Guild Wars 2

I’ve been maining necro since the launch of GW2, but I absolutely adore spellsword type classes so with the announcement of PoF and Weaver I’ve leveled up an ele and fully unlocked Tempest, but I’m very unfamiliar with the whole swapping mechanic, something that seems to be quite core to Weaver gameplay. So I was wondering if you’ve got any tips on how I could prepare myself a bit more for Weaver release (both playstyle and also equipment-wise, although I get that we have no builds for them yet)?

Elementalist isn’t quite your ‘pick up and play’ class like ranger or warrior might be. I consider it to be one of the harder classes to learn since you have so many skills to track and it feels like you’re typing an essay in combat.

The best way I’d say is to play core ele using Fresh Air with either dagger/x or scepter/x (many people like focus for the utility and sustain. I prefer offhand dagger for the much higher damage. All personal preference). With Fresh Air you’ll be constantly switching out of air, hit a crit, switch back, repeat.

I’d say learn d/d since weaver will be a frontliner, and d/d is the closest we have currently. It will help you learn rotations and how to survive better in the thick of things. It’s really just a matter of practice and getting used to everything. Weaver will be taking it to a whole new level with more skills (though maybe not as much swapping in a short amount of time with the whole universal CD on attunements increase). Hope this helps a little. Cheers~

Learn to play the piano.

Practice FA elementalist. Their are 6 weaver skills. FA to the other 3 attunements then stay in Air for a bit the combo looks like this:

Air-Air, Fire-Air, Air-Fire,
Air-Air, Earth-Air, Air-Earth,
Air-Air, Water-Air, Air-Water,
Air-Air, Fire-Air,

Earth-Fire, Water-Earth, Fire-Water are the 3 dual skills that you can miss as FA. Starting in Full Air the combo buttons: F1, F3, F3, F4, F3, F3, F2, F3, F3, F1 (9 attunement swaps). The combo uses half of the dual skill you have available. You swap to Air twice because you can (doubling the FA procs) and this enables your other attunements to get off of cd. FA spec will spec 70% of their time in Air.

Still that is not the only build for weaver. This is how can cycle through the 6 dual skill.

Fire-Air,
Earth-Fire, Air-Earth,
Water-Air, Fire-Water,
Air-Fire, Earth-Air
Water-Earth, Air-Water
Fire-Air

Its more complex but here is the combo starting in Full Air: F1, F4, F3, F2, F1, F3, F4, F2, F3, F1(9 attunement swaps). This does not include a condition focused build. Condition builds will revolve around mostly Fire-Earth combos but it looks similar to that combo. These combos do not take into account you defenses.

Ulion.5476:

You swap to Air twice because you can (doubling the FA procs) and this enables your other attunements to get off of cd.

The global attunement cooldown will unfortunately be retriggered when you swap into air for the second time. It’s true that, depending on casttimes and value of the dual attacks, it may be beneficial to stay in an attunement that is not air for 4 seconds, then swap for another attunement that is also not air and use that new dual attack, then swap right back to air after you get a FA proc. It’s all very hard to tell until we have the actual balancing of the skills though.

Yea so far I noticed that at least one dual skill on every weapon has a daze/stun. So you can use that to do some burst combos in pvp. Still curious if dual skills get the bonus of 2 trait lines (air/fire/earth/water training). It going to be very interesting seeing the various builds people can come up with. The amount of barriers you can get from build for it is comparable to the about of healing you get from auras as tempest. Weaver have an aggressive defense, 2 leaps and 2 dodges from sword. Still keeping up barriers in pvp will be tricky with 2sec to recast another barrier.

sanestar.8731:

Elementalist isn’t quite your ‘pick up and play’ class like ranger or warrior might be. I consider it to be one of the harder classes to learn since you have so many skills to track and it feels like you’re typing an essay in combat.

