Let's assume Ele, specifically weaver, gets buffed (PvP).

Pretense

Everyone believes their ideas will fix the game and I'm no different. I'm just a salty computer science student who is upset @ the last balance patch and finally decided to share my opinions. I'm an ex-ele main and have moved primarily to spellbreaker/thief in PvP and as a result climbed from silver 2 to top 250 leaderboards within a span of a month. As such, I hope that what I believe is my unbiased opinions will help potential future changes.

Before we get into buffs, I'd like to mention sc/f and how much burst that it has on weaver. I'm sure people wouldn't enjoy a low telegraph 1s burst combo. Core fresh air doesn't 100-0 squishy builds thus giving opponents a chance to react. I'd like weaver to be higher damage but carry over the same style of combat. There are a few reasons that caused weaver to be more of an issue than core ele whilst utilizing fresh air.

1. Weaver has more damage modifiers, albeit fair due to difficult access to defensive offhand skills.
2. Tempest defense giving you 20% damage modifier on CC'd targets i.e. starting combo with earthen synergy. Fair enough, not 100% up-time.
3. Double fresh-air proc = double air attune = double static discharge. This is where the real issue begins to occur.Core fresh air does a combo such as: arcane blast -> non-air spell -> attune air -> arc lightning -> lightning strike = 5 hitsWeaver fresh air rotation follows such that: arcane blast -> earthen synergy || (dragon tooth -> plasma beam) -> attune air -> arc lightning -> attune air -> lightning strike = 6 or 7 hitsBoth combos could be further extended by adding hurl into the rotation while starting off in earth. Weaver while being higher damage due to modifiers also get's 1 additional static discharge hit causing an insane amount of burst. As much as I'd like to see ele buffs, I'm sure people wouldn't enjoy playing against such builds if they were buffed to the point of being competitively viable. As a solution lightning discharge could have an ICD of 1s. Specfically 1s because this wouldn't affect core ele's rotation due to the 1s global attunement swap on core ele. Whether 1s ICD on static discharge is enough to tone done the burst of sc/f weaver is debatable. Further number adjustments should follow if weaver were to get buffed.

Now onto the topic of potential weaver buffs (it's going to happen right? Especially after the last patch). The current functionality of ele's melee weapons will never become viable in my opinion. A large portion of dual skills and sword #3 skills are pure damage. Melee damage is relatively useless if there isn't any means to apply it. As Anet seems to avoid functionality changes to skills I wouldn't bet on buffs such as range increased or skill reworks, but I digress. So let's assume ele gets buffed in terms of traits and numerically on skills. Ele currently suffers from the lack of damage but it is actually a result of ele's inherently low defense (a strong offense comes from a strong defense?). As such, ele buffs shouldn't be "Increased flame uprising damage by 50%" (Nov 7th cough). Ele's weakness comes from is it's low base stats in armor/vitality and reliance on water trait line. If defensive buffs were to be given, then it would also have the added benefit of not tremendously increasing ele's strengths in PvE.

Armor/vitality:Currently Ele has light armor with a measly 11.6k Base HP. It was obvious that anet intended to fix this via the master's fortitude trait in weaver spec. Ele builds typically run amulets that increase HP up to 17.2k (sage, avatar, or marauder). Now let's compare that to a professions that also fulfills a bruiser role such as a warrior. Warriors have 19.2k base HP with heavy armor. Coupled with a demolisher amulet (power/percision/ferocity/toughness) warrior will now do more damage whilst being hardier than ele. Ele currently stacks vitality to survive conditions whilst having low total armor and being weak to power builds. As such, possible solution could include buffing Master fortitude and providing protection up-time via other traits. Master fortitude could receive an additional 120 toughness and 5% toughness from condi/power. The 120 flat vit/toughness should apply to all melee weapons as opposed to just sword. Protection boon can come from one of the weaker traits current such as bolstered elements and/or invigorating strikes. This would allow ele to stray away from defensive amulets and toward's marauder or demolisher depending on match-up.

