Guild Wars 2

Alright let me introduce myself,
Im Aiden, im an ele main since release and i’ve played well over 5000 hours on ele.

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.

I pretty much agree with you. I rotate between maining Revenant, Thief, and Elementalist depending on my mood so I would say I’m pretty well versed in all 3 of the classes.

To me, Weaver feels like a cool mix between all 3 of my main classes; combining the evasive and mobile playstyle of Revenant and Thief with the complexity of Elementalist attunement cycling and boon management. So far, I can say it’s kind of lived up to my expectations in the flow of combat BUT as many people, including you, have mentioned it is extremely high risk with not much reward. Put simply, I agree that it lacks the damage and condi pressure to really be seen as a threat.

While I have had amazing success dueling with it and even winning an outnumbered fight, somehow, I feel like most of my success with Weaver has to be that players are just not used to fighting it. Once they know what to watch out for, they’ll dance around our aoes and shrug of our 8 stacks of burning easily.

Particularly Daredevil and Scrapper just annihilate a Weaver. A lot of our attacks are really slow and telegraphed and they don’t even hit that hard. Daredevils will laugh at our sad attempts to land our slo mo attacks and burst the crap out of us with Dual Pistols or D/P. We don’t even have gap closers with enough range to catch up to ranged classes aside from ride the lightning which is interruptible and lightning flash(if you’re using it). Combine that with the fact that running a Hybrid Amulet makes you a glass cannon without the cannon part, I just don’t see it being that very viable in high ranked pvp and wvw; at least with Sword/Dagger Weaver anyway. I have not tried other weaponsets on it yet.

Rain.9213:

I pretty much agree with you. I rotate between maining Revenant, Thief, and Elementalist depending on my mood so I would say I’m pretty well versed in all 3 of the classes.

To me, Weaver feels like a cool mix between all 3 of my main classes; combining the evasive and mobile playstyle of Revenant and Thief with the complexity of Elementalist attunement cycling and boon management. So far, I can say it’s kind of lived up to my expectations in the flow of combat BUT as many people, including you, have mentioned it is extremely high risk with not much reward. Put simply, I agree that it lacks the damage and condi pressure to really be seen as a threat.

While I have had amazing success dueling with it and even winning an outnumbered fight, somehow, I feel like most of my success with Weaver has to be that players are just not used to fighting it. Once they know what to watch out for, they’ll dance around our aoes and shrug of our 8 stacks of burning easily.

Particularly Daredevil and Scrapper just annihilate a Weaver. A lot of our attacks are really slow and telegraphed and they don’t even hit that hard. Daredevils will laugh at our sad attempts to land our slo mo attacks and burst the crap out of us with Dual Pistols or D/P. Combine that with the fact that running a Hybrid Amulet makes you a glass cannon without the cannon part, I just don’t see it being that very viable in high ranked pvp and wvw; at least with Sword/Dagger Weaver anyway. I have not tried other weaponsets on it yet.

To be fair, Weaver was supposed to be a bruiser and designed around doing dmg with sword, which they fully kittened up, i’d hate to see the weapon we all begged for sword dmg and anet is screwing us over, i really hope the devs made a major issue and are gonna fix it or it’l be an other 2 years ele wont get anything significant, we’ve been begging for a good dmg dealing build/way since cele ele and all we got was tempest, its time weaver gives what ele deserves and that is raw physical prowess.
Thanks for reading the post btw

I disagree that survivability would be better if we had more damage. Many professions can evade while attacking at the same time (Mirage is going to be a huge offender of this), so they can easily pressure you while avoid your burst during those 4 seconds.

I find the biggest issue is how barrier works, and this actually applies to Scourge too. Barrier starts to decay only a second after the last application. This makes so much of barrier going to waste and it’s not only annoying but reduces our potential defence. Anet needs to remember just how much damage there is in the game. If a Weaver/Scourge stacked up 10k barrier, that would be gone immediately even without the decay. Now, in addition to barrier also decaying way too quickly, you also don’t get nearly enough of it. If I went up against the Blue Lord in HotM and all 4 adds were wailing on me, I could literally spam my barrier defences and it wouldn’t be enough. But then if I wasted even once, a good chunk of it would decay, assuming that chunk isn’t immediately blasted through. This is a problem for Scourge too. They can also spam their barrier skills and not have enough defence, and they, from what I noticed, actually get more barrier than Weaver! However, unlike Weaver, Scourge can put out some monstrous damage and boon hate.

It would be fine if Barrier just didn’t decay while you are taking damage, but then barrier numbers themselves also need to go up a bit. With these simple changes, barrier should be plenty of defence for Weaver.

Zintrothen.1056:

I disagree that survivability would be better if we had more damage. Many professions can evade while attacking at the same time (Mirage is going to be a huge offender of this), so they can easily pressure you while avoid your burst during those 4 seconds.

