[PvE] Plasma Weaver

Bringing this from the previous forum:The build editor is up and running with the PoF elites and stats so its time to theoricraft...

I've been wanting to try this since I saw the weaver and griever stats

Plasma Weaver (Hybrid Fire/Air/Weaver)

The idea is to maximize burn duration with just food, trait and runes and use griever stats to improve direct dmg with air traits.This will maximize your use of armor stats and food stats (As the single condi food and runes will provide maximum dmg bonus with condi duration than they could otherwise with base stats bonus).This way you get the maximum of burn duration where it provides the maximum for the slot (runes, sigils, food, traits) while keeping all the big dmg boosts and ferocity boosts that stats and the traitlines can provide. Since with ele you can just use burns and big hits with fire/air combos you maximize your dmg potential and only need to go out of fire/air when doing a quick rotation to get the elite stance. This can be done on downtime of fights and during CC rotations (air/earth provide lots of cc).

100% Burn duration: 20% on att swap, 15% from food, 20% from fire trait, 45% from runes. Burn applications all over the place (stance, crits, sigil, signet, fire attacks, fire dual attacks, heal stance)Tons of direct dmg mods: 10% against burning foes, 10% while in fire, 30% against stuned foes (trait+sigil), 20% against foes under 50% hp, 10% on att swap, 5% from sigil.Improved preci and crit chance to cover the lower prec stat from zerker: 7% against weakened foes, 120-240 for air attune (over 80% crit chance self buffed with fury)Tons of bonus ferocity from weaver: over 220% cri dmgOn group scenarios the healing stance helps a bit with sustain and applies burns thanks to the runes of Balth.

You have good mobility to stay on target with air #2 and air #4 and elite stance speed

The rotation will be swaping between air-fire-fire, the dual attack on air/fire deals great dmg and the pure fire #3 and #5 deal massive dmg to burning targets. If your group can deal with breakbars well (you have tons of CC to help) this will make a massive burst.

On oponents without breakbars, air #2 folowed by fire #3 and #5 will deal massive burst.

Another option (in case dmg against stunned foes is not viable) is to swap impact sigil with smoldering and swap the runes with flame legion. This will give you further 7% dmg against burning foes and overcap burning duration for 5%

TL/DR: Get all the big numbers of zerker crits with the big ticks of viper burns in one build!

The new stat is for what I know not worth it in any meta aspect, because condi-builds that over-cap with condition-duration are better of with just sinister gear instead. Maybe a build that would cap out on both precision and condi duration would make griever the best option. But currently I don't really see any use for it.

At the end you will have build with low power and condition numbers and that will add up to a close to decent dps number, but it won't be worth it. Obviously this is only my prediction and I might be wrong.

@npmis.7860 said:The new stat is for what I know not worth it in any meta aspect, because condi-builds that over-cap with condition-duration are better of with just sinister gear instead. Maybe a build that would cap out on both precision and condi duration would make griever the best option. But currently I don't really see any use for it.

At the end you will have build with low power and condition numbers and that will add up to a close to decent dps number, but it won't be worth it. Obviously this is only my prediction and I might be wrong.

Not only does it benefit all your attacks, all the time (even auto power attacks) and that's something vipers doesn't do well. But it also double benefits skills with split power/condi damage components, which almost all the condi attacks do ( Remember how Flame Walls damage was buffed by 200% last patch?) and that is another thing viper's doesn't do well. It will also be superior to Viper on any targets that don't live a long time, are cleansed or go invulnerable, because the duration is wasted when a target does any of those.

@npmis.7860 said:The new stat is for what I know not worth it in any meta aspect, because condi-builds that over-cap with condition-duration are better of with just sinister gear instead. Maybe a build that would cap out on both precision and condi duration would make griever the best option. But currently I don't really see any use for it.

At the end you will have build with low power and condition numbers and that will add up to a close to decent dps number, but it won't be worth it. Obviously this is only my prediction and I might be wrong.

