Tips to refine my weaver

[Sylent.3165]

I am horrible at dps in this game and every game. I try to never go to kill them before they kill me, I like to build myself to do around half damage as others but be very very hard for any mob to kill me.

With that said right now I am building a sword dagger weaver, I have mostly a big mix of everything with mostly healing and vitality. A mix with condition damage power and precesion (more power than condition damage).

I am curious if I should switch out rune of the flock for rune of sanctuary to get all those bonus barriers on every hit. I was trying to debate which is overall better for survival. Thoughts?

[steki.1478]

What do you need survival for? I find it quite easy to survive on full berserker or bererker/marauder weaver (any weapon combo) and it's only gonna get easier on next patch when we can weapon swap out of combat to get a ranged weapon for a bit harder encounters in open world (not that those exist outside of group events where you'll just get revived instantly anyway).

Mixing all stats is the worst thing you can do in pve. If you really want defense just go full dire with fire and earth specs, you have good damage and solid base stats, but again, anything other than glass cannon (or slight variation of it) is a huge waste for pve. Why would you need tanky build to survive a hard hitting mob when you can kill it with 2 skills instead?

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

PvE PvP WvW ?

[Sylent.3165]

@Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:PvE PvP WvW ?

Strictly pve. I do fine with mobs but like being able to solo tough events and champions

[AliamRationem.5172]

@"Sylent.3165" said:I am horrible at dps in this game and every game. I try to never go to kill them before they kill me, I like to build myself to do around half damage as others but be very very hard for any mob to kill me.

With that said right now I am building a sword dagger weaver, I have mostly a big mix of everything with mostly healing and vitality. A mix with condition damage power and precesion (more power than condition damage).

I am curious if I should switch out rune of the flock for rune of sanctuary to get all those bonus barriers on every hit. I was trying to debate which is overall better for survival. Thoughts?

I'm really enjoying the fire/arcane weaver for open world. It's a PvP build that has excellent survivability paired with solid damage.

https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Weaver_-_Fire_Weaver

That's more or less the build. Just swap out that focus offhand for a dagger and swap smothering auras out for burning rage and you're good to go.

The nice thing about fire weaver is that so much of your damage is derived from burn stacking that you can get away with builds that have condition damage as their only offensive stat. But if you feel comfortable enough with the build, you can also go the opposite direction with a power-forward hybrid. It pretty much just works great as long as you have condition damage!

A few suggestions for stat combos to try: Grieiving/Marshal, Carrion/Marshal, Plaguedoctor/Trailblazer, Dire/Apothecary.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

@Sylent.3165 said:I am horrible at dps in this game and every game. I try to never go to kill them before they kill me, I like to build myself to do around half damage as others but be very very hard for any mob to kill me.

With that said right now I am building a sword dagger weaver, I have mostly a big mix of everything with mostly healing and vitality. A mix with condition damage power and precesion (more power than condition damage).

I am curious if I should switch out rune of the flock for rune of sanctuary to get all those bonus barriers on every hit. I was trying to debate which is overall better for survival. Thoughts?

The biggest problem with doing this is that this is not how GW2 works. All of the professions are designed to be wholly capable of surviving without investing any defensive points. Going tanky in PVE just means you take twice as long to kill everything with defensive stats that you never needed in the first place, you'll earn half as much gold as everyone else, and nobody will want you around because you upscale enemies more than you contribute. The real defenses in this game are tactics, not stats. Because of this, you'll always want to go for Berserker gear in PVE. As it stands now, you're running is what we call an RNG build, which is the worst kind of build in the game. You aren't good at anything, you're bad at everything.

If you want defenses, don't change your gear. Change your traits, your utilities, and your strategy. For one, changing those is free. Second, they have far more impact than you'd think, and going for defensive stats has far less impact than you'd think. Third, events in this game are timed, so you'll always want as much offense as possible. Trust me, anything less than a vet dies in two hits on berserker weaver.

[AliamRationem.5172]

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@Sylent.3165 said:I am horrible at dps in this game and every game. I try to never go to kill them before they kill me, I like to build myself to do around half damage as others but be very very hard for any mob to kill me.

With that said right now I am building a sword dagger weaver, I have mostly a big mix of everything with mostly healing and vitality. A mix with condition damage power and precesion (more power than condition damage).

