Weaver Builds
Good look planning 4-7 seconds ahead like “yeah in 5.6 seconds that ranger is gonna shoot me, better prepare my focus earth skills.”
Been playing air 231 arcane 231 weaver 333. Works pretty well. Since the base damage on sword stuff is so low, lightning rod helps hugely. Cleanse is god awful but should be decent when unravel hexes gets fixed.
Sw/D seems to work best for me by a long shot.
hoped for sc/d
air 212
earth 123 (global cd kills the oportunity to react to power bursts)
weav 332 (unravel hexes not cleansing any usefull conditions)
if they d get those two things right u would have a power spec that has good cleanses + could deal with dmg threats without relying on boons while still being able to get countered by condi bursts and stealth.
(edited by shinta.8906)
Even in Viper’s, my damage doesn’t make up for the lack of defence.
The Rainbow Railgun:
Step 1: Obtain Bifrost.
Step 2: Traits
Arcane (1 or 2 / 3 / 2)
Air (3 /3 /3)
Weaver (1 / 2 /1)
Step 3: Take Arcane Brilliance, Sig. Fire, Arcane Wave, Arcane Blast, whateverelite you want (air elemental has some extra stun)
Step 4: Beserker’s Amulet, Scholar Runes, Sigils +5% to distant, +5% to low health
Step 5: Obliterate anyone with less than 20k health and auto invulnerabilities with this combo:
Start in Air Earth. See someone in the distance who is a high priority target.
Swap to Air / Air as you approach, granting yourself swiftness with Air 4. Attempt to cage them if needed with Air 5, OR go into your combo shortly after having switched.
Combo:
Swap Earth / Air, launch an Arcane Blast to Immobilize, RIGHT as its about to hit, you start to cast Pile Driver. Mid cast, and right as Arcane Blast lanes while Earth is still your primary attunment, you swap to Air/Earth, which grants fury and your lightning stike for the Pile Driver to hit hard.
For the follow up burst, use Lightning Surge + Arcane Blast + Arcane Wave spam immediately after Pile Driver hits to benefit from Tempest’s Defense’s 20% bonus damage.
Once you have this down, you can deliver this huuuuuuuge spike of ranged damage from 1,200 range with very little visual “tell” that its coming. You have various fall-backs when this spike misses, but its exceptionally good for bursting down Scourges, Guardians/mesmers/elementalists, but obviously fails against people with auto-defenses unless your burst lands simultaneously.
The bonus crit damage gets unreal.
I would like to try that staff build -except the legendary staff sadly- on WvW, as I always found staff really good on that mode (even if people on the forum think its crap).
PS: About the build I posted earlier: It deals a solid 220k per match, giving sometimes you tops dmg stats with decent survivability to all except condi reapers. Im sure it still needs tweaking but in solo Q is not only viable but fun to see how fast their health goes down. Many times people die by burning trying to run from you, something usefully right now because its not that easy to follow people with the actual CDs.
For competitive play I think it still wont be enough: mobility is lacking compared to other classes to use the 1v1 advantage and area condi spam will break you. Unravel Hexes should totally affect all condis, even if it is nerfed on some other way. Heck right now it competes with geomancers training on functionality.
(edited by Naurgalen.2374)
The Rainbow Railgun:
Step 1: Obtain Bifrost.
Step 2: Traits
Arcane (1 or 2 / 3 / 2)
Air (3 /3 /3)
Weaver (1 / 2 /1)Step 3: Take Arcane Brilliance, Sig. Fire, Arcane Wave, Arcane Blast, whateverelite you want (air elemental has some extra stun)
Step 4: Beserker’s Amulet, Scholar Runes, Sigils +5% to distant, +5% to low health
Step 5: Obliterate anyone with less than 20k health and auto invulnerabilities with this combo:
Start in Air Earth. See someone in the distance who is a high priority target.
Swap to Air / Air as you approach, granting yourself swiftness with Air 4. Attempt to cage them if needed with Air 5, OR go into your combo shortly after having switched.
Combo:
Swap Earth / Air, launch an Arcane Blast to Immobilize, RIGHT as its about to hit, you start to cast Pile Driver. Mid cast, and right as Arcane Blast lanes while Earth is still your primary attunment, you swap to Air/Earth, which grants fury and your lightning stike for the Pile Driver to hit hard.For the follow up burst, use Lightning Surge + Arcane Blast + Arcane Wave spam immediately after Pile Driver hits to benefit from Tempest’s Defense’s 20% bonus damage.
