Sword Weaver Open World PVE build

[Rain.9213]

Hey guys. So it's no secret that sword doesn't have the greatest power damage on its auto attacks and running a Power build can make traversing the desert a bit of a pain. I personally found content more frustrating than it had to be because I wasnt seeing sufficient damage numbers with my full zerk build, therefore having none of the benefits of glass power and zero survivability. However, after a ton of experimenting, I finally got a pretty decent Open World PVE to run the story with and I think you guys should try it out if you're having a hard time with Sword mainhand.http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAsYnMICdOg94C+MA8RgFTA7+MvmfzEJgAQDo4EUC+AA-jxBFABEcCAQS5HK7PIv6PA8AAyQPwVKBJFggKjA-e

So with that trait setup and gear, you should be able to cycle between attunements pretty quickly and cast all your hardest hitting moves in succession. While you won't see consistently gigantic numbers, you will see a ton of moderate ticking hits. Lots of fast pulsing 1k's and 2k's with occassional 3-4k's with damage boost procs. Furthermore, Fire Grab will be critting between 8 to 10k which is beautiful. I see a lot of mobs just explode with it.

Lastly, running water with Arcane Brilliance will let you spam lots of heals to keep yourself alive. Remember that attuning to full water will heal you twice due to healing ripple while comboing Arcane Brilliance with Water Sword 2 will burst heal you quite a lot.

Anyway, give it a shot. If you don't have a set of Marauder gear lying around, you can run a mix of valkyrie and assassin gear and achieve similar results.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAsYnMICdOg94C+MA8RgFTAjIBEAaA3n518bu4EUC+AA-jBCFwAAeAAZ0Dga/hrKBVpWBSlfEOBA0UVhUACqMC-e

Something like that. Basically half valk, half assassin. Enjoy, my fellow weavers!

[MrRay.3027]

Tried this type of build (but with air instead of water) yesterday but I wasn't seeing any kind of results (I think I was just doing things wrong). Ditched it for staff. But today I tried sc/d (don't know if sc/f might be better) and I'm loving it.But I do have a question, on what element do you single atune? I'm asking since I saw you took Elements of Rage.

[Rain.9213]

I single attune to Fire, Air, and Earth! You gotta know when to do it. Mainly I single attune usually after using the dual skill to gain a damage bonus, if I can, or I single attune and immediately use the 3 skill. However, on Fire and Earth, I use 4 then 5 after single attuning to make sure the big hits do a shit ton of damage. I literally just saw Churning Earth do an 11k to an Awakened Mummy.

You can also single attune in situations where, say for example, I have Air/Fire, I cast the air/fire dual skill then Ring of Fire and then I use fire grab, quickly single attune to Air and gain the damage bonus from Elements of Rage right as the Fire Grab hits. There's a lot of cool little tricks like that you can do to spike your damage up pretty high with Weaver.

[Kodiak.3281]

@MrRay.3027 said:Tried this type of build (but with air instead of water) yesterday but I wasn't seeing any kind of results (I think I was just doing things wrong). Ditched it for staff. But today I tried sc/d (don't know if sc/f might be better) and I'm loving it.But I do have a question, on what element do you single atune? I'm asking since I saw you took Elements of Rage.

I've come to grips with using a Sc/D Weaver and it's working very well for me as well once I came up with a good rotation for it. I usually end up Earth/Fire, then rotate through Water, Air, Air, Fire, Earth and restart. The double air is to improve the damage of Plasma Beam, Dragon Tooth, Fracturing Strike and of course Fire Grab which are all the big power moves in Sc/D.

Build will be much better once someone cracks where to get Grieving Stats as right now much of my burn/bleeds are wasted.

[tekfan.3179]

I've used full zerker with a sword-dagger combo(Arcane/Air/Weaver) for the whole story, except for one mission. Survivability went quite up when the build is tuned to dodging and maintaining the barrier with the skills on 3. Still, I found myself wishing for more cc-related stuff in the build.

