TheGreatEdgelord.7048

Christ I've stopped playing GW2 some months ago and i'm really surprised that Fire Weaver, out of all things, is now the please-nerf-everything bandwagon's target. I used to play this build a lot, as it was outright broken (as everything else) before the Febuary 2020 patch, but past that I felt like this build became some sort of mediocre tanker build that hardly can kill anything if not by perfectly timing your attunements and scarce CCs. You're hard to kill thanks to moderate-CD shadowsteps (Lightning Flash, Polaric Leap), a generous amount of evades and sustain (the nerf to stone resonance was mostly a good shave maybe) - which imo is the only thing where fire weavers barely shine above other builds - and that's it. You're, ultimately, a tanker: you're completely inoffensive outside of your pathethic 130 attack range; your only playstyle is to make the exact same combo every 20-30 seconds and try not to die (of boredom too) during this time interval; the only way to get a kill is to hunt for someone dumb - or unfortunate to be stunlocked - enought to stay near you while primordial stance, lava skin and pyro vortex pumps burning. Practically every other sidenoder build - which you're meant to fight - can kitten and/or run from you. And on top of that, your only realiable stunbreaker is (controversially) 25s-CD Signet of Air. But this skill, being a signet, allows your non-negative IQ enemies to know exactly when it's up or not - and thus when you can stunbreak or not (this is one of the reasons why some players still prefer long-CD ToF over signet). Apart from being mediocre on most things, this is probrably the only build in this game's history to be condemned to fcing carry a "cc me" plaque so everyone can cripple your already fragile rotations with immense ease. To sum up: It's a build that mostly relies on passive AoE CDs to deal damage - which makes this build somewhat effective on low-tier matches, but becomes pointless in and above P1 as playroles become more specialized (this is where LR retires Fire Weaver). In general, it's one of these builds that attempts to be a jack-of-all-trades but ends up being barely regular at most things. And while these sort of builds saw some success before Febuary 2020 - when stats were pretty abudant, most of them - like this one - were dumped into mediocricity and, for some unknow reasoning inside an Anet employee's brain, further nerfed. The fact that this build is seemingly more popular now tells more about how braindead it is than anything else. I really hope I have missed some massive buff to Fire Weaver (or a nerf to everything else) that somehow made this build enjoyable and viable - otherwise, this entire thread is just another testament to the painful death of the PvP scenery of this game.

So far I haven't seen how the burst-aspect of the PvP gamemode was fixed; and at many scenarios, it made bursting way worse. The fact that many skills do so little damage and have so little value - as part of no-skill-that-do-too-much philosophy - pushed many builds to rely on extensive burst rotations to secure any kill potential. Combine this with the overzealous increase of cooldowns and you have, basically, a turn-based game. In addition, the global cut-down of high-impact traits/skills - either by nerf or by hilarious amount of CD - greatly affected build variety: duelist builds were highly punished and everything that was left is, mainly, builds that are viable but indissociably vulnerable - as many are, e.g., to condi currently, precisely due to the cleanse witch-hunt; and with no way of working it around if not by either becoming a bunker, or staying so as, essentially, a hit-and-run glass cannon. The options by which you can react to damage were greatly reduced, in general: you'll die (and kill) even throughout the most pathetic of rotations; and it feels like the match winner is completely decided at the very class roll.

Almost every single time I died was due to CC chain. Otherwise most bunkerish builds can cycle through Healing/CDs. This the worst sPvP was in years. Competitive game modes were never better, people just look back on the past with rose-tinted glasses. Both PvP and WvW have been garbage since the beginning and in the last half a year or so are only just now starting to show some promise. What's happened is that people have lost that new relationship energy they had with the game.As much as this is true, one cannot simply trivialize the fact that this patch either potentialized or neglected the current ubiquity of hard CCs. The global chopping of stability and stunbreaks made stunlocking a vulnerability to many builds. But given the lower combat cadence yielded by the upscaling of CDs across the game, inhibiting one of any sort of defensive counterstrategy through continuous CC application seems like the only way of taking down the many bunker-ish builds that aroused in this patch. Not only that, but an increased combat time-to-death means that +1s are now much more effective; loosening the control you have over your own fights and emphasizing zerging/targeting - rather than "emphasis[ing] on [your own] skills". Overall, i'm midly dissappointed with cmc's work; and I think we'll need a CC balance patch pretty soon.