Once you have this down, you can deliver this huuuuuuuge spike of ranged damage from 1,200 range with very little visual “tell” that its coming. You have various fall-backs when this spike misses, but its exceptionally good for bursting down Scourges, Guardians/mesmers/elementalists, but obviously fails against people with auto-defenses unless your burst lands simultaneously.
The bonus crit damage gets unreal.
you tried this in practice?
tempest won’t activated as it is an immob which isn’t covered by it (unless you get the stun down, then see them stand stupid for 2 seconds).
ferocity from arcane skills trait doesn’t stack (only the largest apply).
you are putting all your eggs in one basket, and it all depends on the enemy being 100% glass without a single defensive trait, skill or stats (any of these will negated this attempt to snipe.
or him just moving away as you are rooted while casting, and there is no “range indicator” so guess the distance).
one of the big issues for staff is that the range, while long, is no longer than so many other classes and lower than rangers which will try and snipe you out. (while being slower to attack than any other class, and not having the ability to keep people at distance)
the majority of the staff skills are not very good alone and require you to land full combo’s which is something you will rarely have the possibility to stack up in a close fight.
ps: and imo other classes will do this a lot better
(edited by Nyx.6532)
The Rainbow Railgun:
Step 1: Obtain Bifrost.
Step 2: Traits
Arcane (1 or 2 / 3 / 2)
Air (3 /3 /3)
Weaver (1 / 2 /1)Step 3: Take Arcane Brilliance, Sig. Fire, Arcane Wave, Arcane Blast, whateverelite you want (air elemental has some extra stun)
Step 4: Beserker’s Amulet, Scholar Runes, Sigils +5% to distant, +5% to low health
Step 5: Obliterate anyone with less than 20k health and auto invulnerabilities with this combo:
Start in Air Earth. See someone in the distance who is a high priority target.
Swap to Air / Air as you approach, granting yourself swiftness with Air 4. Attempt to cage them if needed with Air 5, OR go into your combo shortly after having switched.
Combo:
Swap Earth / Air, launch an Arcane Blast to Immobilize, RIGHT as its about to hit, you start to cast Pile Driver. Mid cast, and right as Arcane Blast lanes while Earth is still your primary attunment, you swap to Air/Earth, which grants fury and your lightning stike for the Pile Driver to hit hard.For the follow up burst, use Lightning Surge + Arcane Blast + Arcane Wave spam immediately after Pile Driver hits to benefit from Tempest’s Defense’s 20% bonus damage.
Once you have this down, you can deliver this huuuuuuuge spike of ranged damage from 1,200 range with very little visual “tell” that its coming. You have various fall-backs when this spike misses, but its exceptionally good for bursting down Scourges, Guardians/mesmers/elementalists, but obviously fails against people with auto-defenses unless your burst lands simultaneously.
The bonus crit damage gets unreal.
you tried this in practice?
tempest won’t activated as it is an immob which isn’t covered by it (unless you get the stun down, then see them stand stupid for 2 seconds).
ferocity from arcane skills trait doesn’t stack (only the largest apply).
you are putting all your eggs in one basket, and it all depends on the enemy being 100% glass without a single defensive trait, skill or stats (any of these will negated this attempt to snipe.
or him just moving away as you are rooted while casting, and there is no “range indicator” so guess the distance).one of the big issues for staff is that the range, while long, is no longer than so many other classes and lower than rangers which will try and snipe you out. (while being slower to attack than any other class, and not having the ability to keep people at distance)
the majority of the staff skills are not very good alone and require you to land full combo’s which is something you will rarely have the possibility to stack up in a close fight.ps: and imo other classes will do this a lot better
I used this for over 10 hours so far.
Its exceptionally fun and I feel like im growing better with it the more I practice, learning good fall backs for when the burst is negated. The main issue, as always with staff, is learning how to counter melee engage by thief et all.
Worst is the new warrior spec as they have the invulnerability + sustain + stickiness that makes them very hard to shake with traditional means.
That said, I’ve been annihilating melee thief/guardians/Deadeye snipers.
Rangers/warriors/engineers with excessive blocks/reflects/autoinvulnerability are always the bane of huge spike builds, but it excells at taking out Necromancers, Mesmers, other Eles, guardians, Revenants, and plenty of other builds if you get the jump on them.
Best part is Weaver staff does tempests “dps” cleaving downed foes job way better thanks to the ranged cleave options + 270% bonus crit damage. This 5k lavafonts and 4K meteors are deadly if you are super duper ignored.
