Solemn's (FINAL) Revised DPS Weaver WvW Guide. Weaver still OP

Hello all o/I would like to help in assisting any new or intermediate weavers in understanding what optimal builds exist for weaver and how to use them effectively. If any decide to watch my video, they will see today one such build which in my estimation is extremely effective and valuable within a WvW context (except for roaming).

I have also, so far, received comments from experienced/expert weavers who have said they learned a new trick or two. I hope I can help more within this demographic as well.

Ty for your time and let's continue playing a very valuable class within a WvW context. Good luck and I'll see you in WvW under [wHo] or [DoM] tag /kneel

Very nice guide, I just don't agree with 2 things:

1) Using air/water and water/earth in every rotation and every situation is not worth at all. Those skills have low overall dps and almost no real impact. Fireball will be more effective in 90% of situations. Exceptions would be chasing/running away from enemy (cripple, chill, keeping them in combat since skills pulse often and can hit more targets), quickly tagging downs after already won fight or in combination with weave self elite skill (you can swap quite fast before lava font gets off cooldown).

I suggest swapping to fire every 2nd time and fully attuning only for meteor shower. That way you have access to constant pressure with fireball/font, burst skills from other attunement (2+3) and CC/utility from their 4+5 once you go back to fire.

2) Positioning (it's good, but could be better). This might be more region based (I also noticed that you didnt have many/any weavers in squad), but as backline (rev, ele, anything with 1200 range) you really want to be aggressive. That doesn't mean standing between/behind frontline and backline, that means standing on the other side of your frontline, zoning enemy's movement from max range. This is quite effective strategy (on EU at least), but it does require at least 5 ranged builds (preferably around 10-15).

In absence of these conditions, your positioning is perfectly fine, but range zerg is much more effective when it runs on its own. It's easy to focus on one blob, but as soon as you start dealing with 2 zone zergs (one with massive corrupts and other with massive damage), it starts getting hard to manage resources.

Never though about using commanders gear but i think the crit dmg lost is kind of a waist. Dose 98 armor make or brake one shots? The food seems a bit off as well if you want def food with power go dmg -% with 70 power. Most ppl run crit dmg and power on kill food.

Ele can do raw dmg but you NEED some one to deal with ele hard counters of protection and any type of soft cc counter lol.

Thanks for the feedback both of you, well said, I'm considering all of it. Here are my thoughts so far:

@Jski.6180 said:Never though about using commanders gear but i think the crit dmg lost is kind of a waist. Dose 98 armor make or brake one shots? The food seems a bit off as well if you want def food with power go dmg -% with 70 power. Most ppl run crit dmg and power on kill food.

Using commanders amulet/back-piece is only a difference of about 4% crit damage if I recall correctly, and the 98 toughness does feel like it helps but it could be placebo. It was more of an experiment than anything else, I feel like it's been a successful one, but I'll have to switch back to zerk/marauder for those two pieces as a control later.

For food, yeah, the power/crit dmg on kill is tempting but I'm worried it screws me over when fighting really tanky guilds during the first 10-15 seconds when no downs are being generated. I rely on being able to down at least ~3 people in the first engage because I'm usually hitting the frontline with my full bomb and having 3 frontline go down sucks lol, I feel like it helps to break the enemy's initial push. That being said, I'll be thinking about it - maybe I should give it another try.

Ele can do raw dmg but you NEED some one to deal with ele hard counters of protection and any type of soft cc counter lol.

Yeah, that's pretty irrefutable. Some boon corrupt is necessary for sure. I'm going to make a similar point here to what I said below to Steki and say that even though this is a fair observation, I feel like I'm almost unconditionally utilizing my damage effectively, so, I will have to make the point that it matters, but perhaps less than is generally thought. I find I have a considerable impact even when boon corrupt is less prevalent in my squad's composition, but I absolutely agree that when boon corrupt is used effectively, rev/weaver bomb is devastating.

@"steki.1478" said:Very nice guide, I just don't agree with 2 things:

1) Using air/water and water/earth in every rotation and every situation is not worth at all. Those skills have low overall dps and almost no real impact. Fireball will be more effective in 90% of situations. Exceptions would be chasing/running away from enemy (cripple, chill, keeping them in combat since skills pulse often and can hit more targets), quickly tagging downs after already won fight or in combination with weave self elite skill (you can swap quite fast before lava font gets off cooldown).