I find the biggest issue is how barrier works, and this actually applies to Scourge too. Barrier starts to decay only a second after the last application. This makes so much of barrier going to waste and it’s not only annoying but reduces our potential defence. Anet needs to remember just how much damage there is in the game. If a Weaver/Scourge stacked up 10k barrier, that would be gone immediately even without the decay. Now, in addition to barrier also decaying way too quickly, you also don’t get nearly enough of it. If I went up against the Blue Lord in HotM and all 4 adds were wailing on me, I could literally spam my barrier defences and it wouldn’t be enough. But then if I wasted even once, a good chunk of it would decay, assuming that chunk isn’t immediately blasted through. This is a problem for Scourge too. They can also spam their barrier skills and not have enough defence, and they, from what I noticed, actually get more barrier than Weaver! However, unlike Weaver, Scourge can put out some monstrous damage and boon hate.

It would be fine if Barrier just didn’t decay while you are taking damage, but then barrier numbers themselves also need to go up a bit. With these simple changes, barrier should be plenty of defence for Weaver.

This isn’t what weaver was for though, weaver was based around bruiser dmg dealing not bunkering, if you want to bunker you have tempest which does a better job when barrier comes to earth traits dont expect weaver to be a tempest 2.0 give the DPS eles a viable elite spec please.

Zintrothen.1056:

It would be fine if Barrier just didn’t decay while you are taking damage, but then barrier numbers themselves also need to go up a bit. With these simple changes, barrier should be plenty of defence for Weaver.

I see your point and I agree wholeheartedly. Most of the time, I forget that I’m receiving barrier whenever I dodge or use a dual skill. Hell, I even dropped Stone Resonance because all it did was make a Daredevil’s 2 shot display yellow numbers instead of white ones.

However, I also do think we need a very slight damage buff and range increase in certain skills. And a few more chills/cripples/blinds/vulnerabilities in certain other skills just to have more condition spam to ensure our burns and bleeds stick.

I feel like the sword autos might be a tad slow. If you look carefully all sword autos’ first attack have 1/2 cast time, giving the impression it’ll be faster than what it actually is, since all other second and third attacks have 3/4

i would say that it will become hard to fix as it already overlaps so much with tempest and D/X builds, now yet another bruiser spec introduced which can overlap even further.
not sure how you want to diverse 3 different melee condi focused spec’s without any of them becomming absolete.

as i see it the issue is that weaving as a bruiser is a wrong focus and it will obviously either just be a straight downgrade or upgrade to the existing tempest and core D/X builds.

lots of other issues as well, but as the entire focus of what they wanted with it, i think this is a big issue that is ignored.

I suggest getting more use out of the active evades that weaver can use both with its wepon skills and utility. Twist of Fate goes a long way to keeping you alive you do not even have to use it when your stunned its better used to evade the attk that has the stun. This lets the weaver in effect have many more dodges then most classes classes.

MrAidenVoid.7416:

Zintrothen.1056:

I disagree that survivability would be better if we had more damage. Many professions can evade while attacking at the same time (Mirage is going to be a huge offender of this), so they can easily pressure you while avoid your burst during those 4 seconds.

I find the biggest issue is how barrier works, and this actually applies to Scourge too. Barrier starts to decay only a second after the last application. This makes so much of barrier going to waste and it’s not only annoying but reduces our potential defence. Anet needs to remember just how much damage there is in the game. If a Weaver/Scourge stacked up 10k barrier, that would be gone immediately even without the decay. Now, in addition to barrier also decaying way too quickly, you also don’t get nearly enough of it. If I went up against the Blue Lord in HotM and all 4 adds were wailing on me, I could literally spam my barrier defences and it wouldn’t be enough. But then if I wasted even once, a good chunk of it would decay, assuming that chunk isn’t immediately blasted through. This is a problem for Scourge too. They can also spam their barrier skills and not have enough defence, and they, from what I noticed, actually get more barrier than Weaver! However, unlike Weaver, Scourge can put out some monstrous damage and boon hate.

It would be fine if Barrier just didn’t decay while you are taking damage, but then barrier numbers themselves also need to go up a bit. With these simple changes, barrier should be plenty of defence for Weaver.

This isn’t what weaver was for though, weaver was based around bruiser dmg dealing not bunkering, if you want to bunker you have tempest which does a better job when barrier comes to earth traits dont expect weaver to be a tempest 2.0 give the DPS eles a viable elite spec please.

His point still stands though, you will take some hits from the lord and the adds even with careful positioning and avoiding the bigger damage. Barrier is meant to soften the blow or be an active defence for when you do get hit because being in melee range does make you more vulnerable, ask any melee war or rev this.

He isn’t asking to sit there and facetank hits while he simply auto attacks you dead, he’s asking that barrier at least absorb a hit every now and then. Right now it decays pretty fast without constant application and might float around 2k with plenty of dual skills and traiting for on dodge. 1 hit from any damage spec will destroy that barrier and it doesn’t even need to be a burst skill. The 4s attunement global cool down also hinders health regen via swapping to water as well as cleansing if water/arcane and defensive boons from arcane.

Right now D/D core ele is a much better bruiser than weaver, it can keep high protection uptime, good health regen via water swapping and has the AoE damage pressure against multiple opponents. Sword weaver has none of that, only thing going for it is having more evade frames.

apharma.3741:

MrAidenVoid.7416:

Zintrothen.1056:

I disagree that survivability would be better if we had more damage. Many professions can evade while attacking at the same time (Mirage is going to be a huge offender of this), so they can easily pressure you while avoid your burst during those 4 seconds.

