Guild Wars 2

Referring specifically to PvE what do you guys think will be the new meta for Weaver or Elementalists in general?

I’ve been looking at it and a Fresh Air Power build could go down really well, especially with the sword and possibly dagger offhand(?) although I worry that the synergy from the elite skill that would be generated with a Condi build that we may end up being slightly at a disadvantage by not going Condi.

I ask because my build is currently a power build and since i’m not the wealthiest Asura around I’m really hoping to not have to drop 100g to respec my armor. Also what weapon do you think will perform best in PvE as far as the meta goes?

I think it will be a condi/hybrid weaver with sword(or dagger)/focus and with fire, arcane and weaver traits (hoping that it will be different from the actual mono fire condition tempest)

Leggendalex.4659:

I think it will be a condi/hybrid weaver with sword(or dagger)/focus and with fire, arcane and weaver traits (hoping that it will be different from the actual mono fire condition tempest)

Aren’t you worried that if that is the case it could end up as a jack of all trades but a master of none?

Weaver is clearly a Power Spec so you probably won’t have to change armor. I guess it will be either Staff or Sword/Dagger since Scepter is kinda dead now.

mUnROIDs.4629:

Leggendalex.4659:

I think it will be a condi/hybrid weaver with sword(or dagger)/focus and with fire, arcane and weaver traits (hoping that it will be different from the actual mono fire condition tempest)

Aren’t you worried that if that is the case it could end up as a jack of all trades but a master of none?

I don’t think “jack of all trades but a master of none” means anything concrete here. DPS + DPS = DPS, it’s just a question of whether the tuning and balance are there to incentivize it over the pure alternatives. Being a hybrid may actually have advantages if certain scenarios favor one type of damage over another.

If you’re asking for gearing advice, mine is that you shouldn’t even think about spending any money on it yet. All anyone can offer is their own speculation, and for all we know a Weaver may want new runes, sigils, and gear sets that aren’t even in the game yet. We need to see what it’s actually like in game, after enough time for a meta to have settled in.

Either a condition spec or a hybrid spec. With Viper or the new Grief being the main gear set. Weaver have extra condition damage/duration traits. I am still questioning if the dual skills will do enough damage. Yea I do not see scepter working in pve.

Hybrid dps staff. Just switching between Fire/Earth should deal lots of raw aoe damage+ neverending burning/bleeding with perma 25 might stacks +fury and damage modifiers on burning/bleeding targets.

I can’t wait to nuke Elona.

IDK a build that plays around w.e new stat they introduce (get them expansions sales up).

On Pve it will most likely be power/condi hybrid.
100% burning is already easy with traits+runes+sigil+food, so you can get the new grief stat on your armor and do high condi and crit dmg with fire/air/weaver.

On WvW celestial is looking good again. You might not want to go arcane, as there is just too much boon hate out there to focus on boons, but FA with superspeed might be able to get us away from water.

Eldar.5146:

Weaver is clearly a Power Spec

How so? Sword, at least, has a ton of ways to apply Burning and Bleeding, and Weaver’s traits and utilities provide a lot of condition support. For example:

- Primordial Stance is a utility that blasts out conditions at regular intervals and can be maintained for a long time.
- The Weave Self elite skill boosts your Condition Damage, not your Power, Precision, or Ferocity.
- Weaver’s damaging traits focus about equally on Condition Damage and Power. Weaver’s Prowess gives you bonus Condition Damage when you change attunements, while Elemental Polyphony gives you Power if you’re attuned to fire, and Elements of Rage gives you Ferocity (and also a flat damage boost) when you double-attune.

I’m not saying you can’t be a Power Weaver—I have no idea yet—but to say it’s “clearly a Power spec” seems way off to me.

lLobo.7960:

On Pve it will most likely be power/condi hybrid.
100% burning is already easy with traits+runes+sigil+food, so you can get the new grief stat on your armor and do high condi and crit dmg with fire/air/weaver.