I suggest swapping to fire every 2nd time and fully attuning only for meteor shower. That way you have access to constant pressure with fireball/font, burst skills from other attunement (2+3) and CC/utility from their 4+5 once you go back to fire.

I'm genuinely considering this, because yeah, fireball is more effective from an objective viewpoint than the water/air and earth/water dual skills . . . but . . . I can't utilize fireball the same way I utilize my current rotation. Ice spike is 5 large damage target aoe, static is hard CC, eruption is 5 target large damage aoe, the earth/water dual skill is 5 target low damage aoe (and kind of a garbage skill but it's worth using if you run this rotation) and the rotation leads perfectly into fire/earth with the bonus of being able to know that I can fully attune to fire at any time and meteor shower will be available either right away or in a few seconds.

I know most people like to switch between fire and air, and I kind of understand, but I mostly do not understand. I am sincerely not ego tripping when I say this, but I have not met a weaver in NA WvW who can out-dps me consistently in fights, not a single one. And I only know one weaver who is a friend of mine that runs a similar rotation and is able to get damage that is in the same ballpark as my own. I realize correlation is not causation, but ... what I'm doing is working, I'm not sure if I want to change something that isn't broken hehe. I'd recommend giving the rotation a try and seeing if your overall WvW fight DPS doesn't increase, as weird as it may sound to you.

2) Positioning (it's good, but could be better). This might be more region based (I also noticed that you didnt have many/any weavers in squad), but as backline (rev, ele, anything with 1200 range) you really want to be aggressive. That doesn't mean standing between/behind frontline and backline, that means standing on the other side of your frontline, zoning enemy's movement from max range. This is quite effective strategy (on EU at least), but it does require at least 5 ranged builds (preferably around 10-15).

In absence of these conditions, your positioning is perfectly fine, but range zerg is much more effective when it runs on its own. It's easy to focus on one blob, but as soon as you start dealing with 2 zone zergs (one with massive corrupts and other with massive damage), it starts getting hard to manage resources.

That's a great point, thank you. I wish this was more common in NA, I almost never see this happening. In NA we kind of just blend in with things or find blind-spots where the enemy is not paying attention to, whether we are alone or not, and start casting from there. In my mind this is equally "aggressive" but I see the value in the strategy you're proposing here.

@steki.1478 said:Very nice guide, I just don't agree with 2 things:

1) Using air/water and water/earth in every rotation and every situation is not worth at all. Those skills have low overall dps and almost no real impact. Fireball will be more effective in 90% of situations. Exceptions would be chasing/running away from enemy (cripple, chill, keeping them in combat since skills pulse often and can hit more targets), quickly tagging downs after already won fight or in combination with weave self elite skill (you can swap quite fast before lava font gets off cooldown).

I suggest swapping to fire every 2nd time and fully attuning only for meteor shower. That way you have access to constant pressure with fireball/font, burst skills from other attunement (2+3) and CC/utility from their 4+5 once you go back to fire.

The thing is that it's quite easy to be top dps when you have less than 2-3 weavers per squad. On my server (and generally in EU) you can sometimes see 10-15 weavers on whole map (usually in ranged squad, but sometimes when we dont have enough people, we join the main squad). In that situation if you're not aggressive you're useless. There's no place for random fillers, no place for delayed skills, you pressure constantly and your highest pressure currently comes from fireballs and meteors (and occasional skills 2 on other attunements as well as fgs 5, thats why you should swap fire as every 2nd attunement: fire-X-fire-X-fire-fire-X repeat). Even if you're best dps, it doesnt mean that it cant get better.

But generally you just need to know if you need damage or utility. If it's damage, use what I mentioned earlier, if it's utility (mostly CC for chasing or some heals), keep using other attunements more often, like you do now. Do note that monsoon (water/air) is a water field so you can blast it on the move when you need some heals. Also dont underestimate pile driver, I know it's a projectile and a quite risky one, but it can potentially hit harder than rev hammer 2 if positioned/buffed properly, dont be afraid to blink near enemy backline to use your air burst (assuming that NA doesnt use many weavers, sometimes killing one of those can mean a lot since they have huge damage output if they are alive for the whole fight).