Reliance on water traits:This sections primarily focuses on the synergy (or lack thereof) of water trait line with core ele and weaver. All ele builds currently rely heavily on water traits to cleanse conditions. However, offensive/defensive traits scales independent of the other. Thus DPS roles taking excessive healing traits are inefficient. The main reason ele's trait into water is for the condition cleanse, as such, heals such as soothing mist, healing ripples, and aquatic benevolence have very little impact due to a of lack of healing power and/or outgoing healing multipliers. A sc/f, s/d, or s/f ele should not trait for group healing as their weapon set does not excel at it, i'd rather leave that to the dedicated support such as firebrand or tempest. Potential solutions could include giving self condition cleanse (NOT GROUP) to traits outside of water, e.g. bolstered elements and/or invigorating strikes in weaver or arcane traits for generic ele condi cleanse. On a side note I will say that it's okay for tempest to rely on water traits as their kit is complemented well by supportive healing buffs. Tempest is a whole new issue as it's weakness is likely due to a result of how powerful firebrand is at fulfilling the same role.

Additional notes:-Zephyr's speed is redundant as ele has consistent access to swiftness and super speed.-If Bolstered elements and/or Invigorating strikes become viable choices for weaver, the barrier could act as a pseudo-healing replacement for lost healing if dropping water traits and healing power amulets. Keep in mind barrier was changed in the Dec 12th patch to no longer decay, last a full 5s, and increased in intensity by 15% across all professions.-Not a tempest expert so will leave my opinions out on that.-Every profession should have at least 1 viable build/spec. Currently ele and rev are lacking.

edit: all changes are grammatical. I'm not an English major :)

All Weaver really needs is a buff to sword and some trait tweaks here and there. The other weapons are all fine, in most cases MUCH better than the Sword which is kinda sad. The sword needs damage buffs across the board, as they seem to just hit like a wet noodle. You shouldn't have to be full zerk gear in order to deal damage. with a blooming sword!

Trait wise:

Elemental Refreshment: This just flat out either needs at the least 150% buff or just flat out replaced. Its just so, so useless as it is currently. It needs a BIG buff to make it useful.

Elemental Polyphony: Make this so when you're single attuned you get the attunement buff TWICE

Invigorating Strikes: Change this. It sucks. My ideaBolstered Defense: when you have Barrier you take 90% Condition damage. Gain a Barrier when you are critically hit, 15second ICD barrier to be like 2-3k Base

Most other ele specs are mostly fine, i would revert the Diamond Skin nerf! Make it good again and make Ele a threat to bunker condi players. It was SO easy to counter before it got nerfed into the ground. The problem was Anet knew the playerbase would rather see everything else nerfed rather than adapt and try to improve as a player.

Bring back Arcane Fury as well!

@ArmageddonAsh.6430 said:All Weaver really needs is a buff to sword and some trait tweaks here and there. The other weapons are all fine, in most cases MUCH better than the Sword which is kinda sad. The sword needs damage buffs across the board, as they seem to just hit like a wet noodle. You shouldn't have to be full zerk gear in order to deal damage. with a blooming sword!

Trait wise:

Elemental Refreshment: This just flat out either needs at the least 150% buff or just flat out replaced. Its just so, so useless as it is currently. It needs a BIG buff to make it useful.

Elemental Polyphony: Make this so when you're single attuned you get the attunement buff TWICE

Invigorating Strikes: Change this. It sucks. My ideaBolstered Defense: when you have Barrier you take 90% Condition damage. Gain a Barrier when you are critically hit, 15second ICD barrier to be like 2-3k Base

Most other ele specs are mostly fine, i would revert the Diamond Skin nerf! Make it good again and make Ele a threat to bunker condi players. It was SO easy to counter before it got nerfed into the ground. The problem was Anet knew the playerbase would rather see everything else nerfed rather than adapt and try to improve as a player.

Bring back Arcane Fury as well!

