Guild Wars 2

Swords?? Skill combinations?? Hype!

Stances seem like they’ll get a heafty nerf before the launch.

WP did a showcase of a lot of weaver skills, hopefully someone can get screencaps of all the skills?

From what I’ve seen in WP’s footage Weaver seems absolutely absurd. Both in power and fun. Expect massive nerfs boys and girls.

Wulf.5431:

WP did a showcase of a lot of weaver skills, hopefully someone can get screencaps of all the skills?

This. I’m waiting for an image with all the tooltips lined up nicely

This looks mental!

Blue.1207:

From what I’ve seen in WP’s footage Weaver seems absolutely absurd. Both in power and fun. Expect massive nerfs boys and girls.

Kind of overdue. You’re pushing 40k dps, mesmers are bottom feeders at under 15k.

Ubi.4136:

Blue.1207:

From what I’ve seen in WP’s footage Weaver seems absolutely absurd. Both in power and fun. Expect massive nerfs boys and girls.

Kind of overdue. You’re pushing 40k dps, mesmers are bottom feeders at under 15k.

You cant expect Mesmers to give alacrity,Quickness,Pretty much every boon in the game, and be good dps. If you want more dps on mesmer, then they have to nerf the support it gives.

Cyrin.1035:

For those of you that missed the announcement and just want more detailed info on the elite specs, Wooden Potatoes explains them here:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/163637673

Skip to 1:27:00 for elite specs.

The quote above (from another forum post) has a link to the post-announcement show and has the time listed for the elite specs portion of the video…
The elementalist elite, Weaver, is the first one mentioned out of all the elite specs and shows some of the skills in action!

Its a very crazy elite spec. Its going to be a very confusing when it learning its skills. They added some good defensive option into the spec. From traits extra vitality, Barrier a 400-500 damage shield per dual skill cast and a lot of vigor.

Leo G.4501:

Stances seem like they’ll get a heafty nerf before the launch.

And also i’m expecting some spells will get visual downgrade,like they did with the tempest in HOT, especially the auras.

Ok just seen woodenpotatoes presentation.

It looks promising…fresh air fans are right to be hyped.

The thing that worries me is whole barrier thing…is it value of damage that is absorbed like 5k damage- 600 barrier? If answer is yes…it’s low…one auto attack will break it…it might be useless mechanic.

Extra vitality sounds perfect to get ele in line with other classes and its low in trait tree!

A lot of stability everywhere…and grand master trait that give diamond skin effect on duration of hyper speed – more good news for FA.

Stances…1s evade doesn’t sound that good but it’s something … more barrier thing…heal looks weak.

I personally glad that i was wrong about main class mechanic…atuments will be crazy….blion times better than garbage overloads.

Overall better then expected..lets see what we can craft for pvp during whole preview thing.

After tempest failure i won jump into hype train…unless i will be sure that i won’t have to be healbot to be viable in ranked.

Don’t get excited for it. We all expected to have a viable dps spec when tempest came out and they showed the skills. Forced into braindead support role. Haven’t you gotten the memo that despite the class description ele isn’t allowed to do dps in a pvp setting because its broken. Even if every other class can do 10 times the damage we do by pressing 1 button, if we manage to kill someone, NERF!

Don’t expect to ever have a viable dps spec for ele, we aren’t allowed to have one, every time someone figures out how to do damage outside of pve, they nerf it into the ground. If you want to be a mage and actually do damage, play Black Desert. Atleast being squishy there comes with the damage to back it up.

Being squishy in gw2 just means you die faster while still doing the same damage or less than other classes. 5-10k autos on rev hammer when using a build that still has 2800 armor? perfectly balanced. 5-10k damage on a 30s cd ele skill that you can literally sidestep to avoid being hit by on a class that sacrifices all its defense and can die from a light fart to get that damage? Better nerf the damage some more! Oh, but we have 40k dps in PvE! Because that makes such a difference in pvp right? Because other players will stand still and have huge hitboxes and wont dodge out of our long cast times right? I love the idiots that justify ele nerfs because of pve when its been trash in pvp for years as far as a viable dps build goes.

Nikkinella.8254:

..snip..

I feel the only spec that is going to be support is the Necro’s Scourge (or whatever it’s called) while every other spec is just going to be some variation on dps. As of late, Elementalist’s support was through heals and boons but this round of specs seem to go the opposite direction and punish/rip boons.