The thing is, the Railgun combo is very, very subtle. I dropped a warrior from full health with it because he thought he could just “take” an Air staff 2 and just follow up and get on me, because the change up animation is identical. He dropped. We messaged each other and had a good laugh about that one later, as he was trying a more offensive/sustain version of Spellbreaker.
Retreating away once people start to come for you is the peeeerfect way to set up either the Earth staff 4 or Air 5 to catch people to either start the combo or make them waste stun breakers. Staff 4 Fire, though harder to get into than base burst staff Elementalist, is also great for evade + luring in foes into a soon to be available earth wall or lightning cage, which is great if you are channeling meteor storm and start to get focused.
I’ve had soooo many matches in the past 6 hours in which i was either top damage or top kills, with only 1 or 2 deaths, while still keeping mid secure most of the match. It works even better with an ally in voice chat, if they get downed and someone is going for the stomp or is low, you can 80% of the time just nuke combo the enemy to “ranged revive” them as I like to call it.
A downed foe is a wonnnnderful set up to land your burst as well, as it baits in foes. You have your normal fire staff cleave, but you can also land a ring + earth/air burst combo to interrupt a revive + kill the second foe usually, unless they prepped a bunch of reflects/absorbs/invulns.
Good look planning 4-7 seconds ahead like “yeah in 5.6 seconds that ranger is gonna shoot me, better prepare my focus earth skills.”
obligatory get good? Use Unravel or, seeing a ranger in the distance, prep earth first so you will have it soon.
I do this on my staff build. If i know im going to enter a ranged dangerous zone soon, i prep earth, use earth again, shield, then swap air and prepare my counter ranged assault.
Its GLORIOUS to see a ranger get merced by this.
The Rainbow Railgun:
Step 1: Obtain Bifrost.
Step 2: Traits
Arcane (1 or 2 / 3 / 2)
Air (3 /3 /3)
Weaver (1 / 2 /1)Step 3: Take Arcane Brilliance, Sig. Fire, Arcane Wave, Arcane Blast, whateverelite you want (air elemental has some extra stun)
Step 4: Beserker’s Amulet, Scholar Runes, Sigils +5% to distant, +5% to low health
Step 5: Obliterate anyone with less than 20k health and auto invulnerabilities with this combo:
Start in Air Earth. See someone in the distance who is a high priority target.
Swap to Air / Air as you approach, granting yourself swiftness with Air 4. Attempt to cage them if needed with Air 5, OR go into your combo shortly after having switched.
Combo:
Swap Earth / Air, launch an Arcane Blast to Immobilize, RIGHT as its about to hit, you start to cast Pile Driver. Mid cast, and right as Arcane Blast lanes while Earth is still your primary attunment, you swap to Air/Earth, which grants fury and your lightning stike for the Pile Driver to hit hard.For the follow up burst, use Lightning Surge + Arcane Blast + Arcane Wave spam immediately after Pile Driver hits to benefit from Tempest’s Defense’s 20% bonus damage.
Once you have this down, you can deliver this huuuuuuuge spike of ranged damage from 1,200 range with very little visual “tell” that its coming. You have various fall-backs when this spike misses, but its exceptionally good for bursting down Scourges, Guardians/mesmers/elementalists, but obviously fails against people with auto-defenses unless your burst lands simultaneously.
The bonus crit damage gets unreal.
How do you switch to Air/Earth in mid-cast of Pile Driver if the attunements are still on cd?
In wvw I had some fun messing with weaver trying to recreate old d/d ele-bunker feeling
so far the most reasonable setup I menaged to create was:
weaver
x/3/3
arcane
2/2/1
water
1/2/1
sigil of energy, i’d like to try it with concentration, but i don’t have it on beta
food for lifesteal on crit
rune of durability
for skills aquatic stance or ether renewal (signet isn’t good because you would have enough passive healing) / lighting flash / twist of fate / armor of earth / weave self
main rotation would be starting with air/air, using a4 or Lighting flash/a2/a3 ->fire/air -> 3,2, 5 -> earth/fire -> 2,3, 4, (dodge for blast), 5 -> air/earth -> 4, 3 (imho one of the best dual skills out there if you manage to stick close to enemy, also great for proccing from heal skill) -> rest depending on situation
duals from fire/water and water/earth also allowing for more gap closing, but i found kd from mud slide hard to execute
also, fire/air and air/water 3 are also blast finishers, if you change rotation in midway
(edited by Velth.3780)