it, piercing effect is rarely strong, long cd, daze hardly makes up for the downsites:
Give it 1500 range (as the only staff skill which can reach that far), increase it’s cast time to 3 seconds, increase it’s damage significantly. This would give ele at least ONE very long ranged skill.

Weaver Traits: (generally: stop giving specific weapon trait stats if you are limiting recharge to single elements. You are double handicapping the elementalist, either it should all be weapons or all be attunements)

Master fortitude: change it to a higher bonus which occur when dual-cast is used.

Weaver’s Prowess: only give benefits to condition dmg builds, add in bonusses for power builds on this one.

Elementalist Rage: only gives bonus for power build, make it also help condi builds (and stop double dipping in the traits, the options are limited enough as it is).

Superior elements: increase the weakness timer or change to conditions to increase the damage, or add more than 1 condition to trigger it, to something else (as ele staff got Zero skills that adds weakness, which you will ever cast, this is an awful synergy).

Bolstered elements: guess it is a fine defensive trait.
Elemental Pursuit: kind of a cool skill to have added.
Unravel hexes: also a cool skill to have added although I feel these two traits could have a more combined effect, using 2 traits on this does seem to lock down the traitline a lot. And it gives 3 traits that breaks CC automatically (bol, ele, unravel). So bit much to put here since there isn’t much interesting synergy in the rest.

Invigorating strike: is ok I guess, but again kind of boring and pushing towards only 1 playstyle.

When it comes to traits I would have Loved to see more traits actually make synergy with other traitlines in the ele’s package.
I feel like all the new traits in weaver traitlines are kind of boring, and some of them just seems very “meeh” and “bad” compared to all other traitlines.

Elites/utility skills:
Here I feel we seriously need something that isn’t targeted on ourself. Could we please get some ranged skills in utility and elites?
Or is this just the new ele where every new utility and elite skill is just self-target on us with low aoe range? :/
Feel sad we can’t even get a single elite skill that isn’t melee ranged when we are playing the Main Mage class in the game :/

edit: not sure if the range of staff skills shouldn’t be increased in general or at least have a trait that does this now that you can get sniped so easily.

i think the design idea of the necro matched a lot better to a elementalist imho ^^
could have made the shades elementals which activated elemental effects etc.
given the ele some nice long ranged options with a ton more aoe focus

dreaming over here ^^

edit:
also Arcane ressurrection should be moved to water trait line as it got nothing to do with arcane and everything to do with water

From a WvW standpoint I just don’t see it taking over whatsoever.

1. sword is niche , barrier won’t save you for long
2. the need to switch through two attunements to get skill 3 to be what you really want (esp. on water 3 , weaver’s Pressure blast)
3. the utility skills are lackluster , Twist of Fate requires Unravel hexes traits to be strong
4. you lose the heals from tempest & aura shares …
5. most people run water + fire/air traitlines and earth or tempest for defense , this doesn’t feel strong enough to me traitline-wise either
6. Bolstered Elements is pretty tame compared to the invulns flying around
7. dagger mainhand is pretty weak without tempest for WvW , Ashen Blast could be blast finisher or be given some burning

I feel as though the auto attack and dual attack on scepter should be re evaluated for weaver. It could be a much more viable WvW weapon for weaver than sword.

also kind of sad we got a melee condi focused elite spec Again. when already as it stands the current melee is also condi based, and the other special elite traitline is also melee heavy.
2 very similar elite specs which both just overlaps the D/X which was already strong.

seems like the completely wrong direction, as we would expect this one to be power heavy and ranged heavy (to see a big difference from tempest).

Not sure if it’s been suggested, but I don’t particularly mind the issue with Unravel and full attunement swaps (it’s something that is sacrificed for the extra utility and skills of the spec), but I’d actually suggest a reversal of Unravel. Tapping unravel should just swap you into the primary attunement you’re in with the same effects of using the attunement swap for it.

Give Unravel a 1/4 sec cooldown and like 5 charges that recharge every 10sec and I feel that would be perfect.

Upon further review, one thing that I noticed is that the vast majority of the dual skills have no defenses built into them except for the very ineffective barrier from elemental refreshment. In addition, some of them are weaker than the standard number 3 skills that they replace. If those could be re-balanced to actually make up for the defense that you lose from your 4 and 5 skills being locked behind the attunement gcds, then changes to the profession mechanic may be avoidable. I don’t know if extra barrier is the solution or if more types of defenses need to be added to them, but they do need something extra.

Just offering an alternative solution to changing the way the profession mechanic works, in case the dev team is determined to keep the mechanic as it currently is.

I think turning Unravel into a F5 skill with cooldown of 10sec will help the weaver a lot.
Also increasing the DPS of the sword auto attack a little bit would be good. Not too much of course but 5% or something!
Last but not least just add a simple 1 second evade for Earthen Vortex.

These small changes would change a lot but would’nt be OP.

My feedback after testing sword weaver pvp and wvw:

- Sword has low power damage and scaling.
- Sword has way too low mobility, Air 2 450 range is a joke. Make Fire and Air leaps 600 range.

- Weaver traitline doesn’t cover the survivability needs for a melee Ele, so we are forced again in the Arcana/Water combo to survive. Barrier is not enough and it lacks condition cleansing.