Could be wrong though. I bet no one was expecting the Warr’s Spellbreaker. Seems like a PvP nightmare.

The thing I noticed about the stances is they seem to have a charge period or mechanic but have low cool downs on the activation. Will be interesting to see how this all works out, very nice to see melding of elements and a half and half skill set. Expect on swap sigils to spike and weaver to make excessive use of them.

I like the concept but dislike the name.

Leo G.4501:

Nikkinella.8254:

..snip..

I feel the only spec that is going to be support is the Necro’s Scourge (or whatever it’s called) while every other spec is just going to be some variation on dps.

Firebrand will be support oriented.

CONDI ELE HYPE BOYS
THE DREAM IS REAL

Dahir.4158:

CONDI ELE HYPE BOYS
THE DREAM IS REAL

Yeah that should actually sort of work now…I’m mildly shocked.

morrolan.9608:

Leo G.4501:

Nikkinella.8254:

..snip..

I feel the only spec that is going to be support is the Necro’s Scourge (or whatever it’s called) while every other spec is just going to be some variation on dps.

Firebrand will be support oriented.

You could be right, but I guess I should have said “of the ones I’ve seen from the WP stream” cause the descriptions of each spec in the trailer was frustratingly vague. And when I hear the name “Firebrand”, I think somekind of damage or aggressiveness.

Leo G.4501:

morrolan.9608:

Leo G.4501:

Nikkinella.8254:

..snip..

I feel the only spec that is going to be support is the Necro’s Scourge (or whatever it’s called) while every other spec is just going to be some variation on dps.

Firebrand will be support oriented.

You could be right, but I guess I should have said “of the ones I’ve seen from the WP stream” cause the descriptions of each spec in the trailer was frustratingly vague. And when I hear the name “Firebrand”, I think somekind of damage or aggressiveness.

Yes thats why I personally think firebrand is a poor name for it, but according to the leaks it will be support oriented. The other mooted name for it, Purifier, would have been more fitting.

apharma.3741:

Dahir.4158:

CONDI ELE HYPE BOYS
THE DREAM IS REAL

Yeah that should actually sort of work now…I’m mildly shocked.

I will make a build and video if we’re able to play it next week. My two and a half years of playing condi ele will not fail me now!

Also, the new Grieving stat is amazing and I can’t wait to utilise it.

Nikkinella.8254:

-snip

From the way they described the tempest, I thought it was going to be a front line support role. The weaver seems to be more of a offensive condition/power hybrid spec. The WP videos showed it with a power/condition main stat and ferocity/precision 2nd stat collection weapon.

Ulion.5476:

Nikkinella.8254:

-snip

From the way they described the tempest, I thought it was going to be a front line support role. The weaver seems to be more of a offensive condition/power hybrid spec. The WP videos showed it with a power/condition main stat and ferocity/precision 2nd stat collection weapon.

I hope you’re right. I made an ele to play a dps role. We keep being forced into defensive/support roles while every other class but us has a viable dps spec. What’s a mage without the damage? A pathetic priest, and who wants to play a priest in an rpg.

You’re just the boon monkey/support puppet for the other classes that actually do something as a priest. Its an incredibly boring role to play. Its long past our time to have a viable dps role in pvp and wvw that has a fair risk/reward ratio to it. Unlike all the current elite specs for other classes which are all reward and zero to little risk while if we want to do any type of damage, we actually have to give up all our defense to do so, and are still subpar compared to the other classes that give up nothing to be able to do even more damage than we do.

Meleementalist confirmed!

I’ll play it even if it’s sub par just for the novelty.

did somebody counted all the amazing skills saying block, unblockable or evade?