I am curious if I should switch out rune of the flock for rune of sanctuary to get all those bonus barriers on every hit. I was trying to debate which is overall better for survival. Thoughts?

The biggest problem with doing this is that this is not how GW2 works. All of the professions are designed to be wholly capable of surviving without investing any defensive points. Going tanky in PVE just means you take twice as long to kill everything with defensive stats that you never needed in the first place, you'll earn half as much gold as everyone else, and nobody will want you around because you upscale enemies more than you contribute. The real defenses in this game are tactics, not stats. Because of this, you'll always want to go for Berserker gear in PVE. As it stands now, you're running is what we call an RNG build, which is the worst kind of build in the game. You aren't good at anything, you're bad at everything.

If you want defenses, don't change your gear. Change your traits, your utilities, and your strategy. For one, changing those is free. Second, they have far more impact than you'd think, and going for defensive stats has far less impact than you'd think. Third, events in this game are timed, so you'll always want as much offense as possible. Trust me, anything less than a vet dies in two hits on berserker weaver.

For skilled and experienced players who are very concerned with efficiency, this is accurate. In reality, it depends a lot on player preference and ability. For instance, I consider myself a fairly skilled and experienced player. I've finished a season of PvP in platinum. I'm about to reach gold rank in WvW (as a roamer). But when it comes to PvE, I don't really enjoy fractals, raiding, or gold farming. I mostly just mess around doing things like champion/legendary solos or helping other players.

Clearly, I don't care about efficiency. I'm aware that my damage output isn't acceptable in a raiding environment. But if I can generate enough damage to beat the timer on a legendary bounty solo, I don't see how I am holding anybody back in open world.

On the other hand, take a look at any given world boss, meta, etc. How many people are downed? How many of those players are downed because they're attempting to use glass builds that they aren't quite practiced enough to survive with? Do those players hold the event back more or less than players who survive but deal less potential maximum damage?

For those reasons, I advise trying different builds and using whatever works best for you. I love the fire/arcane weaver build in all flavors, but I PvP, I roam, and I solo bosses, so I tend to prefer a tankier build to a glass build. That's just me. You do you.

[steki.1478]

@AliamRationem.5172 said:

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@Sylent.3165 said:I am horrible at dps in this game and every game. I try to never go to kill them before they kill me, I like to build myself to do around half damage as others but be very very hard for any mob to kill me.

With that said right now I am building a sword dagger weaver, I have mostly a big mix of everything with mostly healing and vitality. A mix with condition damage power and precesion (more power than condition damage).

I am curious if I should switch out rune of the flock for rune of sanctuary to get all those bonus barriers on every hit. I was trying to debate which is overall better for survival. Thoughts?

The biggest problem with doing this is that this is not how GW2 works. All of the professions are designed to be wholly capable of surviving without investing any defensive points. Going tanky in PVE just means you take twice as long to kill everything with defensive stats that you never needed in the first place, you'll earn half as much gold as everyone else, and nobody will want you around because you upscale enemies more than you contribute. The real defenses in this game are tactics, not stats. Because of this, you'll always want to go for Berserker gear in PVE. As it stands now, you're running is what we call an RNG build, which is the worst kind of build in the game. You aren't good at anything, you're bad at everything.

If you want defenses, don't change your gear. Change your traits, your utilities, and your strategy. For one, changing those is free. Second, they have far more impact than you'd think, and going for defensive stats has far less impact than you'd think. Third, events in this game are timed, so you'll always want as much offense as possible. Trust me, anything less than a vet dies in two hits on berserker weaver.

For skilled and experienced players who are very concerned with efficiency, this is accurate. In reality, it depends a lot on player preference and ability. For instance, I consider myself a fairly skilled and experienced player. I've finished a season of PvP in platinum. I'm about to reach gold rank in WvW (as a roamer). But when it comes to PvE, I don't really enjoy fractals, raiding, or gold farming. I mostly just mess around doing things like champion/legendary solos or helping other players.

Clearly, I don't care about efficiency. I'm aware that my damage output isn't acceptable in a raiding environment. But if I can generate enough damage to beat the timer on a legendary bounty solo, I don't see how I am holding anybody back in open world.

On the other hand, take a look at any given world boss, meta, etc. How many people are downed? How many of those players are downed because they're attempting to use glass builds that they aren't quite practiced enough to survive with? Do those players hold the event back more or less than players who survive but deal less potential maximum damage?

