Blood Red Arachnid.2493

If you must know, I rarely wear anything than full berserker or full viper in PVE. The only exceptions to that are when I'm boons/heals for a group. Though technically you can get around 90% of the condi pistol benchmark in full trailblazers. When I say that Stone Resonance carries, I mean it does so on a full glass build. Even then, I only equip it for the harder encounters. Most of the time, I'm just running pure damage utilities, because the self-barrier and healing signet are sufficient. Funny thing about picking any other class is that they all have their own issues. Take Revenant, for example. Power rev has to dedicate an entire weapon slot just to CC, and it loses a lot of damage every time it is forced to do so. The updates to Kalla has changed condi rev form having excellent CC mediocre CC, and they've lost their overworld carry option. Condi rev has a more difficult and more punishing rotation than what ele has, requiring near perfect play or else it will de-synch its abilities and the DPS flatlines. It isn't just revs, either. The warriors forum is full of countless threads trying to fix the entire profession. Thieves have very few useful niches in strikes/raids, and they come at a great personal cost to thieves. Qadim was designed just to give Deadeye a use. Engineers have had most of their utilities power-crept out, leaving quickness scrapper and not much else. Etc. and so on. When you say "any other class", you're really only paying attention to the top few contenders while ignoring every other elite spec. Of course we aren't as good as Virtuoso. Nobody is. That's why every strike and raid group has 6 virtuoso in them. You're mistaken if you think that I'm not playing other professions. I play all but ranger, and right now the one that I have the worst experience with is Revenant, followed by Warrior. For general use, it takes surprisingly little practice. For weaver, there's the "hard part" in the Weave Self rotation, and then there's the easy part. For Scepter, the rotation might as well be button mashing. For Sword, it is usually using weapon skills from left to right. The Fresh air part is slightly more complicated, because you'll alternate swapping between water and earth after fire to use all DPS skills from left to right. Pistol actually requires some practice, but it is basically right to left. It gets more complicated with interruptions, since you'll need to keep track of bullets. The part that needs practice is the Weave Self. Otherwise, the mechanic of weaver is "swap attunement, use damage skill." The Pistol isn't just about damage. Compared to condi Scepter, pistol goes into water attunement, which gives it more self-sustain and CC located in the midst of the combo. It's a 3k raw heal as part of the rotation. The greater frequency of dual skills gives pistol more self-barrier, and it inflicts more weakness on enemies. Pistol also inflicts far more soft CC with its chill, cripple, and immobilize. This part confuses me. If the healer is doing their job, then there's no reason to have substantially more survival, period. The same could be said for all of the heals and buffs that tempest and catalyst give, too. That aside, the "significant detriment" is a bit less than you'd think. For the power setup, the skill Arcane Blast accounts for 2% of the total DPS, or about 900 total. Snowcrows uses it as a flex spot, swapping it out for Wave (CC), Lightning Flash (mobility) or Stone Resonance more defense. Losing 2% of DPS is not a significant detriment to ability. The condition builds get a bit more complicated, but they usually don't need Stone Resonance due to Written in Stone. Most of the stuff you mentioned is available on core ele. There'd be no reason to give Weaver a toolbox that it already has. Instead of having a finite amount of blocks via Arcane Shield or a self-stun via Mist Form, they can instead gain large amounts of barrier to buffer themselves. This is useful in places with a high sustained damage, such as Matthias or the Keep Construct. That aside, what you're describing is rare for this game. The big raid toolbox has been the domain of Mesmer and Guardian for awhile now, specifically the Core of those two professions. In general, the utility that most elite specs add are boons. Some of the few exceptions are Rebound and Winds of Disenchantment. Considering the whole point is that no, the other elite specs aren't consistently putting out fire fields anymore, it really isn't as much of an elementalist property as it is a weaver property. If the weapon and skill balance changes, this fact can change, but until then I'm considering the near constant fire fields of power weaver to be a feature of the profession.