I suggested changes that could potentially allow weaver to drop the water trait line & run more offense trinkets whilst still being capable of surviving. I don't think it'd be fair for a player to run sage or avatar amulet while doing significant damage. The current sword weaver can already do relevant damage if running marauder/demolisher/zerker amulet and the wet noodle feeling everyone haves is due to running sage/avatar whilst running supportive water traits.

Invigorating strikes definitely does suck. Vigor and an barrier isn't horrible, but definitely not worth the slot of a GM trait. A condi-cleanse on dual-skill usage could increase it's viability.

I've rarely seen game devs revert previous changes so I'd doubt arcane fury will come back. But the new trait is so weak and lacks anything special. Definitely, needs to be changed or buffed.

@ChivalrousKnight.7201 said:I don't think it'd be fair for a player to run sage or avatar amulet while doing significant damage. The current sword weaver can already do relevant damage if running marauder/demolisher/zerker amulet and the wet noodle feeling everyone haves is due to running sage/avatar whilst running supportive water traits.

I have 2k Power, 200% crit damage and in WvW, i still hit like a wet noodle. As ele you shouldnt be forced into running full zerk in order to deal damage seeing as we have tiny health and armor. Sword without a doubt does need to have increased damage. Not saying for all of those that are running bunker gear/stats but at the same time, i kinda feel like having 2k power and 200% crit damage i SHOULD be doing more damage. I know i would be on my other characters even with less stats.

@ArmageddonAsh.6430 said:

@ChivalrousKnight.7201 said:I don't think it'd be fair for a player to run sage or avatar amulet while doing significant damage. The current sword weaver can already do relevant damage if running marauder/demolisher/zerker amulet and the wet noodle feeling everyone haves is due to running sage/avatar whilst running supportive water traits.

Any suggestions then? I personally feel #3 skills are all too weak to warrant attuning to same element twice. Pyro-vortex could have it's damage shifted towards the initial hit as opposed to an avoidable pulsing damage. All #2 skills are strong as they offer utility alongside damage. Earth/air #3 is CC so it's good. Lava skin feels strong. water/air and water/earth could be bumped up a little damage wise if they remain the same functionally. All autos aside from fire and maybe air do abysmal damage. Just wouldn't want too much damage buffs to avoid any new cheesy 1 burst builds (even if they aren't viable).

Buffing sword alone wont benefit any other ele spec's or weaver build variations though.

@ChivalrousKnight.7201 said:Any suggestions then? I personally feel #3 skills are all too weak to warrant attuning to same element twice. Pyro-vortex could have it's damage shifted towards the initial hit as opposed to an avoidable pulsing damage. All #2 skills are strong as they offer utility alongside damage. Earth/air #3 is CC so it's good. Lava skin feels strong. water/air and water/earth could be bumped up a little damage wise if they remain the same functionally. All autos aside from fire and maybe air do abysmal damage. Just wouldn't want too much damage buffs to avoid any new cheesy 1 burst builds (even if they aren't viable).

Well, for a start they could improve power scaling across the board. I do think several of the sword 3 skills both full attuned and mixed are kinda rubbish. Its hard to say how to improve them, most just need cast time tweaks and/or range improvements as well as better power scaling. Lava Skin needs a MUCH better Barrier. I would even say at least DOUBLE its current strength

I kinda like Invigorating Strikes ... lots of synergy with Evasive Arcana builds. Of course comparatively speaking its hard to sacrifice Woven Stride/Cleansing Water for it. I was playing with a build similar to this trying to make it work recently: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAsYncMAt4iF5C+4CM5iFDALIAkJ7hFVyyQY4+Uvqn1A-jJR6gAAnAg/HAwaZAt9HAA The only thing I really dont like about this build is the abysmal armor score - decent vitality though.

Making lava skin and polaric leap instant casts would be a good start. Disable aa chain breaks when attuning, and enable tailored victory while moving. Increase Fire2 range and travel speed, reduce aftercast. Only then, when all the clunky stuff is removed, tweak the numbers if necessary.

