Sword Survival PvE

I love sword weaver. So fun to play as, and it looks so cool. I've decided to run the condition build with vipers gear, and am looking for some advice on survival. I'm mainly doing open world metas and fractals (just got full ascended, working my way up). Maybe I'll work up the courage to try raids eventually :P

I'm struggling with survivability, partially because it is a fragile build, but also because I've only really played my ele and have always used ranged weapons, so I'm not used to fighting so close. Can anyone offer me any tips for staying alive?

Use traited arcane shield or stone resonance and have opposite one as utility skill. Twist of fate and healing signet also help. If you need more tankiness you take the remaining trait and skill (of above mentioned). Learn how to blast water field with earth skills. Make use of 3 evades in your weapon set. Use vitality trait on weaver all the time and barrier on dodge if everything else is still not enough. Sandstorm can also be useful against multiple mobs, at which point you dont need any of previous defenses.

That's for open world, in fractals just learn how to position and hope that chrono/druid can save you if you fail. Arcane shield/stone resonance can save you sometimes, but equipping anything additional will be huge dps loss.

@"Wentworth.6901" said:I love sword weaver. So fun to play as, and it looks so cool. I've decided to run the condition build with vipers gear, and am looking for some advice on survival. I'm mainly doing open world metas and fractals (just got full ascended, working my way up). Maybe I'll work up the courage to try raids eventually :P

I'm struggling with survivability, partially because it is a fragile build, but also because I've only really played my ele and have always used ranged weapons, so I'm not used to fighting so close. Can anyone offer me any tips for staying alive?

With all honesty, the best advice I can give you is "use staff". Barring that, at least use the power build for Sword so you have some a burst for fractals. Condi is higher damage overall, but has a long ramp up and no real burst.

Survivability will be mostly achieved through correct positioning, though you have some utilities you can use defensively (Sandstorm or Arcane Shield for instance). But don't go overboard with that in instanced content. Your damage isn't that great and it's not easy to do it. Further compromising it by being too defensive will make you just a deadweight for the team. In open world you can do whatever you feel like. I'd suggest checking out the pvp/wvw playstyle, it has a LOT of self-sustain but it comes at the cost of greatly lowered damage.

@Feanor.2358 said:

@"Wentworth.6901" said:I love sword weaver. So fun to play as, and it looks so cool. I've decided to run the condition build with vipers gear, and am looking for some advice on survival. I'm mainly doing open world metas and fractals (just got full ascended, working my way up). Maybe I'll work up the courage to try raids eventually :P

I'm struggling with survivability, partially because it is a fragile build, but also because I've only really played my ele and have always used ranged weapons, so I'm not used to fighting so close. Can anyone offer me any tips for staying alive?

I've got staff down, and I've been playing it, but I wanted to do sword for somethin different, and I just like it. Thanks for the advice though!

Another condi weaver joins the fray! :D

Condi weaver is technically sturdier than the power variant. Assuming that you’re running the correct traits, you already gain a passive 10% dmg reduction for being within range as well as some significant toughness boosts (assuming you’re glass) for being attuned to earth. On top of that, because sword condi weaver capitalises more on pretty much pressing every skill as fast as possible, especially dual attacks, you get much more from your barriers and healing signet. Generally speaking, your rotation (dual attacks, earth attunement, earthen vortex, molten armor, CC, don’t you dare forget CC, maybe weave self) and that 10% passive already covers for a lot of your defenses.

Dps condi weaver has this thing where how it plays depends on how you rotate. There’s a specific rotation for something that somewhat functions like a burst. Another for trash mob clearing. A general one for reliable dps. I personally think it all comes down knowing your skills and possible combinations; after all, you follow almost the same principles as a power weaver for open world (i.e. if it’s not dead fast enough, you probably will be).

In fractals (and maybe on to raids), condi weaver survives the same way as almost every other 90-100% melee specs would. It’s a matter of knowing your enemy, flanking, abusing evade frames, taking advantage of other people aggroing and also knowing your limitations where you might need to pull back. For raids, condi weaver has a major issue since even its basic rotation can put it in a position where it has +620 toughness, effectively stealing unwanted aggro if the tanker doesn’t build for that much toughness.

I wouldn’t really recommend blasting water fields unless it’s really convenient (e.g water/earth).

I've had the same problem recently, so I tested killing stuff in open world for an hour or so with different traits and skills on different mobs in Elona. I found that offence is the best defence, while being mindful of your position and cooldowns. The Weavers kit doesn't seem to have enough easily accessible and effective defensive skills beyond the evades on sword, so doubling down on defence, won't actually bring you that much of a payoff. With that said, arcane shield is still a must, at least for me, because sometimes you just can't avoid being spanked to death while being CCd. I also bring Glyph of storms which is a strong AOE, that can also be used defensively in earth attunement. For healing signet of restoration feels like the most efficient option unless you really need condi clear.

I personally don't believe the condi build or a mixed power/condi is worth it if you want to use it universally for PvE, since the ramp up time seems to be too high compared to your suitability. I imagine you'd get in to a lot of situations where you finally only kill stuff after you're downed, but I don't have any real experience here, because I can't afford to get anything else than zerkers at the moment.

I use a full zerker build with Air and Fire. Arcane seems fancy at first glance but I feel you're giving up too much damage for what is basically a condi clear on dodge and a shield that will not trigger when you need it to. Taking the defensive traits on the Weaver line is fine though IMO, because the alternatives don't do very much and Invigorating strikes is also gives you vigor, which you lost by not going arcane. The fire line is basically just more burst damage and extra damage on burning foes. The Air line however gives you quite a bit of extra burst with Electric Discharge and Lightning Rod. The latter is specially effective since S/D has a lot of small CC skills and every one of them triggers the trait without a cooldown - even if the enemy has a break bar or can't be CCd. This enables you to freely rotate your attunements and use all of your skills that usually wouldn't get in to a rotation due to their low dps, like air2 or air/earth for example. Now you however do damage with them and get a free CC and Weakness on top. This makes skills like air5 or earth4 very fun to use. You can basically CC something to death. Fire and Air will still be your primary attunements though, but be mindful of the fact that double attuning to these two makes you most vulnerable, but at the same time gives you the most damage. Finally since the damage numbers on their own aren't that impressive, you want to crit as much as possible, hence Signert of Fire and Sigil of Accurecy.This should give you enough control and burst damage to survive most soloable encounters with the correct use of your evades.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAsYhcMonhNNwsB0RsIAYCXyLwR8+VPr31BBgCwDA-jhBBwAnVCmXPAgTAAO1fC8AAwu/o8DA-eI may be completely off here, since I don't have that much experience with Weaver myself, but at the moment this seems to work best for me.

One of the openers that I found for condi weaver stacks an obscene amount of burning (potentially ~30 stacks, not mentioning how much condi dmg mods weaver can take). You wouldn’t use this on trash mobs (open world) though as that’s simply overkill (might use it for instanced content, however, though you lose out on sustained dmg).

Power sword is quite slow imo (which infuriates me) which makes it as bad as how people like to describe the condi variant. Why does flame uprising, cauterising strike, fire grab and quantum strike all have to have the same long cast time as the deadeye’s death’s judgement? Were eles really designed to be this slow/highly telegraphed?