Guild Wars 2

After having played around with a couple of builds on weaver, some using air and some using arcane, I’ve found that the class just feels absurdly clunky.

A few of my major complaints:

1. Sword Auto Chains
This is a big one. Changing attunement while in an auto attack chain will reset you to the first attack in your new element’s chain. This is extremely bothersome, as part of the fun with the class is ‘weaving’ the elements together, no? It also just feels absolutely awful and slow from a gameplay perspective.

2. Attunement CD
Another big one for me. The long, 4s (3.75 with arcane) attunement recharge just eliminates any sense of flow the class may have. If we’re supposed to be doing a stance dance, we should have more ready access to our other skills. No ele likes to sit there and autoattack if they can help it, we like to be more active than that.

3. Sword damage
I don’t know about you guys but I found sword’s damage to be severely underwhelming. In anything that wasn’t fire, I felt like I was hitting like a wet noodle, especially given how low your damage output is if you ever have to swap to earth or water. Water was the big offender, I know it’s not a DPS element, but if we’re a melee spec and we have to switch to it to heal, please let us keep doing respectable damage while we’re stuck in water.

4. Barrier numbers are absolute trash
With how Weaver is looking to be played, in theory, we’re applying barrier through the constant cycling and usage of our dual skills, right? If we had greater access to attunement swapping, these barrier numbers would be great because we’d have a much easier time cycling through dual skills.

5. Schizophrenic gameplay
Weaver feels like it’s an attempted marriage of two things; tactical decision making and wild button mashing. Ele has always been about using skills as they come off cooldown in other attunements to maximize damage. Most of our PvE builds do very very little autoattacking (Not counting you, FA D/Wh) because we tend to be swapping elements to cast what we need. But weaver seems to discourage that, because of the global attunement recharge, while at the same time encouraging constantly throwing out dual attacks for survivability.

All in all I’m not really sure what Anet was building when they created the Weaver. Did they want a high octane, piano playing elite spec that seeks to blow as many CDs as possible? Or did they want a slower, tactical decision maker that sets up its own combos and is adaptable?

Your outlook and feel of this spec is very similar to how I feel about it… the specialization just seems clunky. My main issues with it is the damage it does and its surviveability

With the risk that is required, either the surviveability needs to go up or they need to adjust the damage, or both. Either or, the dmg is not on par with considering the work needed to get in and having to survive with being so squishy and up close.

And I know that this is just beta, but with dmg being a problem, I have only a choice of building dmg (which is still minor) and dying to condis, or building to survive and doing little to no damage.

In PvP you could already create a character of other class and crush an elementalist just by button mashing, without knowing how to play that class.

Now with Weaver it’s even worse. The elementalist became complex to a point where it’s completely absurd to even try to learn it, specially since at the end of all that practice you will still be worse than any other class with much more fluid and dynamic gameplay, with skills that aren’t constantly on cooldown.

Weaver was their only chance to convince me to buy this expansion pack, since there is no competitive content in PoF anyway. And honestly, the swords animation and skills are boring, the mobility is mediocre, the defenses are terrible, there is no synergy with other trait lines, the damage is way under tuned and on top of that it’s freaking unplayable.

It’s full of illogical complexities, you sometimes get 2-3 fields with no blasts finishers, sometimes 2 blasts and no fields, everything is completly kittened up.

*They need to change the core mechanic of how this work, as someone suggested: Using weapon swap to swap the attuments of skills 1-2 and skills 4-5 would be the best place to start. But please remove the cool downs and we shouldn’t need a skill to “undo weaver” it should be playable as it is.

Also: If you are in Fire/water, there should be no cooldown to attune to Fire/Fire, and in all similar cases, remove the cooldown on single attunements and let us double-tap.*

Isnt that what allways has been Arenanets definition of the Elementalist…

It requires a huge amount of work to compete in some degree with other classes… but in the end the class has allways felt weak.

Number 2 so much. for the weaver being an attunement dancing spec this seems so counter productive. The trade off for this spec should be the fact we have to attune twice to get to survival 3 skills, and the complexity the dual skills add to the rotation. Unravel shows how much the GCD sucks, we get a utility to undo the whole elite spec mechanic.

If you compare to other classes our trade off is insane.
-Mesmer replaces a dodge with a blur (more or less =).
-Thief a gap closer with a mark for higher dps (why would a long range weapon need a gap closer?).
-Warrior use their adrenaline from an attack to an absorb with a counter.
-Etc

as usual… You need more effort and skill to perform like other classes. So if you have fun in the challenge and myriads of combination for not being better enjoy …

MasterMc.7543:

Number 2 so much. for the weaver being an attunement dancing spec this seems so counter productive. The trade off for this spec should be the fact we have to attune twice to get to survival 3 skills, and the complexity the dual skills add to the rotation. Unravel shows how much the GCD sucks, we get a utility to undo the whole elite spec mechanic.

