Ban Daur.4831

My hopes and arguments for Longbow, Rifle or Shortbow: I wonder what type of new playstyle mainhand pistol would bring as we already have scepter builds that are tied or forced into melee range based on traitlines, elite specs and especially offhand weaponskills that they have dagger, focus or warhorn. I believe that having a two handed ranged weapon like LB, Rifle or SB, would be the best option for enabling a new playstyle for elementalist as attunements could be fully filled whit 900 or 1200 ranged weapon skills instead of mix of ranged and melee skills based on current weapon selection. It could also focus on single target damage instead of aoe so it would not overtake staff as the premier AoE weapon and be strike damage focused instead of condition like scepter. Reasoning for strike damage focus is that it would not have to rely on burning rage to deal damage to target as it is an important source of damage for condition builds which is near melee range AoE attack. I also have some fears if we get a pistol mainhand in the end on how it is going to play.and whit which off hand weapon depending on damage type it will support in the end as well. If it is power based weapon we would likely play it whit a dagger that makes the weapon mixed ranged. If it were condition based damage likely whit focus which forces melee whit a trait and fire weaponskill 5 use and we already have scepter condition builds. Then we have warhorn which does not actually look too bad skill wise but would be odd if the pistol were 900 range and warhorn weaponskills ranging from 360, 600, 750 and 1200 range. Another reasoning for a fully ranged two handed weapon option is the new encounter designs that force constant movement, splitting and dropping away aoes like the new silent surf fractal encounter or the OLC strike mission. If the skills were all ranged on the weapon set it would allow for more streamlined play in these encounters. Also my biased preferance of course for the classic fantasy of Arcane / Eldritch Archer whit a longbow. ^^ + sorry for the ramble and typos

Thank you for planning on adding some improvements to Weaver sword dual skills and cauterizing strike in pvp but would love to see these buffs directed more towards auto attack chain effects and weapon skill 2 effects on sword. Having these buffs/changes effect WvW roaming would be lovely as well. Hopes and Dreams: Am personally hoping more improvements towards actual auto attack chains nearly in all attunements. As when I compare sword auto attack chains and 2 weapon skills they rarely compete either whit power or condition damage whit the ease of landing these skill in their aoe radius, range and effect when comparing it to mainhand dagger or scepter. Biggest and most noticable difference is fire sword auto attack chain vs scepter flamestrike which does much more damage over time in also in a 180 AoE radius around the target compared to the sword's melee range 130 radius cone. The flame uprising skill 2 does not look to compete whit any of the other weapon skills either in power or burning damage vs scepter, dagger and hammer. I would love to see a clear identity for sword in PvP and WvW game modes should we play it as a hybrid, power, condition or bunker/sustain I-frame weapon because atm it does not feel like a competetive option vs other elementalist main hand weapons. I might be wrong in this judgement so correct me if I'm wrong.

I will give my observations and opinnions on why sword weaver is not that popular option for roaming in WvW, though you can make it work and have good time on it but it can be definetly feel bad being cheesed by more mobile, ranged and chill condition applying opponents. 1. The biggest killer of weaver especially sword weaver is chill effects. Chill increases not only the cooldowns but the time it takes to switch attunements this can translate to being stuck inside an attunement after a swap for 5-6 seconds which in a fight is a very long to be whitout access to new skills, cleansing effects from traits, boons or your sigil effects that apply on swap. Other elem specs will still have their access to other attunements long as they have not used them but weaver will always have to wait after an attunements change. The chill is extra bad if you are whit sword on weaver as it also makes you 66% slower to catch up to targets. 2. Mobility is still an issue even whitout chill effects taking place as there are opponents that are faster and possibly ranged as well so catching up to your target on sword can be difficult especially whit such long cooldown on air 2 skill. You can take lighting flash, run off hand dagger as well and take traits that increase mobility but these will come at some sacrefice when actually standing and fighting your opponent. 3. Sword also feels bit weak in terms of dealing outside of landing it's strongest skills like pyro vortex or quantum strike and these skills are suprisingly hard to land unless you can land a good cc skill prior to using them and this will come down to practicing a lot on weaver and learning your combos and attunements swaps to make it work whit whatever offhand weapon you end up running. 4. Long cooldowns on most sword skills: both "2" and dual skills. Your weapon skills have a long cooldown and a bad attunement swap makes the sword set feel unfun to play if you attune back to an attunement where your skill is still on cooldown this can result in frustration and waiting until you can use a weapon skill. You can of course practice and memorise on what attunements you have been to last and avoid them until you are sure they have come off cooldown. Learning a cycle that goes between all the attunements in a rotation like old condition sword weaver rotation can also help aleviate that but adapted to pvp/wvw setting will help whit this issue but will take practice. But besides all these issues it can be a fun spec/fighter in the mists if you enjoy the visuals and the weaving between attunements for comboing skills for best effect. It takes time and practice and you will feel like a punching bag while playing it but take the beating, get close and burn your opponents to ashes.

