scerevisiae.1972

Weaver is getting a small buff this coming patch with 5->3CD on the GM trait condi cleanse. For sceptre, the recent nerf to earth/air i think was probably unnecessary, it's a 1-shot spec and often can't 1-shot anymore, which is a bit rough considered Sc weaver has no real sustain, stealth etc like a thief would have. That said it's certainly still playable. The biggest issue with weaver IMO is how much of a restriction the 4sec attunement CD imposes on weapon choice and playstyle. Sword weaver is in a bad place as the game has been heavily mobility powercrept so it can't keep up, literally. Still ok versus specs that can't kite it. Hammer weaver is still as bruisy as ever, just very slow and easily kited. Hammer just needs either more ranged skills or another mobility skill to be more generally viable in WVW. Overall weaver is just mid to average overall and definitely not meta. I think the stance nerf (barrier->protection) hurt a lot and was fairly unjustified as weaver wasn't that strong before the change anyway. If I could choose what to change I would definitely be directing attention to making the really terrible (in WVW) weapons relevant -- hammer (more ranged skills, or mobility), pistol (full rework, it sucks), spear (more damage or more utility, pick 1, cause staff beats it in both areas), and maybe sword (make the fire 2 leap be 600 range).

maybe it's you not playing the game? most roamers run power, condi and cele builds in varying amounts, it's totally naive to say cele is always best, cause it isn't. cele is only a viable stat choice if your build self-generates a lot of might. I even get whispers from clueless players along the lines of "you only won cause cele" when i am using a full power build (or trailblazers).

Nerfing cele is naive and reactionary. For years supports have been running minstrels, yet minstrels has never been nerfed. All of a sudden, some WVW commanders started runing a few supports as cele and all of a sudden cele is a problem? Moreover if you were going to nerf, why not start with 20% nerf instead of 100%->0? Anet has to stop listening to thse clueless WVW commanders who only know 1 aspect of the game - faceroll boonballing (cause they are actually terrible at the game, hence why they _need_ to zerg).

* make every weapon a feasible choice in WVW, no more of this BS "we're making this weapon just for PVE" like Ele has gotten for the last 5 straight expacs. * make a 3rd BL map, maybe a fully/mostly underground/dungeon map? having 2 copies of Arctic 12 years after release is super lame and frankly embarrassing. * nerf the kitten out of infinite boon stacking in boonballs, it's ridiculous. a simple solution would be applying boons to a target that already has that boon adds the lesser of (<current-boon-dur>, 1sec) to the current duration. eg: target with 5sec prot receives another 5sec prot but adds only 1sec, making 6sec prot instead of 10. then revert last boon strip nerf. zerging success should require dodging and strategy not facerolling PVE rotations.

> even replacing minstrel on some supports. isn't that a GOOD thing? every support in WVW was running minstrel but now SOME supports have switched to cele. Why is that a problem? even if we stipulate it's a problem that needs addressing (i don't think so), why nerf 100% of the boon duration and condi duration? why not try nerfing 20-50% rather than 100%->0?

I roam on ele regularly on a variety of different specs and can hold my own against the best thieves in the game. I get pinged by WVW commanders to join their zergs as staff weaver artillery. Staff weaver still the best class/spec for DPS vs large blobs in a constricted area. Ele does have a very high skill floor but it definitely still works just fine when played well. I think Ele does need buffs (in WVW) but only to its weak/unusable weapons: hammer, pistol, spear and to a lesser extent, warhorn & sword. Staff/dagger/sceptre are pretty much fine.

i think it strongly depends on the class/spec. losing 45% boon duration is huge for ele/engi for example. also think more generally peole don't realise how much damage they will lose from loss of stacked might... but maybe this will take some time to sink in. as above, there is a good reason why pre-buffed cele was not widely used and why they buffed it to its current state. I still think cele stats are being heavily scapegoated here when really it's excessive boons and nerfed strips that is the real issue. at the very least, nerfing to 50-75% of current boon/condi duration seems like a better first step rather than 100%->0%...

i think Anet are yet to make it clear why they want to nerf cele -- what's the problem? buffed cele has been around for years. the problem, if there is one, is that zergs are using cele on supports, but that is a problem with boon availability and Anet nerfing boon strip, which is a problem of their own making in both cases. making cele redundant again is not going to solve anything, zergs will just go back to mintrels.

wow, so you can't read either. they're both kitten.

pointless arguing with you cause you're clearly new or uninformed about the game but cele damage builds only work cause of mixed power/condi damage and <gasp> boon duration and condi duration. both of which are going away in WVW.... which is why nerfed cele will go back to being roughly as useful as soldier's gear. case in point, before cele was buffed, soldier's gear _was_ the default gear prefix for wvw exotic gear and level 80 boosts.