The immense avalibility of stuns compared to that of stunbreaks in this game is what disvirtues the point of CCs. It virtually allows you to inhibt any sort of defensive counterstrategy towards an enemy damage rotation; and thanks to the global witch hunt of stability and stunbeaks by this patch, this situation is now much more exploitable. It would be great if some CCs were reworked into some type of short daze or minor interrupt, so that the inherent strategy of CCs revolved around cancelling the cast of a particular skill - either for offensive or defensive effect; or simply give back our stability uptime. Now, as CDs were significantly scaled across the game - and damage chopped, making fights (particularly 1v1s) much slower, stunlocking is actually - and unfortunately - the main (or maybe only) way of taking down some builds.

Renewing the pvp experience by increasing cooldowns so much until it feels like a turn-based strategy. Gotta enjoy this 5-minute ICD on Final Shielding - a skill almost identical to 35-second CD Shield of Wrath.

lol what a noob just learn 2 play by rereading your build's rotation on metabattle during that half-a-minute stunlock

If only an enlighted mind could possibly presume that making most stunbreak/stability skills unviable while lefting CCs untouched - besides its damage - would lead to a CC-while-someone-else-does-stuff meta.

A sidenoder duo

As much as I'm respectful of cmc's work, I'm also worried about how much of a burden it was for him to carry the balance patch accross every single trait. But also hope that there'll be viable duelists/roamers builds - my favourite type of gameplay; even if it means that weavers might get out of the current pvp scenery they fullfil. Additionally, and as I'm a fairly new player (~4 years), I'm also very afraid about how traumatic it'll be to change builds into completely different ones; with very distinct roles. "resetting" all your muscular memory and niches about your current builds is a thing that I'm not secure if I can deliver; in spite of it (hopefully) being a necessary sacrifice.

Just give us an example of skill based dmg application of any class in GW2.....I DARE YOU , go on and give me an example of complex dmg rotation in gw2 that requires super-human cordination and concentration. What will you pick ? : spin to win reaper ? ; spint -teleport guardian ? ; shiro teleport herald ? ; stealth burst clown fiesta? ; bull's rush CC lock? ; pewpew gazelle hero? mantra/symbol spam champion? 1-2-3-4-5 holo? C'mon give me an example of skillful dmg application which you obviously play.... ha as cherry on the cake : You talk about light armor class lore as they should rely on dodges to survive but you conveniently forget that light armor should also do 3x more dmg than the rest..hence the light armor does any of that make sense to you?...if not I don't know why you have mentioned light armor or simply you never played another MMO before GW2 "Just give us an example of skill based dmg application of any class in GW2...I DARE YOU" . Oh...who knows? Maybe every one that doesn't rely entirely on a single utility skill that pulses damage for you in such a way that there's almost no way of doing significant damage without it? I don't really know from where you deduced that I consider any of these aforementioned builds as "complex dmg rotation in gw2 that requires super-human cordination and concentration". And in spite of the great majority of them having indeed more complex damage rotations than the Fire Weaver build (and sometimes a steeper learning curve) - and that comes from my own personal experience, I wouldn't refer to them as requiring "super-human cordination and concentration", because this aspect of GW2's PvP died entirely between HoT and 2016: to the point of teamfighting having almost no strategical value besides damage concentration/zerging. "skill-based" should be taken quite literally here, because a profession with more than 20 non-autoattack/non-elite skills shouldn't be viscerally dependant of a single ability for any form of damage application. "you conveniently forget that light armor should also do 3x more dmg" - I'll remind you, because you seem to have forgotten, that GW2's playerbase was highly skeptical of a light armor profession ever going melee would be, anyhow, viable, when the Weaver speacialization was firstly announced. The subsequent PvP seasons after PoF proved them right: sword damage was pathetic, sustain was inferior to most builds, mobility was low. The 2 only possible ways of playing weaver on pvp would be either a fresh air glass cannon or a subpar bunker - the latter being namely this: [https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Weaver_-_Cello_Sword] . The Riptide nerf on the Febuary 2018 patch started a funerary choir about the possiblity of a weaver build ever being viable within structured PvP, even thought sword skills were receiving constant buffs. Eventually, the Condi Weaver we know surfaced, but dependent on the Water traitline for cleansing and survivability: [https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Weaver_-_Sage%27s_Sword] . The August 2018 Patch, which introduced Transmute abilities and Smoothering Auras, created survivability options within the Fire traitline; and gradually these "Sage Weavers" became Fire Weavers. The rework on the Elementalist's core specializations by the July 2019 Patch, which moved weapon skills CD reduction modifiers to minor traits, made all core traitlines a bit more offensive and versatile - even the Water traitline; greatly enhancing the offensive and sustaining capabilities of Elementalists in general. The subsequent nerf on Mirages' and Holosmiths' most popular metabuilds on the October 2019 patch made Fire Weavers the uncontested best sidenoder on GW2's PvP. Overall, the Weaver Specialization traitline didn't recieve many impactful changes on the last patches since PoF; and what allowed weavers to ascend to the metagame were, mainly, changes on the core specs other than an supposed inherent overpowerness of the Weaver specialization.

