Alright let me introduce myself,
Im Aiden, im an ele main since release and i’ve played well over 5000 hours on ele.
I’ve tested out weaver for the past 2 days straight since the demo launched and i’ve found quite abit of issues with the Weaver.
To begin, weaver is supposed and quoted by the devs to be a “dmg dealing bruiser” yet it just feels like mediocre dmg with zero survivability at such a close range due to us not being able to pressure our enemies.
I’ve been practicing Weaver against a Deadeye, Holosmith, Mirage, Spellbreaker, Scourge and Firebrand.
So far the Weaver was able to deal a little bit of pressure against Holosmiths but in clear numbers, with the exact same amulet the holosmith did 4x more dmg in a single skill than any of the weaver skills this clearly is not a fair thing due to the fact that Weaver has pretty slow Cast times compared to the cast times of the other specs and we are the most squishy even when traited into more surviveable specs like water, earth or arcane. To add fuel to the fire weaver as a hybrid doesnt deliver enough conditions to keep up the pressured dmg for a decent high risk high reward playstyle, if we wanted to go condi based, we should honestly just play Tempest as it offers more conditions and more surviveability with auramancer traits.
To conclude the dmg is just lack luster.
Now lets move on to the survivability of weaver.
Weaver has 2 nice evades in the sword skills, and a nice evade in the utility slots aka being Twist of Faith, Riptide and Earthen vortex. In my opinion Weaver does not have any issues with the ICD atunement swapping, since we have enough evades/ when we get a dmg buff to dmg enough pressured dmg to wait out the 4 seconds to go into offhand earth for our obby flesh / magnetic wave, or other means of avoiding dmg.
The heal skill in my opinion actually does its job and provides allot of healing, though the initial heal might be a little low compared to like the warrior heal, maybe a 500+ health would do the trick already.
To conclude Weaver survivability WOULD be good if we had more dmg.
Now lets move on to the mechanics of Weaver.
I really enjoy how the Weaver offers survivability with the evades and heals though one thing im uncertain about it the Gale strike, which takes 3/4 seconds to cast and has a range of 170, it is just too slow of a hit for a stun which can be stunbroken.
Other than that the leaps feel abit short, though in my opinion it shouldnt matter TOO much, a s mall buff would be appericiated but not something of my concern.
The combat in my opinion is smooth for an ele, since i played d/d ele for most of my time on gw2 i can really relate to sword, its pretty much a better dagger main hand with no dmg.
The Flame Uprising skill is slow and does little dmg for the slow cast time, so that deffinitly should be buffed.
Overall the mechanics of weaver in my honest opinion feels good and right for the spec.
My final thoughts.
If Weaver got more Pressured power dmg, around a 25%-50% increase in flatt dmg, and maybe a slight buff in speed then the class would suffice as a nice bruiser, the elementalist class always was squishy, and i dont want that to be changed alhowever the current state weaver is in does not enough pressured dmg or gap closes to counter fact that the ele is so squishy, we were never ment to be able to face tank high bursts, and its a rewarding playstyle if you could dodge and avoid it, though at the moment Weaver has no Dmg to deal to pressure your enemy, so they can facetank our dmg whilst putting up 8-10k crits on us 2shotting a marauder build.