For those reasons, I advise trying different builds and using whatever works best for you. I love the fire/arcane weaver build in all flavors, but I PvP, I roam, and I solo bosses, so I tend to prefer a tankier build to a glass build. That's just me. You do you.

A downed player in glass cannon gear would still contribute more than a player with random build. You get revived almost instantly and 10 seconds of decently executed burst (or in case of thief and reaper just autoattacking) will give you more damage than a random build does in 2 minutes.

In every bigger event you'll see top 5-10% doing 90% of squad damage and it doesn't even matter if they go down or die (which rarely happens to begin with), the rest of the squad cant keep up at all.

You're also forgetting that most of metas/bosses have attacks that do over 10k damage so your gear wont even save you if you don't dodge. You just waste it on stats that dont even have impact.

Solo and low man scenarios are a completely different story though (but only in case of group events/legy bounties and similar difficulty).

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

@AliamRationem.5172 said:

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@"Sylent.3165" said:I am horrible at dps in this game and every game. I try to never go to kill them before they kill me, I like to build myself to do around half damage as others but be very very hard for any mob to kill me.

With that said right now I am building a sword dagger weaver, I have mostly a big mix of everything with mostly healing and vitality. A mix with condition damage power and precesion (more power than condition damage).

I am curious if I should switch out rune of the flock for rune of sanctuary to get all those bonus barriers on every hit. I was trying to debate which is overall better for survival. Thoughts?

The biggest problem with doing this is that this is not how GW2 works. All of the professions are designed to be wholly capable of surviving without investing any defensive points. Going tanky in PVE just means you take twice as long to kill everything with defensive stats that you never needed in the first place, you'll earn half as much gold as everyone else, and nobody will want you around because you upscale enemies more than you contribute. The real defenses in this game are tactics, not stats. Because of this, you'll always want to go for Berserker gear in PVE. As it stands now, you're running is what we call an RNG build, which is the worst kind of build in the game. You aren't good at anything, you're bad at everything.

If you want defenses, don't change your gear. Change your traits, your utilities, and your strategy. For one, changing those is free. Second, they have far more impact than you'd think, and going for defensive stats has far less impact than you'd think. Third, events in this game are timed, so you'll always want as much offense as possible. Trust me, anything less than a vet dies in two hits on berserker weaver.

For skilled and experienced players who are very concerned with efficiency, this is accurate. In reality, it depends a lot on player preference and ability. For instance, I consider myself a fairly skilled and experienced player. I've finished a season of PvP in platinum. I'm about to reach gold rank in WvW (as a roamer). But when it comes to PvE, I don't really enjoy fractals, raiding, or gold farming. I mostly just mess around doing things like champion/legendary solos or helping other players.

Clearly, I don't care about efficiency. I'm aware that my damage output isn't acceptable in a raiding environment. But if I can generate enough damage to beat the timer on a legendary bounty solo, I don't see how I am holding anybody back in open world.

On the other hand, take a look at any given world boss, meta, etc. How many people are downed? How many of those players are downed because they're attempting to use glass builds that they aren't quite practiced enough to survive with? Do those players hold the event back more or less than players who survive but deal less potential maximum damage?

For those reasons, I advise trying different builds and using whatever works best for you. I love the fire/arcane weaver build in all flavors, but I PvP, I roam, and I solo bosses, so I tend to prefer a tankier build to a glass build. That's just me. You do you.

What I said above doesn't "depend a lot on player preference and ability." You don't need to be skilled, experienced, or even care about efficiency. I take berserker weaver into the overworld while being specced for almost pure damage, and I blow everything away in one to two hits. The skill floor we're talking about here is whether or not a player can click Quantum Strike or if they know that Sandstorm blinds. If you're talking about players worse than that, then no gear set will save the infinitely incompetent. If Sylent can't function at that level, the question they should be asking is how they can learn to use a good build right, not how to make a wrong build.

You're using your obtuse and eccentric playstyle to justify making generally bad decisions, and your argument is that vacuous "Well, maybe the people who go down at world bosses are in glass canon gear." No, they aren't. Most players don't run glass cannon builds, meta builds, or even something similar to Woodenpotatoe's overworld-focused builds. They run RP builds and RNG builds. The fact is that all of those snowflake builds that don't go for damage still die to solo bounties, still die to solo champions, still die to world bosses, and they still die to legendary mobs. Running a carrion or soldiers isn't going to save them, let alone a mix of the two. If those players were running the raid builds or even a modified raid build, then they wouldn't be doing 10% of the damage of good players on average.