I can't really understand your point on "dodgerolling grants vigor" though. The 2 sources of vigor on the default Fire Weaver build comes from Elemental Contincengy (3s when struck while on water, 10s ICD); and Invigorating Strikes (3s when using a dual attack). Mantaining your supposed "big" vigor uptime would require a weaver to force itself on defensive stances, as the only 2 dual attacks that matter on sword weavers are Lava Skin and Pyro Vortex; and attuning to water for anything other than riptide - which is practically your healing skill - is usually bad. If somehow the vigor uptime on weavers is huge, just add an ICD for Invigorating Strikes on its vigor application (similar to Woven Stride). And for a light armor class, I really would prefer for it to rely on dodges for its defensive capabilities other than passive damage reductions/vitality or anything of that sort; as dodges requires you to have previous knowledge of your enemy's combos for its effective use. Maybe the exhaustion effect could be applied as a (additional) way to halt the many on-demand evade frames a weaver has, but, imho, the main problem with Fire Weavers is its braindead damage application of simply proc Lava Skin, Primordial Stance and Glyph an stress your target with passive and huge amounts of burning. I'd be glad if this lazy design could be reworked into something more skill-based and less (if at all) passive.

What attracts many people to complain about fire weavers, regardless of motive or coherence, is the fact that this build exploits the thing that most lacks on Gw2's pvp playerbase: disengaging - and how and when to do it. Fire Weavers are practically innofensive outside of their 180 range damage threshold: wait for primordial stance and glyph to go off, watchout if they're fire-attuned, be aware of Pyro Vortex and Lava Skin, stunbreak/evade Gale and you'll avoid almost all their damage. Their sustain is completely within the expectations of a build that uses a +560 healing power amulet - and with access to water fields and blast finishers (and, a very important highlight: it is a light armor melee build). The stability uptime given by primordial stance and bolstered elements single handedly is 20% - which is essential for keeping within the 180 range from your foe; and considering the amount of cc-heavy builds, this is perfectly adequate. And, also, this is a mostly single-condi condition damage build; as cleansing prioritizes the condition that's applied the most, minor (although frequent) cleansing can mitigate most of the damage. My complaint about fire weavers, in spite of those who refer to this build as one of "high skill floor/cap", is how passive their damage is: proc primordial stance, glyph and lava skin and keep within a 180 range from your target, disengage and sustain if needed, but that's all. It might be tricky to keep chasing some classes with a single 12s cd 600 range gap closer, and the overall sustain and survivability of this build involves some semi-esoteric nuances: you cannot heal and cleanse effectively at the same time (as you clean on fire and heal on water/earth); your damage mitigation relies heavely on dodges (and thus additional knowledge of your enemy combos). Not to mention how comically vulnerable this build is to boon corrupt and chill. Overall, to disappointment of those who claim the opposite, surviving is indeed the most skill-based thing on fire weavers. Imo, fire weavers aren't that op by themselves. However, anet has nerfed every other build that could effectively counter it to the point that this build quickly surfaced to gw2's pvp metagame. I hope those working on the next big balance keep it in mind; otherwise we'll return to the same status quo of "balance patchs" which only deletes a particular build from pvp whislt ignoring the immense range of interplayer strategical possibilities, so that another extremely overpowered and broken build/comp emmerges shortly after; taking the dead build's podium.