What hurts sword weaver the most is that the full damage potential is hybrid, needing you to invest stats in power-precision-ferocity-condition damage, and only 2 evades for the squishiest profession out there, while some other have stealth+more evades+more mobility+more vitality/armor. Taking also into account the necessity of running water to condi cleanse in pvp, that leaves not much room to make a good use of the stat investment. Is there any prof that needs 2 GM traits to survive condies?

Dual skills add protection.Weaver elite grant stability every time u change elements.Stance skills grant protection.Remove ratio between max hp and shields and just have shield hp be based on raw stats.

Done for free anet next time ima have you charge you guys.

(PVP) Personally my main problem of both waver and tempest that there are not big upgrades to core specs like other elite specs on other classes. Like usable addition unique skills, weapons with new functionalities. Almost every expansion spec is power creep. In case of ele's specs it's not:

-Tempest is without overloads is regular ele who can only heal and heal all the time. And guess what? You can't mostly use overloads cause there easy to interruptible for everything that is not blind. There is no other elite spec in this game that it's main mechanic basically can be completely forgotten. Maybe it wasn't that bad if tempest was not so much healing power dependant. But it is, so you can realistically you can run it only with magi or mender and that's it. Impressive build craft potential.

-Waver is much better concept on paper and sounds like proper upgrade for ele: it expands attument swaping and managing 4 skill bars, brings I-frames that core ele doesn't provided in swords skills and new utilities. On paper unfortunately. In fact it works like NERF to core ele - access to skills is overcomplicated and dragged down by internal cooldown making offhand skills unreliable when you really need them. So waver is all about using only first 3 skill on all bars...2 less then core, 8 by total. So waver is nerfed ele for me.

How is it no one ever mention weaver gets a personal barrier on dual attacks? That's what it brings compared to core ele. Maybe we forget that because it simply sucks.

I've always wondered why Weaver doesn't have a trait or skill similar to Spellbreaker's Magebane Tether. As Weaver is mostly designed around Sword which is a full melee spec, it totally makes sense to get advantages if you stay on your target.

@"MyPuppy.8970" said:How is it no one ever mention weaver gets a personal barrier on dual attacks? That's what it brings compared to core ele. Maybe we forget that because it simply sucks.

Thats an understatement, i WISH it just sucked. It is SO pointlessly useless. When you can take 5k auto attack hits and insane condi bombs the "barrier" you get is barely enough to stop even 10% of an auto attack :/ Lol

Sword Weaver in sPvP feels slow.Sustain is fair but not awesome, because you must stop attacking for 8 sec to heal yourself. Damage heavily lacks some burst combo.Well, it's possible to have class without burst combo but in exchange it should be able to deal damage constantly (like Scrapper). 8 sec pause to heal yourself totally breaks this concept.Moreover, I think Scrapper is much better than Sword Weaver: better sustain heal from regeneration and better burst heal, better damage output, better defensive skills, a bit easier to play.Just buffing sword damage won't help. Reducing attunement switch CD to 2 sec and adding some burst combo may help.

sword/dagger weaver in pvp/wvw needs access to a reflect they buffed conjure earth shield not to long ago but that does not really solve the problem. I mean it really is pretty funny how easy it is to kite sword weaver, the reflect they gave to conjure earth shield needs to be applied at the same time shield is equipped or it is just not worth slotting as a utility.

it was cool to get a reflect skill in the utility bar but it is under whelming to say the least the reflect should at least be applied when equipping the earth shield and on magnetic surge so u can reactively reflect a ranged burst instead of trying to proactively trying to equip a shield than use the reflect

I always feel like these posts lack some very basic insights. When you propose to give ele more sustain/protection/cleanse, so they can shift away from defensive amulets etc., how do you make it so you're not just buffing defensive setups. How do you make them not stay ahead of whatever offensive options you're trying to buff. When you talk about base stats, try to look just a bit further than 'warrior has so much more hp and armour game not fair'. The reasoning behind guardian and ele's low hp pool is their high healing potential. When warrior's healing becomes comparable, THAT's when things get hairy, as we've seen in the past. Now that ele's healing is substantially higher than warrior's for example, what do we still lack? Pressure. We shouldn't do as much damage as warriors, but we should be allowed to put out comparable pressure over a while. A sword weaver completely lacks any sort of execute, ranged cc/snare, burst or gap closing (to PoF standards). I know you say something like this here: "Melee damage is relatively useless if there isn't any means to apply it", but try to be more clear and succinct on these matters if you're trying to be helpful.