Sword Skills so far seen in wp stream + with wp gear numbers:
__________________________________________________________________
Fire

Fire Strike•••••••1/2s cast•••••••481 dmg•••••••130 range
Fire Swipe•••••••3/4s•••••••••••••561•••••••••••••130
Searing Slash•••3/4s•••••••••••••910•••••••••••••130•••••••2 burn stacks 4s

Flame Uprising••3/4s•••••••••••728+364•••••••450/180 radius•••••••1 burn stack 5,5 sec, 1 sec intervall

Cauterizing Strikle••3/4s•••••••910/1274 on burned foes•••180•••••••2 burn stacks 5,5 s
__________________________________________________________________
Water

Seiche (1of3 AA?)••••1/2s••••••••••••••251••••••••••••130•••••••72 healing

Riptide••••••••••••••1s••••••••••••••2x508•••••••••••- … -•••••••5s regen + waterfield 5 pulses 429 healing – leap back + evade 1,75 s

Twin Strike (F/W)••3/4s••••••••••••2x1156•••••••••- …-•••••••••••chill 4s + 2 burn 5s + barrier
__________________________________________________________________
Air

No AA seen

Polaric Leap•••••••••1/2s••••••••••••240••••••••••••••450••••••••••leap + 3/4s daze + superspeed 2s

Shearing Edge (W/A)••1/2s•••••••728••••••••••••••600••••••••••••••vigor + chill 3s
__________________________________________________________________
400 Barrier on all #3 skills
3sec icd global on atuneswitch
__________________________________________________________________
Adept
1••Superior Elements••dual skills cause 4s weakness and 7% dmg bonus on weakened foes
2••Sign looks like a Superspeed trait
3••Masters Fortitude••+120 vita when using sword and vita of 5% of pow+5% of condi

Master
1••Weavers Prowess••on atune-switch for 8s +10% condi dmg and 20% condi duration
2••Swift Revenge••gain 4s swift on dual wield and gain 75 dmg bonus under the effect of swift/ss
3••Lesser Stone Resonance••gain 4s stab on activating stance + LSR on 50% hp

GM
1••Elements of Rage••10% dmg bonus when single atunement and gain fero 145 based on power
2••Unravel Hexes••3s superspeed on criiple/immob/chill + lose condi every 1/2s under the effect of ss
3••Invigorating Strikes••grants 3s vigor on dualwield skills and 857 barrier on dodging
__________________________________________________________________
the elite looks like a real elite so far!

Looks very intresting. But will be hard if i can´t swap to an element gaining the same skills on 4+5 evry time. E.G. when i swap to air for breaking a block shield i need my unblockable knockdown on 5, regardless which element i currently am in …
Same for magnetic wave. I am dead if i need 3s to use it. the swap, cast when i see rapid fire aiming or a condi bomb striking makes win or die.

Well the passive barrier is suppose to help with defense. I am not sure how barrier scales but in the WP video it showed 500-800 barrier per every dual skill used. Also we have not seen any of the dual skills for the core weapons(30 of them :P). They may have more cc or defensive options.

Wolfric.9380:

Looks very intresting. But will be hard if i can´t swap to an element gaining the same skills on 4+5 evry time. E.G. when i swap to air for breaking a block shield i need my unblockable knockdown on 5, regardless which element i currently am in …
Same for magnetic wave. I am dead if i need 3s to use it. the swap, cast when i see rapid fire aiming or a condi bomb striking makes win or die.

In theory you have to double click air to gain all air skills on the bar – we have internal cooldown on all swaps 3s. Maybe it’s possible to make it shorter with arcane traits.

Looks like one of the utilities lets you attune as normal, so that’ll be the button to press if you need super-quick access to 4 & 5 skills.

Ubi.4136:

Blue.1207:

From what I’ve seen in WP’s footage Weaver seems absolutely absurd. Both in power and fun. Expect massive nerfs boys and girls.

Kind of overdue. You’re pushing 40k dps, mesmers are bottom feeders at under 15k.

Great job comparing full glass dps spec with a full support tanky one. Obviously the one that has better survivability and better group support should have better damage too, right?

Wolfric.9380:

Looks very intresting. But will be hard if i can´t swap to an element gaining the same skills on 4+5 evry time. E.G. when i swap to air for breaking a block shield i need my unblockable knockdown on 5, regardless which element i currently am in …
Same for magnetic wave. I am dead if i need 3s to use it. the swap, cast when i see rapid fire aiming or a condi bomb striking makes win or die.

I feel this is a necessity of attunement swap, i.e. if you likely need certain skill, you need to use some skill (predict) with your attunement melding to have available.

Me personally, I’m not an attunemtnt dancer so likely I will stick to Tempest.

Would charging (holding the button down) an attunement for 1 second while being unable to move be a compromise for fully swapping (double swapping) to an attunement when melded?