I find the biggest issue is how barrier works, and this actually applies to Scourge too. Barrier starts to decay only a second after the last application. This makes so much of barrier going to waste and it’s not only annoying but reduces our potential defence. Anet needs to remember just how much damage there is in the game. If a Weaver/Scourge stacked up 10k barrier, that would be gone immediately even without the decay. Now, in addition to barrier also decaying way too quickly, you also don’t get nearly enough of it. If I went up against the Blue Lord in HotM and all 4 adds were wailing on me, I could literally spam my barrier defences and it wouldn’t be enough. But then if I wasted even once, a good chunk of it would decay, assuming that chunk isn’t immediately blasted through. This is a problem for Scourge too. They can also spam their barrier skills and not have enough defence, and they, from what I noticed, actually get more barrier than Weaver! However, unlike Weaver, Scourge can put out some monstrous damage and boon hate.

It would be fine if Barrier just didn’t decay while you are taking damage, but then barrier numbers themselves also need to go up a bit. With these simple changes, barrier should be plenty of defence for Weaver.

This isn’t what weaver was for though, weaver was based around bruiser dmg dealing not bunkering, if you want to bunker you have tempest which does a better job when barrier comes to earth traits dont expect weaver to be a tempest 2.0 give the DPS eles a viable elite spec please.

His point still stands though, you will take some hits from the lord and the adds even with careful positioning and avoiding the bigger damage. Barrier is meant to soften the blow or be an active defence for when you do get hit because being in melee range does make you more vulnerable, ask any melee war or rev this.

He isn’t asking to sit there and facetank hits while he simply auto attacks you dead, he’s asking that barrier at least absorb a hit every now and then. Right now it decays pretty fast without constant application and might float around 2k with plenty of dual skills and traiting for on dodge. 1 hit from any damage spec will destroy that barrier and it doesn’t even need to be a burst skill. The 4s attunement global cool down also hinders health regen via swapping to water as well as cleansing if water/arcane and defensive boons from arcane.

Right now D/D core ele is a much better bruiser than weaver, it can keep high protection uptime, good health regen via water swapping and has the AoE damage pressure against multiple opponents. Sword weaver has none of that, only thing going for it is having more evade frames.

You do understand you can take arcain line as a weaver? The arcain line even effects the swap for weaver by dropping its globe cd making it far better swap effect both in heals and protection uptime as well as having 2 added blast a short lasting water field and 2 more eviads.

Jski.6180:

apharma.3741:

MrAidenVoid.7416:

Zintrothen.1056:

I disagree that survivability would be better if we had more damage. Many professions can evade while attacking at the same time (Mirage is going to be a huge offender of this), so they can easily pressure you while avoid your burst during those 4 seconds.

I find the biggest issue is how barrier works, and this actually applies to Scourge too. Barrier starts to decay only a second after the last application. This makes so much of barrier going to waste and it’s not only annoying but reduces our potential defence. Anet needs to remember just how much damage there is in the game. If a Weaver/Scourge stacked up 10k barrier, that would be gone immediately even without the decay. Now, in addition to barrier also decaying way too quickly, you also don’t get nearly enough of it. If I went up against the Blue Lord in HotM and all 4 adds were wailing on me, I could literally spam my barrier defences and it wouldn’t be enough. But then if I wasted even once, a good chunk of it would decay, assuming that chunk isn’t immediately blasted through. This is a problem for Scourge too. They can also spam their barrier skills and not have enough defence, and they, from what I noticed, actually get more barrier than Weaver! However, unlike Weaver, Scourge can put out some monstrous damage and boon hate.

It would be fine if Barrier just didn’t decay while you are taking damage, but then barrier numbers themselves also need to go up a bit. With these simple changes, barrier should be plenty of defence for Weaver.

This isn’t what weaver was for though, weaver was based around bruiser dmg dealing not bunkering, if you want to bunker you have tempest which does a better job when barrier comes to earth traits dont expect weaver to be a tempest 2.0 give the DPS eles a viable elite spec please.

His point still stands though, you will take some hits from the lord and the adds even with careful positioning and avoiding the bigger damage. Barrier is meant to soften the blow or be an active defence for when you do get hit because being in melee range does make you more vulnerable, ask any melee war or rev this.

He isn’t asking to sit there and facetank hits while he simply auto attacks you dead, he’s asking that barrier at least absorb a hit every now and then. Right now it decays pretty fast without constant application and might float around 2k with plenty of dual skills and traiting for on dodge. 1 hit from any damage spec will destroy that barrier and it doesn’t even need to be a burst skill. The 4s attunement global cool down also hinders health regen via swapping to water as well as cleansing if water/arcane and defensive boons from arcane.

Right now D/D core ele is a much better bruiser than weaver, it can keep high protection uptime, good health regen via water swapping and has the AoE damage pressure against multiple opponents. Sword weaver has none of that, only thing going for it is having more evade frames.

