Hey guys !

I just wanted to share some experiments I did since last tuesday patch on my elementalist. Just saying for the context I play elementalist since launch and I feel like a decent spvp player (Plat 1-2 : depends if I try hard or not)

I've tried several builds for ele the entire week and tried to find some that could work best. I especially kept 2 builds that are doing well .

1 Menders Weaver

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAsYncMAt4idOA+4C8RglTA7uMnmfzFlgB4Hg4AEAWAA-jJxHABf/AAkvMAAnAAm3fAA

I used to play sage for more condi dmg and less tankiness. But now there's too many power mesmers and reaper (+ some revenant tho) so staying alive is almost your main concern. That's why Menders works best. Same for Avatar. It didn't work as much as menders for me when I tried it.

2 Celestial tempest

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAodn0XCVYidOA+XCcYilTAzdseWfrFlgLwHg4AEAWAA-jJxHQBD8BAUkyA6Y/BAcCAAA

I wanted to find a great build for tempest. And celestial works really fine tho ! I have just enough thougness to survive quite fine (+ vitality) and having decent healing power to be able to support allies. To me it works very well still. But remember , even if you keep bad players alive, they are still bad player. Stay calm and try you best.

3 Fresh air weaver

Honestly I didn't even bother to play it again after the nerf. It wasn't amazing before but the dmg nerf feels to much to me. Sorry

There ! Feel free to react and agree/disagree.

PS: some traits can be tweaked. Especially in water and arcane master tier. However Weaver traits are a must have this way. Gives the best synergy and utility as it is. For Tempest, if you know there will be less condi and more power build . You can go aurashare then stab on overload and go earth traitline instead of arcane ... It's different but works too .

I've been rolling with Menders Weaver for a while now and it feels like the most forgiving and the most impactful of all the possible combinations right now. I use Bolstered Elements and all the stances except unravel, no Lightning Flash and it all feels very decent in comparison to everything I tried before.

@LexIcon.2819 said:I've been rolling with Menders Weaver for a while now and it feels like the most forgiving and the most impactful of all the possible combinations right now. I use Bolstered Elements and all the stances except unravel, no Lightning Flash and it all feels very decent in comparison to everything I tried before.

Hey thanks for your comment ! For Bolstered Elements I feel like it's not worth it. 1stack of stab + some barrier that has a huge delay to be effective while you're already low HP. Especially when you compare with swift revenge that increase your dmg , increase swiftness effectiveness and add a cleansing on all dual skills. To me it's more versatile and has more utilities .

Then for lightning flash , i've been playing it as you are but LF is for me a life savior. And primordial stance isn't worth if you don't run Bolstered element + menders amulet. it was awesome with sage amulet tho.

This just cover my opinion. It's not the one and only truth tho ! A build being versatile and working better (or less) is great for the health of the game !

Doing great...I don't try to invalidate how you feel about those builds but using it in ranked is not good idea to test build...you can play even condi rev these days and with proper rotations you can get to plat...or deadeye...or something even more weird depending on region....frostball is great example of this.

During pro-leauge era testing looked like this...you did duels/scrims on private servers to check:-how is probable to win/lose against class x (so you will get idea how rotate based on counters)-in what scenarios i can contest node or can't-how works my build in this duo, what are synergies and bla bla bla.

And some questions about your builds:

1. why this rune? Below 50% crit amulets don't do crits at all on such slow single hit animations like on ele sword? Why not rune of pack for example to actually try to get any crit?
2. Personally I feel that cele was only viable when bunker meta was viable...simply because there wasn't back then so much damage from everywhere like these days...besides all ele synergies with cele amulet from back then were nerfed...or removed like arcane fury.

But...if it works for you and you enjoy it...do what you like. I personally will skip this season completely.

@"Mr Godlike.6098" said:Doing great...I don't try to invalidate how you feel about those builds but using it in ranked is not good idea to test build...you can play even condi rev these days and with proper rotations you can get to plat...or deadeye...or something even more weird depending on region....frostball is great example of this.

During pro-leauge era testing looked like this...you did duels/scrims on private servers to check:-how is probable to win/lose against class x (so you will get idea how rotate based on counters)-in what scenarios i can contest node or can't-how works my build in this duo, what are synergies and bla bla bla.

