Guild Wars 2

I spent most of this weekend trying to see what a Weaver rotation would actually look like (in PvE). I spent much of the weekend, like many, feeling that it just did not flow well at all, but after a lot of work I finally have a rotation that I think actually works. I have no idea how this would compare to current builds in terms of DPS – that will have to wait for September, and chances are very high that there is a better rotation than this. This is at least something to look at, though!

The traits: http://imgur.com/a/pM8Ag

The weapons: Sword/Dagger. Focus has the highest DPS skill, but it has no other DPS skills and offhand skills are very important because of the way the attunements cycle.

The Gear: I suspect this will use Food/Traits/Runes+Viper gear to max out on condition duration and filling in remaining gear slots with the new Griever’s gear.

The sword seems to favor condition damage as even before adding any stats, the conditions are generally even with and in many cases stronger than the power damage.

The Utilities: Arcane Power, Primordial Stance, Signet of Fire.

For the elite, I’m not sure if Weave Self will actually prove to be useful for PvE. The two benefits are:

1) Increased Condi damage. This is obviously good, but I don’t know if it will manage to work because the second “benefit” may hurt more than help? Hard to say. It is:

2) Attunement recharge reduction. This also seems very good, but it actually seems to make the rotations MORE clunky because there just don’t seem to be enough skills worth using that are off cooldown faster than you can swap. Under rotations, I’ll list the best Weave-Self rotation I’ve been able to come up with, but it really gets rough toward the end. This Elite MAY be useful for quick bursty phases. Otherwise, Firey Greatsword or the Fire Elemental may prove to be the way to go.

The Rotation:

Without Weave self:

Start in Fire/Air

2 – 3 – Signet – 4 – Fire – 3 – 4 – 5 – 2 – Earth – 3 – 2 – Earth – 3 – 5 – Air – 3 – Fire – 2 – 3 – - Signet – 4 – Fire $$ – 3 – 4 – 5 – 2 – Earth – 3 – AA – Air – 3 – AA – Fire – Repeat

https://youtu.be/_oUASmBWWGI (Note: I’m far from perfect)

Use Arcane Power and Primordial stance off cooldown when in or just before attuning to Fire or Earth. Always swap to the next attunement ASAP while casting Earth 5.

This rotation took a lot of work and even if it feels ever so slightly rough in a place or two, it’s by far the smoothest thing I’ve found out of testing this nonstop all weekend.

As I said above, I don’t know if Weave Self will be used as it feels clunky. The best I have for it is:

With Weave Self:

From Fire/Air:

2 – 3 – Signet – 4 – Fire – 3 – 4 – 5 – Earth – 3 – 2 – Earth – 3 – 5 – Water – 3 – Fire – 2 – 3 – Air – Tailored Victory – 3 – AA – Fire – 2 Signet – 4 – Fire – Pick up at $$ in regular rotation

The problem is, I fail to see why pick condi over power for PvE. Sure, there’s Primordial Stance and there’s Weave Self. But the traits don’t give you much, beside Weaver’s Prowess. At best, I’d look into using Grieving stats and trading the 7% damage modifier from Swift Revenge from it. It could be a close call. The grandmaster is very clearly power oriented. And I see no reason to take an adept which isn’t Superior Elements, another power damage modifier. And then there’s the problem with Sword attacks. They seem more like duelling-oriented. For dealing damage, I think Staff will be so much better.

Feanor.2358:

The problem is, I fail to see why pick condi over power for PvE. Sure, there’s Primordial Stance and there’s Weave Self. But the traits don’t give you much, beside Weaver’s Prowess. At best, I’d look into using Grieving stats and trading the 7% damage modifier from Swift Revenge from it. It could be a close call. The grandmaster is very clearly power oriented. And I see no reason to take an adept which isn’t Superior Elements, another power damage modifier. And then there’s the problem with Sword attacks. They seem more like duelling-oriented. For dealing damage, I think Staff will be so much better.

Because Power sword is horrid?
The damage is actually worse than a lot of core builds?
While Condi pressure from sword and weaver is actually good

https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/242465/gw004.jpg

^screenshot from a different thread. But as you can see, with power stats the damage is worse/same as some of the Ele Auto Attacks

Outside of Meteor Storm, Staff is really weak on 4 & 5 skills, making it a poor choice for Weaver builds. Grieving will be great for power builds looking to increase condi damage on the side, but it’ll be difficult to top Vipers and a condi-focused rotation under the current build.

mygamingid.5816:

Outside of Meteor Storm, Staff is really weak on 4 & 5 skills, making it a poor choice for Weaver builds. Grieving will be great for power builds looking to increase condi damage on the side, but it’ll be difficult to top Vipers and a condi-focused rotation under the current build.

Why not Sinister? You can easily max burning duration with traits, runes, and sigils alone, so Sinister lets you pile on the Condi Damage even more than Viper. Or are we trying to maximize bleed duration as well?

Agent Noun.7350:

mygamingid.5816:

Outside of Meteor Storm, Staff is really weak on 4 & 5 skills, making it a poor choice for Weaver builds. Grieving will be great for power builds looking to increase condi damage on the side, but it’ll be difficult to top Vipers and a condi-focused rotation under the current build.