You do understand you can take arcain line as a weaver? The arcain line even effects the swap for weaver by dropping its globe cd making it far better swap effect both in heals and protection uptime as well as having 2 added blast a short lasting water field and 2 more eviads.

Core ele with 50% boon duration has essentially 8.5s CD on attunement swap and 7.5s on protection for going into earth, it’s essentially permanent protection with regen from going into water. The main thing is that you can go into each of the elements every ~9-10s gaining the benefits of all arcane traits and synergy while gaining more from healing ripple and soothing mist as you gain them every 9-10s.

Weaver doesn’t have this with the 4s (3.5s with arcane) recharge and you get a lot less out of that. The dual skills and water field is nice but you need to have a blast ready for it which usually means earth→water before hand. Even revisiting the same elements (water/earth) for the defensive abilities/traits from arcane will need to be done every other swap to come even close to how core ele takes advantage of the arcane line.

As I say at the moment certainly in WvW core D/D ele is a lot better at being a bruiser than weaver is at all. Weaver has more evades but core ele makes up for it with shocking aura, burning speed, frozen burst and magnetic grasp. Frozen burst of which is a very low cool down blast.

Weaver is being advertised as a bruiser spec, I’m not asking for it to be strictly superior to D/D core but it should not be almost inferior in almost every way. At the moment weaver only has the superior evade up time but generally lacks the rest of the defences of core D/D.

apharma.3741:

Jski.6180:

apharma.3741:

MrAidenVoid.7416:

Zintrothen.1056:

I disagree that survivability would be better if we had more damage. Many professions can evade while attacking at the same time (Mirage is going to be a huge offender of this), so they can easily pressure you while avoid your burst during those 4 seconds.

I find the biggest issue is how barrier works, and this actually applies to Scourge too. Barrier starts to decay only a second after the last application. This makes so much of barrier going to waste and it’s not only annoying but reduces our potential defence. Anet needs to remember just how much damage there is in the game. If a Weaver/Scourge stacked up 10k barrier, that would be gone immediately even without the decay. Now, in addition to barrier also decaying way too quickly, you also don’t get nearly enough of it. If I went up against the Blue Lord in HotM and all 4 adds were wailing on me, I could literally spam my barrier defences and it wouldn’t be enough. But then if I wasted even once, a good chunk of it would decay, assuming that chunk isn’t immediately blasted through. This is a problem for Scourge too. They can also spam their barrier skills and not have enough defence, and they, from what I noticed, actually get more barrier than Weaver! However, unlike Weaver, Scourge can put out some monstrous damage and boon hate.

It would be fine if Barrier just didn’t decay while you are taking damage, but then barrier numbers themselves also need to go up a bit. With these simple changes, barrier should be plenty of defence for Weaver.

This isn’t what weaver was for though, weaver was based around bruiser dmg dealing not bunkering, if you want to bunker you have tempest which does a better job when barrier comes to earth traits dont expect weaver to be a tempest 2.0 give the DPS eles a viable elite spec please.

His point still stands though, you will take some hits from the lord and the adds even with careful positioning and avoiding the bigger damage. Barrier is meant to soften the blow or be an active defence for when you do get hit because being in melee range does make you more vulnerable, ask any melee war or rev this.

He isn’t asking to sit there and facetank hits while he simply auto attacks you dead, he’s asking that barrier at least absorb a hit every now and then. Right now it decays pretty fast without constant application and might float around 2k with plenty of dual skills and traiting for on dodge. 1 hit from any damage spec will destroy that barrier and it doesn’t even need to be a burst skill. The 4s attunement global cool down also hinders health regen via swapping to water as well as cleansing if water/arcane and defensive boons from arcane.

Right now D/D core ele is a much better bruiser than weaver, it can keep high protection uptime, good health regen via water swapping and has the AoE damage pressure against multiple opponents. Sword weaver has none of that, only thing going for it is having more evade frames.

You do understand you can take arcain line as a weaver? The arcain line even effects the swap for weaver by dropping its globe cd making it far better swap effect both in heals and protection uptime as well as having 2 added blast a short lasting water field and 2 more eviads.

Core ele with 50% boon duration has essentially 8.5s CD on attunement swap and 7.5s on protection for going into earth, it’s essentially permanent protection with regen from going into water. The main thing is that you can go into each of the elements every ~9-10s gaining the benefits of all arcane traits and synergy while gaining more from healing ripple and soothing mist as you gain them every 9-10s.

Weaver doesn’t have this with the 4s (3.5s with arcane) recharge and you get a lot less out of that. The dual skills and water field is nice but you need to have a blast ready for it which usually means earth->water before hand. Even revisiting the same elements (water/earth) for the defensive abilities/traits from arcane will need to be done every other swap to come even close to how core ele takes advantage of the arcane line.

As I say at the moment certainly in WvW core D/D ele is a lot better at being a bruiser than weaver is at all. Weaver has more evades but core ele makes up for it with shocking aura, burning speed, frozen burst and magnetic grasp. Frozen burst of which is a very low cool down blast.