Do you think Weaver will have enough Burning uptime to get by on Burning alone, or will Bleed need to factor in, too? I think that’s going to determine whether you can use full Grieving or if you’ll need some pieces of Viper in there as well.

If there’s enough Burning that it can be your sole (or, at least, very heavily favored) source of condition damage, then yeah, full Grieving and use traits/runes/sigils to max Burning duration. Hell, you don’t even need food for that. But if there’s not enough Burning to do great DPS with that condition alone, Weaver will need at least some Expertise to help with Bleed duration, too.

Ulion.5476:

Weaver have extra condition damage/duration traits.

There is only one trait (Weaver’s Prowess) that is a direct buff to condition damage/duration, and it competes against Swift Revenge, a 7% damage trait, for the same slot. There is no trait at the Grandmaster level looks like a clear “condi option.” So at the very least, I have a hard time seeing it as a specialization that encourages pure condi.

I think it’s very possible Arenanet is trying to position the Weaver to be a hybrid of the two. The more I think about it, the more I think that could be awesome. But I’m not convinced they’ll be able to get the balance just right to make us want to actually play like that. If building for pure power or pure condi is even slightly superior, everyone will probably just ignore the other entirely.

I’m thinking it’ll likely be a power-leaning hybrid, perfect for the Grieving stats. Viper is a condi-leaning hybrid set with the condition duration, but since burning is relatively easy to 100%, we can make use of the extra ferocity from grieving.

I don’t think you can really get away with full power or full condi unless you’re going FA (power obvs), and I feel FA support is more geared for pvp and wvw arenas.

typographie.1742:

I think it’s very possible Arenanet is trying to position the Weaver to be a hybrid of the two. The more I think about it, the more I think that could be awesome. But I’m not convinced they’ll be able to get the balance just right to make us want to actually play like that. If building for pure power or pure condi is even slightly superior, everyone will probably just ignore the other entirely.

I think if any elite spec can actually pull of a true power-leaning power/condition hybrid, it’s Weaver.

Others have pointed out that it’s trivial to max out Burning duration without a single point of Expertise, which frees you up to wear full Grieving. But rotation-wise, I think there’s potential for a Burning-focused Weaver to still use basically every attunement in some way. If you use sword, every dual attack that involves fire attunement causes Burning: fire+water is Twin Strike, fire+air is Pyro Vortex, and fire+earth is Lava Skin, and all of those cause Burning. They also all have long enough recharges that you might (and I want to emphasize “might” here) actually want to cycle through attunements to work all three of them into your rotation.

I’m envisioning something like starting in earth/fire with Lava Skin, going to fire/fire and using Primordial Stance and fire weapon skills, then starting to go to like water/fire, fire/water, fire/fire, air/fire, fire/air, fire/fire, etc. You’d always want fire to be one of your active attunements, and probably stop in at fire/fire regularly to ensure that and to refresh Elements of Rage, but cycling like that would let you use all of the dual attacks that cause Burning while also letting you use CC skills from other attunements without having to give up your ability keep Burning active.

I’m not nearly as expert at this as others, though, and clearly none of us have been hands-on yet, but a build like that could be pretty fun, I think.

What I’ll be interested in is to see if optimal Weaver rotations also include Bleeding. I suspect the focus will stay on Burning—there’s a reason condi Tempest sticks to Burning and not Bleeding—but who knows?

It will be a matter of what will provide a better dmg on most scenarios.

- You can go fire weaver (fire/arcane/weaver) and focus on condi and be a version of the current condi tempest.
– You could go fire/air weaver (fire/air/weaver) and focus on power dmg and burn dmg using all the power mods from air.

What will decide is likely how much the power dmg from air/fire can compete with the condi dmg from arcane/fire…

I don’t think adding bleeds will be improvement for a max dps pve build (it will help on pvp builds)

Not sure if the weaver trait lets you overcap condi duration, but a fire/air/weaver with grieve stats (pow/condi>prec/fero) with flame legion runes, fire meat chilly and furious crystals is 100% burn duration and some nice power dmg mods…

The hybrid build will be interesting to think about. You would have to think about which duals skills/AA chains do the most total damage, while keeping up elemental rage. Doubt we will see a bleed build but the AA chain can stack a good about of bleeds. Just thinking about the possible damage spec for the weaver is very interesting.