Why not Sinister? You can easily max burning duration with traits, runes, and sigils alone, so Sinister lets you pile on the Condi Damage even more than Viper. Or are we trying to maximize bleed duration as well?

True, all you need is a set of runes of Balthazar and some burning duration food and you get 100% burn duration because the traits give you the other 40%. You could replace the food with a sigil of smoldering but that would be a waste imo. Just run a sigil of force and a sigil of bursting.

I am interested in finding out if sinister or grieving gear will be better with such a setup though. They both have the potential to work.

Ganathar.4956:

Agent Noun.7350:

mygamingid.5816:

Outside of Meteor Storm, Staff is really weak on 4 & 5 skills, making it a poor choice for Weaver builds. Grieving will be great for power builds looking to increase condi damage on the side, but it’ll be difficult to top Vipers and a condi-focused rotation under the current build.

Why not Sinister? You can easily max burning duration with traits, runes, and sigils alone, so Sinister lets you pile on the Condi Damage even more than Viper. Or are we trying to maximize bleed duration as well?

True, all you need is a set of runes of Balthazar and some burning duration food and you get 100% burn duration because the traits give you the other 40%. You could replace the food with a sigil of smoldering but that would be a waste imo. Just run a sigil of force and a sigil of bursting.

I am interested in finding out if sinister or grieving gear will be better with such a setup though. They both have the potential to work.

Same, that’s my main question: whether we’ll want raw condition damage or to supplement it with stronger crits. I’ll be really interested to see how that shakes out once we can do actual DPS testing.

My guess is that Sinister will win out, but I’d prefer Grieving to be better just because I enjoy Power builds and would love a functional hybrid.

As Solori said, the sword definitely seems to be a condition-centered weapon. Without knowing the actual damage coefficients and so forth it’s hard to answer the question definitively, but this weekend I went ahead and charted out what the damage looked like from each sword skill with all stats stripped (no amulet, no runes, no traits that give stat bonuses) and in many cases the condition damage for the sword skills was already higher than the direct damage skills. This was true especially of the #3 skills, which is important because they are the ones with the most variation and so which are off cooldown the most.

In fact, most of the highest base damage values on the sword are condition damage. In other words, even if there are some cases like Air #2 or Fire #2 where the direct damage number is higher than the condition damage number, these direct damage numbers are still lower than condition damage numbers available on other skills.

The long and the short of it: if you put together a rotation that uses the highest damage skills as frequently as possible, it’s going to be condition skills.

From what I have seen, the staff looks like it will work for Power Weaver. Fennec put out a video showing a rotation very similar to the current staff rotation, but taking advantage of all of Weaver’s damage and stat bonus traits.

As for gear, I think it will be Viper’s to the duration cap (also including food/utility/runes/sigils/traits) and then fill in the rest with Griever’s. The thing is that there definitely are some skills that have a very nice direct damage component to them (like Earth/Earth #3) and when you are using the AA waiting for the attunement to come off CD, all of the AA are more power based than condition.

I love a Sinister/Viper’s combo on Tempest or Vanilla builds. I camp Fire in those build, though.

The Weaver spec offers the Weaver’s Prowess trait for a 20% bump in condi duration and a 10% bump in condi damage upon switching attunements. If you’re going to switch, then it’s good to have something like Earth to switch to.

I’m not sure a pure fire condi build will do more dps than the current tempest fire, as weaver depends a lot on swaping attunes to get the most of its coeficients. So if you have a pure fire weaver, you will miss some time out of fire and I think other builds will make better use of this time.

Depending on griever stats and weapon coeficients, I can see a fire/air weaver being a good option for a hybrid dps. Use all dmg coeficients of air with the extra burn of fire and swap betwen then to get the most of weaver.

If sword can sustain a good amount of bleeds, I can see a earth/fire weaver being an option for a full condi spec.

I think air is totally not worth going into as condi from what I’ve tested. I could get decent condi dmg out by just rotating fire and earth around, but alas, it still feels very weak compared to the other specs. Also I used focus, dagger is not really a good condi off-hand. Maybe for some kinda hybrid build that would probably just not be as good anyway.

Zaseka.7182:

I think air is totally not worth going into as condi from what I’ve tested. I could get decent condi dmg out by just rotating fire and earth around, but alas, it still feels very weak compared to the other specs. Also I used focus, dagger is not really a good condi off-hand. Maybe for some kinda hybrid build that would probably just not be as good anyway.

I constantly use dagger off-hand on t4 fotm to help with breakbars (updraft and earthquake does a lot of breakbar dmg) and I combo it with firegrab for up to 25k crits on bosses. This is using the usual FA tempest build.

With a griever stat (powe/condi > fero/prec) and taking tempest defense instead of FA (due to quicker att swaps between fire and air) it could make for a great dps. BttH or FA can be good options, with tempest defense for more dmg when you break the boss bars.

Btw, keep in mind that primordial stance seemed to be broken during beta, and was doing 3 stacks of burn instead of 1

Zaseka.7182:

I think air is totally not worth going into as condi from what I’ve tested. I could get decent condi dmg out by just rotating fire and earth around, but alas, it still feels very weak compared to the other specs. Also I used focus, dagger is not really a good condi off-hand. Maybe for some kinda hybrid build that would probably just not be as good anyway.