I think we are looking at wrong location while scepter is quite strong atm and could use some tuning whit catalyst I don't see it abused whit either tempest or weaver as much and catalyst could jump to another weapon set if it were nerfed. The difference from what i see is the amount+variety of boons, extra stats, combofields and auras that catalyst can generate is what makes it superb compared to other elem specs. For tempest to generate as many boons, auras and combofields they will need to take shouts that cost utility slot and complete overloads which can be interupted. Catalyst spheres are instant cast and you generate energy to cast them via attacking and attunement swapping if you run approriate trait. Catalyst Sphere size and duration also matters as catalyst can combo inside it easier compared to any other combofields tempest or weaver can generate. The type of auras, finishers and boons from Spheres/combofields that can be generated is lot stronger than elem could do before in combination whit the traits catalyst can choose from. I would reccoemend looking into what catalyst brought to the table in comparison to what other elem builds can do and try to match the power level while not destroying the uniqueness of the spec for those whom enjoy it.

Yeah the polaric leap can be indeed very handy for interupting key skills including heals, channeled skills and pve side the bosses breakbar. Guess you could also remove the superspeed for lowered cooldown but that goes againts the idea of gab closing easier. I figured it would be a fair tradeoff for a lowered cooldown but I do see not having something to remove stab prior to gale or gales trikes or other cc would weakean the potential cc chain/combo. Working whit some traitideas instead if "woven stride" swiftness increase part became a minor trait and increased your movement speed while wielding a sword but yeah this change feels bad as well. As for primordial stance turning bleeding into imobilizes that would certainly be strong having pulsing aoe imobs to keep enemies tethered to you but PvE side of things the bleeding is used to deal damage. Pulsing chill is already quite strong at slowing targets especially againts elems and we do have it in our kit as well whit the primordial stance but yeah using it takes away from damage potential. Having some way of applying imobilize or stun prior to to landing pyro vortex would certainly be strong only thing that comes to mind for sword set to have is air earth dual attack: "gale strike" which already has a floating cc. Guess you could extend the floating duration up to 2s or at least 1.5s to match scepter this would ease preassure for attunement swapping and landing the pyro vortex for damage after or quantum strike when playing whit power sword exmpl. Traditionally however cc prior to landing these skills is done whit the off hand weapons: focus gale 3s knockdown 40s cooldown, Dagger: updraft 200 launch 30s cooldown (in PVP). But having something on else to help whit landing key skills on sword would certainly be helpful. As for updating sword, scepter and other elementalist weapon skills it comes down to the devs to see if buffing or nerfing things is the better approach. And yeah the effort to reward whit how easy it is to land skills and how much damage or utility they provide is harder thing to balance and scepter in that regard is performing very well in comparison to sword but I would not want to see it nerfed overtly either as it can be the best choice to run for elmentalist thanks to phase sifting or other mechanics in some PvE encounters that prevent melee focused builds from being viable. Did some testing whit a friend sometime ago non scientific as it was just memes and chillin at the time but they were running scepter at the time whit grieving stats I believe in (PvP). I wanted to test out different sword auto attacks vs fire scepter autoattack on their catalyst. On the short test I tried condition build and power build to test if either fire or air auto attacks would match the scepter auto damage. It was not even close scepter would hit much harder vs both condition or power sword users. I then tried to circle the opponent to try and avoid the 2nd hit from the scepter but that did not workout either. I did not test out earth or water autoattacks but I doubt either would have performed much better. (This was a meme not serious test of power level between sword and scepter. It did not account for attunement swapping and proccing different traits for modifiers it was auto chain vs auto chain alone)