Going to disagree about pistol and weaver here. Been using it on ele for awhile now, and one of the issues I've noticed with pistol is that it can go "off-beat" pretty easily. That is, through interruptions via CC or mechanics, the proper pacing the rotation can get pretty messed up. When using Pistol on Tempest or Catalyst, this often forces me to choose between losing all of the additional effects, or auto attacking until the skill reaches its cooldown again. But on Weaver, the rotation inevitably corrects itself, or can be easily corrected by just switching which skill I'm using. The dual skills ability to consume two kinds of bullets at once means that any excess bullets will be spent eventually, or a spent bullet can be re-generated with the dual skill. This flexibility gives me the opposite impression. Aside from that, there's a couple of other small notes I'd like to make. I've mentioned it before, how the mechanic of Weaver is less likely to mess up. Catalyst suffers greatly when the fight moves locations and it has to manage the energy mechanic. Tempests can get interrupted while overloading, or get forced to dodge/use a weapon utility when demanded. The weaver... just has more weapon skills and a different swap.. That said, there is something that makes Weaver quite easy to play, and that is the self-barrier generation. Elemental Refreshment and some of the weapon skill's barriers can come in handy, but it is hard to state just how powerful Stone Resonance is as a defensive ability. It's effectively a second heal skill, and in dire situations it can save a player quite easily. I use it while doing stuff like soloing fractals and champions. Already talked about pistol above. Mostly, but that isn't all. Weaver has a lot of self-swiftness built in, as well as the ability to spec for a souped-up version of swiftness, or additional vigor for more dodging. That all depends on if you equip the skills. Raid scenarios aren't the entire game, after all. The pure DPS versions have some barrier generation and inflict weakness on enemies, and a temporary defense boost via weave self. You can get further barrier or extra dodges by changing some utilities, and you can also choose extra health, more protection, automatic condition cleanses, or more vigor by changing the traits. Is this as good as Tempest's souped up protection and innate water traitline? Probably not. But I definitely have an easier time surviving on Weaver than I do on Catalyst. It inflict weakness. Out of all ele specs, Weaver has potentially the highest CC without having to equip tornado. The power builds with Fresh Air or during the Weave-Self rotation can go through a lot of elements really quickly, letting the weaver chain a bunch of CC skills together all at once. The best I found is with Sword/Dagger, which will go through 732 defiance damage (not including weakness). I use this rotation to solo Wyverns, but it is pretty darn useful to have that in the back pocket while fighting someone like Samarog. Finally, a small bit of trivia everyone overlooks is the combo fields. It's only weaver and condi tempest that output fire fields consistently anymore. Power Tempest spams lightning fields, and Catalyst spams very field possible. Power weaver keeps up a fire field almost consistently, and Condi Weaver has one intermittently. Condi tempest has intermittent fields, too. It gets overlooked, but it does add burn damage and might to the team.

That all depends on how the player is approaching these events. I do treasure mushrooms daily, and one of the things that happens roughly every other day is some player who insists that we wait or kill the mushroom slow so their "friend" can show up. The longest I've waited for this "friend" was around 8 minutes. Treasure mushrooms aren't exactly hard to get to. Take a waypoint, hop on a mount, under 30 seconds and you're there. See, the guy we were waiting for was busy messing about with who-knows-what until they eventually slowly arrived. There is a lot of flexibility in the definition of "heading to the event". It could be "wait for my friend to arrive, he's coming right now via teleport to friend", or it could be "wait for my friend to finish his PVP match and finish eating his sandwich, btw he's coming on an alt that doesn't have this waypoint." I've had people be "late" to an event that happens at a scheduled time and takes 10 minutes to complete. Power creep or no, it isn't Anet's responsibility to throttle our performance because of people who won't look at a clock or keep commitments.

There is a history here. For a long time, until the middle of PoF, the highest DPS weapon that Ele had was the staff. Staff weaver broke the 50k mark with how much damage it could do. Knowing this, understand that the development of Tempest and Weaver were done in a game space where the ranged option for Eles was not only set, it was dominating. By the time that the catalyst came around, staff had been nerfed, which is partly why the hammer has a myriad of distances to work with. But hey, we did get pistol and spear. I still use Weaver for the overworld stuff. Mostly I run with either pistol condi or scepter condi. I avoid Catalyst mostly because it hurts my hands to play it. I will use Tempest in select situations, particularly when I need to tag enemies or in areas where condi/projectiles don't work that well. There's a flow to how weaver works, but what I like about it is the mechanical simplicity. You don't have to build energy, maintain an overload, etc. On weaver, when you push the button, the button does things. Weaver currently suffers from the problem that Mirage does, in the sense that its toolbox just isn't meant for static HP bags. Its primary gimmicks are mobility and barrier. Having enhanced swiftness and self-barrier generation isn't useful with a nearby healer and a boss that never moves. If you're by yourself in a hazardous environment, the Weaver's toolbox shows its virtues.