The focus has been the go-to offhand for condi Tempest because it has the strongest condition skill of all of the offhands in Fire #4. However here’s the thing: it’s also the ONLY condition damage skill on the entire weapon, and in fact it’s almost the only DPS skill at ALL on the weapon. Water #4 and #5 and Earth #4 do very, very small direct damage, but otherwise the rest of the skills do no damage at all.

This worked very well for condition Tempest, which never attunes out of fire, but with the Weaver,you need to be swapping attunements and the way that they cycle from left to right makes the offhand skills very important. While Dagger’s offhand skills are not as strong as Focus Fire #4, they are still strong options to use while you’re stuck waiting for the next attunement swap.

I think “focus is a better condition weapon” is thinking in the old Elementalist/Tempest box and we need to step out of it. Like I said, other than fire #4, focus isn’t really a “weapon” at all, but a bunch of zero-damage defensives.

As for Air or just Earth/Fire, Fennec actually posted a video of the condition rotation he came up with (it’s unlisted but linked under his Staff Weaver video) and it is Earth/Fire. I couldn’t compare directly to his because he had other people on the golem with him boosting his numbers from Arcane Power, but I tried doing his myself and comparing it to the one where I go into Air. His was putting out about 3% more condition damage than mine, but I am pretty sure that mine was putting out a good bit more direct damage than his – definitely enough more to outpace that 3% difference, even just on Viper gear. With Griever, it would be even more.

The thing about Air is that the Fire/Air #3 skill is the Weaver’s highest damage sword skill, and second only to either Earth #5 on Dagger of Fire #4 on focus. Excluding direct damage numbers, it’s actually tied for the strongest condition damage skill with Fire/Fire #3 and Fire/Water #3.

I can tell you that Arcane, Fire and Weaver with S/D is a pretty good combo. Fire can be swapped for earth pretty easily. I suppose you can go Fire, Earth and Weaver.

Maskah.1486:

I can tell you that Arcane, Fire and Weaver with S/D is a pretty good combo. Fire can be swapped for earth pretty easily. I suppose you can go Fire, Earth and Weaver.

I like Earth’s recharge reduction and permanent passive bonus for Signets, plus you get a condi bonus off Toughness. That’s 100-133 more condi damage for a full offensive gear spec. You also get some defensive quality of life abilities. Arcane will be solid, too. Neither is a bad choice for a Weaver’s third spec.

In any case, I’m likely to go D/X over Sw/X, at least until Sw/X is rebalanced to account for range and attack speed.

Solori.6025:

Feanor.2358:

The problem is, I fail to see why pick condi over power for PvE. Sure, there’s Primordial Stance and there’s Weave Self. But the traits don’t give you much, beside Weaver’s Prowess. At best, I’d look into using Grieving stats and trading the 7% damage modifier from Swift Revenge from it. It could be a close call. The grandmaster is very clearly power oriented. And I see no reason to take an adept which isn’t Superior Elements, another power damage modifier. And then there’s the problem with Sword attacks. They seem more like duelling-oriented. For dealing damage, I think Staff will be so much better.

Because Power sword is horrid?
The damage is actually worse than a lot of core builds?
While Condi pressure from sword and weaver is actually good

https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/242465/gw004.jpg

^screenshot from a different thread. But as you can see, with power stats the damage is worse/same as some of the Ele Auto Attacks

My point it, for PvE you should just ditch Sword and go with power Staff. I don’t see how condi Sword can compete with it damage-wise.

mygamingid.5816:

Outside of Meteor Storm, Staff is really weak on 4 & 5 skills, making it a poor choice for Weaver builds.

So use conjures to fill the gaps. Just like we do now with Tempest. Staff is the current meta for a reason, especially after Scepter damage got wrecked in the last balance. And the reason is largely Meteor Shower.

lLobo.7960:

Zaseka.7182:

I think air is totally not worth going into as condi from what I’ve tested. I could get decent condi dmg out by just rotating fire and earth around, but alas, it still feels very weak compared to the other specs. Also I used focus, dagger is not really a good condi off-hand. Maybe for some kinda hybrid build that would probably just not be as good anyway.

I constantly use dagger off-hand on t4 fotm to help with breakbars (updraft and earthquake does a lot of breakbar dmg) and I combo it with firegrab for up to 25k crits on bosses. This is using the usual FA tempest build.

With a griever stat (powe/condi > fero/prec) and taking tempest defense instead of FA (due to quicker att swaps between fire and air) it could make for a great dps. BttH or FA can be good options, with tempest defense for more dmg when you break the boss bars.

Btw, keep in mind that primordial stance seemed to be broken during beta, and was doing 3 stacks of burn instead of 1

Why don’t you use focus then, it has more breakbar dmg Comet 200 + Gale 400 to the Updraft 332 and Earthquake 200, also some chilled and quick cripple for a bit added. Helps a lot on 100cm second boss cc phase.

Any star gear that does not have condi duration, even on ele that gets so much free one, is pretty much of waste for condi dmg. Especially if you also want to get some bleed dmg in on weaver, you’d probably need to drop Balth runes. Condi ele right now does 20% power dmg, I can’t imagine any kind of hybrid build being comparable to either side of the spectre. Maybe for engie.