- Weaver traitline doesn’t provide “soft” speed buffs without wasting a trait. without swiftness or 25% speed bonus, sword range is a pain to be played. There is a trait but it’s contested with the most powerful traits, so u can’t pick it, and Ele can’t afford wasting runes/utilities for that.

I see much other wasted potential with this new elite:
- without the condition removal, the superspeed build will not exist.
- without a change in the attunement swap mechanic, a scepter build will not exist (no fast offhand skills, no fast phoenix, water trident)
- another thing is that chill has too much value against the Weaver swap mechanic, unbalanced by design.

In conclusion, we seem to have a very tanky melee build with some good sustained hybrid damage (carried by Primordial Stance in this demo weekend), with way much CC skills, but with the same identical issues of the core DD ele forced in the arcana/water combo to survive.

No way Weaver will be the offensive build we hoped for in PvP/WvW:
- not enough mobility to rotate fast (PvP) or engage/disengage fast in WvW and avoid damage
- not enough self-buffing offensive boons
- not enough condi cleansing (unless they buff the superspeed trait)
- no crazy op or cheesy sustain traits/skills that other professions have to survive in marauder gear

GCD is’nt really an issue from what i’ve played. It’s a tradeoff, i’m ok with that. We still can make nice combos, and with time and experience it will become more natural. I’m getting more comfortable with it anyway.

Sword:
My only concern is the aa damage and speed, lack of condi removal, and dual skill with too high cd for what they do. Only lava skin is fine, but should be instant cast. Rest is meh. An evade in fire2 would be great, or maybe just increase the leap distance to 600. Air2 is great. My favorite, I absolutely love it. Increase 450 to 600 would be perfect. Sword also lacks spike damage and burst, nothing really hard hitting, but I understand it was designed that way because of hybrid damage. The range of aa is also a concern because lack of gap closer, and since we don’t have weapon swap for kiting, it is sometimes hard to survive. Overall, it is really fun to play, but very difficult to “weave in and out” of the fights.

Focus offhand:
Offers superior survivability but feels clunky as most have already mentionned, because important skills are not accessible by the time you need them. No mobility skills, I find it annoying.

Dagger offhand:
Better dps, much better mobility, but lower survivability. So much more fun than focus.

Staff Offhand:
Please make it true!

Staff:
Dual skills are too slow and lack the condi damage needed for the spec. The skinny barrier brings nothing. Piledriver is fun but shouldn’t root you. In fact no skill should root you.

Overall, there is some improvement to make in dual attacks to make them somewhat threatening. Right now weavers are more or less free kills. In a DPS build anyway. We can output some nice damage, but that requires more risk & effort for lower results, and nothing to the party.

Weave self elite

currently elite gives us up to 20 seconds with half of cd between attunements + bonuses from already used attunements, but if we are swapping between all of them, we are ending it within 4-10 seconds depending on how many skills we are using, and entering ‘perfect weave’ witch no longer grant attunement gcd-reduction (and ends earlier if we use tailored victory) – so it’s kind of punishes us for completing requirement to become this so called ‘ultimate being’ which is actually worse than base effect of elite (no gcd reduction)

currently to get most of this elite we should stick to changing between 3 attunements for 19 sec and than at the end swap to the last one.

I’d like to see it changed to increase it’s base duration to 25 seconds and remove that whole ‘perfect weave’ stadium.
Leave ‘woven element’ bonuses as they are and, if all of them are activated, allow us to end elite earlier with tailored victory

Ganathar.4956:

Upon further review, one thing that I noticed is that the vast majority of the dual skills have no defenses built into them except for the very ineffective barrier from elemental refreshment. In addition, some of them are weaker than the standard number 3 skills that they replace. If those could be re-balanced to actually make up for the defense that you lose from your 4 and 5 skills being locked behind the attunement gcds, then changes to the profession mechanic may be avoidable. I don’t know if extra barrier is the solution or if more types of defenses need to be added to them, but they do need something extra.

Just offering an alternative solution to changing the way the profession mechanic works, in case the dev team is determined to keep the mechanic as it currently is.

could work yes ^^

Staff:
Dual skills are too slow and lack the condi damage needed for the spec. The skinny barrier brings nothing. Piledriver is fun but shouldn’t root you. In fact no skill should root you.

Overall, there is some improvement to make in dual attacks to make them somewhat threatening. Right now weavers are more or less free kills. In a DPS build anyway. We can output some nice damage, but that requires more risk & effort for lower results, and nothing to the party.

yup agreed.
the dual skills are cool and shiny, but as for effectiveness it doesn’t feel like something you would want to sacrifice a full trait line on :/

Velth.3780:

Weave self elite

currently elite gives us up to 20 seconds with half of cd between attunements + bonuses from already used attunements, but if we are swapping between all of them, we are ending it within 4-10 seconds depending on how many skills we are using, and entering ‘perfect weave’ witch no longer grant attunement gcd-reduction (and ends earlier if we use tailored victory) – so it’s kind of punishes us for completing requirement to become this so called ‘ultimate being’ which is actually worse than base effect of elite (no gcd reduction)

currently to get most of this elite we should stick to changing between 3 attunements for 19 sec and than at the end swap to the last one.

