Upgrading Weaver- Including Self-Quickness and Resistance

[Stallic.2397]

I've been playing Weaver as a main class for years now. In PvP, it's effectiveness is currently considered average to sub-tier. Every build I've created had it's niche but was easily exploited in time because every build needed these minor tweaks. So here are the ideas: these buffs would help the newly added spear weapon, while also buffing range or melee weaver.

Superior Elements- Is now called Superior Electric Discharge. Dual Skills triggers an electric discharge upon your targeted enemy that weakens and applies vulnerability to target. Weakness lasts 4 seconds instead of 2. (This is still a skill that can be dodged- but not a trait that requires the actual dual skill itself to hit the target, which is an upgrade for spear dual attacks)

Master’s Fortitude- Gain increased vitality while holding a main hand weapon. Gain Increased power while holding a dual handed weapon. (This skill is extremely limiting to sword only. It has to be changed)

Elemental Pursuit- Gain superspeed and quickness when applying inhibiting conditions

Elemental Refreshment- Apply more barrier. Currently 260 is practically useless and should increase to 500 baseline. Increase radius to 1200 range (this is for range builds like scepter or spear, which should also be applicable to support playstyles)

Elemental Polyphony- For Water application, instead of 120 healing power, apply 120 precision. (Healing weaver isn't a thing. No weaver build maximizes on increased healing power. Precision is more effective for the well-known selfish DPS specialization) 

Bolstered Elements- Apply Protection and 260 barrier. Or increase protection generation to 4 sec baseline. Either one

Invigorating Strikes- Gain vigor when using a dual attack. Dodge rolling grants barrier and resistance.

Edited July 4 by Stallic.2397

[RazieL.5684]

this is nice but nowhere near enough... weaver is in a horrible state and no group benefits from bringing one, you are better off bringing pretty much anything else...

like mukluk says in his most recent video about weaver you are better off bringing a dragonhunter that does the same but also has amazing utility that is always there without having to swap elements 5 times for basic CC options and stuff... right now weaver is F tier...

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

13 hours ago, RazieL.5684 said:

this is nice but nowhere near enough... weaver is in a horrible state and no group benefits from bringing one, you are better off bringing pretty much anything else...

like mukluk says in his most recent video about weaver you are better off bringing a dragonhunter that does the same but also has amazing utility that is always there without having to swap elements 5 times for basic CC options and stuff... right now weaver is F tier...

His intro makes me doubt the entire video.  One of the biggest assets I found with Weaver is its ability to do good CC at a moments notice.  I don't know what build he was running, but in my standard sword/dagger build I have 732 hard defiance damage available at nearly any time from the weapon skills alone, and this is on top of the chill, weakness, and cripple that the build constantly doles out.  Warhorn would have 450 available using the same setup, which isn't as much but still is nothing to sneeze at.  The only difference is that I run Fresh Air, and instead of alternating between fire and air when not weaving self I pop into water or earth for their DPS skills before doubling into air.

He also says that there's no utility on the build... while he has warhorn equipped.  Warhorn comes with several group boons, boon extension, and also a projectile reflection skill when necessary.  He has glyph of storms on his bar, which has a pulsing AoE blind for 10 seconds, and the warhorn also has Dust Storm for more blind spam.  He can take the healing signet off for either Aquatic Stance for additional group healing or Arcane Brilliance for an additional blast finisher.  Finally, Arcane Blast gets swapped out for other utility skills a lot, because it does so little overall DPS to begin with.  The benchmark has it do 900 DPS throughout the fight total, amounting to just 2% of the overall damage done.  That can be switched out with things such as Signet of Earth for immobilize, Signet of Water for group healing, Glyph of Renewal to revive allies with whatever flavor desired, Arcane Wave for more CC, Lightning Flash for mobility, Arcane Shield for a stunbreak and an emergency defensive option with no animation, or any of the Conjures for a more niche use.

Times like this I really hate how ubiquitous and domineering groups like Snowcrows are.  Players use the builds on their websites religiously, and then complain about things that can be fixed by changing around one trait, one utility, or an off-hand weapon.  