Thank you both for added suggestions and yeah phase sifting is an issue that full melee specs have to content whit. Sword weaver is not alone in this problem and generally I also would hope to see melee specs be able to close the gab in damage when mechanics allow whit higher potential dps compared to their ranged counterparts. On elementalist guess this issue could also be solved if conjure weapons became more like kits to switch into for some ranged damage. Frost bow might be cool option for power sword weavers and maybe for condi weavers as well if you add some bleeding to the auto attack perhaps imagine sharp icecicles. Another option for condi side instead the axe as it has condition already skills tied to it besides the ranged auto attack. But conjures are not the subject of this thread and someone can open a topic to cover them again. But continuing whit the crazy sword suggestions Fire Attunement: Cauterizing Strike: I would add extra burning ticks when hitting bleeding foe to honor the name sake of this skill and make the skill match the burning duration of scepter 3. (PvP) This would allow nice counterplay againts the weaver as well so it encourages people to cleanse their bleeds before weaver dual attunes into fire for more damage. Also (PvE) side of things to Increase the damage of Condition sword weaver to compete whit scepter.

I'd like to first say I'm tired when I'm writing these suggestions and that i have lowered inhibitations so i might go crazy whit some of the suggestions. Bring me down to earth if need be or go crazy yourself as well if you have good ideas for improvements. I will start from fire attunement and work my way down to earth. I may not comment on every sword skill weaver has but on the ones I believe could use improvement. Also here is a link to see current skills: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Weaver Fire Attunement: 1. The auto attack chain: Fire Strike, Fire Swipe and Searing Slash: I would love to see burning added to the first two skills similar to earth attunements auto attack chain. Currently the chain feels very weak and backloaded where as scepters 1 auto does lot more damage in shorter time whit little risk of interuption. Adding burning to the auto attack chain in pve would help bring up some crowd favorite builds back into play that are played whit sword namely Condition Sword Weaver and Hybrid Sword Weaver. PvP side of things this would help fire weaver(Condi) to apply some preassure still when other skills are on cooldown and also because weaver has harder access to cover conditions similar to burn guardian so i believe it needs easier access to apply at least some burning damage. 2. Flame Uprising: This one is crazy but it need not be too strong I would add pulsing burning on the field to match scepters burning damage after the initial hit because at the momment scepter 2 dragonstooth is on a shorter cooldown and does more damage while following it's target. Adding burning to the field would similarly help previously mentioned sword builds in pve and in pvp I feel the previous buff was aokay but it does not match the power level of scepter. 3. Cauterizing Strike: I would add extra burning ticks when hitting bleeding foe to honor the name sake of this skill and make the skill match the burning duration of scepter 3. (PvP) This would allow nice counterplay againts the weaver as well so it encourages people to cleanse their bleeds before weaver dual attunes into fire for more damage. Also (PvE) side of things to Increase the damage of Condition sword weaver to compete whit scepter. Water Attunement: 1. Auto attack chain: Not every attunement need be strong for damage and that was the idea whit weaver to weave between offense and defense. I'm going crazy again but on the last hit whit auto attack chain in addition to it's healing I would add a short duration slow, weakness or chill to add defensive value to completing the chain. Would this be a cool interaction? Would help both in PvP and perhaps little in open world as well againts some mobs if they were hampered somehow. 2. Riptide: (PVP) I would add 1s of stability at the start of the cast to prevent to gurantee that this skill goes off. Atm when you use it and hit a shocking aura or similar skill like engineer shield it gets interupted. That might be smart play on their part to interupt it when you enter water attunement but being an evade and a very key skill for survival and sustain whit a long cooldown is sad to loose it like that. Other option is to remove the damaging part of the skill entirely to fix the same issue and have it purely as a healing and evasion skill. Air Attunement: 1. Auto attack chain: Going crazy again here but I would add some vulnerability to the chain attack to work as a cover condition for condi and boost power damage side of things (PvP) and help keep up vulnerability stacks in (PvE) and to add a short blind 1s on the last attack to make this skill more attractive to power sword weavers in pvp it would be thematic as well whit lightning theme. This would help compete whit scepter after becoming lot stronger in it's utility to apply damage, weakness and blind. 2. Polaric Leap: (PvP) I would remove the daze this skill has for a lot shorter cooldown to make it work as gab closer. Atm it is way too easy to kite the slow moving sword weaver whit ranged weapons. 15s on a 2 skill on air is way too long. Have it match flame uprsing whit power damage instead and remove daze for gained mobility if need be. Earth Attunement: 1. Rust Frenzy: (PvP)+(PvE open world) This skill roots you in place and requires dual attuning to earth to get use out of it. I would add defensive value to it whit weakness and it would work to cover condition your bleeding as well perhaps. Well those were my suggestions and they were mostly working around condition application perhaps there are other ways of enhancing sword skills as well like adding boon application somewhere or other interactions or just numbers changes. Give me your thoughts on this or your own suggestion better yet for some of the skills not mentioned yet if you believe they are in need of updating or buffing. Or is this a terrible idea again and too much power creep for sword weaver?