Zaseka.7182:

lLobo.7960:

Zaseka.7182:

I think air is totally not worth going into as condi from what I’ve tested. I could get decent condi dmg out by just rotating fire and earth around, but alas, it still feels very weak compared to the other specs. Also I used focus, dagger is not really a good condi off-hand. Maybe for some kinda hybrid build that would probably just not be as good anyway.

I constantly use dagger off-hand on t4 fotm to help with breakbars (updraft and earthquake does a lot of breakbar dmg) and I combo it with firegrab for up to 25k crits on bosses. This is using the usual FA tempest build.

With a griever stat (powe/condi > fero/prec) and taking tempest defense instead of FA (due to quicker att swaps between fire and air) it could make for a great dps. BttH or FA can be good options, with tempest defense for more dmg when you break the boss bars.

Btw, keep in mind that primordial stance seemed to be broken during beta, and was doing 3 stacks of burn instead of 1

Why don’t you use focus then, it has more breakbar dmg Comet 200 + Gale 400 to the Updraft 332 and Earthquake 200, also some chilled and quick cripple for a bit added. Helps a lot on 100cm second boss cc phase.

Any star gear that does not have condi duration, even on ele that gets so much free one, is pretty much of waste for condi dmg. Especially if you also want to get some bleed dmg in on weaver, you’d probably need to drop Balth runes. Condi ele right now does 20% power dmg, I can’t imagine any kind of hybrid build being comparable to either side of the spectre. Maybe for engie.

Right now you go Viper’s until 100% then fill in the rest with Sinister. It is possible that Griever will be what you fill in the rest with come PoF. Remember that part of the reason that Tempest does only about 20% of it’s damage from power is that it has no ferocity. In PoF, PvE Weavers will be taking the Elements of Rage Grandmaster, which gives a 10% damage boost along with extra ferocity, so even without any stat changes the power damage ration is going to go up. If it turns out that for the Adept Trait the’re taking Superior Elements, that’s even more of a boost to the power damage.

I made a spreadsheet during the weekend to refer back to, so I can estimate that a naked (no stats, no traits) character would do about 48.5% power damage using the Fire/Earth/Air Sw/dagger rotation I posted or about 49.5% power damage using the Earth/Fire only Sw/Focus rotation that Fennec and a few others have thrown around. (This is calculated by adding up the total damage values for every skill used in each rotation).

So if we go with something like this (http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAoYA1MsIAYuIIAUAOAFbym4ZA-TRSAQBR7EAER1cAwDAwaqGIN9AhU5362B4mKB9yyDkCYRlVA-e) we will get 80% bleed and burn duration and then Weaver’s Prowess will give us the other 20% putting us at 100% for both with room for, from Griever, about another 207 ferocity (~14% crit damage).

It would be almost impossible to figure out a direct comparison here without having the damage coefficients from all of these skills, but if we ignore the Power and condition Damage stats for now, that would put the Sword/Dagger rotation at around 36% power damage and the Sword/Focus rotation at around 37% power damage.

The tradeoff to go Sinister in these slots over Griever would be a loss of 14% ferocity for 66 extra condition damage and 5% extra crit chance.

Basically, using Griever to complete the gear is giving around 134 effective power over Sinister, while Sinister is giving 10 damage more per burn and 4 damage more per bleed. I don’t think that’s even a close decision.

Feanor.2358:

mygamingid.5816:

Outside of Meteor Storm, Staff is really weak on 4 & 5 skills, making it a poor choice for Weaver builds.

So use conjures to fill the gaps. Just like we do now with Tempest. Staff is the current meta for a reason, especially after Scepter damage got wrecked in the last balance. And the reason is largely Meteor Shower.

Condi Dagger/Focus is up ~29% on FA Staff currently, so Staff is far from meta. Staff only enters the discussion against large hitbox, high health, immobile opponents. It’s amazing there, for sure, but so is Condi Dagger/Focus.

If you want to run Staff for fun or in those rare circumstances where it excels, enjoy! Otherwise, Condi Dagger/Focus is the meta. I’m curious where it’ll end up for large hitboxes. No less than the small hitbox DPS, but possibly much more with some of those area attacks.

With Weaver, you’ll have 20% condi duration on demand, so you can ease that burden and pick up more condi damage in your gear. You’ll also get +10% condi damage with that same trait, which is nice. No need to use Unravel, either, just switch attunements.

Skolops.2604:

Basically, using Griever to complete the gear is giving around 134 effective power over Sinister, while Sinister is giving 10 damage more per burn and 4 damage more per bleed. I don’t think that’s even a close decision.

The gear I looked at was Viper weapons (Dagger/Focus) & trinkets, with Sinister or Grieving armor. Runes were 4xNightmare & 2xTrapper, with Sigils of Bursting and Agony (Fire/Arcane/Weaver). Condi duration is maxed with Weaver’s Prowess.

Power: Grieving +2.70%
Crit Chance: Sinister +12.06%
Crit Damage: Grieving +9.20%
Condi Damage: Sinister +4.1%

If you take Power * Crit% * CritDmg, you get a net total power advantage for Grieving of… 0.08%. The Precision gap levels the playing field significantly.