You address weaver's burst potential as potentially problematic. I agree and appreciate that, but do you not also see sword weaver's bunkering potential as a problem waiting to hatch?

It's important that you nail exactly what you're trying to accomplish. Everyone can agree that every profession should have a viable build. Literally noone seems to agree how we should get there.

I personally think the easiest way to balance ele is to increase the base HP from 11 645 to 15 645.

So Fresh air weaver doesn't need to run 11 645 hp and Sw/D can be competitive with other tanky builds.

@"Gokil.2543" said:I always feel like these posts lack some very basic insights. When you propose to give ele more sustain/protection/cleanse, so they can shift away from defensive amulets etc., how do you make it so you're not just buffing defensive setups. How do you make them not stay ahead of whatever offensive options you're trying to buff. When you talk about base stats, try to look just a bit further than 'warrior has so much more hp and armour game not fair'. The reasoning behind guardian and ele's low hp pool is their high healing potential. When warrior's healing becomes comparable, THAT's when things get hairy, as we've seen in the past. Now that ele's healing is substantially higher than warrior's for example, what do we still lack? Pressure. We shouldn't do as much damage as warriors, but we should be allowed to put out comparable pressure over a while. A sword weaver completely lacks any sort of execute, ranged cc/snare, burst or gap closing (to PoF standards). I know you say something like this here: "Melee damage is relatively useless if there isn't any means to apply it", but try to be more clear and succinct on these matters if you're trying to be helpful.

You address weaver's burst potential as potentially problematic. I agree and appreciate that, but do you not also see sword weaver's bunkering potential as a problem waiting to hatch?

It's important that you nail exactly what you're trying to accomplish. Everyone can agree that every profession should have a viable build. Literally noone seems to agree how we should get there.

I've always hoped for sword/dagger weaver to evolve into the highest APM build with extremely high risk high reward, very evasive with high dmg potential with as little passives running the show as possible. A 100% pure talent build.

One sentence : revisit ferocity modifier and give more passive ferocity to ele but since healing amulet don't have it, it would be useless i guess

More efficient barrier and more skills that applies it on sword (the stance is totally worthless)

the problems with sword weaver:it has to take a fully defensive trait setup because many defensive traits only function paired with others, and it's super squishy and has no good defensive skillsit is extremely prone to being kited. not even gs/dagger warrior is easier to kite

tone down its ability to self apply regen a trillion times per second and give it some skills and traits that clear conditions, and it's no longer pigeonholed into taking cleansing water on every build. but then you still have to do something about it being tied with reaper for being the worst melee at gap closing, and unlike reaper not having access to a ranged weapon or perma chill

@"Gokil.2543" said:I always feel like these posts lack some very basic insights. When you propose to give ele more sustain/protection/cleanse, so they can shift away from defensive amulets etc., how do you make it so you're not just buffing defensive setups. How do you make them not stay ahead of whatever offensive options you're trying to buff. When you talk about base stats, try to look just a bit further than 'warrior has so much more hp and armour game not fair'. The reasoning behind guardian and ele's low hp pool is their high healing potential. When warrior's healing becomes comparable, THAT's when things get hairy, as we've seen in the past. Now that ele's healing is substantially higher than warrior's for example, what do we still lack? Pressure. We shouldn't do as much damage as warriors, but we should be allowed to put out comparable pressure over a while. A sword weaver completely lacks any sort of execute, ranged cc/snare, burst or gap closing (to PoF standards). I know you say something like this here: "Melee damage is relatively useless if there isn't any means to apply it", but try to be more clear and succinct on these matters if you're trying to be helpful.