I have been delving into deadeye recently to find a fun power spec to play but i have noticed one annoying issue when you get hit by knockback/push or other cc mechanics even if they are small like in strikes or fractals they will rise you from kneel position and sometimes when zoomed out or focusing on the rotation I may not notice the change. This might be a learn to play issue mostly but I would hope that (if you get knocked/stunned you return to kneeling position instead of standing) if that was your stance whit the rifle. Would this change be beneficial or hinder repositioning after a stun too much? Has this been an issue for you playing deadeye or learned to play around it?

I loved playing the old heal tempest back when it had 10 target cap and could be fit into squads whitout major drawbacks. The trait and utility selection imo at least were more free and the ability to heal outside of water attunement via auras was amazing as you could gain those via weapon skills, trait choices, shouts and overloads. It promoted a very fun and active playstyle and did not feel punishing when leaving water. I know lot of people seem to be happy or at least fine whit the new tempest but personally it feels like a shadow of it's former glory. Comparison videos of the old and the new: compare the healing potential and playstyle/gameplay. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ND95MQVtekc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZ5DtCPSFQQ Having alacrity baseline on tempest would enable lot more play whit the spec and might be balanced as well for it too. Tempest atm is not winning any dps races and it's utility toolbox while a bit better now is not great either. If alacrity became baseline tempest could be played more as a carry healer as it was back then, also the offensive support variant might perfectly align whit the other offensive supports if it had to take some boon duration or run two to fill for uptime similar to renegades and mirages. Compare the full dps tempest to other offensive supports: https://snowcrows.com/benchmarks Of course balancing comes an issue again in both in pve and pvp and for that just have the same treatment herald recently got and make the alacrity another boon for competitive modes or completly not available. This request has already been shouted by so many in some of the other topics and some youtube videos covering the tempest. What I would want to know is why not make it so? Because from my perspective tempest is not topping any dps charts, the healing is not overpowered whit the utility it can bring and it's playrate is low outside of pvp of course.