Again,

I dont think a bleed intensive build will be on PvE. Burn just have more dmg and seems you can keep better dps by staying in fire and using the burns than going back and forth to earth/fire for bleeds.

If you leave fire for earth, you will stay in earth for 4 secs (att CD), its quite short, but do the 2 skills in earth provide enough bleeds to provide more dps in those 4 secs than the burns from the fire auto chain?
Now, if you have a hybrid, and swap to air, you get some burst and buffs that might be worth the 4 secs while fire #2 is on CD. And sword dual skill F/A does good burning too.

PvP could possibly do with a earth weaver for the earth defensive traits and some tanky condition setup.

Agent Noun.7350:

How so? Sword, at least, has a ton of ways to apply Burning and Bleeding, and Weaver’s traits and utilities provide a lot of condition support. For example:

- Primordial Stance is a utility that blasts out conditions at regular intervals and can be maintained for a long time.
- The Weave Self elite skill boosts your Condition Damage, not your Power, Precision, or Ferocity.
- Weaver’s damaging traits focus about equally on Condition Damage and Power. Weaver’s Prowess gives you bonus Condition Damage when you change attunements, while Elemental Polyphony gives you Power if you’re attuned to fire, and Elements of Rage gives you Ferocity (and also a flat damage boost) when you double-attune.

I’m not saying you can’t be a Power Weaver—I have no idea yet—but to say it’s “clearly a Power spec” seems way off to me.

The traits have 35% of power modifiers and give you in addition +120power/precision. I’m not saying weaver is bad for condi but no idea why everyone thinks its mainly a condi spec.

power spec for me, air + arcana + weaver weapon sword+dagger

is how i want to try

Its still only bleeding and burning for condi dmg i am not sure why anet thinks vanabitly is a “ele” thing when it on every class in the game who often have 3 or more dmg condi effects. The weaver realty needs a 3ed condi dmg effect not just soft cc if you want to get the most out of condi. A punishment condi would be nice maybe a new one that only weaver can use.

As for power yes it looks like weaver will do a lot of power dmg on nearly all of its weapons due to the cast time / rotation of its burst skills. I am thinking staff will do real dmg in big fight environment with out needing to stop moving. Scpter will do the best burst single target dmg “beam of death” and dagger or sword will be great moving melee dmg.

If ANet really wanted the Ele to be a condi spec, they’d add more damaging conditions or traits that allow conditions to cause damage.

More skills in Earth would add Bleeding, Water skills could cause damage with Chilled, and more skills in Fire would add Burning. Air could solely be CC, I know being hit by lightning bolts would certainly cause nearly all of the CC conditions barring Taunt and Fear.

It would be nice if the Core Ele specializing in Fire/Earth/Water would be unparalleled at causing condi damage as noted above, and subbing in Air would give you all the CC you needed.

ANet may want to re-visit their design methodology, giving each Elite spec/base spec a defined role. Tempest could be re-worked to be primarily support, base Ele would be our condi spec, and the new Weaver would be power. Honestly, every profession needs some delineation like this, otherwise the only choice in specs will always be whatever the newest one released is, since every spec HAS to be able to do everything, and the newest stuff generally includes the best and flashiest toys.

Yea just watched the weaver video. He is using a fire/water/weaver build in marauders:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/167733328?t=01h16m25s
Saw him get 10 burns 36 bleeds on a target with skills and utilities. Seems like it was easy enough to keep high bleeds on a target. You will have to put alot of forethought into you action with the Weaver in pvp. Well this weekend will be fun alot of fun builds to test out.

weaver condi ele will be a thing and i will make it great.

Oh good, I get to stay in fire for dps…again.