----------------------------------

Now, I don't play Weaver in PVP that much.  However, I play weaver in WvW every day.  The change I like most from that list is to Superior Elements.  IMO one of the greatest changes that could be made to Weaver is to give Superior Elements better.  I'd prefer to change the ICD from 10 seconds to 4/5, instead of changing the duration to 4 seconds, because it would give a more consistent performance that is less vulnerable to cleanses.  That said, more weakness from that trait is the easiest way to give weaver more damage, more survival, easier time catching enemies, additional covering conditions, and it works for basically every build.  Really, we're taking Master's Fortitude because the other options just aren't good, and not out of any innate value for Fortitude.  There's a big problem, though:  the way you've made the suggestion it would make the new Electric Discharge only work against a single target.  This is a big step down from how Superior Elements works currently, which has an ICD per target and can hit multiple enemies with weakness at the same time.

I do wonder what is with the modern desire for self-quickness.  The biggest problem that weaver has isn't the speed at which their skills are executed, but rather the speed at which attunements can be changed to access those skills.  In those drawn-out fights that WvW is known for, managing the cooldowns becomes a great pain for me, sometimes literally.  I'd much rather prefer that Weaver gets personal alacrity over personal quickness, as that would improve everything instead of just improving damage.  Elemental Pursuit is already an inconsistent trait with a 10 second ICD, and it isn't taken because randomly getting superspeed when you chill or cripple (AKA you've attuned to the defensive elements of Earth and Water) an enemy means that it is neither well timed or particularly crucial.  Getting random bits of quickness while attuning to water isn't going to help much either, so the reliability of alacrity would also be a better option here.

Not sure the changes for Bolstered Elements or Elemental Refreshment will go through.  I do love me some barrier, but the Superior Elements buff is already massive.  Anet is polarized against giving generic buffs 1200 range for tactical reasons, and that isn't changing anytime soon.  Finally, giving Invigorating Strikes Resistance isn't going to distinguish it from Woven Stride, and wouldn't be much of a buff IMO.  Woven Stride already self-heals and cleanses disabling conditions, which isn't much different from gaining resistance.  Woven Stride already pairs well Water traits.  Fire Traits, which are usually taken with Woven Stride, come with Smothering Auras and Burning Fire for cleanses.  Unless there's some specific case or matchup that I'm not thinking of, resistance here wouldn't be a significant buff.  

[zeyeti.8347]

4 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

Times like this I really hate how ubiquitous and domineering groups like Snowcrows are.  Players use the builds on their websites religiously, and then complain about things that can be fixed by changing around one trait, one utility, or an off-hand weapon.  

1st bencher is tempest with a staggering 46k (but is gonna be nerfed soon , as always good ele build with survivability and meta damage + somewhat easy to play = nerfes) , virtuoso is currently in the 15th position , but stays by far the most dps played trough pve.

it's kind of obvious what trait you need to take if you just have the ability to read , i mean +x damage if ... is better for damage than receive resolution if... so i don't think ppl copy what snowcrow does so much as you kind of see not as much tempest (and i say it agian , the fresh air tempets is gonna be nerfed for sure) as virtuoso , ppl play mostly what is simple and has good damage and utility.

for the weaver cc have to disagree , if you are fire fire for example it would take you +-7 secs to reach the cc from earth (if you just attune to fire) and most cc bar don't last that long , weaver has good cc , but their access is covered by an attunement cd , and as fresh air ele i would really doubt the damage output when you go earth/earth , i know you can use unravel to bypass weaver core mechanic or use the extend of fresh air to go full air or halve but if you have already used air skills it's kind of probeblematci , but let's be real ... unravel should be a f5 skill for weaver.

For now let's enjoy our ez tempest FA benching high for the time being , cause it's not gonna lats long.

Edited July 9 by zeyeti.8347

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

5 hours ago, zeyeti.8347 said:

for the weaver cc have to disagree , if you are fire fire for example it would take you +-7 secs to reach the cc from earth (if you just attune to fire) and most cc bar don't last that long , weaver has good cc , but their access is covered by an attunement cd , and as fresh air ele i would really doubt the damage output when you go earth/earth , i know you can use unravel to bypass weaver core mechanic or use the extend of fresh air to go full air or halve but if you have already used air skills it's kind of probeblematci , but let's be real ... unravel should be a f5 skill for weaver.

