[Weaver] Let's Fix Sword Together

Weaver sword is cool. That's a good thing, because sword Elementalist has been a popular wish for years. But mechanically-speaking, Weaver's sword skills just don't quite work yet. In this thread, let's talk about what's good about sword, what isn't, and what our suggestions are for how to improve it. Per Gaile Gray's guidelines on how to give good feedback, let's keep this constructive and specific, and suggest reasonable improvements.

Here's my own take. I should note this is purely from a PvE perspective. I'd very much appreciate people weighing in with PvP and WvW perspectives as well.

What Works

1. Weaver sword feels fantastic in general. While I have concerns with the feel of a couple of skills in particular, overall, Weaver's sword skills feel great to use. Flame Uprising is extremely satisfying, as is Quantum Strike when it lands. The mobility and evasion skills are useful and loads of fun, especially Riptide.
2. It has good survivability options. From evades to barriers to mobility, sword has good options for staying alive in melee, provided you're on your toes. That's how it should be.
3. The animations are great. Everything looks amazing, even the things that don't feel great.

What Needs Work

1. The damage just isn't there. Right now, sword has trouble competing with dagger as a condition damage weapon, and can't really perform as a physical damage (direct damage boosted by Power) weapon. That's a big problem for a bruiser specialization like Weaver--there's little reason to use a high-risk weapon like sword if its damage doesn't stack up with less risky options.
2. The middle attack of each autoattack chain is too slow. So, first, I want to say something that might be unpopular: I actually think the autoattack chains are well-paced overall. While testing rotations, I found I could generally use a skill (or two, with Quickness), complete an autoattack chain, and then I was ready to attunement swap again. That's actually a pretty nice rhythm, and it's easy to wrap my head around. But I still think the chains should speed up a tiny bit, because one of the things that doesn't feel great is that the slow speed of the autoattack chains just doesn't line up with the amount of impact they have. The slow animations feel like they should hit much harder than they do. In general, the last hit of each chain is worth the wind-up, but the middle one just feels like stalling.
3. Quantum Strike's hit box feels too small. Its animation suggests a hit box of similar size to Cauterizing Strike, but I find I whiff it a lot more, like I need to much more precisely hit with the blade of the sword rather than the elemental magic around the blade.

Suggestions for Improvement

1. People are going to have their own ideas about this, but here's my take: increase the pulsing physical damage on skills and dual attacks. Elementalist already has access to dagger for an excellent condition damage weapon, but lacks a good physical damage weapon (or potential hybrid, Grieving-style weapon) for anything that doesn't have a massive hit box. Sword is well-positioned to fill that niche. My reasoning is that it has the basic skill design to succeed as a physical damage weapon. One thing I've noticed is that Power-boosted damage only seems to do well in group PvE when it can mimic condition damage--it's the skills that continue dealing damage after you cast them that work. It's why Dragonhunter works with Berserker stats, for example, and why staff does so well for Elementalists against large hit boxes. Weaver's sword skills include skills that pulse damage after your cast, including Flame Uprising, Quantum Strike, Pyro Vortex, Lava Skin, and Gale Strike. My suggestion is to increase the physical damage on these specific skills to increase sword's sustained DPS.
2. Change the middle attack of each autoattack chain to 1/2 second cast instead of 3/4 second. I'm actually fine with the final hit having a wind-up, but the middle hit feels far too slow. I suggest speeding that up very slightly. I don't think it would disrupt that flow I talked about above, and would improve the overall feeling of the autoattack chains.

Those are my ideas. I'd love to read others' takes and see where this discussion leads us. Hopefully we can come up with a realistic, actionable way to improve Weaver's sword skills so it's a more viable and fun weapon to use.

Here is my contribution:

Fire Auto-chain: slightly increase power coefficients, include other burning stacks (1s/2s/2x3s) to respective steps 1/2/3 .Fire#2: Increase field duration.Fire#3: Reduce cast time, increase power coefficient against burning foes, create lingering effect (similar to scepter fire#1).

Air Auto-chain: Heavily increase power coefficients and/or increase and distribute number of lightening strikes and make lightning strikes cause vulnerability. Move swiftness to first strike and give a 1s quickness to second strike.Air#3: Reduce cast time, apply vulnerability with lightening strikes.

Water Auto-Chain: Increase healing power coefficient.

Earth Auto-chain: move cripple to first strike and first bleed to last strike (cripple - 1x bleed - 2x bleeds).Earth#2: change cripple to weakness.

Dual SkillsDual skills need to benefit from CD reduction from traitlines from BOTH attunement lines, right now they don't get any reduction at all!Fire/Air#3: Increase the vortex duration and power coefficient.Air/Earth#3: Reduce aftercast.Earth/Fire: Reduce cast time.

@lLobo.7960 said:Dual SkillsDual skills need to benefit from CD reduction from traitlines from BOTH attunement lines, right now they don't get any reduction at all!

I agree with pretty much all of your suggestions, though I'm not sure about this one. I definitely agree that it's wrong that they don't get any reduction at all, but getting it from both might be overkill. Just getting a reduction from one would be sufficient, I think.

That said, I certainly wouldn't complain if I got a huge cooldown reduction on fun dual attacks! :grin:

@Agent Noun.7350 said:

@lLobo.7960 said:

Dual Skills

Dual skills need to benefit from CD reduction from traitlines from BOTH attunement lines, right now they don't get any reduction at all!

I don't think it would be too much as to get the double CD reduction you would need to spec on both elemental lines, and then attune to both elements to even get the skill. Its a very specific scenario.Not to mention that the CD reductions got nerfed from 30 to 20% a while ago.

all I want is the range doubled on Auto attack chains.... 130 is impossible to hit a moving target when you have Australian Internet. (PvP/WvW player)