Guild Wars 2

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.

Glenstorm.4059:

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.

Yeah, I agree, although Unravel Hexes looks incredibly promising, fresh air (especially arcane/water/air), never really struggled with conditions, and is only really hardcountered by a good thief or revenant, who will have an incredibly easy time shutting you down. It’s still very early to tell, though.

I really hope there’s a way to quickly and easily access skills 1-2 and 4-5 of any attunement while being attuned to another one. For example, I want to be able to get earth 4-5 with water 1-2 and then, let’s say, reverse that with ease and of course with a CD. I don’t want to have to cycle through my attunements in a specific way to achieve this result. That would add too much restriction to the spec’s playstyle.

Zintrothen.1056:

I really hope there’s a way to quickly and easily access skills 1-2 and 4-5 of any attunement while being attuned to another one. For example, I want to be able to get earth 4-5 with water 1-2 and then, let’s say, reverse that with ease and of course with a CD. I don’t want to have to cycle through my attunements in a specific way to achieve this result. That would add too much restriction to the spec’s playstyle.

You just press earth and it will flip them.

So you were in earth and went to water giving you 1+2 in water and 4+5 in earth, pressing earth will flip it making 1+2 earth and putting water onto 4+5. If you want to flip it again go to water and it will return you to water 1+2 and earth 4+5.

Also from what I saw the elite reduces the recharge on attunement swap while giving you huge bonuses in them. Wiki (yes it’s updated with what little we know) says it makes the attunement recharge 2s, that’s very short.

apharma.3741:

Zintrothen.1056:

I really hope there’s a way to quickly and easily access skills 1-2 and 4-5 of any attunement while being attuned to another one. For example, I want to be able to get earth 4-5 with water 1-2 and then, let’s say, reverse that with ease and of course with a CD. I don’t want to have to cycle through my attunements in a specific way to achieve this result. That would add too much restriction to the spec’s playstyle.

You just press earth and it will flip them.

So you were in earth and went to water giving you 1+2 in water and 4+5 in earth, pressing earth will flip it making 1+2 earth and putting water onto 4+5. If you want to flip it again go to water and it will return you to water 1+2 and earth 4+5.

Also from what I saw the elite reduces the recharge on attunement swap while giving you huge bonuses in them. Wiki (yes it’s updated with what little we know) says it makes the attunement recharge 2s, that’s very short.

That’s true! And the skill even starts cooling down the moment you enter the stance. I’m pretty sure it’ll be good idea to stay in the stance for as long as possible (i.e. not getting a perfect weave until the very end of the 20s duration), just to retain the 2s attunement cd between three attunements. This should also let you keep three of the four buffs for almost 20s, and then the perfect weave after I assume will give you almost 10second of all four buffs (you’ll then need to press Tailored Victory for the float attack just before the effect expires). If this is how it actually works, you’ll be buffed up very good for almost 30s, and only one minute later you can start to Weave Self again.

Wolfric.9380:

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.

It will be worse…we stay healbot another year…or more

a better view on things:

Glenstorm.4059:

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.

There are 3 builds in current meta don’t fear thiefs +1 (d/p never should fight 1v1 if not forced)

- War (both gs power/macebow zerkers), scrapper – main reason is that automatic endure pain and elixir s can ruin thief burst and ONE mistake can lead to oneshot specially war. If thief waste time advantageous 2v1 against one of this builds he already lost as he stopped rotating.

- DH – random blocks and 90% of skills are burst, even stupid tactic to lay down all traps on node can kill be accident stupid thief wanting just a decap. DH is just pure thief counter.

So questions are:

Do we get damage enough to at least force thief disengage thief?
Can we stop thief +1?

Mistform is one option, still we have focus (earth 5 on demand only after double swapping earth).

FA rare advantage is that cooldown on main burst doesn’t almost exists but we need damage punish at least thief for +1…

More I think about it…new specs and loads of hyper speed…add dagger offhand mobility, teleport…maybe it’s possible now to compete at roaming with thief…and start +1 him for change.

we should start to talk about underwater skills!

shinta.8906:

a better view on things:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7gGYfBxlJ8

Thank you so much for this. With this we have aaaalmost all the sword skills, at least, and to me they look like perfection. Oh geez just remembered focus sword gives even more dual skills. Holy moly

More thoughts of thief issue:

It feels almost that having on weaver focus is disadvantage…loads of skills great for survival (tempest after removal of cleric/cele still was meta in pro-teams)…we want them right now…and…swap earth swap something and then invulnerability? double swap earth?…Attument swaps feel like +cast time on skills…I feel that focus will be bad idea for new spec. Heh mistform starts to be something reliable…

Also 3 skills must be real good to replace shocking aura…the other burststoping thing on demand. We got Tempest Defence trait out there but FA without Aeromancer’s Training…?!