and how many power builds use cele? :boggle:

i don't think you know what "factually" means. nerfed cele being "worse" that soldier's gear is an opinion, thus "factually" is a non-sequitur. > you can still do more power damage with celestial than soldier ...whereas ^this is _factually_ incorrect, as soldier's has a lot higher power stat.

not sure if you were playing the game then but noone used it back then -- that's why they buffed it, duh.

doesn't need damage, it needs utility/survivability - a reflect/block or a 2nd movement skill. it's way too squishy.

nerfed cele gear worse than soldier though.

just add the daze back. wasn't even OP, had no reason to change. but hey, this is Anet, the dev team that nerfed boon strips when boon abundance was already a problem /shrug.

thief is fine, you're just bad. try playing one to learn how they work and how to counter.

have we found someone who plays pistol at all?

this post is correct. i've been a roamer since the game released and cele was not even used by roamers back when it didn't have concentration after the initial set of nerfs that reduced the total stats -- that's _why the buffed it_ to include conc and expertise. nerfing cele just means that we (roamers) will go back to full power / full condi and trust me, that will be way more toxic to all the lower-skilled players that need to zerg. the cele roamer meta was always about roamers fighting other roamers, but as above, cele works because it has boon duration and cele builds need high might uptime to be able to kill anything. i totally agree that zergs now running cele on supports is a problem, i ran cele as supports in zergs long before it became popular, eventually WVW commanders caught on despite cele being the best support gear for literally years... but, the issue is not cele stats, it's that Anet has powercrept the hell out of boons and continually nerfed strips. leave cele alone and fix the boon/strip problem.

> * It's getting changed back to the original Celestial from 2013-2021, the new modified Celestial with boon/condi duration was a change from 2021-2024. noone used it back then, that's why they buffed it. > * It got used before the change, but less. Mostly by Guardian+Elementalist back in Core or before HOT. Being the only classes that could benefit from all stats at the same time. ele is my most-played class, and i never used cele before the buff, power or zealots/clerics/marshals mixes were better. > * Most roamers just hate it because it has toughness, and they hate that, because they can't just burst people down. very untrue. a lot of roamers use cele. i'm a "roamer main" and i don't care if my adversaries use cele at all. or full tank gear for that matter. roamers win because they play better, that's all. > Nothing much will really change. The forums will just flounder about a few days until they can find something new to complain about. also untrue. many existing roaming builds on eg: guildjen are already being changed/reworked or removed. there is a net loss of build diversity and that is bad. cele builds only work when they self-generate might to compensate for the big loss of damage, and it's the boon duration that keeps the might up and makes it work. the boon duration is crucial. as i said, they could experiment with the impact of halving the boon & condi duration instead of fully removing.

Firstly, I struggle to comprehend why cele stats are a problem, I play full power builds, full condi builds and cele builds and everything in between and I don't feel like cele outperforms as a stat choice - it's just a tradeoff. I do think it's being scapegoated by numerous players as an excuse for why they lose fights but it's available to everyone so the "I died because you used cele" arguments doesn't really hold up -- anyone can use it. What I do think is an issue is that many classes/specs do not have good power or condi builds and cele is their only real choice, so removing boon & condi dur from cele will definitely kill a lot of build diversity and make some classes/specs not viable at all, which is definitely a bad thing. Build diversity is the only thing that keeps this game interesting. So I really hope the cele nerf is reverted before release, or Anet tries a halfway measure first, eg: 50% reduction of current boon duration & condi duration not 100% reduction. my $0.02 as someone who both roams and zergs.

spear is amazing in PVE, just it sucks in the other 2 game modes. this is the core of Anet's problem, they seem incapable of designing/balancing.

to be honest i forgot pistol even existed. haven't seen a pistol ele once in game.

just run one of these builds TBH: https://guildjen.com/gw2-wvw-builds/ also watch exzen's vids for FA weaver gameplay if you go with that, though it is definitely a high skill floor & cap build.

IMO spear is lacking supprting traitlines more than anything, like, it needs some level of customisation, along with a design pass over some of the more obvious "pure filler" skills. i think abandonning the traits/specialisations in order to pump out more (much lower quality) expacs in order to create more gemstore SKUs was a terrible thing for the game but no going back now. what could be done however is shoehorning some new weapon mechanics into existing traitlines. eg: edgings look a lot like glyphs -- just make them glyph skills and tweak existing glyph traits?