Weaver is being advertised as a bruiser spec, I’m not asking for it to be strictly superior to D/D core but it should not be almost inferior in almost every way. At the moment weaver only has the superior evade up time but generally lacks the rest of the defences of core D/D.

Core ele dose not get any more boon duration the weaver. Weave gets every thing core ele gets it just has a goble cd on swaps but the swaps them self are on lower cd.

Jski.6180:

apharma.3741:

Jski.6180:

apharma.3741:

MrAidenVoid.7416:

Zintrothen.1056:

I disagree that survivability would be better if we had more damage. Many professions can evade while attacking at the same time (Mirage is going to be a huge offender of this), so they can easily pressure you while avoid your burst during those 4 seconds.

I find the biggest issue is how barrier works, and this actually applies to Scourge too. Barrier starts to decay only a second after the last application. This makes so much of barrier going to waste and it’s not only annoying but reduces our potential defence. Anet needs to remember just how much damage there is in the game. If a Weaver/Scourge stacked up 10k barrier, that would be gone immediately even without the decay. Now, in addition to barrier also decaying way too quickly, you also don’t get nearly enough of it. If I went up against the Blue Lord in HotM and all 4 adds were wailing on me, I could literally spam my barrier defences and it wouldn’t be enough. But then if I wasted even once, a good chunk of it would decay, assuming that chunk isn’t immediately blasted through. This is a problem for Scourge too. They can also spam their barrier skills and not have enough defence, and they, from what I noticed, actually get more barrier than Weaver! However, unlike Weaver, Scourge can put out some monstrous damage and boon hate.

It would be fine if Barrier just didn’t decay while you are taking damage, but then barrier numbers themselves also need to go up a bit. With these simple changes, barrier should be plenty of defence for Weaver.

This isn’t what weaver was for though, weaver was based around bruiser dmg dealing not bunkering, if you want to bunker you have tempest which does a better job when barrier comes to earth traits dont expect weaver to be a tempest 2.0 give the DPS eles a viable elite spec please.

His point still stands though, you will take some hits from the lord and the adds even with careful positioning and avoiding the bigger damage. Barrier is meant to soften the blow or be an active defence for when you do get hit because being in melee range does make you more vulnerable, ask any melee war or rev this.

He isn’t asking to sit there and facetank hits while he simply auto attacks you dead, he’s asking that barrier at least absorb a hit every now and then. Right now it decays pretty fast without constant application and might float around 2k with plenty of dual skills and traiting for on dodge. 1 hit from any damage spec will destroy that barrier and it doesn’t even need to be a burst skill. The 4s attunement global cool down also hinders health regen via swapping to water as well as cleansing if water/arcane and defensive boons from arcane.

Right now D/D core ele is a much better bruiser than weaver, it can keep high protection uptime, good health regen via water swapping and has the AoE damage pressure against multiple opponents. Sword weaver has none of that, only thing going for it is having more evade frames.

You do understand you can take arcain line as a weaver? The arcain line even effects the swap for weaver by dropping its globe cd making it far better swap effect both in heals and protection uptime as well as having 2 added blast a short lasting water field and 2 more eviads.

Core ele with 50% boon duration has essentially 8.5s CD on attunement swap and 7.5s on protection for going into earth, it’s essentially permanent protection with regen from going into water. The main thing is that you can go into each of the elements every ~9-10s gaining the benefits of all arcane traits and synergy while gaining more from healing ripple and soothing mist as you gain them every 9-10s.

Weaver doesn’t have this with the 4s (3.5s with arcane) recharge and you get a lot less out of that. The dual skills and water field is nice but you need to have a blast ready for it which usually means earth->water before hand. Even revisiting the same elements (water/earth) for the defensive abilities/traits from arcane will need to be done every other swap to come even close to how core ele takes advantage of the arcane line.

As I say at the moment certainly in WvW core D/D ele is a lot better at being a bruiser than weaver is at all. Weaver has more evades but core ele makes up for it with shocking aura, burning speed, frozen burst and magnetic grasp. Frozen burst of which is a very low cool down blast.

Weaver is being advertised as a bruiser spec, I’m not asking for it to be strictly superior to D/D core but it should not be almost inferior in almost every way. At the moment weaver only has the superior evade up time but generally lacks the rest of the defences of core D/D.

Core ele dose not get any more boon duration the weaver. Weave gets every thing core ele gets it just has a goble cd on swaps but the swaps them self are on lower cd.

You’re completely missing what I’m saying. I’m saying core ele can keep up protection permanently, weaver finds this much harder as the moment you have swapped out of earth fully the protection has run out. Barrier in no way makes up for that.

D/D core ele is a better bruiser than this bruiser spec atm.

I feel there are a few things that could be done to improve this game play and balance it a bit with other classes. Most of these have probably been stated and I’m not suggesting all of these things should be done, just options to tweak. (These thoughts are based on WvW and/or PvP as its pretty easy to accomplish PvE with just about any build)

1. Someone mentioned an F5 skill that has the unravel utility as a permanent skill, that is an awesome idea.

1a. Another suggestion was to add a weapon swap capability that would allow you to switch the current two attunements from main hand/ off hand slots. This is a cool idea as well.