I disagree.The build is caped on burn duration, wich is the only condi you will be using. It also has over 60% crit chance on its own (80% with fury), in a group scenario its over-caped.By getting burn duration from food/sigil/runes you are getting way more dmg than you could with any stat food./sigil/rune.Now if you dont need expertise, and since you have access to a lot of direct dmg mods from weaver, fire, and air, it is only beneficial to get a better distribution of dmg stats on your gear. You get a lot of dmg from power/crit as an ele and improving crit dmg with minimal loss to power and condi dmg is a great option.

In group scenario you precisely hit the cap using full zerk. The precision loss from using Griever over Berserker makes you lose about 15% crit chance. Even accounting for the 7% from Superior Elements you still end up with lower crit (and less than 100%). You need the burning damage to offset both this loss and the loss of power damage due to lower Ferocity (more than 20% lower crit damage). Could be possible, depending on the weapon set. For staff, which is the current power dps meta, it will be pointless. For the other weapons I can see it being worthwhile compared to the same weapon sets. Compared to the meta dps builds? I don't know, but I don't hold my hopes high.

@Feanor.2358 said:In group scenario you precisely hit the cap using full zerk. The precision loss from using Griever over Berserker makes you lose about 15% crit chance. Even accounting for the 7% from Superior Elements you still end up with lower crit (and less than 100%). You need the burning damage to offset both this loss and the loss of power damage due to lower Ferocity (more than 20% lower crit damage). Could be possible, depending on the weapon set. For staff, which is the current power dps meta, it will be pointless. For the other weapons I can see it being worthwhile compared to the same weapon sets. Compared to the meta dps builds? I don't know, but I don't hold my hopes high.

The thing is, with weaver you need to swap attunements (different ones) to keep weaver prowess up (20% condi duration, 10% condi dmg), and you need to double attune to keep elements of rage up (10% dmg).

Compared to a condi weaver buildI don't think weaver will work with a single condition, like tempest do.If you want a condi weaver you need to jump into earth between two fire attunes to keep the buffs and still deal condi. This means you will need to get viper gear to buff your bleed duration and get earth line and a bunch of defensive (minor)traits. I don't think this will (on a group/raid scenario) be better than all the bonus dmg and crit dmg from my proposed build.

Compared to a full zerker build.The build gets about 230% crit dmg with up to 80% self buffed crit chance.On a group scenario, you should be nearly caped or caped on the crit chance (except maybe during the 4s when you are double tapped into fire loosing the prec bonus of air) the loss of 20% crit dmg should balanced by the 100% burn duration and all the condi dmg output.

I'm not sure it will be higher (or competitive) dps than the current fire/arcane tempest, but I think it might be a competitive pve weaver build for group content.This will depend if the higher power/crit dmg and all the dmg buffs in air/weaver will compare to the condi output of arcane/tempest.The main advantage over the fire tempest, I see is the higher mobility and utility (without loosing so much dps) in fights (cc, heal stance), and more 'viable' dps on moving targets.

Precision:Full berserker gear with the current power meta traits / runes / sigils / food has 2140 precision (65.28% crit chance), which goes to 2460 precision (100.5%) with spotter, banner of discipline and fury. If you switch the berserker gear to griever, you end up with 1813 precision (49.71%), so you lose 327 precision. Conversely, you get back 7% from Superior Elements, you gain 70 precision from Bowl of Fire Meat Chili, 120 precision from Elemental Polyphony as long as at least one of your attunements is air. I probably expect the attunement rotation to go fire - fire - air - air to maximize Elements of Rage uptime, so that means you get the 120 precision from Elemental Polyphony 75% of the time. That leaves us with 1883 (53.05%) / 2003 (58.76%) precision, + the 7% from Superior Elements, which adds up to (roughly) 95.5% / 101% with buffs depending on whether you're dual fire or at least one of your attunements is air.