I’d like to see it changed to increase it’s base duration to 25 seconds and remove that whole ‘perfect weave’ stadium.
Leave ‘woven element’ bonuses as they are and, if all of them are activated, allow us to end elite earlier with tailored victory

generally think the problem is that it is “self-target” skills.
if you gave them the same range as your weapon, it would actually be pretty good as the CC on it is ok.
if you also made the full buff stay for 30sec after activation before the buff stopped.

personally, I really like the idea of “powering up skills” and think it should be done with All the weaver skills. adding more effects to the skills the more attunements you’ve been through before using the skill, adding an “ultimate” effect when you’ve been through all 4. would be an awesome setup imho
but I do feel like their extremely limited range, limit the builds that can utilize them and makes them not worth it unless you are melee anyway. therefore I think giving them the range of the weapon would be the best solution to these skills (properly a pretty good way to do with all “elite/utility” skills so to give the weapons a lot more characteristic feel)

I played a glass staff weaver in PvP, and it seemed really bad. The spec locks you out of the life-saving 3/4/5 skills on the staff, and it also messes with the condition you inflict using arcane skills. I switched back to tempest to see if I was just being bad and I pretty much decimated everything.

I don’t know about the other weapons, but it doesn’t seem to function well on the staff to me.

Fashion Mage.3712:

I played a glass staff weaver in PvP, and it seemed really bad. The spec locks you out of the life-saving 3/4/5 skills on the staff, and it also messes with the condition you inflict using arcane skills. I switched back to tempest to see if I was just being bad and I pretty much decimated everything.

I don’t know about the other weapons, but it doesn’t seem to function well on the staff to me.

have much the same feeling.
the dmg output in no way makes up for the complete lack of effective survivability it brings. dmg is actually lower, takes more effort and traits are vastly worse with no synergy to other traits or utilities/elite.
elites and utility skills are all melee ranged, making them close to useless for staff dmg builds.

Personally I think Arenanet missed their chance on this elite spec for ele.

Like most, I also feel that the attunement cooldown mechanic feels clunky and denies us the way we used to play ele. Surely, you can say to get used to it. But the whole idea behind the way attunement swapping works makes playing ele fun and functional. Now when you swap to one attunement to use a certain skill, you’ll be stuck/delayed for 2,5 seconds to use a skill in another attunement that you might need at that situation.

Changing the attunement cooldown mechanic to the same ones as core ele but with much lower cooldown (4 seconds on the ones you just used) would be a big improvement to the playability of the weaver spec?

Sword skills look flashy but don’t do an awful lot of damage. Condi damage is lowish, and my scepter/warhorn tempest does 2x more condi compared to weaver with same stats using sword/focus. Some skills on different attunements feel like they sort of do the same which makes it generally a bit boring overall, not a lot of variability kind of kills an elite spec.

The dual attacks seems ok on the other weapons, but it’s not like we need them replaced by a new one through an annoying attunement system. So to me it seems the spec is mostly about some flasy sword skills and dual attacks that are underwhelming.

Can someone please tell me, what does the weaver add that we don’t have yet?

It would be nice to have Unravel as a permanent and passive option instead of a temporary one. This makes the weaver less complicated for more casual-style gameplay while still allowing to use some of the new abilities of the weaver. Let’s call it: Weaver Light.

1. Not a fan of global cooldowns as it takes away the fun of attunement switching and combo making.
2. Barriers are really weak. I feel like the default barrier values should be much higher and decay slower, especially if you’re giving up so much easy and quick access to mobility options and defensive options in other builds.
3. AA chain can be completely interrupted when switching attunements. If I perform the first 2 attacks in air and switch to earth, I expect the final hit of the earth AA chain to occur.
4. For now, AA chains feel weak.
5. Twist of Fate stance is sluggish. If I stun break, I expect to get out of danger ASAP, not slowly spin away. Weave Self is too punishing after switching to all elements.

I’d love it if the different auto attack chains could be combined such that attunement swaps mid-chain doesn’t restart it entirely. Could introduce some interesting play by finishing a chain in another attunement from the one you started in.

For core Ele, you can rotate through all the attunements in 10s, spending 2.5s in each. For Weaver, you need to spend 4s each, for a total of 16s. If ANet doesn’t want to remove the global cooldown, we should at least reduce the global cooldown to 2.5s to be on pair with core Ele.

I’m not asking for Weaver to be an upgrade over core Ele, I just want it to be on par with core Ele.

Same thing with Barrier values. Core Ele can swap to water and heal for a lot more than the barrier dual skills provide. It doesn’t require skill casting. It’s instant. It’s raw heal that doesn’t decay! Like, barrier value should be higher than raw heal for the reason that it decays. Again, I’m not asking for an upgrade, I just want it to be on par with core Ele.

And sword damage, at least makes it as strong as Dagger and reduce the cast time. Like, what’s the reason to sacrifice range, put yourself into risky position, and have worse damage? The rewards should be proportional of the risk.

Thanks!

Would be nice just to have some feedback from Anet, almost everyone thinks Weaver is needlessly complicated and limiting. Putting defensive skills behind a 5 to 8 second cooldown is just stupid.