Guess I'll be "that guy" and say that the motivation for players to do good damage is that they kill things faster, get loot faster, have a higher chance of winning, and waste less of theirs and other's time. It's not a good idea to create a system that deliberately disincentivizes good buildcraft or good play. If you want to reduce power creep without putting down an artificial limiter, the best thing you could probably suggest is a reduction in the base boon duration for a lot of offensive boons. That way, the buffer builds need to have dedicated stats, reducing group damage overall. That, or just nerf all of the profession's DPS.

I, for one, find it much more difficult to complete the daily and weekly WvW achievements and Wizards Vault when I am constantly being ganked by willbenders. It's why I switched over from Ele to Necro.

I'm here out of habit, mostly. Earning gold is like a synthetic form of work, since I can't do real work IRL. I need to keep myself occupied, and I can't just be passively entertained all day.

This all sounds awfully familiar... There's been some changes, though. For thief, Unload was buffed a bit, and now there's deadeye builds dedicated to spamming it permanently. Catalyst received some significant buffs, and weaver received some significant nerfs, making it the worst ele spec overall.

The stances are alright... in the right situation. The only one I've never really used is Unravel, mostly because I've just gotten used to playing weaver as is. Aquatic Stance is alright if you have teammates with you that you'll want to heal. I would use it in some of the higher damage raid bosses, also sometimes in WvW when I'm with a group. It is best considered for when you have Bolstered Elements equipped, since that gives additional protection for all stances. It isn't bad for healing, either, being 6600 every 20 seconds on a two-count. Twist of Fate is great in PVP/WvW still, even with the cooldown on it. Twist can act as a condi cleanse, a regen source, a stun break, a dodge, and a movement skill all in one. Stone Resonance is another skill that's great for WvW and high pressure situations. Whenever I go do something silly like solo fractals or bounties, one of the best "carry" utilities I can pick is this one. It's effectively a second healing skill, and all of that barrier (plus stability) lets me muscle through a lot of dicey situations. Weave Self is pretty self-explanatory. Primordial Stance is damage. But, I've found the chill to be useful in WvW for locking down enemies. The weaver gimmick is that it is an evasive duelist spec, so it is loaded up with a bunch of personal buffs and abilities to help it with that. The value of those utility skills depends where you are and what you're doing. If you're looking at raid clears and and structured PVE, everything but Primordial Stance and Weave Self seems useless. Anywhere else, and it is a pretty decent toolbox.

I'm of the mind that WvW should occasionally become incredibly hostile and random for a week: Though I opted for Cairns effect rather than social awkwardness. It's easier to program.

Out of all the elite specs in the game, my favorite one is... weaver. But second place is definitely the deadeye. For high-end gameplay it isn't that good of a spec. However, I've found it to be very useful for when I have to play the game while limited. The rifle rotation is pretty easy to do, even with only a mouse hand. The great range lets me park in a place and just click on enemies instead of having to chase them down to fight them. I can kill most enemies before they become a threat to me. I can trivialize range-themed bosses with infinite projectile destruction. Headshot spam when combined with Mercy lets me do things like solo-break Aestus. The stealth spam is great for avoiding fights while navigating maps. With a few trait changes it becomes a permanent-quickness build that can shred through enemies at melee range.

Even after this update, I'm still not going to play Catalyst because the frenetic nature of the spec hurts my hands. By no means is catalyst an easy spec to play.

I noticed I haven't been playing much revenant lately. Especially power rev. If I were to categorize my biggest gripes with it, that would be the amount of variables that I need to keep track of. On power vindicator, for example, I need to keep track of the dodge enhancing button, my endurance, my energy, my cooldowns, my weapon swap, and my legend swap all at the same time. That's just one too many to handle. I constantly end up forgetting to look at something, and I'm losing modifiers or I'm stuck autoing because I've run out of stuff. This just makes the class overall unpleasant to play.

I'm pretty certain it did. The personality type that spams a person with downvotes on every post is also the same type of personality that will use the emoji reactions as a heuristic method to judge people instead of actually reading post.

I don't know. I'm so confused but now I cannot express it.