Hey ! I mean Ranked was a proper way (for me) to test those builds cause it has a lot of bursty builds out there during the off season ... so staying alive was quite hard. Then those build weren't really new to me. I've played it quite a long time before. But with the last patch a lot of things has changed in spvp. What I tried to find was a way to keep elementalist alive through bruiser/support builds. (Since it can only do that now thanks to anet's balance)And I don't have any value as a player to find ppl to do scrims ... or even duel as a ele isn't funny at all... why bother anyway.

And some questions about your builds:

1. why this rune? Below 50% crit amulets don't do crits at all on such slow single hit animations like on ele sword? Why not rune of pack for example to actually try to get any crit?

Honestly I found that rune funny and unused. It synargizes finely but yeah maybe pack should be better. And with fury , crit chance is decent enough. And I like cripple on dodge tho Haha (I feel more like a thief now) Then you can stil go the basic water rune or else depending on what you want to do most.

2. Personally I feel that cele was only viable when bunker meta was viable...simply because there wasn't back then so much damage from everywhere like these days...besides all ele synergies with cele amulet from back then were nerfed...or removed like arcane fury.

As I said ... the only available healing power amulet in pvp these days are sage, marshal, menders, avatar and celestial. None of these has insane defensive stats on it. So making a bruiser/support spec these days is harder. Celestial has the strength to get some toughness and vitality (+ the stats on soldier runes) so yeah you have less healing power but you're able to survive longer and deal some dmg through that. You won't get the same support effectiveness as before with magi amulet but it deals much more dmg. So it's kinda a different gameplay/positionning.

Regarding Weaver, I had much greater success with Sage than Mender.Even with Sage/ Avatar you have insane sustain heals once you get the hang of it, while dmg is incomparably better, at least regarding Sage x Mender ratio.Mender, however is much more likely to be better choice for Ranked as its better for Teamplay and thus also more useful, there are much better dmg classes after all. With Mender you can fill the role of a Druid in Ranked which is very useful.Now that Weaver received buffs to Barrier and other Professions got some Nerfs I believe we will see more of Weavers.

I think avatar is far better than Sage because condy is too easily removed with limited cover with ele and you are sacrificing lightening damage. Mender is a more grey area, good when in group, but for spvp there's times when you want to be able to win 1v1 on a point, and avatar gives that edge you need. Also worth considering healing is often overrated in pvp (pretty number at then end often means self heal or overheal) , healing is only relevant where it would otherwise have prevented a death and often a player will get out of combat or go defensive when low anyway.

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:I think avatar is far better than Sage because condy is too easily removed with limited cover with ele and you are sacrificing lightening damage. Mender is a more grey area, good when in group, but for spvp there's times when you want to be able to win 1v1 on a point, and avatar gives that edge you need. Also worth considering healing is often overrated in pvp (pretty number at then end often means self heal or overheal) , healing is only relevant where it would otherwise have prevented a death and often a player will get out of combat or go defensive when low anyway.

The Condi pressure with Sage is pretty steady if you're using Primordial Stance, so much it covers even capable Condi removals.Also your point about Healing would be true if we were talking about professions like Thief who can use only one Healing ability at a time, but professions like Ele can heal continuously during fight using many different Heal skills and combos to trigger Healing effects, so Healing Power truly plays a significant role for them.

@Alatar.7364 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:I think avatar is far better than Sage because condy is too easily removed with limited cover with ele and you are sacrificing lightening damage. Mender is a more grey area, good when in group, but for spvp there's times when you want to be able to win 1v1 on a point, and avatar gives that edge you need. Also worth considering healing is often overrated in pvp (pretty number at then end often means self heal or overheal) , healing is only relevant where it would otherwise have prevented a death and often a player will get out of combat or go defensive when low anyway.

EDIT: Somehow quoted myself instead of edit. Sorry

dabbled with sage over avatar and my mind has been changed, with the key factor being that the condition damage makes primordial surge much more potent.

Glass staff still works too

@Liberis.9573 said:Glass staff still works too

How do you even build that? Can it compete with S/F weaver?

Menders weaver is really strong with Primordial Stance.