Ferocity:The current meta power dps build has 1280 ferocity (235.33% crit damage). While you lose quite a lot (445) by changing to griever stats and another 70 by not using the power / ferocity food, this is mostly compensated by the immense 14% power to ferocity conversion from Elements of Rage (which is a constant bonus, as opposed to the 10% damage bonus being only applied when you attune to a single element) - resulting in 1107 ferocity (223.8%), or a 11.5% reduction compared to berserker.

Power:There's no way going around it, you lose quite a lot in this department: 175 from runes, 100 from food and 227 from changing berserker to griever, and only regain 120 due to Elemental Polyphony while one of your attunements is fire (again, 75% of the time), so you end up going down from 2948 to 2566 (assuming fire attunement -> 120 from Elemental Polyphony in the latter case + 150 from Empowering Flames in both cases).

Conditions:Do I even need to? :) 0 compared to 1348 condition damage with 100% burning duration.

Other stuff:10% damage while over 90% health (Scholar runes) replaced by 10% damage for 8 seconds when attuning to a single element (Elements of Rage).

With these said however, I completely agree with @Feanor.2358 that this hybrid build won't be viable with staff, there's simply not enough burning available to make it work. For the above calculations, I used the first build posted by @lLobo.7960, with swapping Sigil of Impact to Accuracy as the only difference.

@Niriel.5490 said:With these said however, I completely agree with @Feanor.2358 that this hybrid build won't be viable with staff, there's simply not enough burning available to make it work. For the above calculations, I used the first build posted by @lLobo.7960, with swapping Sigil of Impact to Accuracy as the only difference.Nice analysis. I never know how much precision you get from spotter and banners...Just want to add a few things:

• I think best weapon set is sword/dagger to get the most of burning and dmg.
• I haven't tested rotations yet, but fire->fire->air->repeat should keep you with all the buffs to a maximum time. This will depend if elements of rage starts its CD when you leave the single attunement or when you enter it. The rotation should aim to maximize direct dmg and burn application. Fire grab and fire/fire #3 deal massive dmg against burning foes, fire/air #3 deals a lot of dmg and burn. It will need some fine tunes to see where autoattacks will fit among combos and where you get the elite going, how alacrity interacts with the elite and attunement swaps and how to get that magma skin when you are quickly going to earth to get the perfect weave...

As I mentioned, there is a lot to test and fine tune, but I think it has potential.

@lLobo.7960 said:As I mentioned, there is a lot to test and fine tune, but I think it has potential.

Definitely agree on this part, basically this build concept was the first thing that came to my mind when I first saw the griever stat combo, and I really hope it's going to be viable to break the current binary berserker - viper meta.

The new dmg boost for fire and air sword attacks is making this look even nicer.

Call Lightning: Increased lightning damage by 12.5%. Slightly reduced the aftercast of this ability.Quantum Strike: The cooldown of this ability has been increased from 15 to 18 seconds. Physical damage has been increased by 10%.Cauterizing Strike: The physical damage of this ability has been increased by 17%.

Just need to normalize the auto attack chain timing and we may have something here.

Hey there, I've been eyeing this build for a long time, any feedback now that PoF is actually running?

@17212612-199D-483E-9B99-C9E6E725D050 said:Hey there, I've been eyeing this build for a long time, any feedback now that PoF is actually running?

I got the griever armor and weapons from the start with pvp/wvw and legendary gear, trinkets/ammy/rings are still a mix of zerker and sinister.With this I've been able to push around 27k to 30k dps on the test area.I still have to improve my rotation as interrupting your auto chain is a massive dps loss and managing CD of fire#2 and fire/air #3 badly can be a huge dps loss too.I haven't tested much on the area and am quite sure it can do better with more practice.I haven't tested with focus instead of dagger yet. It might get better numbers

I don't know if that is the build qT used for their condi d/d weaver but I had a glimpse on their rotation and it was fire/air.

It's not the 50k of staff, but its quite reliable as you are more mobile and depend less on fields.I've played it on the story some fractals and open world and guild missions... Im usually top dps in those scenarios along with condi revs...