…I am starting to less like new elite spec.

Edit: after Bog preview…if barrier is a thing…does new bolstered elements trait is our elixir S ? Holy moly…

Ele lose to thief you lack stun breakers. You can build to counter and roll thieves as an ele but that you cant counter condi burst and boon corruptions as a core ele. That’s always the issue and will still be the issue in spvp or wvw. Wvw way easier due to more stats variety. Spvp is something to see.. thieves are the last thing you will worry about, Watch out for new Mesmer and Necro bunker heals and condi spikes.

im mostly hyped for twist of fate:
https://youtu.be/i7gGYfBxlJ8?t=135

I build my ele to stand against thiefs and i force them to disengage. I play without water and mainly as boon machine using arcane tempest.
It works, but boon corruption is a total nemesis …. Also condi mesmers are realy bad for me. But i can live with this. You can´t beat it all reliable.

In all seriousness, I’m hoping the relatively recent splitting of pvp/pve/wvwv skills will let eles have the build diversity they want. Barrier sounds like it should function as sustain for sword weavers and should make staff a lot more tanky. I think staff weaver or scepter will be more noob (me) friendly.

I loved Ele at inception becsuse of the no-mana caster style and the dynamic qualities of d/d play. Weaver seems like it could bring d/d back and a true melee build will be fun.

I’ll be planning to do the spellbreaker collection to get an ascended dagger to go with my weaver blade eventually.

Can’t wait.

Waisenpai.6028:

Ele lose to thief you lack stun breakers. You can build to counter and roll thieves as an ele but that you cant counter condi burst and boon corruptions as a core ele. That’s always the issue and will still be the issue in spvp or wvw. Wvw way easier due to more stats variety. Spvp is something to see.. thieves are the last thing you will worry about, Watch out for new Mesmer and Necro bunker heals and condi spikes.

Twist of fate our new stunbreak utility has two charges with 5s cooldown…+1s I-frame…this can ruin few backstabs.

The dagger 3ed skill looks like roaming ele going to be a thing like it use to be i cant wait!

About the “thief problem”

First, FA ele isn’t all that bad against thief in 1v1 situations NOW, you have enough burst to finish them, and if you don’t make many mistakes can win the fight. The only reason you lose that fight is because they can disengage and bleed you of CD’s. Weaver gives you both hard mitigation (barrier, evades in twist of fate), more soft mitigation (more prot, more weakness if traited), and more frequent, high damage pressure.

One of the major downsides of weaver from a counter-burst perspective is that it will be VERY hard to quick fire-swap + phoenix someone to 1-shot an overzealous thief. It might be able to be played around, smart rotating of your on-demand defenses and having access to burst.

I think FA ele will be stronger relative to thief than it is now, but it still most likely won’t have a place.

MORE LIKELY, however, if we look at history, is that ele competes for a damage-oriented bruiser-type role, which is less reliant on instant-access to specific CD’s like obsidian flesh but instead has a long rotation of defenses. I can see two great trait combos here:
- Air, arcana, weaver with either d/x or sw/x
- Water, arcana, weaver with sw/x

Thanks to some synergies in air and weaver, this is actually both offensively and defensively a great combo (counter condis with tons of superspeed stripping condis every 1/2s, great for kiting when needed, great pressure from all those air lighting strikes). Arcana gives you protection, and all the other things it always has, plus allows you to swap more often. With D/X, you now have a water field from the fire/water dual skill (also an evade), and a blast in either air/water or water/water.

More likely, sword/x is going to be the combo to use, as new-weapon skills are basically always more powerful than base-game weapons, and most viable pvp specs use their new weapon. Sword has a long (4s) water combo field on water 2, that you can blast with basically any element, and multi-blast if you attunement dance properly. The dual skills have a lot of ways to get barrier and other mitigation, as well as good ways to heal. If you have the water/arcana combo then you always have great options to cleanse, and weaver gives some really good bruiser-type traits. This trait combo will most likely feel like the old d/d ele on steroids with souped-up dodge rolls carrying you to victory behind cleanses, blasts, and barrier.

@blackbead
FA is going to be a problme more so then 1v1 with thf. Its perma super speed as things stand. You may be close to perma super speed even with out FA but for a class like ele having super speed makes you unbelievable hard to pin down for all of its weapons i like to see how they make it work out. But who knows having super speed may let ele go true mages dmg glass and less of a bruser build making it where thf must be there to kill them in one burst.

@BlackBeard.