Well, I greatly appreciate you shedding some light on how things play out in EU, it's an interesting play-style. I've tried the fire auto attack as a pressure and although it irrefutably outputs "good" pressure, I find myself having higher damage using as many aoes as possible --- simply, that is the case. I don't think the argument that I haven't seen enough weavers to know if I can measure to their damage works when I've been comparing myself to every single one I've met over the past 8 months, and although there are less, I would know if one had discovered a trick to generate better dps consistently (btw - I am sure one exists, somewhere .. I just need to find him/her). Kind of curious to create a EU alt, that would be the only way to be sure about this.

I've always been one to challenge the paradigm and I think I'll have to stand out on a limb and challenge the EU paradigm here, to what ever laughter I may receive from it's proponents. I don't think that rotation is optimal, I think it's logical, but not optimal. I've seen it in practice in the videos of others - it can't break a frontline in a small choke the way putting down 5 different aoes within 7-10 seconds does, nor can it spread damage across a wide field of a huge blob the same way and manage cooldowns effectively. I sincerely urge you and other EU weavers to replicate the rotations, as I'm not talking out of my butt.

Regardless, cheers o/ We may have to agree to disagree on that single point. But thanks very much for your input and as far as everything else you have said, right on.

Later Edit: I realize the likelihood of you reading this now is slim but I'd like to clarify one thing: I have recently toyed around in some GvG style fights, and I can see that there may be a stronger appeal for fire/x x/fire fire/x type of rotation in that scenario. Perhaps that is much more common in EU thus why that rotation is better for it?

Very informative video. I don't see many videos this informative. Plenty that shows off what they are doing but not enough that offer a real playthrough. What are your thoughts on sword weaver? Or even D/D since you are on the front lines?

sword and d/d is poor in front line because of ele's fundamental lack of health and toughness, you waste too much stats to sustain enough to survive. Staff is slightly more useful because it offers some area denial and can hit walls, but its still poor, dps is meaningless in the context of blob v blob, although the numbers look pretty to some. FA sceptre is more interesting as you can spike targets while staying off the front line. Staff for denial and walls, switch to weaver for roaming and sceptre for blob skirmishes.

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:sword and d/d is poor in front line because of ele's fundamental lack of health and toughness, you waste too much stats to sustain enough to survive. Staff is slightly more useful because it offers some area denial and can hit walls, but its still poor, dps is meaningless in the context of blob v blob, although the numbers look pretty to some. FA sceptre is more interesting as you can spike targets while staying off the front line. Staff for denial and walls, switch to weaver for roaming and sceptre for blob skirmishes.

Why bother with spiking one target for 10k damage when you can hit 20 targets for much more? Not to mention that staff has strong targetted nukes in air as well and higher range.

Scepter is only good for roaming when you're fighting squishy targets since it doesn't have high burst enough to compensate for lack of sustained damage, defense and mobility that every roaming build has. It has 0 value in blobs, you might as well bring a soulbeast if you want to skirmish in blobs and not be completely useless.

Title is misleading. I wouldn't call it OP since you sacrifice any sustain for damage and require good positioning and rotations to bring value out of it. That's closer to balanced more than anything.

Just compare DPS staff vs sword or dagger in zerg, you're useless with one hand weapon, spamming evades and kites between 2 weak skills.Sword : no range, no cleave, no boonstrip, no effective CC, no cripple/immo, no allies support etc.Dagger a bit better : more mobility, more range, aoe/strong dual attacks, actually d/d is quite possible, but you'll still need a lot of armor, your own sustain and manage perfectly your rotation with the evades/leap to avoid a maxium dmg and place yourself quickly : burning speed, mud slide, steam slide. The lighting rod build could work in zerg, but I doubt you'll be as effective as reapers, hammer SpB, holos in frontline, or staff.

@Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:Just compare DPS staff vs sword or dagger in zerg, you're useless with one hand weapon, spamming evades and kites between 2 weak skills.Sword : no range, no cleave, no boonstrip, no effective CC, no cripple/immo, no allies support etc.Dagger a bit better : more mobility, more range, aoe/strong dual attacks, actually d/d is quite possible, but you'll still need a lot of armor, your own sustain and manage perfectly your rotation with the evades/leap to avoid a maxium dmg and place yourself quickly : burning speed, mud slide, steam slide. The lighting rod build could work in zerg, but I doubt you'll be as effective as reapers, hammer SpB, holos in frontline, or staff.

Not everything has to be designed for zergs. Each weapon should fulfill different role, but the fact that other weapons arent even that good for roaming makes ele obnoxious to play with.