I’m actually starting to like Weaver now. It took some time getting used to not always having certain offhand skill when I wanted them.

If the barrier from dual skills is increased, it might make up for not having those defensive offhand skills readily available. Also if sword damage is improved (or fixed because it seems like the power scaling is broken) I think it could be a solid weapon.

It’s a little disappointing that this elite spec didn’t really provide a reliable option for survivability though. Still can’t figure out how those other Weavers I saw in wvw were so tanky.

I dabbled in it and it would take a lot more practice to claim to have any clue how best to use the class, but one note I would like to put out there is that there needs to be some better UI to depict which is your primary and which is your secondary element. It’s too confusing right now. I mean, if you look you can tell them apart, sure, but it’s not lightning quick, can’t miss it, it’s something you need to scrutinize.

I’m not sure the best way to do this, but maybe a large “primary” and smaller “secondary” icon that appears right above the health bubble. There needs to be something large and central to the UI.

Xillllix.3485:

Would be nice just to have some feedback from Anet, almost everyone thinks Weaver is needlessly complicated and limiting. Putting defensive skills behind a 5 to 8 second cooldown is just stupid.

I do agree, but I think this is a general issue with the GW2 designers, which is just done enough here for everyone to feel it ^^

what I mean is that needless complexity, to do something simple, is what they used to create a false sense of “difficulty/skill ceiling” imho.
weapon switching instead of just skillbars (feel like console design to combat the lack of hotkeys),
+ the 25 different buff/debuff,
+36 field/combo combination,
+ complete lack of class roles,
+complete lack of ways to gather information of what you are facing/fighting before it is already after you Needed that info,
+ design made where you have to pre-emptively react to the enemies “animations” which are very obscured,
+ absurd amount of different builds and time to get a hang of it all, with very few valid setups (as all classes need to do all, which also scraps any feeling of “roles” + “class balance”, and balance in general across the setups),
+ etc. etc. etc.

the complexity layering has been added to heavily that I bet even oldtimers can find it confusing and that the Vast majority of players don’t know even all the mechanics on paper, much less are able to react to them on instinct with correct reactions.

this aspect won’t change unless the designers do though as it seems they believe that the more convoluted the design, the better it must be.
simplicity concepts are not something they seem to have in their discussions ^^

My feedback for weaver is limited as i really only want to use it in pve, the one mode we couldnt test in this weekend. But from what i saw with the training dummy/other people there are some things to improve.
Sword autos need to a solid buff, they simply do not hit hard enough right now. I like the idea of seeing the cast and aftercasts getting reduced, would fit the play style better i think. Most of the rest of the skills i dont want to comment on until we see them live in pve, but i will say Pyro Vortex felt weak.
Barrier is very underwhelming right now. With the amounts we get right now from dual skills a support character can one-shot them. As a pve/bruiser defense tool its not much good. I’d also like to see the decay rate in combat reduced quite a bit, doesnt feel good seeing it disappear so fast.
I dont think the attunement swapping is that clunky right now, but it something to keep in mind.
Stances weren’t really exciting, but Twist of Fate does look like an excellent defensive skill.
The traits looked pretty solid. I’d like to see Superior Elements as a damage modifier not a crit mod on live, i think the class needs that more. Unraveling Hexes also needs to be buff/fixed so it removes all condis. That will be a make or break change on weaver viability in pvp.
All in all, Weaver needs to be in a better place for launch but i’m optimistic. I remember what a complete mess Tempest was during its first beta, and the huge amounts of changes it needed to get to a good spot, both mechanically and marginally. Weaver on the other hand feels like a solid, well designed spec that generally works the way its suppose to. Its obviously a much more intense change in play than what Tempest brought, and I think folks just need more time to settle into its flow and figure out the new rotations. Some number tweaking across the board, and I think its going to be a real stand out spec.

i play ele for 3 years i think this is a worst change i ever seen !!!!! i only play pvp/wvw

first this idea is really garbage
no one use skill 3 when i chose fire/fire i have only one skill to use (waiting 4s for changing the element ) and its only 130 rage and low dmg!! at less make it 400 radius ! and do some move!

don’t try to do something its already garbage idea ! dont make half of my skill fire and the other air i lost all my compo man !

skill 2 with air (sword) have cast !!!!!!! why!! take a cast off i cant use it for any compo !

low dmg! really low dmg !!
you have to make some move skill i cant catch any one play range... i have only one teleport! make some move skill like skill 3 (fire) dagger (normal ele)

d/d all skill is useless 0 compo !!! with new trait lane zero ideas

scepter/focus useless have a lot of cd changing between element ! and all new skill useless i think using normal ele better
some think is really wrong about you arenanet ! can i ask what i have to do with (Unravel) its really useless ... the idea of making half of my skill .. is already garbage.

all dmg come from condi and its also useless ! only burning and bleeding

new trait lane weak ! make some idea please please !

elite skill is really bad cd for 90s we need some dmg
heal skill is really useless in pvp ! make it normal this new play style not for supporting !
only think you do is barrier ! and its weak ><

I made a fairly effective build using Sage Amulet, Primordial Stance, and Stoneheart together to become an uncritable bleed bursting killer. It was pretty fun. Even downed two thieves in a 1v2 from the bleed stacks before they could burst me down (though I lost in the downed state battle).