The condi damage differential works out to something like 12.2/second/stack on burns and 4.7/second/stack for bleeds, ignoring the impact of any buffs outside of Weaver. Stacks add up really fast and last quite a while on Condi Ele builds. Looking at that, Sinister is winning easily… but…

Things do get a bit more questionable when you add in perfect raid buffs. All of the gaps shrink, but the changes to crit percentage are the most meaningful. Grieving ends up with something like a +4.6% power-based damage advantage.

Is that enough to make this an easy choice? It depends on the power-to-condi damage ratio in your rotation. The more damage tips toward physical, the more beneficial Grieving will be. The more damage tips toward condi, the more beneficial Sinister will be.

mygamingid.5816:

Is that enough to make this an easy choice? It depends on the power-to-condi damage ratio in your rotation. The more damage tips toward physical, the more beneficial Grieving will be. The more damage tips toward condi, the more beneficial Sinister will be.

I calculated the difference in crit chance. I am not sure I understand what you’re trying to say here. Your final number of a 4.6% advantage for Grieving to power based damage is correct, but earlier you cite a .08% advantage. What is that supposed to represent? Are you saying it is only a 4.6% advantage with the raid buffs? That would be entirely incorrect.

Here is the setup you described. It’s off by only one power and two condition damage from the one I linked, so it’s another way of getting to pretty much exactly the same thing.

With Sinister, your setup has 2262 power, 39.29% crit chance, 150% crit damage, and 1610 condition damage.

Swap that to Griever, and you will have 2323 power, 34.14% crit chance, 163.8% crit damage, and 1543 condition damage.

With Sinister, the effective power is 2262*.39*1.5+2262*.61 = 2703
With Griever, the effective power is 2323*.34*1.638+2323*.66 = 2826

2826/2703=1.045 or a 4.5% advantage.

WITH raid buffs, you would have:

Spotter+Banner of Discipline+Fury=35.2% crit chance
Banner of Discipline=11.3% crit damage
Empower Allies + Banner of Strength + Pinpoint Distribution + 25 Might = 1070 Power/Condition Damage
Frost Spirit + 5 GOTL = 17.5% damage bonus or 10% condition damage bonus

Altogether, that gives:

Sinister = 3332 power, 74.5% crit chance, 161.3% crit damage, and 2680 condition damage.

Grieving = 3393 Power, 69.3% Crit chance, 175.1% crit damage, and 2613 condition damage

Altogether, Sinister gives an effective power of: (3332*.745*1.613+3332*.255)*1.175 = 4385.6

Altogether, Grieving gives and effective power of: (3393*.693*1.751+3393*.303)*1.175 =6045.7

It’s an enormous difference: a 38% boost to power based damage over Sinister, and remember that in either rotation, about 50% of the pre-stat damage is power based AND that this is BEFORE factoring in Weaver’s 7% extra crit chance and ferocity bonus from the grandmaster trait.

What bonus to condition damage do we get from taking Sinister instead? It’s a bit easier to calculate because of the way condition damage works. Factoring in the 10% bonus from Weaver’s Prowess, we’d be getting 73.7 extra condition damage, which is worth 4.4 per bleed and 11.4 per burn or 4.84 per bleed and 12.54 per burn after GOTL. Does it add up? Yes. Fennec had the better condition uptime than me (obviously) and at the height of it there were about 27 burns and 20 bleeds. That was when he had Arcane Power pumping out burns to other players. The rest of the time, he was averaging around 12 burns and 40 bleeds (this is actually being generous, I think).

So at the peaks the Sinister gear would be giving 435 extra DPS (27 * 12.54 + 20 * 4.84) and on the average would be closer to 344 extra DPS (12 * 12.54 + 40 * 4.84). (This is factoring in Weaver’s 10% condition damage bonus). The question is, what’s better? 435 DPS (which is higher than reality as that is the peak, not average, value), or the DPS you gain from the extra 1660 effective power (which is NOT factoring in Weaver’s extra power damage bonuses)?

Ahh, well guess what: the wiki now has the damage coefficients: lucky us! We’ll use Fennec’s rotation since he’s much better than me. One trip through his rotation takes 16 seconds. In that time, he uses:

Signet of Fire
Earth AA parts 1+2+3+1+2
Earth 2
Earth/Earth 3
Fire 2
Fire/Earth 3
Fire AA parts 1+2+3+1+2+1+2+3
Fire/Fire 4
Fire/Fire 3
Fire 2
Earth AA parts 1+2+1+2+3

Signet of Fire: coef = .5
Fire AA1: coef = .2
Fire AA2: coef = .2
Fire AA3: coef = 1.25
Fire 2: coef = .25 hit and .14 per 2x pulses
Fire 3: coef = 1.75
Earth AA1: coef = .66
Earth AA2: coef = .19
Earth AA3: coef = .25
Earth 2: coef = .25
Earth 3: coef = .64
Fire/Earth 3: coef = .08

In the rotation, that works out to a total of 13.88*1660 = 23,040.8*1000 (Weapon Strength) / 2597 (heavy raid boss armor) / 16 seconds = 554.5 DPS.