You address weaver's burst potential as potentially problematic. I agree and appreciate that, but do you not also see sword weaver's bunkering potential as a problem waiting to hatch?

It's important that you nail exactly what you're trying to accomplish. Everyone can agree that every profession should have a viable build. Literally noone seems to agree how we should get there.

Thx elemelmentist LUL

Exact this feeling i had and this was my point also in every discussion. Weavers sustaine is strong and only lacks in 1v2 scenario in spvp, for wvw you can troll like a monkey. The damage himself is not bad or good, just medium and not easy to land in most cases because you gets kited whole day. It lacks the gapclosers warri has or other melee specs. The damage just drops to 0 if you need to care yourself and you lose often your pressure in this times + you get a bigger gap on a target. But do we need more mobility or just only a bit more? I guess you all know the feeling to fight a thief or mesmer in wvw. You cant kill them, they die only to mistakes.

On the other hand buffs to damage only can work if we see them on sword direct. If not, its possible fresh air weaver gets a real monster and nerfed to ground after. Specially the scepter himself. Weaver burst with fresh air is to some point broken and i win 9/10 duels against all power-classes in wvw without s/d thief. Its not the best working build for smallscale, here we seee the core fa (also roaming strong enough) more shining.

At end im also a bit out of ideas to bring the weaver himself into a better position, but i believe the buffs needs to be only on the sword himself, not on traitlines. Maybe fire 2 lesser animation, higher range, some more damage. No animation on polaric leap. After using a duelstrike maybe the third skill on weapon should be ready to use, but this whould buff the weaver fresh air with phoenix to much.

So buff sword, not so clunky, more damage and give the duelstrike some more love. I guess it could be thing than. No more sustaine.

Really good points were brought up regarding some possible monstrosity of a tank weaver showing up if defenses are buffed too much. That holds a good deal of merit and needs to be considered but it should stop consideration over possible defense buffs to other dps builds to make them viable. As someone who has been playing sword weaver with great success this is my take:

• Damage is good but is unreliable (power is a bit on the low end and could use some increases). This can be addressed by increasing hitboxes, range of skills, etc. Because we have decent damage available but it's so damn easy to avoid it seems like nothing is being done sometimes.
• Sustain is very high but can feel too much like an interruption to your fight as the healing combos take your pressure off the target for easily 8 seconds.
• Mobility is atrocious. I'm pretty sure a flower moves faster than weaver... The set needs better gap closers (range increase to fire 2, I'm talking significant increase, and allow water 2 to be aimed in a direction similar to warrior's whirlwind attack for example) right now the lack of pressure can be partly attributed to the lack of gap closers so you can't really kill an opponent in a good amount of time. Revisiting the way some of the gap closers work or possibly reworking skills to add some mobility would do this class a huge favor.
• Cast times on some skills are too long, mainly experienced this with the dual skills, they take a long time to hit and due to the small hitboxes and low range they never seem to land against anyone moving around. The cast times are also too long to efficiently land them on foes even after you've disabled them.
• Tailored victory needs to be castable while moving. This speaks for itself as the skill cant be landed well right now due to the small radius and the root
• Attunement swap times feel clunky and often leave little room for combos to be done that branch across multiple attunements. Reducing the cd to 2 seconds would ensure that combos can be executed well but also stops people from rapidly swapping between things like earth and water for insane regen (if it's a problem icds of 4 seconds or 5 seconds can be added for each element's interaction with swap traits.)This ofc is not everything that could be better but this is what I have experienced so far and I think could be adjusted without breaking the spec.

Really, all Weaver Sword needs is some damage buffs. It does NOT need more defense, just a little help with damage because you shouldnt have to be full zerk and die when looked at in order to deal damage. I think the attunement cool down is in a good place, not too high and not too low. What would maybe be good is a F5 that swaps your attunements around that are off the attunement cool down, sort of like a weapon swap so with a 10second cool down if you were say Water/Air pressing the F5 would make you Air/Water, this wouldnt affect attunement cool downs either.