I also think that bruiser role is thing for new class. Paladin amulet + swords evasion, twist of fate+ add dagger for mobility and teleport/mistform and we got potential to rival bunker druid and scrapper.

But…we are not only one with new elite specs…we can predict things based of 2 year HoT meta and that it.

Many things feel good with Weaver but we don’t know if it’s viable. I hope we can cook up something nasty for soloq…something that doesn’t need premade to shine.

What has me a little bit excited is the change to attunement cooldowns.

Your current attunement doesn’t go on CD when you change attunement. Instead all attunements go on a 3 second CD when you change.

Elementalist was always my favourite profession thematically but I find weapon / attunement CD annoying. I love how engineers can either have no swapping or swap freely with kits, but much less into them thematically.

So this has me seriously considering returning.

Caeledh.5437:

What has me a little bit excited is the change to attunement cooldowns.

Your current attunement doesn’t go on CD when you change attunement. Instead all attunements go on a 3 second CD when you change.

Elementalist was always my favourite profession thematically but I find weapon / attunement CD annoying. I love how engineers can either have no swapping or swap freely with kits, but much less into them thematically.

So this has me seriously considering returning.

I don’t know why you would think that your current attunement does not go on CD when changing attunement – it does based on the info we currently have. And all attunements go on a 4s cd, not 3.

Jski.6180:

@blackbead
FA is going to be a problme more so then 1v1 with thf. Its perma super speed as things stand. You may be close to perma super speed even with out FA but for a class like ele having super speed makes you unbelievable hard to pin down for all of its weapons i like to see how they make it work out. But who knows having super speed may let ele go true mages dmg glass and less of a bruser build making it where thf must be there to kill them in one burst.

Core fresh air ele already has next to permanent superspeed upkeep assuming that you are free to keep attacking (and critting) a target. Weaver won’t change that (outside of the elite where you get to keep perma superspeed should you want to). So you can already go see how it works out :o).

BlackBeard.2873:

About the “thief problem”

First, FA ele isn’t all that bad against thief in 1v1 situations NOW, you have enough burst to finish them, and if you don’t make many mistakes can win the fight. The only reason you lose that fight is because they can disengage and bleed you of CD’s. Weaver gives you both hard mitigation (barrier, evades in twist of fate), more soft mitigation (more prot, more weakness if traited), and more frequent, high damage pressure.

One of the major downsides of weaver from a counter-burst perspective is that it will be VERY hard to quick fire-swap + phoenix someone to 1-shot an overzealous thief. It might be able to be played around, smart rotating of your on-demand defenses and having access to burst.

I think FA ele will be stronger relative to thief than it is now, but it still most likely won’t have a place.

MORE LIKELY, however, if we look at history, is that ele competes for a damage-oriented bruiser-type role, which is less reliant on instant-access to specific CD’s like obsidian flesh but instead has a long rotation of defenses. I can see two great trait combos here:
- Air, arcana, weaver with either d/x or sw/x
- Water, arcana, weaver with sw/x

Thanks to some synergies in air and weaver, this is actually both offensively and defensively a great combo (counter condis with tons of superspeed stripping condis every 1/2s, great for kiting when needed, great pressure from all those air lighting strikes). Arcana gives you protection, and all the other things it always has, plus allows you to swap more often. With D/X, you now have a water field from the fire/water dual skill (also an evade), and a blast in either air/water or water/water.

More likely, sword/x is going to be the combo to use, as new-weapon skills are basically always more powerful than base-game weapons, and most viable pvp specs use their new weapon. Sword has a long (4s) water combo field on water 2, that you can blast with basically any element, and multi-blast if you attunement dance properly. The dual skills have a lot of ways to get barrier and other mitigation, as well as good ways to heal. If you have the water/arcana combo then you always have great options to cleanse, and weaver gives some really good bruiser-type traits. This trait combo will most likely feel like the old d/d ele on steroids with souped-up dodge rolls carrying you to victory behind cleanses, blasts, and barrier.

It’s true that FA isn’t all that bad in a 1v1 vs a thief, but neither specs should spend much time 1v1’ing in conquest anyway. Where FA struggles is against good thieves and revenants that more often than not are capable of shutting you down in teamfights. Still, I’m very intrigued to see what FA weaver brings to the table, as the additional dual attacks and barrier may cater to a more sustained-dmg playstyle. However, we don’t know yet if Weavers will have more protection uptime, as there’s a good chance Elemental Attunement (and Healing Ripple for that matter) will see some kind of ICD in the upcoming balance patch (I’d be very surprised if that is not the case), but hopefully a fair one just to make sure that you can’t abuse it (like getting 2 years of protection uptime for everyone around you by continuously attuning to earth while Weaving Self). The rest of your post I agree with, although there is obviously still a ton of testing and theorycrafting to be done.