[AliamRationem.5172]

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@AliamRationem.5172 said:

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@"Sylent.3165" said:I am horrible at dps in this game and every game. I try to never go to kill them before they kill me, I like to build myself to do around half damage as others but be very very hard for any mob to kill me.

With that said right now I am building a sword dagger weaver, I have mostly a big mix of everything with mostly healing and vitality. A mix with condition damage power and precesion (more power than condition damage).

I am curious if I should switch out rune of the flock for rune of sanctuary to get all those bonus barriers on every hit. I was trying to debate which is overall better for survival. Thoughts?

The biggest problem with doing this is that this is not how GW2 works. All of the professions are designed to be wholly capable of surviving without investing any defensive points. Going tanky in PVE just means you take twice as long to kill everything with defensive stats that you never needed in the first place, you'll earn half as much gold as everyone else, and nobody will want you around because you upscale enemies more than you contribute. The real defenses in this game are tactics, not stats. Because of this, you'll always want to go for Berserker gear in PVE. As it stands now, you're running is what we call an RNG build, which is the worst kind of build in the game. You aren't good at anything, you're bad at everything.

If you want defenses, don't change your gear. Change your traits, your utilities, and your strategy. For one, changing those is free. Second, they have far more impact than you'd think, and going for defensive stats has far less impact than you'd think. Third, events in this game are timed, so you'll always want as much offense as possible. Trust me, anything less than a vet dies in two hits on berserker weaver.

For skilled and experienced players who are very concerned with efficiency, this is accurate. In reality, it depends a lot on player preference and ability. For instance, I consider myself a fairly skilled and experienced player. I've finished a season of PvP in platinum. I'm about to reach gold rank in WvW (as a roamer). But when it comes to PvE, I don't really enjoy fractals, raiding, or gold farming. I mostly just mess around doing things like champion/legendary solos or helping other players.

Clearly, I don't care about efficiency. I'm aware that my damage output isn't acceptable in a raiding environment. But if I can generate enough damage to beat the timer on a legendary bounty solo, I don't see how I am holding anybody back in open world.

On the other hand, take a look at any given world boss, meta, etc. How many people are downed? How many of those players are downed because they're attempting to use glass builds that they aren't quite practiced enough to survive with? Do those players hold the event back more or less than players who survive but deal less potential maximum damage?

For those reasons, I advise trying different builds and using whatever works best for you. I love the fire/arcane weaver build in all flavors, but I PvP, I roam, and I solo bosses, so I tend to prefer a tankier build to a glass build. That's just me. You do you.

What I said above doesn't "depend a lot on player preference and ability." You don't need to be skilled, experienced, or even care about efficiency. I take berserker weaver into the overworld while being specced for almost pure damage, and I blow everything away in one to two hits. The skill floor we're talking about here is whether or not a player can click Quantum Strike or if they know that Sandstorm blinds. If you're talking about players worse than that, then no gear set will save the infinitely incompetent. If Sylent can't function at that level, the question they should be asking is how they can learn to use a good build right, not how to make a wrong build.

You're using your obtuse and eccentric playstyle to justify making generally bad decisions, and your argument is that vacuous "Well, maybe the people who go down at world bosses are in glass canon gear." No, they aren't. Most players don't run glass cannon builds, meta builds, or even something similar to Woodenpotatoe's overworld-focused builds. They run RP builds and RNG builds. The fact is that all of those snowflake builds that don't go for damage still die to solo bounties, still die to solo champions, still die to world bosses, and they still die to legendary mobs. Running a carrion or soldiers isn't going to save them, let alone a mix of the two. If those players were running the raid builds or even a modified raid build, then they wouldn't be doing 10% of the damage of good players on average.

Yeah, you're right. Everyone should play the way you do. If only we would all listen people would cease dying in events and we'd all farm gold 5x as fast as we currently do. Everyone forget your advice. Just thumbs up this guy. He knows the way.