My main complaint is how low the damage output is when you’re not using Primordial Stance. With this stance you can load up conditions in huge stacks very quick, but without it you’re just not hitting hard enough to be a serious threat to all the sustain out there. An entire elite weapon set shouldn’t feel underpowered when not using a specific utility to boost it’s damage.

I also don’t feel like I quite have the innate mobility to stick to my target. A sword elementalist can’t switch to a ranged weapon like every other class, so above all there is a significant need to outpace your opponent. Right now most enemies seem too able to kite me for the sacrifice in range I’ve made.

CETheLucid.3964:

Just a quick and dirty first impressions on of my time (about two days) with Weaver as an elementalist. The dual attunement mechanic is kitten near perfectly done.

I love that I can double proc attunement specials by fully attuning to an element from a fused one.

I kinda wonder why anyone would need Unravel at all once you understand how to fully attune.

I guess because it counts as a stance and it can proc stability when traited I suppose? But the other stances offer a bit more.

That needs a cooldown buff or a complete reworking or something.

The fused elemental skills tend to be fantastic. The sword is everything I was looking for in a sword spec for ele.

I’ve been kinda vocal on asking for sword for ele and I’m very pleased with what we got. The skills all flow together quite nicely.

Likewise the dual attack skills on dagger are very well done and it assuaged my fears of losing some of the more important mobility skills on dagger that tend to be on skill 3.

Weaver dagger gives a bunch of mobility skills to the dagger spec and it’s a welcome addition.

I’ve just started playing around on scepter with Weaver and on this one I’m just a little iffy.

On dagger and sword I could play around with many different builds but on scepter I felt kinda shoehorned into the Air trait line to really make it work.

But work it does. It’s an amazing 1vX build and Weaver adds a good bunch of conditions and control to scepter.

I wish there was more control or something to make it more flexible outside of a fresh air build.

But as far as I know that’s always been a thing for scepter and it seems a lot of Weaver traits really flow with the fresh air build.

It’s not a bad build by any means. Just feels limited. I’m sure in PvE I could mess around more since the experience is generally more forgiving VS real people.

Now staff I’m kinda underwhelmed by in terms of what Weaver offers.

Lahar and Pile Driver withstanding (they’re really good and I like them a lot), most of the other staff dual attacks don’t feel too great.

They feel underpowered and clunky to fire off compared to what you gain if you hit. In PvP/WvW you’re not going to hit anyone with them.

Maybe a zerg vs zerg situation? But in smaller conflicts the skills are easy to avoid and even if they hit, they don’t feel sufficient for a two handed weapon.

These skills need to be harder hitting or do more or something to reward good/predictive positioning which is what you need to use for a majority of staff weaver dual attacks.

Those are my impressions thus far.

A great spec overall and I’m glad we finally get to add sword to the elementalist repertoire.

I know I’m not the only elementalist who started building a legendary sword once I found out we’re getting sword.

See you guys in Elona!

For the Weaver feedback thread. Didn’t know there were designated feedback threads. Probably not official but hey I wanna add my two copper pieces.

I really like the new elite, it certainly shows that it had more time of development than the first beta we had for tempest. Still, I think that some problems should be addressed if the class wants to be competitive:

- Sword dmg compared to all other new professions is tuned down even if not by that much. The problem is that other classes weapons can be swaped, letting you choose in battle if you want utility vs damage, something that ele cant.

- Same problem happens if you want to stick in melee range to your enemy with the sword, its not easy at all and you cant compensate it with other weapon

- Last but not least important is the limited condi dmg removal in a low health melee class:
1) Condi burst cant really be managed by sustained removals. (Making melee non tank builds food for certain classes even with double cleansing fire)
2) As it is now the trait " Unravel hexes" overlaps with “Geomancers training” in half its function, weakening is usefulness and appeal as a GM elite trait

Problems with Weaver
1. survivability:
Can’t survive anything, barrier is horrible on the low health ele, and gets removed way to easily.
Attunement swapping cool down needs to decrease from 4 to 3 sec, and you need to instantly be able to fully attune the attunement you are currently in. (for example for an OH moment you can change into earth, then instantly press earth again to fully attune to earth (while actually changing attunements can be 3 seconds))
2. lack of dmg both physical and condi
3. Almost 0 condi cleanse, can’t stand up to any classes in this condi heavy meta.
4. Sword lacks dmg, and movement ability
5. Some sword skills makes you stay in place which is exactly the opposite of what should happen to an ele.
6. New ult needs to be able to be used on the move, not have to stand still to use it.
7. Increase barrier available to us.
8. Having to use focus to survive any range class.

koenrox.6480:

Problems with Weaver
1. survivability:
Can’t survive anything, barrier is horrible on the low health ele, and gets removed way to easily.
Attunement swapping cool down needs to decrease from 4 to 3 sec, and you need to instantly be able to fully attune the attunement you are currently in. (for example for an OH moment you can change into earth, then instantly press earth again to fully attune to earth (while actually changing attunements can be 3 seconds))
2. lack of dmg both physical and condi
3. Almost 0 condi cleanse, can’t stand up to any classes in this condi heavy meta.
4. Sword lacks dmg, and movement ability
5. Some sword skills makes you stay in place which is exactly the opposite of what should happen to an ele.
6. New ult needs to be able to be used on the move, not have to stand still to use it.
7. Increase barrier available to us.
8. Having to use focus to survive any range class.