The best way I’d say is to play core ele using Fresh Air with either dagger/x or scepter/x (many people like focus for the utility and sustain. I prefer offhand dagger for the much higher damage. All personal preference). With Fresh Air you’ll be constantly switching out of air, hit a crit, switch back, repeat.

I’d say learn d/d since weaver will be a frontliner, and d/d is the closest we have currently. It will help you learn rotations and how to survive better in the thick of things. It’s really just a matter of practice and getting used to everything. Weaver will be taking it to a whole new level with more skills (though maybe not as much swapping in a short amount of time with the whole universal CD on attunements increase). Hope this helps a little. Cheers~

Thanks for the response! I know it’s a difficult class to learn, which is probably why I’ve been afraid to touch it up until this point. But on the other hand, it’ll be all the more rewarding when I do learn to play it properly.

When you say core ele, do you mean without Tempest tree? If so, what build would you recommend for d/d? Seeing as I’ll probably do sword/dagger, this feels like a good place to start.

And FWIW, I’m only interested in the PvE side of things, PvP has never really interested me

Yobculture.5786:

Learn to play the piano.

I play the guitar, will that do?

Ulion.5476:

Yea so far I noticed that at least one dual skill on every weapon has a daze/stun. So you can use that to do some burst combos in pvp. Still curious if dual skills get the bonus of 2 trait lines (air/fire/earth/water training). It going to be very interesting seeing the various builds people can come up with. The amount of barriers you can get from build for it is comparable to the about of healing you get from auras as tempest. Weaver have an aggressive defense, 2 leaps and 2 dodges from sword. Still keeping up barriers in pvp will be tricky with 2sec to recast another barrier.

Neither sword nor scepter has a daze or a stun on their dual attacks. Sword has a floating dual attack, though. And then we still need to see the air/earth dual attack on scepter, which thematically could fit a daze/stun.

And you really can’t say anything about the amount of barrier we get until we know how well it scales off of healing power. The current amount of barrier (without any healing power) doesn’t seem to match the amount of healing a tempest can potentially do through auras (especially not without the dodge grandmaster), but some of the core traitlines (at least earth) should be getting barrier in today’s balance patch, so a lot is still up in the air!

Going for an aura build picking up the aura related traits aura after every overload, heals on aura and regen on aura. Thats around 500 heal 600 regen per aura, so a total of 1100 healed per aura. Healing done with full auras on utilities within 1min of time. Thats 6-8 aura from utilities and you may be able to get 6 overload off a minute in pvp. Around 12-14 aura every minute or 13k~15k healing.

Barrier build picking up the barrier related traits. vitality, barrier when low and barrier on dodge. The minor trait gives ~375 barrier per dual skill used, 650 barrier 5 pulse when at 50%hp 70s cd(stone resonance) and 850 barrier on dodge. Estimate barrier gained per minute, assuming you cycle through the 6 dual skills every 30 sec you should be able to get 12 barriers for total 4500 barrier. You an dodge 6-8 time a minute so you will gain 5100-6800 barriers. The barrier proc at 50% hp add a 3250 barrier every minute. Add stone resonance twice since its a trait and utility, so the barrier per minute 16k~18k. At base stat barrier is better for solo play but aura builds are better for support.

Anyways learn what the dual skills do for each weapon set will take awhile. I have to get back into a melee mindset to play a weaver. Been awhile since I have play d/x.

You didn’t account for auras through traits, weapon skills and combos. That’s easily another 6-8 auras/min. It’s hard to compare barrier to healing, especially since weaver and tempest achieve different goals, but the fact that the healing of tempest also affects allies makes the barrier amount look even less impressive. You don’t get much value out of an aura-build with no healing power though, which is why the scaling is interesting.

Aeosoth.2461:

sanestar.8731:

Elementalist isn’t quite your ‘pick up and play’ class like ranger or warrior might be. I consider it to be one of the harder classes to learn since you have so many skills to track and it feels like you’re typing an essay in combat.

