With the weaver, the elementalist appears to become more complex and naturally, it’s hard to see the design philosophy when you’re overwhelmed by an insane amount of possibilities. After taking a look into the new sword weapon skills and the weaver traits, it became quite clear to me what Arenanet intends to do and what the meta in PvE might look after the release of the addon.
My assumption is that the weaver meta will be an earth/fire power/condition hybrid relying on burning, bleeding and direct damage. Why? Take a look at the sword earth skills in this video:
0:48
Earth Sword #1 will be a mix of direct damage and bleeding. Earth Sword #2 is a blast finisher, again with direct damage and bleeding. The hybrid skill will deal direct and burning damage.
Here are the sword fire skills:
1:22
Again, we see a mix of condition and direct damage. So these five skills make perfect sense to become a rotation while swapping between earth and fire.
(fire,earth) fire/earth hybrid #3 -> 3x auto attack -> fire #2 -> attune to earth (earth, fire) earth #2 (combo finisher in fire field) -> 3x auto attack -> back to fire, repeat
It becomes even more evident if you consider the fact that dual attunement lets you benefit from the passive toughness and power boni you get from the earth and fire traitlines at the same time. Here is a link to the fire/earth traits that would synergize a lot with the new sword skills and weaver traits.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQFgdAlNIIAYRAIUeAmYwOoIA-TRx0wAEU/B2+DGU+B4EAaBIrEEA-e
The weaver traits are shown here:
3:10
The traits for this build would be superior elements, weaver’s prowess and elements of rage. Elemental polyphony would constantly grant you +120 power and +120 toughness. With sigil of accuracy on one of your weapons and sigil of fire as utility, you get about 20% crit chance without any precision gear. Now for the synergies:
+ 270 power
+ 270 toughness
+ 10 % toughness converted to condition damage
+ 10% power converted to condition damage
+ 10% damage increase against burning
+ 5% damage against bleeding
Not mentioned are the flat condition damage and duration increases from your other traits and weapon sigils/runes. The rune of choice would be the superior rune of the berserker. If you get some precision from your gear and get 30-40% critical chance, you could even benefit from the 14% power to ferocity bonus from elements of rage. You will have permanent fury because of a blast finisher in your fire field every 8 seconds and the persisting flames trait.
With primordial stance, the weaver has a strong damage utiltiy that synergizes well with this build.
2:22
So, a typical rotation would look like this:
Start in (fire, earth), cast sigil of fire (and maintain the passive effect), cast primordial stance, fire/earth hybrid #3 -> 3x auto attack -> fire #2 -> attune to earth (earth, fire) earth #2 -> 6x auto attack -> back to fire (now with 6x auto attack), repeat and keep on cooldown. One Rotation will be around 16 seconds, 8 seconds for each attunement because the sword #2 skills have 8s cooldowns. By taking the cooldown reduction traits in earth and fire, one rotation would take about 12 seconds.
The elite would give you even more condition damage and toughness and reduce the cooldown of attunement changes to 2s, meaning that you could build in double fire and double earth attunement to gain access to your regular sword #3 skills and the 10% damage effect from elements of rage. If you chose focus as an offhand weapon, your survival abilities earth #4 and #5 would be immediately available 75% of the time.
What do you think will the new pve meta be?
(edited by cursE.1794)