Also want to tell some some experiences I have seen as well about the elementalist players or those whom struggle whit it, try it out and then drop it. Some of them were friends, guildies and others public lfg gamers. I know these issues as seasoned players you know are overcome whit experience, proper build, traitline choices, positioning and understanding of your skills/rotation/combos. And I'm pretty sure you have seen other people whom have tried elementalist struggle whit it as well and that is why we pick the class to welcome the challenge of course. Or for the cool visual effects hah. But too often I have seen and heard the elementalist players struggle so much whit it that they been kicked out of groups or asked to reroll to another spec/build. One such experience was in W2 Slothasaur a tempest player was trying to play the current iteration of the heal tempest build and you can guess how that went. They failed at every aspect that is asked of them to heal, condition clear and provide alacrity (They could do only around 30% uptime). The comm asked them go dps this time around and the role was filled whit ham. (Please make alacrity baseline so tempest players can pick the healing grandmaster) Going futher into past before EoD there was a friend who wanted to try out the new hybrid weaver build whit sword in fractals and they really stuggled whit positioning to avoid aoes/condition and to deal damage having to be fully melee range whit a low hp pool. He did give it a good try but after downing so many times whit it and feeling unable to contribute as much as he wanted would promptly switch to a scourge to overcome the mechanics. One more short story from public lfg strike: mai trin CM training a dps tempest player was trying it out and I'm guessing they were struggling to do their damage rotation while dealing whit mechanics which resulted in the favorite pass time of elem players floor tanking. Comm kicked them out as a result even though it was training. Yeah it was CM I know you should know your class/spec going into harder content. It is so rare to see elementalist players whom perform well on their chosen spec/role and also decide to stick whit it to learn. But even on the high end those players whom are competent or even mastered the class/specs/roles idk do you feel rewarded and how often do you feel like that you have the tools to deal whit mechanics whitout huge sacrefices to your normal damage/heal/support builds. I know you can build around each encounter but having some quality of life would be nice or perhaps not as elementalist can be hard class to balance. Sorry for the rambling and these downer stories. There are some good ones as well where a friend decided to pick fire weaver for pvp and climbed from silver to g2-g3 and were happy about the experience. But yeah often times these stories have ended whit a bad experience.

Yeah when I opened this topic I was mainly focusing on the pve side of things but I do realise this change would effect the competitive modes as well. This change could be pve exclusive as well to prevent overt power creep for weaver in PvP and not reduce the skill expression, build diversity and skill ceiling. But what I had in mind whit the long cooldown to have on the unravel would only enable the weaver player to use it once per phase in instanced content like fractals/strikes/raids to enable them to contribute to breakbars or to survive conditions and large aoe areas like in 98cm if you were to fail in positioning. The cooldown example could be from 60-120s so it was used only for those emergencies. As for pvp side the cooldown could be similarly long if it were to be added so you could only use it once per fight for a duel to help survive a +1 at a side node. Or for roaming fresh air scepter weaver to enable one damage burst. Think this was the build (scepter) that used unravel in the utility bar to enable that fast burst damage and this change would effect this build the most. From what I understand and have seen the build struggles whit survival a lot and has fallen out of favor a bit. Perhaps this could help the build a bit to allow it to slot another defensive utility for survival or more damage if you wanted to go crazy but yeah that is where the balancing problem comes in and smarter heads whit experience and math need to step in. As a side note about adding damage to supporting utilities. Yeah that approach could work as well to solve the same problem and we have examples of these whit other classes that can slot passive signets whit damage attributes and that enable useful utility on the active. Few examples: Bane signet, Signet of Midnight, Signet of Domination, Signet of Agility and many others. Those utilities being stun breaks, cc or condition clear while providing damage boost on the passive. But that topic might require it's own thread and I belive it's been requested and talked about similarly in the past like unravel.

Yeah I'm kind of new in the forums and was not playing back when PoF was realeased where unravel might have been already discussed. I figured to bring up the topic for this now as some reworks are happening whit upcoming balance patches and share this view again. Also i hope it would be not too difficult a change to make. I don't know if it would help the playrate of the class that much but maybe add that little bit of ease of use. As for weapon skill use yeah: skill 3 access can be crucial for dagger to have those evades and air 3 cc skill. But whit unravel we would get access to those next attunement's sweet off hand weapon skills as well. If it were dagger, focus or staff or any weapon set for that matter. Having to wait 4-8s to line up for cc skill use or to survive a mechanic whit a condition clear, evade or obsidian flesh is way too long sometimes for the situations especially in a dynamic game like gw2. (depending of course if alacrity/arcane/weave self) Yeah side note for sword favorite weapon for me which actually made me pick up weaver, as it had that battlemage vibe. Sad to see it be so low damage in comparison to other choices like scepter and staff which have popped up. Well gave me an excuse to try out those weapons more now but do hope sword set will get some look at as well.