It looks like Griever’s is the clear winner. We can see for sure come September, but for now this is the best I can do with the raw numbers and videos from this weekend.
_

By the way, if we did want to factor in the extra 20% condition damage from Weave Self, which nobody really used this weekend because it makes the rotations weird but may prove useful with alacrity, then you’d be getting a 10% bonus 100% of the time and a 30% bonus 18.2% of the time. On average, your total gained condition damage from sinister then would be (67*1.3*.182)+(67*1.1*.818) = 76.14, which is an extra .37 per burn with GOTL and an extra .16 per bleed with GOTL. Needless to say, this doesn’t change the result.

The Build

47.86% crit chance.

mygamingid.5816:

The Build

47.86% crit chance.

Here’s what you’re missing: the 8.57% crit chance from Signet of Fire needs to be taken out, because you’re casting it off cooldown. Your real crit chance in that build is the 39.29%.

https://www.google.com/search?q=(3332*.745*1.613%2B3332*.255)*1.175

mygamingid.5816:

Feanor.2358:

mygamingid.5816:

Outside of Meteor Storm, Staff is really weak on 4 & 5 skills, making it a poor choice for Weaver builds.

So use conjures to fill the gaps. Just like we do now with Tempest. Staff is the current meta for a reason, especially after Scepter damage got wrecked in the last balance. And the reason is largely Meteor Shower.

Condi Dagger/Focus is up ~29% on FA Staff currently, so Staff is far from meta. Staff only enters the discussion against large hitbox, high health, immobile opponents. It’s amazing there, for sure, but so is Condi Dagger/Focus.

If you want to run Staff for fun or in those rare circumstances where it excels, enjoy! Otherwise, Condi Dagger/Focus is the meta.

I run Staff everywhere except on Matthias. Is D/F better on some raid bosses? Sure, it might. But it’s a boring build which doesn’t use the class mechanic and has nothing beside single-target dps to offer. Staff has excellent cleave, regardless if you run FA or not. This alone is enough to offset the lower ST damage and make it a valid meta choice. And I’m genuinely amused by people running D/F in fractals or other non-raid PvE content.

Weaver ain’t gonna change this. 3 damage modifiers? Yes, please. You can stick with your boring condi if you want.

Skolops.2604:

I spent most of this weekend trying to see what a Weaver rotation would actually look like (in PvE). I spent much of the weekend, like many, feeling that it just did not flow well at all, but after a lot of work I finally have a rotation that I think actually works. I have no idea how this would compare to current builds in terms of DPS – that will have to wait for September, and chances are very high that there is a better rotation than this. This is at least something to look at, though!

The traits: http://imgur.com/a/pM8Ag

The weapons: Sword/Dagger. Focus has the highest DPS skill, but it has no other DPS skills and offhand skills are very important because of the way the attunements cycle.

The Gear: I suspect this will use Food/Traits/Runes+Viper gear to max out on condition duration and filling in remaining gear slots with the new Griever’s gear.

The sword seems to favor condition damage as even before adding any stats, the conditions are generally even with and in many cases stronger than the power damage.

The Utilities: Arcane Power, Primordial Stance, Signet of Fire.

For the elite, I’m not sure if Weave Self will actually prove to be useful for PvE. The two benefits are:

1) Increased Condi damage. This is obviously good, but I don’t know if it will manage to work because the second “benefit” may hurt more than help? Hard to say. It is:

2) Attunement recharge reduction. This also seems very good, but it actually seems to make the rotations MORE clunky because there just don’t seem to be enough skills worth using that are off cooldown faster than you can swap. Under rotations, I’ll list the best Weave-Self rotation I’ve been able to come up with, but it really gets rough toward the end. This Elite MAY be useful for quick bursty phases. Otherwise, Firey Greatsword or the Fire Elemental may prove to be the way to go.

The Rotation:

Without Weave self:

Start in Fire/Air

2 – 3 – Signet – 4 – Fire – 3 – 4 – 5 – 2 – Earth – 3 – 2 – Earth – 3 – 5 – Air – 3 – Fire – 2 – 3 – - Signet – 4 – Fire $$ – 3 – 4 – 5 – 2 – Earth – 3 – AA – Air – 3 – AA – Fire – Repeat

https://youtu.be/_oUASmBWWGI (Note: I’m far from perfect)

Use Arcane Power and Primordial stance off cooldown when in or just before attuning to Fire or Earth. Always swap to the next attunement ASAP while casting Earth 5.

This rotation took a lot of work and even if it feels ever so slightly rough in a place or two, it’s by far the smoothest thing I’ve found out of testing this nonstop all weekend.

As I said above, I don’t know if Weave Self will be used as it feels clunky. The best I have for it is:

With Weave Self:

From Fire/Air:

2 – 3 – Signet – 4 – Fire – 3 – 4 – 5 – Earth – 3 – 2 – Earth – 3 – 5 – Water – 3 – Fire – 2 – 3 – Air – Tailored Victory – 3 – AA – Fire – 2 Signet – 4 – Fire – Pick up at $$ in regular rotation

All fine and dandy— but I cant play these glass cannon 11k to 14k dps toons, especially since I WvW and PvP most of the time.

1 mistake and you are dead.

Skolops.2604:

mygamingid.5816:

The Build

47.86% crit chance.

Here’s what you’re missing: the 8.57% crit chance from Signet of Fire needs to be taken out, because you’re casting it off cooldown. Your real crit chance in that build is the 39.29%.