Agreed!

More survivability and more mobility needs to happen to go up against any ranged class.

I played mostly Sword/Dagger and Sword/Focus Weaver this weekend. Here are my impressions:

General

-Weaver as it stands is definitely not a pure Power spec. It does decent condi pressure though. I found Sage amulet to work best for myself, though I hope others can find more viable options. I know Phantaram tried a Mender’s build with some success. Deadshot looks like it has some potential, but I couldn’t make it work.

-The overall animations and look of the spec are great. The Sword, Dual Attack and Utilities are flashy and look powerful. The Elite skill looks good too.

-The biggest issue for me is the inability to have instant access to powerful defensive abilities like Swirling Winds and Obsidian Flesh. THAT SAID, I will for now chalk it up to a L2P issue on my part, since Weaver does provide evades on both Sword and Utilities (Twist of Fate.)

-Survivability needs help. Weaver cannot reliably survive condi bombs. Barrier in particular is lackluster. It requires speccing into Vitality and Healing Power (already limiting build diversity) and decays too early to be useful.

-Another problem I see with the Weaver is that one Utility skill (Primordial Stance) seems to do the bulk of its damage. PS itself is bugged (pulses 3 burn/sec when attuned to Fire and Earth, instead of 1 burn/sec.) It’s going to be weak when fixed, which is going to exacerbate the problem that our weapon skills don’t do all that much damage for a melee spec.

-I also fear that Weaver is still too reliant on Water/Arcane, hamstringing its build diversity. Especially with the crazy condis flying around now, Water is needed more than ever. And Arcane is indispensable for the Attunement swap cool down reduction and Evasive Arcana. I was hoping for more active defense to be added to Sword to help us justify specccing into Fire/Air/Earth, and the evades are a good start, but there simply isn’t enough condi removal to justify abandoning Water, and the class feels too clunky without Arcane.

Sword

-Sword auto-attacks are not good. They don’t do much damage and feel clunky. I think they should just have their cast times reduced/animations sped up. Another problem is that if you swap Attunements mid-AA chain, you reset the chain to the first attack. It’s clunky and annoying.

-Besides the auto-attacks, the Sword feels great to use. A lot of potential here. Needs more damage though!

-Dual attacks for the most part are great (though Staff and Scepter seem to have a few underwhelming Dual Attacks.) However, none of the Dual Attacks benefit from cooldown reduction traits. This needs to be rectified. Some skills like Flame Eruption and Gale Strike could be faster too. Lava Skin should really be instant-cast.

-I love the gap-closers, CC and evades on Sword! Been looking forward to this for ages. I so badly want to spec into Air for Lightning Rod, but am too scared to give up Water/Arcane

Utility Skills

-Primordial Stance is great! However, it’s going to be weak when its bug is fixed

-Twist of Fate is a good skill, and will be on my bar with Lightning Flash and PS.

-Unravel is just a waste of a Utility skill IMO. Once you get the hang of how Attunement swapping works with Weaver, you will almost never need to take this skill. I’d much rather see it reworked. Maybe condition removal or more CC?

Healing Skill

-No real opinion on this; I mainly used Signet of Restoration.

Elite Skill

-Should definitely be usable while moving. Stopping to cast this just cuts your momentum dead.

Traits

-Grandmaster tier needs work. IMO, there is only one good GM trait, Invigorating Strikes. Elements of Rage runs counter to the Weaver mechanic! It should reward dual-attuning; it feels more like a Tempest trait at the moment. Unravel Hexes is so pointless. It’s essentially another Lucid Singularity, which no one takes. It should remove all conditions (one condition per half second) when under the effects of Superspeed.

Overall, I love the Weaver, a lot more than I liked Tempest initially. I hope the issues get fixed; I really want it to be viable as a damage-dealing spec in PVP. It needs to be able to survive on the frontlines and/or have the capacity to do enough damage if people are going to play it.

Clownmug.8357:

I’m actually starting to like Weaver now. It took some time getting used to not always having certain offhand skill when I wanted them.

If the barrier from dual skills is increased, it might make up for not having those defensive offhand skills readily available. Also if sword damage is improved (or fixed because it seems like the power scaling is broken) I think it could be a solid weapon.

It’s a little disappointing that this elite spec didn’t really provide a reliable option for survivability though. Still can’t figure out how those other Weavers I saw in wvw were so tanky.

You got to use dodge skills right. That and healing power goes a long way. Twist of Fate helps out a lot.