EDIT: Half of the current meta-builds don’t use their respective new weapons, so it’s probably a little early to call sword/x the go-to weapon set.

Mejiora.9584:

Jski.6180:

@blackbead
FA is going to be a problme more so then 1v1 with thf. Its perma super speed as things stand. You may be close to perma super speed even with out FA but for a class like ele having super speed makes you unbelievable hard to pin down for all of its weapons i like to see how they make it work out. But who knows having super speed may let ele go true mages dmg glass and less of a bruser build making it where thf must be there to kill them in one burst.

Core fresh air ele already has next to permanent superspeed upkeep assuming that you are free to keep attacking (and critting) a target. Weaver won’t change that (outside of the elite where you get to keep perma superspeed should you want to). So you can already go see how it works out :o).

Well the thing is with core and tempest ele’s your still eating though your other atuments and you need them to swap to get get out of air. Weever will always have another atument to swap to that and air atument can be doubled swapped. I think making one with air have a longer duration but have an icd would go a long way to making sure its not making freash air to able to be both the best def effect and offensive effect for ele.

With the vitality Weaver trait we can finally use different amulets that don’t rely on it. Viper, Berserker and all the others won’t be out of the question and this might be the first time we’ll have actual build diversity (amulet-wise) in a very long time.

Weaver still seems like it’ll be heavily reliant on Water traits though.

Jski.6180:

Mejiora.9584:

Jski.6180:

@blackbead
FA is going to be a problme more so then 1v1 with thf. Its perma super speed as things stand. You may be close to perma super speed even with out FA but for a class like ele having super speed makes you unbelievable hard to pin down for all of its weapons i like to see how they make it work out. But who knows having super speed may let ele go true mages dmg glass and less of a bruser build making it where thf must be there to kill them in one burst.

Core fresh air ele already has next to permanent superspeed upkeep assuming that you are free to keep attacking (and critting) a target. Weaver won’t change that (outside of the elite where you get to keep perma superspeed should you want to). So you can already go see how it works out :o).

Well the thing is with core and tempest ele’s your still eating though your other atuments and you need them to swap to get get out of air. Weever will always have another atument to swap to that and air atument can be doubled swapped. I think making one with air have a longer duration but have an icd would go a long way to making sure its not making freash air to able to be both the best def effect and offensive effect for ele.

It’s true that the wait-time to get back into the same attunement that you just swapped out of is more than double the duration for core fresh air ele compared to weaver, but core ele with arcana will still be able to roll through a lot more attunement swaps than weaver (outside of Weave Self) simply because swapping attunement doesn’t put all your other attunements on a 4s cd. Now, with double-dipping into air with fresh air it’s not easy to tell who can actually swap more in and out of air, but remember when you fully attune to air you still trigger a new 4s cd on all other attunements. Anyways, it’s a valid point that you trade attunement cooldowns for air procs and superspeed on core ele, but remember that Weaver has drawbacks too when doing the fresh air dance, as each time you attune to air you will be locked out of other attunements for 4s, whereas with core ele you can always change to available attunements within the 1.5s global attunement cd. However, dual attacks and being able to weave in 4/5-skills of other attunement into air attunement (at least before double-dipping) should alleviate this problem to some extent.

Dahir.4158:

With the vitality Weaver trait we can finally use different amulets that don’t rely on it. Viper, Berserker and all the others won’t be out of the question and this might be the first time we’ll have actual build diversity (amulet-wise) in a very long time.

Weaver still seems like it’ll be heavily reliant on Water traits though.

Yeah, the trait gives you 120 vitality if you wield a sword, and 5% of your power and condition dmg as vitality regardless of your weapon. AFAIR This amounts to around 1200 + 1500 ~ 2700 HP with the new griefing stats in PvP, so you’d end up just shy of 15k HP with no toughness. This is probably worth it for sword builds, but remember you’re giving up a trait slot for it

EDIT: Why would you think Weaver relies on water traits though? With high superspeed uptime, conditions may not be that much of a problem! It’s true that Healing Ripple looks really strong for Weaver as it is right now, but I’d be very surprised to see it not get an ICD in the upcoming balance patch.

Mejiora.9584:

Dahir.4158:

With the vitality Weaver trait we can finally use different amulets that don’t rely on it. Viper, Berserker and all the others won’t be out of the question and this might be the first time we’ll have actual build diversity (amulet-wise) in a very long time.

Weaver still seems like it’ll be heavily reliant on Water traits though.