2. The Grandmaster trait of unravel hexes should remove all conditions over time, not just immobilizations condis, in this meta of condi stomping it would be a nice option to have so focus and the fire cantrip weren’t almost always manditory. Would give way to some Air builds imo. I do not believe this is as OP as some say considering how easy everyone stacks conditions in the current meta, this change is sorely needed to promote any kind of build diversity.

3. Sword power increase; to easy to miss with sword at 150 range as it is, but when you do hit it’s like swinging a wet noodle.

4. On the other hand if dmg isn’t increase could use a little buff on the amount of barrier given, feels pretty lack luster especially to the amount I saw scourge giving out.

5. Would be nice if the second attunement triggered certain elemental trait line bonuses. I was disappointed the the second attunement is not consider active with the first. So trait’s like Aeromancer’s Training or Aquamancer’s Training only work as the main hand attunement, instead of either attunement triggering them.

I love the weaver concept, but it just feel very underpowered, im all for a high skill class, but I’m getting tired of water trait line being near mandatory in every pvp/wvw build. Would be nice to see some of these ideas implemented to give us some build diversity.

apharma.3741:

Jski.6180:

apharma.3741:

Jski.6180:

apharma.3741:

MrAidenVoid.7416:

Zintrothen.1056:

I disagree that survivability would be better if we had more damage. Many professions can evade while attacking at the same time (Mirage is going to be a huge offender of this), so they can easily pressure you while avoid your burst during those 4 seconds.

I find the biggest issue is how barrier works, and this actually applies to Scourge too. Barrier starts to decay only a second after the last application. This makes so much of barrier going to waste and it’s not only annoying but reduces our potential defence. Anet needs to remember just how much damage there is in the game. If a Weaver/Scourge stacked up 10k barrier, that would be gone immediately even without the decay. Now, in addition to barrier also decaying way too quickly, you also don’t get nearly enough of it. If I went up against the Blue Lord in HotM and all 4 adds were wailing on me, I could literally spam my barrier defences and it wouldn’t be enough. But then if I wasted even once, a good chunk of it would decay, assuming that chunk isn’t immediately blasted through. This is a problem for Scourge too. They can also spam their barrier skills and not have enough defence, and they, from what I noticed, actually get more barrier than Weaver! However, unlike Weaver, Scourge can put out some monstrous damage and boon hate.

It would be fine if Barrier just didn’t decay while you are taking damage, but then barrier numbers themselves also need to go up a bit. With these simple changes, barrier should be plenty of defence for Weaver.

This isn’t what weaver was for though, weaver was based around bruiser dmg dealing not bunkering, if you want to bunker you have tempest which does a better job when barrier comes to earth traits dont expect weaver to be a tempest 2.0 give the DPS eles a viable elite spec please.

His point still stands though, you will take some hits from the lord and the adds even with careful positioning and avoiding the bigger damage. Barrier is meant to soften the blow or be an active defence for when you do get hit because being in melee range does make you more vulnerable, ask any melee war or rev this.

He isn’t asking to sit there and facetank hits while he simply auto attacks you dead, he’s asking that barrier at least absorb a hit every now and then. Right now it decays pretty fast without constant application and might float around 2k with plenty of dual skills and traiting for on dodge. 1 hit from any damage spec will destroy that barrier and it doesn’t even need to be a burst skill. The 4s attunement global cool down also hinders health regen via swapping to water as well as cleansing if water/arcane and defensive boons from arcane.

Right now D/D core ele is a much better bruiser than weaver, it can keep high protection uptime, good health regen via water swapping and has the AoE damage pressure against multiple opponents. Sword weaver has none of that, only thing going for it is having more evade frames.

You do understand you can take arcain line as a weaver? The arcain line even effects the swap for weaver by dropping its globe cd making it far better swap effect both in heals and protection uptime as well as having 2 added blast a short lasting water field and 2 more eviads.

Core ele with 50% boon duration has essentially 8.5s CD on attunement swap and 7.5s on protection for going into earth, it’s essentially permanent protection with regen from going into water. The main thing is that you can go into each of the elements every ~9-10s gaining the benefits of all arcane traits and synergy while gaining more from healing ripple and soothing mist as you gain them every 9-10s.

Weaver doesn’t have this with the 4s (3.5s with arcane) recharge and you get a lot less out of that. The dual skills and water field is nice but you need to have a blast ready for it which usually means earth->water before hand. Even revisiting the same elements (water/earth) for the defensive abilities/traits from arcane will need to be done every other swap to come even close to how core ele takes advantage of the arcane line.

As I say at the moment certainly in WvW core D/D ele is a lot better at being a bruiser than weaver is at all. Weaver has more evades but core ele makes up for it with shocking aura, burning speed, frozen burst and magnetic grasp. Frozen burst of which is a very low cool down blast.

Weaver is being advertised as a bruiser spec, I’m not asking for it to be strictly superior to D/D core but it should not be almost inferior in almost every way. At the moment weaver only has the superior evade up time but generally lacks the rest of the defences of core D/D.

Core ele dose not get any more boon duration the weaver. Weave gets every thing core ele gets it just has a goble cd on swaps but the swaps them self are on lower cd.