Basically, I agree with what others have already stated regarding Weaver – besides reducing the global cooldown for attunement swapping. From what I‘ve seen, Weaver is about combining two elements to get new effects, not about attunement dancing to the max. I think this was brought up by Wooden Potatoes (and maybe others streamers), but I can’t remember someone at Anet saying so. So I guess the global cooldown ist the Ele’s drawback that most oft he new elite specs have gotten: Necro loses his second healthbar aka shroud, Warrior will only have two bars of addrenaline and access to level 1 bursts, guard loses instant support via virtues and instead gains more but channeled support by tomes, …. Therefore, I think the global cooldown for attunement swapping should stay. But in turn, what we gain for losing instant access to the 4th and 5th skills should make up for that – which it currently doesn’t. So these are my suggestions:

Sword
Sword feels clunky and weak when compared to the other weapons. Some skills could use some more range. Maybe give 1-2 of the autoattacks a small gap closer (like Ranger once had on sword) on the second part of the chain, or increases the range of the closers already there. Also, maybe a second evade would be nice. Sword is a melee weapon, after all. I also think the damage should be increased.

Dual Attacks
These are basically what we get for the increased global cooldown on attunement swap and the resulting drawbacks. Some Dual Attacks make up for up that (Lava Skin, …), but some still need buffs to really shine (pretty much like Overloads did Pre-HoT). Besides increasing damage and/or range, you could also add some finishers, evades, blocks or combo fields.

Barriers
Right now, these feel almost useless due to decaying way to fast and having a relatively low base value (at least for Ele, but I guess it‘s the same for Necro). I understand that Anet wants to prevent players to LoS during a fight, stack up some barriers, re-enter the fight, and repeat as long as needed. So I suggest changing the way barriers decay to being instant instead of slowly, but delaying the decay. For example, if a skill gives you a barrier which lasts 3 seconds and starts decaying after 1 second, you would have 0 barrier after 4 seconds. Instead, I would like to see the barrier last for the full 4 seconds, and then run out instantly. The result would be the same, but none oft he barrier points would be wasted by a slow decay. If the barriers base value is also increased- especially on Dual Attacks – , the Weavers survivability would get a nice and needed boost.

Effects related to attunements
Some of the traits that activate on swapping to a attunement (Healing Ripple, …) will not activate when fully attuning to single element. I think they should to make up for the increased global cooldown on swapping and losing instant access to 4th/5th weapon skills. Additionally, any trait that is active while you’re attuned to a specific element (Empowering Flame, …) will only work for your main hand attunement. I suggest that they also work for the off hand one, giving players more reason to double attune and enhancing the aspect of combining two elements. I understand that changing active skills like Glyphs or Elementals to work with double attunements would be too much, though.

Condi cleanse/Resistance
Some form of condi cleanse would be helpful with surviving in melee range. Right now, Weaver has more or less to rely on Water traits/skills to cleanse condis. Changing Unraveling Hexes to remove every kind of condition would probably be too much (making Frash Air builds pretty much immune to condis), but something like „remove a Condition/gain Resistance when using a Dual Attack / when using a Stance / when gaining a Barrier / when a barrier expires“ might work.

Glenstorm.4059:

I played mostly Sword/Dagger and Sword/Focus Weaver this weekend. Here are my impressions:

General

-Weaver as it stands is definitely not a pure Power spec. It does decent condi pressure though. I found Sage amulet to work best for myself, though I hope others can find more viable options. I know Phantaram tried a Mender’s build with some success. Deadshot looks like it has some potential, but I couldn’t make it work.

-The overall animations and look of the spec are great. The Sword, Dual Attack and Utilities are flashy and look powerful. The Elite skill looks good too.

-The biggest issue for me is the inability to have instant access to powerful defensive abilities like Swirling Winds and Obsidian Flesh. THAT SAID, I will for now chalk it up to a L2P issue on my part, since Weaver does provide evades on both Sword and Utilities (Twist of Fate.)

-Survivability needs help. Weaver cannot reliably survive condi bombs. Barrier in particular is lackluster. It requires speccing into Vitality and Healing Power (already limiting build diversity) and decays too early to be useful.

-Another problem I see with the Weaver is that one Utility skill (Primordial Stance) seems to do the bulk of its damage. PS itself is bugged (pulses 3 burn/sec when attuned to Fire and Earth, instead of 1 burn/sec.) It’s going to be weak when fixed, which is going to exacerbate the problem that our weapon skills don’t do all that much damage for a melee spec.

-I also fear that Weaver is still too reliant on Water/Arcane, hamstringing its build diversity. Especially with the crazy condis flying around now, Water is needed more than ever. And Arcane is indispensable for the Attunement swap cool down reduction and Evasive Arcana. I was hoping for more active defense to be added to Sword to help us justify specccing into Fire/Air/Earth, and the evades are a good start, but there simply isn’t enough condi removal to justify abandoning Water, and the class feels too clunky without Arcane.

Sword

-Sword auto-attacks are not good. They don’t do much damage and feel clunky. I think they should just have their cast times reduced/animations sped up. Another problem is that if you swap Attunements mid-AA chain, you reset the chain to the first attack. It’s clunky and annoying.

-Besides the auto-attacks, the Sword feels great to use. A lot of potential here. Needs more damage though!

-Dual attacks for the most part are great (though Staff and Scepter seem to have a few underwhelming Dual Attacks.) However, none of the Dual Attacks benefit from cooldown reduction traits. This needs to be rectified. Some skills like Flame Eruption and Gale Strike could be faster too. Lava Skin should really be instant-cast.