Ahh, I’ve been used to a Fire/Earth combo with permanent passive Sigils.

I’m surprised no one pointed out that the math from Skolops is wrong, even after I posted the Google link.

Skolops.2604:

mygamingid.5816:

Is that enough to make this an easy choice? It depends on the power-to-condi damage ratio in your rotation. The more damage tips toward physical, the more beneficial Grieving will be. The more damage tips toward condi, the more beneficial Sinister will be.

I calculated the difference in crit chance. I am not sure I understand what you’re trying to say here. Your final number of a 4.6% advantage for Grieving to power based damage is correct, but earlier you cite a .08% advantage. What is that supposed to represent? Are you saying it is only a 4.6% advantage with the raid buffs? That would be entirely incorrect.

Here is the setup you described. It’s off by only one power and two condition damage from the one I linked, so it’s another way of getting to pretty much exactly the same thing.

With Sinister, your setup has 2262 power, 39.29% crit chance, 150% crit damage, and 1610 condition damage.

Swap that to Griever, and you will have 2323 power, 34.14% crit chance, 163.8% crit damage, and 1543 condition damage.

With Sinister, the effective power is 2262*.39*1.5+2262*.61 = 2703
With Griever, the effective power is 2323*.34*1.638+2323*.66 = 2826

2826/2703=1.045 or a 4.5% advantage.

WITH raid buffs, you would have:

Spotter+Banner of Discipline+Fury=35.2% crit chance
Banner of Discipline=11.3% crit damage
Empower Allies + Banner of Strength + Pinpoint Distribution + 25 Might = 1070 Power/Condition Damage
Frost Spirit + 5 GOTL = 17.5% damage bonus or 10% condition damage bonus

Altogether, that gives:

Sinister = 3332 power, 74.5% crit chance, 161.3% crit damage, and 2680 condition damage.

Grieving = 3393 Power, 69.3% Crit chance, 175.1% crit damage, and 2613 condition damage

Altogether, Sinister gives an effective power of: (3332*.745*1.613+3332*.255)*1.175 = 4385.6

Altogether, Grieving gives and effective power of: (3393*.693*1.751+3393*.303)*1.175 =6045.7

It’s an enormous difference: a 38% boost to power based damage over Sinister, and remember that in either rotation, about 50% of the pre-stat damage is power based AND that this is BEFORE factoring in Weaver’s 7% extra crit chance and ferocity bonus from the grandmaster trait.

What bonus to condition damage do we get from taking Sinister instead? It’s a bit easier to calculate because of the way condition damage works. Factoring in the 10% bonus from Weaver’s Prowess, we’d be getting 73.7 extra condition damage, which is worth 4.4 per bleed and 11.4 per burn or 4.84 per bleed and 12.54 per burn after GOTL. Does it add up? Yes. Fennec had the better condition uptime than me (obviously) and at the height of it there were about 27 burns and 20 bleeds. That was when he had Arcane Power pumping out burns to other players. The rest of the time, he was averaging around 12 burns and 40 bleeds (this is actually being generous, I think).

So at the peaks the Sinister gear would be giving 435 extra DPS (27 * 12.54 + 20 * 4.84) and on the average would be closer to 344 extra DPS (12 * 12.54 + 40 * 4.84). (This is factoring in Weaver’s 10% condition damage bonus). The question is, what’s better? 435 DPS (which is higher than reality as that is the peak, not average, value), or the DPS you gain from the extra 1660 effective power (which is NOT factoring in Weaver’s extra power damage bonuses)?

Ahh, well guess what: the wiki now has the damage coefficients: lucky us! We’ll use Fennec’s rotation since he’s much better than me. One trip through his rotation takes 16 seconds. In that time, he uses:

Signet of Fire
Earth AA parts 1+2+3+1+2
Earth 2
Earth/Earth 3
Fire 2
Fire/Earth 3
Fire AA parts 1+2+3+1+2+1+2+3
Fire/Fire 4
Fire/Fire 3
Fire 2
Earth AA parts 1+2+1+2+3

Signet of Fire: coef = .5
Fire AA1: coef = .2
Fire AA2: coef = .2
Fire AA3: coef = 1.25
Fire 2: coef = .25 hit and .14 per 2x pulses
Fire 3: coef = 1.75
Earth AA1: coef = .66
Earth AA2: coef = .19
Earth AA3: coef = .25
Earth 2: coef = .25
Earth 3: coef = .64
Fire/Earth 3: coef = .08

In the rotation, that works out to a total of 13.88*1660 = 23,040.8*1000 (Weapon Strength) / 2597 (heavy raid boss armor) / 16 seconds = 554.5 DPS.

It looks like Griever’s is the clear winner. We can see for sure come September, but for now this is the best I can do with the raw numbers and videos from this weekend.
_

By the way, if we did want to factor in the extra 20% condition damage from Weave Self, which nobody really used this weekend because it makes the rotations weird but may prove useful with alacrity, then you’d be getting a 10% bonus 100% of the time and a 30% bonus 18.2% of the time. On average, your total gained condition damage from sinister then would be (67*1.3*.182)+(67*1.1*.818) = 76.14, which is an extra .37 per burn with GOTL and an extra .16 per bleed with GOTL. Needless to say, this doesn’t change the result.