I for one am excited for condi Ele to finally be viable (hopefully.)

Wolfric.9380:

Looks very intresting. But will be hard if i can´t swap to an element gaining the same skills on 4+5 evry time. E.G. when i swap to air for breaking a block shield i need my unblockable knockdown on 5, regardless which element i currently am in …
Same for magnetic wave. I am dead if i need 3s to use it. the swap, cast when i see rapid fire aiming or a condi bomb striking makes win or die.

Definitely a change of pace emphasizing proactive gameplay over reactive gameplay with respect to skills 4 and 5. Sort of like a Mesmer using blurred frenzy as a layer of defense more often than as a reaction to a specific incoming attack. The real meat of swapping is immediate access to the dual skill and it’s functionality.

I stopped maining ele when cele d/d was born, but this looks pretty sick!

It looks like a real dmg line that ele been needing but is scary me that the atuments seem to have no cd that maybe to much for ele as a class. Ele may end up with perma super speed but we will have to see how it looks on the free weekend coming up. I hope there a pvp part of it.

Staff ele fire air weaver (i am going to call it weeb) freash air One with Air mix with low def / hp glass in wvw should be very hard to pin down and do high dmg not though metor but though every thing else staff brings (more so now that we are getting a lot more skill due to the dule atuments i do not know them all yet).

Glenstorm.4059:

I for one am excited for condi Ele to finally be viable (hopefully.)

We can either play a full condi build with Trailblazer etc. or with the new Grieving stat which is Power/Precision/CondiDMG/Ferocity. If we play with the latter, we would have high dmg and condi, but we’ll need to find a way to fit the vitality, toughness and healing power in. Celestial seems like a good choice—maybe apothecary and shaman. Also, one Weaver trait gives like 120+ vitality or something (not sure) so that’s one thing we can use.

I wished WP would have shown us the dagger and focus mixed skills as well. Wasn’t really interested in scepter.

D/D ELE LES GO BOIISSSS

Can anybody post or give link for any info about new elite spec like skills, traits? There where more than wp stream previewing new expac.

Mr Godlike.6098:

Can anybody post or give link for any info about new elite spec like skills, traits? There where more than wp stream previewing new expac.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6r7kp0/links_to_each_of_the_elite_specialisation_tooltip/

Seems to have it but hard to read and i am not sure if all the info is there.

First glance looks like this new elite will be a ton of fun! My favorite thing about ele has always been the fast cycling through attunements to access the skills you need. Tempest, while powerful, slows all of that down with the extremely slow overload casts. It looks like weaver will do the opposite: you’ll be swapping a lot more often both because your best effects are no longer locked into slow overload casts and because you’ll need to double-swap to access the 4 and 5 skills. It also adds that extra layer of complexity with the dual attunement gimmick. Very cool!

It wasn’t clear to me from the video how that 3s GCD will come into play, though. If I need to access the 4 and 5 skills for an attunement that I’m not currently in, how does that work? For instance, let’s say I’m in fire/water and I need air 4 and 5. Do I swap to air, become air/fire, initiating the 3s GCD, and then after 3 seconds I am able to swap to x/air and use air 4 and 5? Or is there some way (outside of fresh air or other conditional abilities) to avoid that 3s wait time? It occurs to me that the whole fun of elementalist is being able to swap to get at those abilities quickly, and the quicker you are the better!

I hope it won’t end up feeling clunky! It does look like a lot of fun!

I asked the same and it looks like double tap the same element will swap to full element more or less immidiately. If this is the case it´s some relearning reflexes, but it looks great actually doing what so many “Old” eles were missing. complex fast rotation a lot of skills and reactive gameplay. If this is the case it´s high skill, active gameplay and sounds fun. If a high skill is high reward then we get some usual troubles… and complains when the good eles show up … And if nerfed ele will die for average and low tier play and even for higher tiers is possible because when you need to play like a god to get the same results as other classes onle a fistfull eles might remain.

There’s a stance which lets you fully attune to element in the next 5 seconds. Aside from that, you’ll need to wait the 3s for the attunement swap to recharge before using it second time.