The best way I’d say is to play core ele using Fresh Air with either dagger/x or scepter/x (many people like focus for the utility and sustain. I prefer offhand dagger for the much higher damage. All personal preference). With Fresh Air you’ll be constantly switching out of air, hit a crit, switch back, repeat.

I’d say learn d/d since weaver will be a frontliner, and d/d is the closest we have currently. It will help you learn rotations and how to survive better in the thick of things. It’s really just a matter of practice and getting used to everything. Weaver will be taking it to a whole new level with more skills (though maybe not as much swapping in a short amount of time with the whole universal CD on attunements increase). Hope this helps a little. Cheers~

Thanks for the response! I know it’s a difficult class to learn, which is probably why I’ve been afraid to touch it up until this point. But on the other hand, it’ll be all the more rewarding when I do learn to play it properly.

When you say core ele, do you mean without Tempest tree? If so, what build would you recommend for d/d? Seeing as I’ll probably do sword/dagger, this feels like a good place to start.

And FWIW, I’m only interested in the PvE side of things, PvP has never really interested me

Hey! Sorry for the late reply, work has kept me very busy these past few weeks. Being an adult sucks. Anyway…

Yes, when people say ‘core’ they mean without elite specializations (i.e. tempest, weaver, ect.) I personally find core ele far stronger than tempest. But that’s just my play style. PvE is the easier thing since in open world you can use pretty much anything. I play PvE and WvW so I generally make builds in terms of WvW moreso. They work great in both. Recently, I’ve been playing a bit glassier and it’s been fun! Below is a build I threw together that gives high damage with a bit of sustain. If you’re having a hard time try celestial trinkets. Don’t need to play meta to be effective (and the main thing is to have fun!)

Below: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAoYhMMozhFOwsB8RM0AYSBIA8BpjwM4HUZhb4UA-TByHAB9o8TP1VaSJ4eqUk/DAAgTAQ47P4leAA-e
(Sigils can be changed since I know they are a little pricey for some people.)

My main build is a high boon build (maxes out at 93% boon duration) but it’s pretty expensive (less so if you convert ascended armour). The link to that one is below. This one is amazing. I use it with celestial trinkets in WvW roaming and large scale. It’s great in PvE as well as it provides a solid mix of offensive and defensive stats. If you have any more questions feel free to ask!

(boon build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJArYhMMozhFOwsB8RM0AYVW4GOFkAZA4DSHhZwPA-TBCXABQoEk3TAAp7PcrKFwquS0PAAAU+FieAA-e)

Tbh the skill ceiling for Weaver would be infinitely higher than any other class post patch.
I can’t even imagine mastering it.

You got literally infinite possibility out of it, with additional interchangeable 3rd skill.
Not only that, you have to learn this on every weapons.

I got an ok buruser build ready. Oddly i think aura share weaver is going to be the thing in wvw for group play. Solo play will be running clears on reg all though weaver seems to have a lot of aoe reg build in.

For a WvW healbot ele, I just don’t see that Weaver is going to improve upon that role, as most Weaver traits and skills are more offensive as well as self-defense/self-healing, and the heals that it does bring to the table are more directional rather than field based, which makes it harder to heal the zerg. Sounds like a great specialization for making ele more independent for WvW roaming, PvP or PvE, though.

Sylvyn.4750:

For a WvW healbot ele, I just don’t see that Weaver is going to improve upon that role, as most Weaver traits and skills are more offensive as well as self-defense/self-healing, and the heals that it does bring to the table are more directional rather than field based, which makes it harder to heal the zerg. Sounds like a great specialization for making ele more independent for WvW roaming, PvP or PvE, though.

It looks like a very strong pvp spec for people that can utilize all skills on a weapon.
The better the player the stronger it gets. It has next to infinite skill ceiling in theory and a very high skill floor.

You probably don’t need to even use Sword to pick Weaver because of the interesting mechanic it provides on default.