@Blimm.5028 said:

@Liberis.9573 said:Glass staff still works too

You can't even compete on S/F weaver with anyone ... unless you spam shatterstone

@Nath Forge Tempete.1645 said:

@Blimm.5028 said:

@Liberis.9573 said:Glass staff still works too

S/F weaver does have filthy burst and +1s fairly decently. It's no mesmer, but it gets it's job done. Is this shatterstone thing a meme I missed?

@Blimm.5028 said:

@Nath Forge Tempete.1645 said:

@Blimm.5028 said:

@Liberis.9573 said:Glass staff still works too

Well ... it got buffed like 5 times already? Damage wise. You can deal a nice 5k+ on marauder amulet (depends on toughness tho)

So yeah it's basically a meme.... they nerfed a lot of things then buff shatterstone (or dagger skills)

ANd for the fresh air part: there's too many skirmisher that has high mobility for S/F to stay alive with the few defenses it has. It 's super easy to get harassed nowadays.

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:I think avatar is far better than Sage because condy is too easily removed with limited cover with ele and you are sacrificing lightening damage. Mender is a more grey area, good when in group, but for spvp there's times when you want to be able to win 1v1 on a point, and avatar gives that edge you need. Also worth considering healing is often overrated in pvp (pretty number at then end often means self heal or overheal) , healing is only relevant where it would otherwise have prevented a death and often a player will get out of combat or go defensive when low anyway.

I also use Sage... The best one i tried so far... Dmg is rlly nice, and survivability on s/d weaver is anyway just great.

Define "great"

@"Razor.6392" said:Define "great"

that you could still compete in spvp with .... like 2 months ago .... time has changed since then LUL

@Blimm.5028 said:

@"Liberis.9573" said:Glass staff still works too

Berserker amuletRune of Strength/ScholarSigil of Exploitaiton/StrengthSigil of Separation

Fire 3/1/2Air 3/2/1Arcane 2/3/2

Arcane brilliance, blast, wave, shieldGlyph of Elementals

I've never played Weaver before, but I hit plat every season with only glass staff. Depends on what you mean by competing I guess.

Are you "still" running this in ranked?

Z

nope not at all ... just menders staff ele is fun but not optimal thus it requires you to perfectly know how to position yourself and all evades skills etc

there's still the fresh air build that can be great or the "meta" Sword / dagger weaver .

I personally think menders tempest is better than going celestial as you get -40% damage reduction from protection, can get immunity to crits in earth and the extra healing power really makes a difference to support decent players. The extra power damage also works wonders for clearing out clutter or making an AoE no go zone with air overload and earth overload against mesmer clones and phantasm so long as you’re running away from them.

I feel like sword just needs it’s auto attacks reduced to 1/2s on the chain, maybe cut the burning on the final hit of the fire auto and add some to the 2 preceding hits and it’s in a solid place. The real problem is that other classes are better not that sword Weaver isn’t strong.

Sceptre burst Weaver had too much instant cast 900 range damage, I feel they should really have changed electric discharge to be only on first at tuning to air and not a second time. The problem is sceptre is an awkward weapon to use, it doesn’t flow if you know what I mean and the number 2 skills imo should be redesigned.

@apharma.3741 said:I personally think menders tempest is better than going celestial as you get -40% damage reduction from protection, can get immunity to crits in earth and the extra healing power really makes a difference to support decent players. The extra power damage also works wonders for clearing out clutter or making an AoE no go zone with air overload and earth overload against mesmer clones and phantasm so long as you’re running away from them.

I feel like sword just needs it’s auto attacks reduced to 1/2s on the chain, maybe cut the burning on the final hit of the fire auto and add some to the 2 preceding hits and it’s in a solid place. The real problem is that other classes are better not that sword Weaver isn’t strong.

Sceptre burst Weaver had too much instant cast 900 range damage, I feel they should really have changed electric discharge to be only on first at tuning to air and not a second time. The problem is sceptre is an awkward weapon to use, it doesn’t flow if you know what I mean and the number 2 skills imo should be redesigned.

Yep almost agreed with all you said. I do better in the actual meta as menders staff than celestial. I was trying to make a supportive build with still some dmg but even the dmg is bigger on mender.

Sword for me is a problem of design not balancing ... so is scepter.

I find s/d weaver with sage amulet really strong now. Its hard to lose a 1v1 fight. Some fights take long but are all in your favor i feel. I played a lot of classes last season and weaver to me feels great for solo q