You’re completely missing what I’m saying. I’m saying core ele can keep up protection permanently, weaver finds this much harder as the moment you have swapped out of earth fully the protection has run out. Barrier in no way makes up for that.

D/D core ele is a better bruiser than this bruiser spec atm.

Swaping out of earth for core ele takes 7 sec before you can swap back into it. Weaver at worst needs to wait 7 sec too. Earth wait for cd water wait for cd earth wait for cd something else wait for cd earth. How is that diffrent. Atument cdr effects the goble cd of weaver swaps.

Jski.6180:

apharma.3741:

You’re completely missing what I’m saying. I’m saying core ele can keep up protection permanently, weaver finds this much harder as the moment you have swapped out of earth fully the protection has run out. Barrier in no way makes up for that.

D/D core ele is a better bruiser than this bruiser spec atm.

Swaping out of earth for core ele takes 7 sec before you can swap back into it. Weaver at worst needs to wait 7 sec too. Earth wait for cd water wait for cd earth wait for cd something else wait for cd earth. How is that diffrent. Atument cdr effects the goble cd of weaver swaps.

With core ele you get the advantage of swapping into earth and water but also go into fire and air and use their stronger attacks and buffs. On weaver the way you’re saying you’re just swapping between water and earth, your attacks will lack damage, you’ll miss out on swiftness.

At this point I feel you’re being deliberately silly if you cannot see how bad camping 2 elements is vs a full rotation through all elements utilising choice skills from each as needed.

apharma.3741:

Jski.6180:

apharma.3741:

You’re completely missing what I’m saying. I’m saying core ele can keep up protection permanently, weaver finds this much harder as the moment you have swapped out of earth fully the protection has run out. Barrier in no way makes up for that.

D/D core ele is a better bruiser than this bruiser spec atm.

Swaping out of earth for core ele takes 7 sec before you can swap back into it. Weaver at worst needs to wait 7 sec too. Earth wait for cd water wait for cd earth wait for cd something else wait for cd earth. How is that diffrent. Atument cdr effects the goble cd of weaver swaps.

With core ele you get the advantage of swapping into earth and water but also go into fire and air and use their stronger attacks and buffs. On weaver the way you’re saying you’re just swapping between water and earth, your attacks will lack damage, you’ll miss out on swiftness.

At this point I feel you’re being deliberately silly if you cannot see how bad camping 2 elements is vs a full rotation through all elements utilising choice skills from each as needed.

Well no its a 2 step thing you go fire earth air earth water earth like that your allways going to get back to earth and keep that perma protection if you so want it but you will be able to keep up the other boons due to how long they will last. The fact that weaver has barror and core atm dose not and that barror is on dodge roll makes weaver a far better bruser on its own BUT if you add in def states such as Twist of Fate and geting more stab from that AND getting more stab from the core ele effects makes you nearly impossible to be cc like a core ele.

The problem is not that weaver is not tankly is super tankly its the lack of dmg that is bugging ppl all though most of the dmg on ele should be coming from a scepter its the sword that in a weird places.

As I said in another thread, in core Ele you can swap to all the attunements in 10s, spending 2.5s in each. For Weaver, you have to spend 4s in each attunement, for a 16s total.

Just make the global cooldown 2.5s to be on par with core Ele. I don’t need a buff, I just want it to be on par with core Ele.

Don’t know if this has been suggested, but would it be better if you didnt have a cooldown when you switch attunements for the core. Like
If you go from water to earth you end up with a earth/water hybrid.
But if you want to do earth/earth you double tap again after a .5s CD ( safegaurd for people with lag and such)
I think it would help if you were able to bypass the CD entirely when fully attunning to an element while keeping the global CD.
The utility that allowed us to do this could be changed to let you bypass the CD of attunement swapping for everything. You would then just up the CD of it.
I understand why the global CD is their, and I don’t mind it, just the theme of “master of the elements” is kinda lost when you cant fully attune when you need to without the use of a utility.
The weaver kinda feels like being a Mage who learns a new powerful spell but forgets ALL of the fundamentals for spell casting

I found it extremely difficult to kill anyone as Weaver both as direct dmg and condi, mainly because most classes did tons more burst damage than it and the Attunement swap CD doesn’t allow me to deal with all of it fast enough. They can also keep kiting sword and keeping you from getting your barrier and then quickly burst you down, even through superspeed spam and movement skills as much as possible. When you have to swap into certain things for utility/survival you end up losing the heavier damage skills and having to wait to swap and use them again while they heal up. The Elite skill also has an absolutely massive cooldown for how desperately needed it is most of the time o.o

Jski.6180:

apharma.3741:

Jski.6180:

apharma.3741:

You’re completely missing what I’m saying. I’m saying core ele can keep up protection permanently, weaver finds this much harder as the moment you have swapped out of earth fully the protection has run out. Barrier in no way makes up for that.

D/D core ele is a better bruiser than this bruiser spec atm.