@"ArmageddonAsh.6430" said:Really, all Weaver Sword needs is some damage buffs. It does NOT need more defense, just a little help with damage because you shouldnt have to be full zerk and die when looked at in order to deal damage. I think the attunement cool down is in a good place, not too high and not too low. What would maybe be good is a F5 that swaps your attunements around that are off the attunement cool down, sort of like a weapon swap so with a 10second cool down if you were say Water/Air pressing the F5 would make you Air/Water, this wouldnt affect attunement cool downs either.

It really depends on where Anet plans to go with Weaver in the PvP/WvW side of the game though it's highly arguable that they don't care anymore for non PvE game modes after they buffed both Mirage and FB after the last patch despite being obviously overtuned.

What role is Sword Weaver supposed to take?

Side Node assaulter/Bunker?Weaver has great sustain to be able to handle 1v1s against specs that share the same role which are SB and Druid with Condi Mirage as the only exception. Condi Mirage will eventually wear down a Weaver if the Weaver is unlucky with cleanse and doesn't cleanse that constant 10-25 confusion in a timely manner. Despite its great sustain, Sword Weaver falls off when it gets +1'ed though unlike the said 3 classes which are able to reliably bunker long enough for help to arrive. "Meta" build Weaver (Arcane/Water) cleanse is mostly cleansing 1 by 1 and I can't count how many times I've died because my cleanses would remove cripple/vulnerability/low stack of burn/torment instead of the 15+ confusion.

+1 roamer/DPS?Sword Weaver damage is nowhere potent enough to be even compared to a Holosmith or Shiro Herald. Its skills need a lot of tweaking in terms of damage. Even then, Holosmith would still have better survivability due to easy access to stealth, stab (Corona Burst when traited), and double elixir S.

Honestly speaking, I'd prefer if Sword Weaver would take the +1 roamer/DPS role. Tempest is already the Bunker elite spec of the Class so it makes sense to buff up Sword Weaver damage in PvP/WvW. On top of that, the range and radius for sword skills need to be tweaked as well.

I also hate how Primordial Stance is the only reason why Hybrid Weaver is even viable in all game modes. I mean if you remove Primordial Stance on any hybrid sword weaver build, everything just falls off to the point that playing hybrid sword weaver isn't even viable at all anymore. Would've actually made more sense if Primordial Stance was an F5 skill as it is the main theme of a Weaver, combining 2 Elements, and it's actually more potent than any Sword Dual skill.

The first thing I'd like to see before anything else is this: when fully attuning to an element, attunement swapping CD is reduced to 1 second (or whatever number it is without Weaver). This will help give fully attuning some real use. Unravel could become a viable utility. And while I'm talking about Unravel, it should proc attunement swapping traits twice, such as Electric Discharge and Healing Ripple. Basically, if it can be procced a second time after attuning to the element once, then Unravel should do it all at once. It has the power to become a truly good utility.

The next change I'd like to see is earth sword 2 changed to be ground targeted movement skill. The blast would occur at the end of the cast. One of my issues with Weaver is its lack of mobility. The spec has multiple traits/skills that give superspeed and swiftness, yet there are just as many skills that restrict your movement, or don't even move you at all. I find sword really does do enough damage now, when you spec for it, and it has plenty of sustain, but it definitely needs some functionality improvements. Water 2 should be an AoE siphon for instance.

Next change would be Woven Stride's regen removed and direct condition cleansing given when gaining superspeed or swiftness, with an ICD, or cleansing when using a duel skill. Something good needs to be done in order to relieve the reliance on the Water line for survivability. I think sword provides some of that relief, but a change to Woven Stride and Invigorating Strikes will help further.

Next is Invigorating Strikes giving healing when barrier absorbs damage. This will make it a true GM trait and competitive with Woven Stride.

These are the main things. They aren't direct number changes, but functionality changes which will help make Weaver more interesting and improve some traits and skills.