[Quam.7218]

@"Rain.9213" said:Hey guys. So it's no secret that sword doesn't have the greatest power damage on its auto attacks and running a Power build can make traversing the desert a bit of a pain. I personally found content more frustrating than it had to be because I wasnt seeing sufficient damage numbers with my full zerk build, therefore having none of the benefits of glass power and zero survivability. However, after a ton of experimenting, I finally got a pretty decent Open World PVE to run the story with and I think you guys should try it out if you're having a hard time with Sword mainhand.http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAsYnMICdOg94C+MA8RgFTA7+MvmfzEJgAQDo4EUC+AA-jxBFABEcCAQS5HK7PIv6PA8AAyQPwVKBJFggKjA-e

So with that trait setup and gear, you should be able to cycle between attunements pretty quickly and cast all your hardest hitting moves in succession. While you won't see consistently gigantic numbers, you will see a ton of moderate ticking hits. Lots of fast pulsing 1k's and 2k's with occassional 3-4k's with damage boost procs. Furthermore, Fire Grab will be critting between 8 to 10k which is beautiful. I see a lot of mobs just explode with it.

Lastly, running water with Arcane Brilliance will let you spam lots of heals to keep yourself alive. Remember that attuning to full water will heal you twice due to healing ripple while comboing Arcane Brilliance with Water Sword 2 will burst heal you quite a lot.

Anyway, give it a shot. If you don't have a set of Marauder gear lying around, you can run a mix of valkyrie and assassin gear and achieve similar results.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAsYnMICdOg94C+MA8RgFTAjIBEAaA3n518bu4EUC+AA-jBCFwAAeAAZ0Dga/hrKBVpWBSlfEOBA0UVhUACqMC-e

Something like that. Basically half valk, half assassin. Enjoy, my fellow weavers!

I found it really helpfull, as a player new to Ele in general i struggle as hell becouse the amount of skill/combination/combos is just insane.

Before I tried this build I played Fire 1/1/2 Air 3/2/1 Weaver 1/2/1 full zerk and Yeah a saw some nice numbers 10k-12k on Hydras but I still felt really glassy, especially if I got cc chained.

On Your build I still see good numbers like 8-9k but I feel more survival in open world and that's what I'm looking for, as someone fresh in Weaver (Ele in general) I'm having beginners problem...

In Fractals I run Auramancer Tempest in witch I'm in love. But open world is always a problem.

[Dawdler.8521]

I dont play weaver much and barely understand how it works but I am always in favor of bunkering up in open world, lol.

Took your build and swapped weapons to cavalier, changed runes to rage, trinkets to mix cavalier and knights to achieve 2300 power, 1932 toughness, 1497 vitality (never added vitality so guessing trait, on mobile and cant see), 29% crit and 226% critdmg. Should be a considerably tougher open world setup while doing like 80% of the damage or something (unless burn duration runes add a metric ton of damage). Could replace that healing sigil with a dmg sigil to further balance against getting a ~50 % damage reduction from the toughness (or some extra precision).

[Wentworth.6901]

@Dawdler.8521 said:I dont play weaver much and barely understand how it works but I am always in favor of bunkering up in open world, lol.

Took your build and swapped weapons to cavalier, changed runes to rage, trinkets to mix cavalier and knights to achieve 2300 power, 1932 toughness, 1497 vitality (never added vitality so guessing trait, on mobile and cant see), 29% crit and 226% critdmg. Should be a considerably tougher open world setup while doing like 80% of the damage or something (unless burn duration runes add a metric ton of damage). Could replace that healing sigil with a dmg sigil to further balance against getting a ~50 % damage reduction from the toughness (or some extra precision).

That ferocity seems quite wasted with that setup. I'm sure survivability is better, but you seem to be sacrificing a lot of damage with such a low crit rate.

[Wentworth.6901]

I'm wondering, is Rampagers a good set for a sw/d weaver? Its a good mix of condi and power, though its primary stat is precision, and it doesn't have ferocity, so I'm not sure if it would actually be a dps gain. I'm currently running berserkers (with rune of flame legion and traiting fire to help with burning).

[Smakkage.6197]

I'm wondering what the best way to setup most builds would be honestly. With the recent nerfs. Would it be wiser to stack ferocity/power now and try to get base crit chance to 45ish percent and just supplement that with your build? I've noticed I gain might stacks like nobody's business. So maybe power isn't AS needed these days? Or am I totally mistaken? Would it be wise to go almost full precision/ferocity? You'd have a ramp up time but once all the dots connected you'd absolutely melt people. +healing might be necessary just to keep yourself viable though.

I assume most Sword/Dagger weavers go with a mix of condi/power/healing?

[Rain.9213]

Nowadays for open world, I just run Full Celestial trinkets with vipers armor and weapons. I also use this same setup for WvW. Gives you a decent amount of survivability while not hitting your damage too hard.