If you compare to other classes our trade off is insane.
-Mesmer replaces a dodge with a blur (more or less =).
-Thief a gap closer with a mark for higher dps (why would a long range weapon need a gap closer?).
-Warrior use their adrenaline from an attack to an absorb with a counter.
-Etc

yer wasn’t even comparing so much. only compared with the necro that sacrifices reaper, which is kind of a lot but the power it gains is incredibly strong.
even here i’ve been very dissapointed with the elementalist (especially as a staff ele).

so yes i do agree with these ^^

Core ele was considered hard to play because its complex. Now weaver follows. But all we need is practice. It will get fluid in 2 months

mazut.4296:

Core ele was considered hard to play because its complex. Now weaver follows. But all we need is practice. It will get fluid in 2 months

But still underwhelming, and forced into the same arcana/water combo to survive.

Weaver Elemental Flow just takes getting used to.

Weaver has an incredibly high skill ceiling but there is simply no reward for learning the class.

“High complexity high reward” is what it should be, but instead it’s just complex and weak. Damage numbers, barrier numbers and even heals are a joke. You can go full glass cannon and lose all matches, or you can go condi with no sustain. Or you can go sustain and just “be there” and smile about how useless you are.

Power builds have become useless ever since people realized that 1 stat for damage (condi dmg) is better than having to invest into 3 stats for damage (power). Power builds need Power, Precision AND Ferocity. There is almost no space left for defensive stats. Condi builds only need A SINGLE STAT to do the same damage. That leaves them more options for defensive stats which is why condi is meta in WvW.

Build theorycrafting is boring since 2 of the trait lines are pretty much locked in must-haves (Arcane & Weaver). Or have you ever tried to do WvW without Swiftness and Protection?

Unravel hexes – as a grandmaster trait – only removes movement impairing conditions and has a ridiculous ICD despite how useless it is.

Polaric Leap has a range that is a complete joke. It should be 900 range.

Stances don’t have any condi clear so that cantrips are still superior choices in nearly every slot. The one stance trait that we have gives us a SINGLE stack of stability (have fun surviving in WvW…).

The “undo weaver” skill is a sarcastic and bad joke. As if I’d take a utility slot to undo the elite spec that I’m playing. Just make re-attuning to the same attunement have 1s cd or even lower.

Overall the class is not worth learning since the reward for mastering the class is too low.

The disappointment that is called Weaver will prevent me from buying Path of Fire. Money saved. I’m not buying a horribly designed and underpowered class for a full 30 bucks.

I felt the flow was ok, I agree I did have to do full atuo chains while waiting although I’m used to filtering while cds are up cause I main engi. I like the idea of weave and having a rotation like engi’s 3/4 kit rotations.

Agree with the damage though, was low.

I love the analogy of it flowing like a river of bricks, think that really summed it up perfectly.

From what I’ve seen before the weekend I was really hyped for the weaver. My first character was my ele back in early 2013 and it has been my main for a very long time. I changed to rev because I was underwhelmed with tempest (overcharge is nice and all but it should be a core feature of ele tbh). Now with the weaver I felt like this is my chance to get my ele back as my main. Well, I’ve had my chance of playing weaver now and man… I’m dissapointed on so many levels.

I never had any trouble with managing my elements, but now? There is a lot more to keep track of with absolutely no reward for doing so. Not only do I have to keep track of my cd’s but I also have to remember in which order I switched my elements. If I use S/D and am in fire/earth and switched to earth last, the next time I switch it will affect my main hand skills. So if I want air 4 on my dagger to either close a gap or get away from an enemy I’m just kitten out of luck, because I won’t get it the next time I switch. Without arcane I have to wait 8 seconds to get the skill I want. I am “weaving” much faster without having the weaver as a trait line while doing more damage, which kinda defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?

And as already stated multiple times, the damage is way too low to even consider the sword in any game type. If I have to get up close, I want to deal damage. I can do that more effective with the dagger. The sword doesn’t add anything. It’s not an alternative damage dealing main-hand and it doesn’t keep me alive any longer than the dagger does. I also lose my overcharge so I deal even less damage.

With how the weaver is right now I won’t play it. I’ll still play my ele as my main again tho.

after years of chill being our cryptonite and mainly that because of its effect on our atunement cd i scratch my head to the bottom of my feet what inspiration overcame the creator to actually advertise that as our next elite spec.