[dace.8019]

100% agree that the way to make Weaver (and almost any profession) shine is to go all-in on damage. It doesn't necessarily need to be berserker (if you're going condi, hybrid or something) but leaning all your stats into killing mobs quickly and working out survivability from traits, utilities and approach/tactics is rewarded throughout GW2's PvE.

There isn't a single aspect of GW2's PvE I don't take a glass-cannon (stats-wise) profession into and manage. Some things are harder than others, but generally I can first-go everything. The game's combat is fluid and dynamic, understanding how different enemies fight is more important than face-tanking them while you cycle through a rotation. One of the best things about being glassy is that you need to learn these. You'll understand the game better as a result; instead of facetanking attacks you might survive, you'll learn to side step them, dodge them, block them, interrupt them, shadowstep out, flank - and you'll have been ready for it, because you'll recognise the enemy and know their moves, the boss' mechanics, etc. This is true mastery.

All of which is achievable in non-damagey gear, of course. But being that good and being in soldier's gear is a bit like leaving your ferrari home and riding the bus.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

You should avoid using random gear, it will make your setup quite inefficient, and proper gear is easy to get.

I find that using Greiver's armor with Celestial trinkets gives enough survivability on Weaver. However, Weaver is really best at excessive ranged AoE damage, up-close the sword seems a bit lackluster and you'll lack the powerful overloads of the Tempest.

Some people make it work, but I always feel like they'll be best as a mage bomber.

I think Rune of Sanctuary is okay if you want to play defensively, it plays into Elementalist's main stats. Its not like, horrible or anything. That said if you want to play defensively on Ele (as core or either subclass), its better to go supportive, that way people will still want you around. This game only has DPS and healers in PvE, it doesn't have tanks outside of select raid content and PvP/WvW.

I encourage everyone to play how they want, and find what works for them. This is about the "meta", but you can ignore it, if you want.

[AliamRationem.5172]

@"Hannelore.8153" said:You should avoid using random gear, it will make your setup quite inefficient, and proper gear is easy to get.

I find that using Greiver's armor with Celestial trinkets gives enough survivability on Weaver. However, Weaver is really best at excessive ranged AoE damage, up-close the sword seems a bit lackluster and you'll lack the powerful overloads of the Tempest.

Some people make it work, but I always feel like they'll be best as a mage bomber.

I think Rune of Sanctuary is okay if you want to play defensively, it plays into Elementalist's main stats. Its not like, horrible or anything. That said if you want to play defensively on Ele (as core or either subclass), its better to go supportive, that way people will still want you around. This game only has DPS and healers in PvE, it doesn't have tanks outside of select raid content and PvP/WvW.

I encourage everyone to play how they want, and find what works for them. This is about the "meta", but you can ignore it, if you want.

There are so many different ways to play weaver. I wish we had a better way to quantify what we mean when talking about our builds. For instance, when you say sword seems lackluster, what does that mean? What is the normal range of DPS?

I am running sword/dagger fire/arcane weaver with plaguedoctor/trailblazer stats. I'm tanky enough to solo difficult champions (PoF bounties, avatar of Balthazar in AB, Svanir brute/summoner, etc.). My single-target sustained DPS when solo against most champions is 7-10k range generally. With support and including cleave, it can be much higher.

What do you guys see with your builds? For all I know, everyone is running around doing 30k sustained DPS in open world. How much DPS is enough for open world?

My build, for reference:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGgAwilZwmYXMJmJOKXbvfA-zRRYkRC7NKwlROJQmFgDzCPTbA-e

[Aigleborgne.2981]

@"AliamRationem.5172" said:What do you guys see with your builds? For all I know, everyone is running around doing 30k sustained DPS in open world. How much DPS is enough for open world?

My build, for reference:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGgAwilZwmYXMJmJOKXbvfA-zRRYkRC7NKwlROJQmFgDzCPTbA-e

I think that people going for full dps build don't bother with difficult champions (not soloing them).Even if it is possible, one mistake and you are dead. And some are probably impossible with berserk stats.

I will look at your build ?When I play OW, I can't resist to attack any champion I encounter. While I like full dps and it is fine for regular tasks, it becomes difficult for champions soloing, especially ranged one.

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

I like war+air+weaver with marauder stats and pack runes. Every hit a critical. Everytime swiftness procs, I cleanse a condi. It is kind of fun. It also works against stupid necros and overconfident engis in wvw.