-I love the gap-closers, CC and evades on Sword! Been looking forward to this for ages. I so badly want to spec into Air for Lightning Rod, but am too scared to give up Water/Arcane

Utility Skills

-Primordial Stance is great! However, it’s going to be weak when its bug is fixed

-Twist of Fate is a good skill, and will be on my bar with Lightning Flash and PS.

-Unravel is just a waste of a Utility skill IMO. Once you get the hang of how Attunement swapping works with Weaver, you will almost never need to take this skill. I’d much rather see it reworked. Maybe condition removal or more CC?

Healing Skill

-No real opinion on this; I mainly used Signet of Restoration.

Elite Skill

-Should definitely be usable while moving. Stopping to cast this just cuts your momentum dead.

Traits

-Grandmaster tier needs work. IMO, there is only one good GM trait, Invigorating Strikes. Elements of Rage runs counter to the Weaver mechanic! It should reward dual-attuning; it feels more like a Tempest trait at the moment. Unravel Hexes is so pointless. It’s essentially another Lucid Singularity, which no one takes. It should remove all conditions (one condition per half second) when under the effects of Superspeed.

Overall, I love the Weaver, a lot more than I liked Tempest initially. I hope the issues get fixed; I really want it to be viable as a damage-dealing spec in PVP. It needs to be able to survive on the frontlines and/or have the capacity to do enough damage if people are going to play it.

Just wanted to quote and say that I agree strongly with everything said here, and it’s a good summary of current issues. I hope the devs read this.

Glenstorm.4059:

I played mostly Sword/Dagger and Sword/Focus Weaver this weekend. Here are my impressions:

General

-Weaver as it stands is definitely not a pure Power spec. It does decent condi pressure though. I found Sage amulet to work best for myself, though I hope others can find more viable options. I know Phantaram tried a Mender’s build with some success. Deadshot looks like it has some potential, but I couldn’t make it work.

-The overall animations and look of the spec are great. The Sword, Dual Attack and Utilities are flashy and look powerful. The Elite skill looks good too.

-The biggest issue for me is the inability to have instant access to powerful defensive abilities like Swirling Winds and Obsidian Flesh. THAT SAID, I will for now chalk it up to a L2P issue on my part, since Weaver does provide evades on both Sword and Utilities (Twist of Fate.)

-Survivability needs help. Weaver cannot reliably survive condi bombs. Barrier in particular is lackluster. It requires speccing into Vitality and Healing Power (already limiting build diversity) and decays too early to be useful.

-Another problem I see with the Weaver is that one Utility skill (Primordial Stance) seems to do the bulk of its damage. PS itself is bugged (pulses 3 burn/sec when attuned to Fire and Earth, instead of 1 burn/sec.) It’s going to be weak when fixed, which is going to exacerbate the problem that our weapon skills don’t do all that much damage for a melee spec.

-I also fear that Weaver is still too reliant on Water/Arcane, hamstringing its build diversity. Especially with the crazy condis flying around now, Water is needed more than ever. And Arcane is indispensable for the Attunement swap cool down reduction and Evasive Arcana. I was hoping for more active defense to be added to Sword to help us justify specccing into Fire/Air/Earth, and the evades are a good start, but there simply isn’t enough condi removal to justify abandoning Water, and the class feels too clunky without Arcane.

Sword

-Sword auto-attacks are not good. They don’t do much damage and feel clunky. I think they should just have their cast times reduced/animations sped up. Another problem is that if you swap Attunements mid-AA chain, you reset the chain to the first attack. It’s clunky and annoying.

-Besides the auto-attacks, the Sword feels great to use. A lot of potential here. Needs more damage though!

-Dual attacks for the most part are great (though Staff and Scepter seem to have a few underwhelming Dual Attacks.) However, none of the Dual Attacks benefit from cooldown reduction traits. This needs to be rectified. Some skills like Flame Eruption and Gale Strike could be faster too. Lava Skin should really be instant-cast.

-I love the gap-closers, CC and evades on Sword! Been looking forward to this for ages. I so badly want to spec into Air for Lightning Rod, but am too scared to give up Water/Arcane

Utility Skills

-Primordial Stance is great! However, it’s going to be weak when its bug is fixed

-Twist of Fate is a good skill, and will be on my bar with Lightning Flash and PS.

-Unravel is just a waste of a Utility skill IMO. Once you get the hang of how Attunement swapping works with Weaver, you will almost never need to take this skill. I’d much rather see it reworked. Maybe condition removal or more CC?

Healing Skill

-No real opinion on this; I mainly used Signet of Restoration.

Elite Skill

-Should definitely be usable while moving. Stopping to cast this just cuts your momentum dead.

Traits

-Grandmaster tier needs work. IMO, there is only one good GM trait, Invigorating Strikes. Elements of Rage runs counter to the Weaver mechanic! It should reward dual-attuning; it feels more like a Tempest trait at the moment. Unravel Hexes is so pointless. It’s essentially another Lucid Singularity, which no one takes. It should remove all conditions (one condition per half second) when under the effects of Superspeed.

Overall, I love the Weaver, a lot more than I liked Tempest initially. I hope the issues get fixed; I really want it to be viable as a damage-dealing spec in PVP. It needs to be able to survive on the frontlines and/or have the capacity to do enough damage if people are going to play it.

I couldn’t agree more.