Your math is wrong.

Someone was surprised so I had to kill that vibe, we cant be surprised and happy here.. not allowed

Skolops.2604:

mygamingid.5816:

Is that enough to make this an easy choice? It depends on the power-to-condi damage ratio in your rotation. The more damage tips toward physical, the more beneficial Grieving will be. The more damage tips toward condi, the more beneficial Sinister will be.

I calculated the difference in crit chance. I am not sure I understand what you’re trying to say here. Your final number of a 4.6% advantage for Grieving to power based damage is correct, but earlier you cite a .08% advantage. What is that supposed to represent? Are you saying it is only a 4.6% advantage with the raid buffs? That would be entirely incorrect.

Here is the setup you described. It’s off by only one power and two condition damage from the one I linked, so it’s another way of getting to pretty much exactly the same thing.

With Sinister, your setup has 2262 power, 39.29% crit chance, 150% crit damage, and 1610 condition damage.

Swap that to Griever, and you will have 2323 power, 34.14% crit chance, 163.8% crit damage, and 1543 condition damage.

With Sinister, the effective power is 2262*.39*1.5+2262*.61 = 2703
With Griever, the effective power is 2323*.34*1.638+2323*.66 = 2826

2826/2703=1.045 or a 4.5% advantage.

WITH raid buffs, you would have:

Spotter+Banner of Discipline+Fury=35.2% crit chance
Banner of Discipline=11.3% crit damage
Empower Allies + Banner of Strength + Pinpoint Distribution + 25 Might = 1070 Power/Condition Damage
Frost Spirit + 5 GOTL = 17.5% damage bonus or 10% condition damage bonus

Altogether, that gives:

Sinister = 3332 power, 74.5% crit chance, 161.3% crit damage, and 2680 condition damage.

Grieving = 3393 Power, 69.3% Crit chance, 175.1% crit damage, and 2613 condition damage

Altogether, Sinister gives an effective power of: (3332*.745*1.613+3332*.255)*1.175 = 4385.6

Altogether, Grieving gives and effective power of: (3393*.693*1.751+3393*.303)*1.175 =6045.7

It’s an enormous difference: a 38% boost to power based damage over Sinister, and remember that in either rotation, about 50% of the pre-stat damage is power based AND that this is BEFORE factoring in Weaver’s 7% extra crit chance and ferocity bonus from the grandmaster trait.

What bonus to condition damage do we get from taking Sinister instead? It’s a bit easier to calculate because of the way condition damage works. Factoring in the 10% bonus from Weaver’s Prowess, we’d be getting 73.7 extra condition damage, which is worth 4.4 per bleed and 11.4 per burn or 4.84 per bleed and 12.54 per burn after GOTL. Does it add up? Yes. Fennec had the better condition uptime than me (obviously) and at the height of it there were about 27 burns and 20 bleeds. That was when he had Arcane Power pumping out burns to other players. The rest of the time, he was averaging around 12 burns and 40 bleeds (this is actually being generous, I think).

So at the peaks the Sinister gear would be giving 435 extra DPS (27 * 12.54 + 20 * 4.84) and on the average would be closer to 344 extra DPS (12 * 12.54 + 40 * 4.84). (This is factoring in Weaver’s 10% condition damage bonus). The question is, what’s better? 435 DPS (which is higher than reality as that is the peak, not average, value), or the DPS you gain from the extra 1660 effective power (which is NOT factoring in Weaver’s extra power damage bonuses)?

Ahh, well guess what: the wiki now has the damage coefficients: lucky us! We’ll use Fennec’s rotation since he’s much better than me. One trip through his rotation takes 16 seconds. In that time, he uses:

Signet of Fire
Earth AA parts 1+2+3+1+2
Earth 2
Earth/Earth 3
Fire 2
Fire/Earth 3
Fire AA parts 1+2+3+1+2+1+2+3
Fire/Fire 4
Fire/Fire 3
Fire 2
Earth AA parts 1+2+1+2+3

Signet of Fire: coef = .5
Fire AA1: coef = .2
Fire AA2: coef = .2
Fire AA3: coef = 1.25
Fire 2: coef = .25 hit and .14 per 2x pulses
Fire 3: coef = 1.75
Earth AA1: coef = .66
Earth AA2: coef = .19
Earth AA3: coef = .25
Earth 2: coef = .25
Earth 3: coef = .64
Fire/Earth 3: coef = .08

In the rotation, that works out to a total of 13.88*1660 = 23,040.8*1000 (Weapon Strength) / 2597 (heavy raid boss armor) / 16 seconds = 554.5 DPS.

It looks like Griever’s is the clear winner. We can see for sure come September, but for now this is the best I can do with the raw numbers and videos from this weekend.
_

By the way, if we did want to factor in the extra 20% condition damage from Weave Self, which nobody really used this weekend because it makes the rotations weird but may prove useful with alacrity, then you’d be getting a 10% bonus 100% of the time and a 30% bonus 18.2% of the time. On average, your total gained condition damage from sinister then would be (67*1.3*.182)+(67*1.1*.818) = 76.14, which is an extra .37 per burn with GOTL and an extra .16 per bleed with GOTL. Needless to say, this doesn’t change the result.

sorry to say, it does not work in sPvP at all.