Yeah, the trait gives you 120 vitality if you wield a sword, and 5% of your power and condition dmg as vitality regardless of your weapon. AFAIR This amounts to around 1200 + 1500 ~ 2700 HP with the new griefing stats in PvP, so you’d end up just shy of 15k HP with no toughness. This is probably worth it for sword builds, but remember you’re giving up a trait slot for it

It’ll be good for those with condition damage and power stats but I really like the dual skills inflict weakness trait too. Weakness is just so good for defence against power and burst builds, very good for preventing dodge regent which if paired with decent chills can really make a huge difference in a protracted fight. As far as I can tell it has no ICD and when dual skills have about a 15-20s CD I can see high weakness uptime.

apharma.3741:

Mejiora.9584:

Dahir.4158:

With the vitality Weaver trait we can finally use different amulets that don’t rely on it. Viper, Berserker and all the others won’t be out of the question and this might be the first time we’ll have actual build diversity (amulet-wise) in a very long time.

Weaver still seems like it’ll be heavily reliant on Water traits though.

Yeah, the trait gives you 120 vitality if you wield a sword, and 5% of your power and condition dmg as vitality regardless of your weapon. AFAIR This amounts to around 1200 + 1500 ~ 2700 HP with the new griefing stats in PvP, so you’d end up just shy of 15k HP with no toughness. This is probably worth it for sword builds, but remember you’re giving up a trait slot for it

It’ll be good for those with condition damage and power stats but I really like the dual skills inflict weakness trait too. Weakness is just so good for defence against power and burst builds, very good for preventing dodge regent which if paired with decent chills can really make a huge difference in a protracted fight. As far as I can tell it has no ICD and when dual skills have about a 15-20s CD I can see high weakness uptime.

The trait is called Superior Elements and is definitely also worth exploring. Weakness is such a potent condition. It does have a 10s ICD though, so the very max you can achieve is 4s of weakness every 10s.

I am looking forward to d/d weever roaming and kill shot staff weever with or with out super speed FA truth be told.

Jski.6180:

I am looking forward to d/d weever roaming and kill shot staff weever with or with out super speed FA truth be told.

Kill Shot Staff would be awesome. Unfortunately Pile Driver doesn’t even do as much dmg as a lvl 1 Killshot. Obviously numbers can be tweaked and it’s hard to compare damage across classes, but don’t expect to one-shot anyone with it :P. The 2s daze that it provides along with the pierce is nice though (especially with potential LR procs!)

EDIT: typo

Mejiora.9584:

Jski.6180:

I am looking forward to d/d weever roaming and kill shot staff weever with or with out super speed FA truth be told.

Kill Shot Staff would be awesome. Unfortunately Pile Driver doesn’t even do as much dmg as a lvl 1 Killshot. Obviously numbers can be tweaked and it’s hard to compare damage across classes, but don’t expact to one-shot anyone with it :P. The 2s daze that it provides along with the pierce is nice though (especially with potential LR procs!)

Good point i am realty thinking staff weever is going to play like the old staff ele – standing still for metor to land odds are your not going to get time to pull it off any more with the one shot dmg effects weever is bring to staff.

Dahir.4158:

With the vitality Weaver trait we can finally use different amulets that don’t rely on it. Viper, Berserker and all the others won’t be out of the question and this might be the first time we’ll have actual build diversity (amulet-wise) in a very long time.

Weaver still seems like it’ll be heavily reliant on Water traits though.

Viper, berserker probably won’t be optimal even for glass cannon build if new barrier mechanic won’t be something glorious. Berserker for example is only used by war…class with the best base defence stats in game with 2 invulnerability skills (one from trait, one on demand) blocks and great sustain when bursting.

Marauder will be way better right for now as condi is still viable and god knows how viable in upcoming meta. If you want to survive condi you need vitality and cleanses.

I think that for now we are closer to bruiser spec then glass cannon but we will see.

Small note: something tells me that HoT meta will be superior at start of new expac but we will see at Path of Fire first monthly or Unity Tournament.

I see two possible builds.

Scepter/focus with weaver/air/arcane and half arcane half stance utilities and sw/d or d/d condition bruiser with half stance half cantrip utilities.

The first one taking advantage of superspeed and the last one taking advantage of barriers and extra vitality.

WP explains Barrier thing:

-You need to destroy it first to start to damage health pool

-Barrier is temporary and needed to sustain

-Scales from vitality and healing power

-Vitality rise max barrier value cap

-Healing power rise amount of barrier gain

-Can’t be boon riped

Oh yea we will gain barrier on core ele from earth. Even Tempest will have it.

I wonder how it interacts vs condi damage

kitten mender/sage/magi looks really meta…again…can’t say that little disappointed.