Elemenatlist what do you think if weaver would get unravel utility as an F5 skill? I think it would fit thematicly and help the utility side of weaver for key situations where you need access to: survival tools, CC skills, projectile block, evades, healing and/or if the encounter allows just raw extra burst damage. I would not want it to become part of the normal damage rotation for weaver but to make it easier access for key utilities which are tied to weapon skills to help weaver overcome encounter mechanics in a hurry. I think it would also make weaver more fun, easier and useful to play having that little bit of extra/faster utility access. (Ranting to justify adding it, you may skip this part): You may ask then why not use unravel then as slotted utility, because from what i understand to remain damage competitive you need to run damage for all your utilities. You may ask why not run fresh air instead: not all weaver builds run that, though I do like it when it allows you easier access to those 2nd slot skills on other attunements. You may ask why not predict the encounter mechanic and be ready in whatever attunement you need to be for the mechanic: because sometimes staying or preparing a specific attunement or combo for things is a huge damage loss or sometimes things happen at random and you are too slow to contribute to breakbar damage and feel bad about it or you might be on the floor enjoying being rubbed. I don't know in what form unravel would be best for weaver as a F5 skill but I would be fine having it added whitout: ammo, boons and whit a relativly long cooldown to keep it balanced. This way it would not remove the specialization trade off completly either and hopefully keep unravel for use only in key situations. Is this a bad or a good idea and if good in what form unravel could be for weaver as an F5? Or should it remain in the choice utility skillbar?

Greetings I will add my suggestion as well which would require a new animation to be added to the warrior but would look cool from roleplay standpoint and gameplay mechanic would not require dropping the banner and picking it up anymore making it similar to other boon utilities but retaining the unique banner visuals. Animation "Wave the banner of: XXXXXX" and if voice acting could be added to scream something inspirational related to the banner would be a nice bonus. Example animation: Skip to: 0:23 People whom are better at roleplay and and know guild wars lore could perhaps add Charr, Human, Sylvari, Asura and Norn quotes/voice lines to the banners when being waved. What do you guys think those could be? But some examples that came to my mind: Charr: Banner of Defense: For the Legions! Banner of Discipline: One Charr! / Warband to me! Banner of Strength: Show me your claws! Banner of Tactics: Legions march! / Fight like Khan-ur! Battle Standard: Human: Banner of Defense: For Kryta! / For the Queen! Banner of Discipline: Stand firm! Banner of Strength: Banner of Tactics: Flank them! Battle Standard: Sylvari: Banner of Defense: Preserve sacred life! / Protect the Grove! Banner of Discipline: Banner of Strength: Draw strenght from Nature! Banner of Tactics: Ventari guide us! Battle Standard: Asura: Banner of Defense: Protect the research! / Preseve Knowledge! Banner of Discipline: Banner of Strength: Terminate the ignorant! Banner of Tactics: Employ your minds! Battle Standard: Norn: Banner of Defense: Banner of Discipline: Venerate the spirits! Banner of Strength: Time to hunt! Banner of Tactics: Prepare a trap for them! / Spirits guide us! Battle Standard: What do you guys think? Would this be a bad idea and the cooldowns and boons could be adjusted accordingly. The cast speed of the animation / banner wave could range from 0.5 to 1.25. Elite Banner is a question mark if the stomping and revival potential is to be kept however guess it could be still a throw animation or a longer wave animation.

That is a good point having to run water on a dps build to enable aura share would indeed be a painful dip on dps potential. Perhaps alacrity could indeed be here instead: Unstable Conduit and if need be have those pvp, wvw and pve splits on the duration of alacrity or even absence of it like done for some other strong boons in the game.