Swaping out of earth for core ele takes 7 sec before you can swap back into it. Weaver at worst needs to wait 7 sec too. Earth wait for cd water wait for cd earth wait for cd something else wait for cd earth. How is that diffrent. Atument cdr effects the goble cd of weaver swaps.

With core ele you get the advantage of swapping into earth and water but also go into fire and air and use their stronger attacks and buffs. On weaver the way you’re saying you’re just swapping between water and earth, your attacks will lack damage, you’ll miss out on swiftness.

At this point I feel you’re being deliberately silly if you cannot see how bad camping 2 elements is vs a full rotation through all elements utilising choice skills from each as needed.

Well no its a 2 step thing you go fire earth air earth water earth like that your allways going to get back to earth and keep that perma protection if you so want it but you will be able to keep up the other boons due to how long they will last. The fact that weaver has barror and core atm dose not and that barror is on dodge roll makes weaver a far better bruser on its own BUT if you add in def states such as Twist of Fate and geting more stab from that AND getting more stab from the core ele effects makes you nearly impossible to be cc like a core ele.

The problem is not that weaver is not tankly is super tankly its the lack of dmg that is bugging ppl all though most of the dmg on ele should be coming from a scepter its the sword that in a weird places.

Going in that rotation you will very rarely do much damage at all as you’ll spend most of your time in earth and water. It’s also a very dumb rotation to complain about doing no damage in, ofc you won’t, it’s your healing and tanky element types that you spend most of your time going fire, earth, air, water, earth, fire, water, earth, air, water etc.

Barrier on dodge is only if you trait for it, granted unravel hexes and elements of rage aren’t competitive with it but it’s still not going to save your bacon much. Most D/D core ele builds will either go fire getting the extra cleanse and blinds from burns or if they really want they can go earth and be much tankier by being immune to crits with good stab access.

At the moment D/D core is much better equipped to sustain as well as this boring weaver play you’re suggesting but also puts out far more damage. That is why it’s a better bruiser atm.

apharma.3741:

Jski.6180:

apharma.3741:

Jski.6180:

apharma.3741:

You’re completely missing what I’m saying. I’m saying core ele can keep up protection permanently, weaver finds this much harder as the moment you have swapped out of earth fully the protection has run out. Barrier in no way makes up for that.

D/D core ele is a better bruiser than this bruiser spec atm.

Swaping out of earth for core ele takes 7 sec before you can swap back into it. Weaver at worst needs to wait 7 sec too. Earth wait for cd water wait for cd earth wait for cd something else wait for cd earth. How is that diffrent. Atument cdr effects the goble cd of weaver swaps.

With core ele you get the advantage of swapping into earth and water but also go into fire and air and use their stronger attacks and buffs. On weaver the way you’re saying you’re just swapping between water and earth, your attacks will lack damage, you’ll miss out on swiftness.

At this point I feel you’re being deliberately silly if you cannot see how bad camping 2 elements is vs a full rotation through all elements utilising choice skills from each as needed.

Well no its a 2 step thing you go fire earth air earth water earth like that your allways going to get back to earth and keep that perma protection if you so want it but you will be able to keep up the other boons due to how long they will last. The fact that weaver has barror and core atm dose not and that barror is on dodge roll makes weaver a far better bruser on its own BUT if you add in def states such as Twist of Fate and geting more stab from that AND getting more stab from the core ele effects makes you nearly impossible to be cc like a core ele.

The problem is not that weaver is not tankly is super tankly its the lack of dmg that is bugging ppl all though most of the dmg on ele should be coming from a scepter its the sword that in a weird places.

Going in that rotation you will very rarely do much damage at all as you’ll spend most of your time in earth and water. It’s also a very dumb rotation to complain about doing no damage in, ofc you won’t, it’s your healing and tanky element types that you spend most of your time going fire, earth, air, water, earth, fire, water, earth, air, water etc.

Barrier on dodge is only if you trait for it, granted unravel hexes and elements of rage aren’t competitive with it but it’s still not going to save your bacon much. Most D/D core ele builds will either go fire getting the extra cleanse and blinds from burns or if they really want they can go earth and be much tankier by being immune to crits with good stab access.

At the moment D/D core is much better equipped to sustain as well as this boring weaver play you’re suggesting but also puts out far more damage. That is why it’s a better bruiser atm.

You cant have it all that a real thing that weaver must deal with that how all classes should be. That call balancing.

Weaver d/d has a lot more added effects then core d/d with its added blast hard and soft cc even a field. Its a true burser set up its just i am not sure if weaver was aimed to be a bruser line is all.

Having barror on dodges roll is like having arcain evasion its a requirement for d/d to be all it can be the different is there are 2 other GM that you can take and still be viable.

Back to what we where talking about camping earth. You can have stone harte up 1/2 of the time 4 sec on 4 sec off making you super tankly. You end up losing fire water combo, air fire combo, and the core fire air and water earth to a point too. You can still jump to these effects but you may lose your protection up time if protection is the only thing your playing d/d ele for.

Just adding my voice that the damage was so low that it was glaringly obvious. I really had a ton of fun with the mechanics of the class but as it stands it’s neither a DPS condi or DPS power….either is fine but one of the two roles needs to be buffed to make it a viable option for play.