 

10 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

The only difference is that I run Fresh Air,

 

[zeyeti.8347]

19 minutes ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

 

 

 

20 minutes ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

use the extend of fresh air to go full air or halve but if you have already used air skills it's kind of probeblematic

 

[Stallic.2397]

17 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

Now, I don't play Weaver in PVP that much.  However, I play weaver in WvW every day.  The change I like most from that list is to Superior Elements.  IMO one of the greatest changes that could be made to Weaver is to give Superior Elements better.  I'd prefer to change the ICD from 10 seconds to 4/5, instead of changing the duration to 4 seconds, because it would give a more consistent performance that is less vulnerable to cleanses.  That said, more weakness from that trait is the easiest way to give weaver more damage, more survival, easier time catching enemies, additional covering conditions, and it works for basically every build.  Really, we're taking Master's Fortitude because the other options just aren't good, and not out of any innate value for Fortitude.  There's a big problem, though:  the way you've made the suggestion it would make the new Electric Discharge only work against a single target.  This is a big step down from how Superior Elements works currently, which has an ICD per target and can hit multiple enemies with weakness at the same time.

I do wonder what is with the modern desire for self-quickness.  The biggest problem that weaver has isn't the speed at which their skills are executed, but rather the speed at which attunements can be changed to access those skills.  In those drawn-out fights that WvW is known for, managing the cooldowns becomes a great pain for me, sometimes literally.  I'd much rather prefer that Weaver gets personal alacrity over personal quickness, as that would improve everything instead of just improving damage.  Elemental Pursuit is already an inconsistent trait with a 10 second ICD, and it isn't taken because randomly getting superspeed when you chill or cripple (AKA you've attuned to the defensive elements of Earth and Water) an enemy means that it is neither well timed or particularly crucial.  Getting random bits of quickness while attuning to water isn't going to help much either, so the reliability of alacrity would also be a better option here.

Not sure the changes for Bolstered Elements or Elemental Refreshment will go through.  I do love me some barrier, but the Superior Elements buff is already massive.  Anet is polarized against giving generic buffs 1200 range for tactical reasons, and that isn't changing anytime soon.  Finally, giving Invigorating Strikes Resistance isn't going to distinguish it from Woven Stride, and wouldn't be much of a buff IMO.  Woven Stride already self-heals and cleanses disabling conditions, which isn't much different from gaining resistance.  Woven Stride already pairs well Water traits.  Fire Traits, which are usually taken with Woven Stride, come with Smothering Auras and Burning Fire for cleanses.  Unless there's some specific case or matchup that I'm not thinking of, resistance here wouldn't be a significant buff.  

Interesting points, thanks. Some things I didn't consider too, especially that superior elements was more of a multiple target weakness applier rather than a single target attack. It's highly dependent on actually hitting the target though, and since plenty of dual attacks are slow projectiles, I wouldn't say it's reliable. Making it change to Superior electric discharge would increase the realistic chance for hit dramatically. Because of that I wonder what the balance should be... Could you make the discharge skill an aoe based off of the main target, kinda like how signet of fire works? I also agree that the CD of weakness should be reduced. It honestly should just be changed to "every dual skill triggers weakness". Not sure what is Anet's obsession with Ele and redundant CDs. 

The extra vitality with the fortitude trait is mainly a pvp necessity where Vitality is much harder to come by and more critical in practice. Having a trait tied to a single weapon out of the entire arsenal available to Ele is really impractical. 

Quickness will be most useful with staff builds and upcoming spear builds. They would need it the most, so the trait change to add quickness would apply to them. I just looked at Staff Weaver's abilities and it has about 4-5 ways to apply immobilize, chill or cripple. And that's not including traits yet. If you add quickness to Elemental Pursuit, say gain 3 sec of quickness out of a 10 sec CD, then that would be pretty easy to achieve. It would be random, but not hard to attain. In practice it would almost be like gaining quickness upon every other attunement swap. 

Alacrity is an interesting addition. I didn't add it at first because Weaver as a specialization seemed more like a durable elite rather than a supportive one. Since Tempest already has alacrity, it seemed redundant. But self-alacrity could work. You made good points about the final tier traits competing against each other. In order to make it more fair, you could change Invigorating strikes to add alacrity. Instead of vigor (which is the current rendition and not a tremendously impactful boon), you can grant alacrity. So instead, it would say:

Invigorating Strikes: Gain alacrity when using a Dual Attack. Dodge rolling grants barrier and resistance. 

That way, it would have much more utility to compete against Woven Stride, which is currently the best trait available if you want anything besides a damage boost.