A lot of people seem to think that the global attunement recharge is 3s (and understandably so, since WP says it is 3s), but if you look at the actual gameplay, it looks to be 4s. The footage from Bogotter even states that it is a 4s recharge (in the traitline tooltip).

so this means very difficult reactive gameplay. The class will massively use rotations and combos but lack on demand gameplay.

Absolutely, but if you’re willing to give up a utility slot, I think “Unravel” will be quite an interesting skill to play around with. With two charges and a 25s count recharge, it should cover enough of your important reactive 4/5-skills that you need to swap attunement for. However, it doesn’t help you through the 4 second lockout if you just changed attunement and need to react with a spell from a different attunement (this lockout is only 1s for base ele and tempest). Fresh air is another way to get quick access to 4/5-skills of another attunement, but hardly swiftly enough to be deemed “reactive” (and also does not help against the global 4s lockout if you just changed attunement).

On another note, as an avid fresh air player, I must admit it kind of annoyed me a little how WP proclaimed fresh air to be super OP in the expansion because of it “bypassing the ICD” and giving tons of lightning strikes. Since every time you swap attunement as a weaver, even if you swap to air, it will incur a 4s cooldown on all attunements. So what could have been a “bonus” of double-auttuning into air for 2x lightning strikes actually realistically adds around a second of additional time spent in air attunement before you can attune to other elements (but obviously also gives access to air 3 blind). Looking at the footage I’m pretty certain that core fresh air ele produces just as many (if not more) lightning strikes than what was deemed “OP” in the footage. Now, I’m not saying I know if weaver fresh air will turn out to be strong or not, but it certainly won’t be OP due to it bypassing any ICDs or producing a lot of lightning strikes. Unravel Hexes sound super great for fresh air though, and the new dual attacks alone are going to shake up a lot of things, not to mention stances! So much theorycrafting to be done in the coming months

Mejiora.9584:

Absolutely, but if you’re willing to give up a utility slot, I think “Unravel” will be quite an interesting skill to play around with. With two charges and a 25s count recharge, it should cover enough of your important reactive 4/5-skills that you need to swap attunement for. However, it doesn’t help you through the 4 second lockout if you just changed attunement and need to react with a spell from a different attunement (this lockout is only 1s for base ele and tempest). Fresh air is another way to get quick access to 4/5-skills of another attunement, but hardly swiftly enough to be deemed “reactive” (and also does not help against the global 4s lockout if you just changed attunement).

Fresh Air does help, as the global “lockout” is still a normal cooldown. However, it only lets you enter Air fast, the rest of the attunements will still be slower.

Feanor.2358:

Mejiora.9584:

Absolutely, but if you’re willing to give up a utility slot, I think “Unravel” will be quite an interesting skill to play around with. With two charges and a 25s count recharge, it should cover enough of your important reactive 4/5-skills that you need to swap attunement for. However, it doesn’t help you through the 4 second lockout if you just changed attunement and need to react with a spell from a different attunement (this lockout is only 1s for base ele and tempest). Fresh air is another way to get quick access to 4/5-skills of another attunement, but hardly swiftly enough to be deemed “reactive” (and also does not help against the global 4s lockout if you just changed attunement).

Fresh Air does help, as the global “lockout” is still a normal cooldown. However, it only lets you enter Air fast, the rest of the attunements will still be slower.

Yeah, that’s what I said. It helps you get quick access to 4/5-skills of a different attunement than the one you are currently in, but if you e.g. just swapped to fire and need to use focus 4/5 skills in earth, you’ll be out of luck for at least four seconds, after which you’ll have to swap to earth, then crit, then back to air. This adds up to around 6 seconds from you swap attunement until you can react with 4/5-skills of another attunement (other than air). Of course, if you haven’t swapped an attunement for the last four seconds you can get access to any other attunements 4/5 skills within a second or two with fresh air, and instantly with Unravel. I doubt that will happen often though, seeing as weaver-gameplay looks to involve a lot of attunement-dancing.

From a PvP PoV, I wonder if Fresh Air Weaver will actually be viable. The reason FA is not PvP-viable now is because FA Ele is Thief food. Even Tempest was pigeonholed into a healbot role because Thieves simply shut out Eles from playing DPS builds. From what little I’ve seen so far, Weaver doesn’t do much to change that…unless Barrier is a significant buff to sustain, especially since you’ll be in true melee range now. Guess we’ll have to wait and see.