Weaver power sword is so ridiculously bad

[DavyMcB.1603]

I have been playing power sword weaver since pof launch. Finished all story instances solo along with map completion. And my verdict is that weaver power sword is just plain bad. Rotation line up & utilities are "ok" but the damage is literally nonexistent. To make it worse, we are talking about the class with LOWEST armor, LOWEST hp and locked behind 99.99% melee skills.

 

It seriously warrants a hotfix

[Razor.6392]

My guess is that anet was tired of ele reigning supreme in the power dps charts.

 

It won't be long before staff weaver gets nuked.

[Loboling.5293]

For open world, I'm having great success with celestial weaver. Earth, Fire. I have about 1k condi dmg, and 2k power, but I feel like I tear through mobs. And my sustain is just amazing I can solo group events. (not sure if a lot of classes can do that, I've only really played holo (glass) and ele (glass and cele).

 

Sword seems to excel at hybrid damage, but mostly condi. However, ele scales so well with celestial, for situations you don't need to maximize burst, it allows you to stay in the fight and keep damage up. Power is pretty bad with sword, you're better off with almost any other weapon. They could definitely buff swords power damage, while bringing down their condi slightly. (I suggest the fart burning utility, that procs 10 stacks of burning aoe, by reducing burning duration a bit) Then you'd have some more flexibility with sword.

 

For now, sword weaver seems to have two main advantages, higher condition potential and maximizing the bruiser nature of the ele. You can't really capitalize on both at once, but I'm still amazed by my damage output with a defensive celestial set-up. I easily stack 20 burns in aoe within a few seconds.

 

Until some changes happen, you'll have to get your damage from condi. (Although feel free to experiment, I'm just pointing out what I've observed)

[mygamingid.5816]

> @Razor.6392 said:

> My guess is that anet was tired of ele reigning supreme in the power dps charts.

 

Power Guardian was up 6k on small-hitbox damage over Tempest. Ele hasn't topped the power charts in a while unless you gift them raid boons, raid condis, someone to keep them alive, and a great big hitbox to splash multi-strike AOEs on. Even then, they weren't up much on Guardian (1k) and Guardian brings a lot more team support.

[mygamingid.5816]

> @DavyMcB.1603 said:

> I have been playing power sword weaver since pof launch. Finished all story instances solo along with map completion. And my verdict is that weaver power sword is just plain bad. Rotation line up & utilities are "ok" but the damage is literally nonexistent. To make it worse, we are talking about the class with LOWEST armor, LOWEST hp and locked behind 99.99% melee skills.

 

Sword is definitely a condi weapon and not a great one of those. Kudos to you for "powering" (HAHAHA!) through that, though. It's player like you that'll keep a lot of others from making that mistake.

 

What gear and traits were you running?

 

 

[DavyMcB.1603]

> @mygamingid.5816 said:

> > @DavyMcB.1603 said:

> > I have been playing power sword weaver since pof launch. Finished all story instances solo along with map completion. And my verdict is that weaver power sword is just plain bad. Rotation line up & utilities are "ok" but the damage is literally nonexistent. To make it worse, we are talking about the class with LOWEST armor, LOWEST hp and locked behind 99.99% melee skills.

>

> Sword is definitely a condi weapon and not a great one of those. Kudos to you for "powering" (HAHAHA!) through that, though. It's player like you that'll keep a lot of others from making that mistake.

>

> What gear and traits were you running?

>

>

 

I actually realized that it's shit from the first few hours but I wanted to test it thoroughly. And yeah, I can say with full confidence that power weaver sword sucks inside and out. I ran various setup. The best power-oriented so far for me is Zealot as the dmg isnt any less shitty but at least you are immortal.

[Ulion.5476]

Weavers condition sword does ok damage for open world Fire/arcane. Power sword is one of the weakest spec for weaver atm.

[Knuckle Joe.7408]

Attack speed is stupidly slow, feels like I'm autoattacking like a GS reaper. They need to give weaver the attack speed (or should I saw activation time?) of sword ranger. For a spec that emphasizes swiftness, superspeed and fluidly "weaving" your skills, that sword activation time is atrocious and without synergy at all. I was reaaaaaally hoping that we would finally have a fluid, fast playstyle like the good ole days of D/D Evasive arcana core ele.

[Agent Noun.7350]

> @"Knuckle Joe.7408" said:

> They need to give weaver the attack speed (or should I saw activation time?) of sword ranger.

 

I'd really like that.

 

I'm a big power build fan, so I'd love it if Weaver sword got a power damage buff (even if it means nerfing its condition damage) and a feeling/flow like Ranger sword. That's probably a closer comparison than Mesmer sword, too. A fluid feeling of jumping back and forth and weaving skills together would fit extremely well. Even if it shakes out to get condition buffs instead of power buffs, a better flow would help a lot.

 

Hell, we already have staff if we want a slow weapon, right? ;)

[juno.1840]

> @Loboling.5293 said:

> For open world, I'm having great success with celestial weaver. Earth, Fire. I have about 1k condi dmg, and 2k power, but I feel like I tear through mobs. And my sustain is just amazing I can solo group events. (not sure if a lot of classes can do that, I've only really played holo (glass) and ele (glass and cele).

>

> Sword seems to excel at hybrid damage, but mostly condi. However, ele scales so well with celestial, for situations you don't need to maximize burst, it allows you to stay in the fight and keep damage up. Power is pretty bad with sword, you're better off with almost any other weapon. They could definitely buff swords power damage, while bringing down their condi slightly. (I suggest the fart burning utility, that procs 10 stacks of burning aoe, by reducing burning duration a bit) Then you'd have some more flexibility with sword.

>

> For now, sword weaver seems to have two main advantages, higher condition potential and maximizing the bruiser nature of the ele. You can't really capitalize on both at once, but I'm still amazed by my damage output with a defensive celestial set-up. I easily stack 20 burns in aoe within a few seconds.

>

> Until some changes happen, you'll have to get your damage from condi. (Although feel free to experiment, I'm just pointing out what I've observed)

 

It's hard to hit 2k power and 1k condi wlth celestial unless you trait Fire+Earth and take the condi-power conversion traits. Also you must be including food and utility buffs. These things I just listed are not unique to celestial (as in any gear setup can do it).

 

I'm confuzzled on your comment: " my sustain is just amazing I can solo group events" -- because I think sustain is extremely lacking. You can go arcane+water but then you lose those fire+earth condi conversions. Also celestial doesn't provide great toughness, vitality, nor healing power -- just enough to be better than zero, but not nearly as good as a stat set design for survival.

 

Honestly you'd be better off with a condi-set than celestial since you can take the power/precision/ferocity stats and redirect them to condi/vitality/toughness/expertise.

[Bunnytown.7801]

Here's the open world PVE build I'm running. It's a power build that can get some really high bursts (I'm getting 7.5 k fire grabs, 5k cauterizing strike), but still be tanky. I can get 100% crit chance through traits, fury, and either signet/perception rune. It's the best way I've found to turn the sword, which is a hybrid weapon, to get the most out of power.

 

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAsYnMMAtMglNA+4C8RglGATIQGAihFZhbYU4uS3pD1A-jlSEQB1Ttnso0IP6BIoys1oKA3UCGhTAAAeAAVzM372fAA-w

The gear is just what I'm using on hand, and I'm sure it can be made better.

 

Sword/dagger weaver has a lot of hard cc, so I'm paired this with disabling rod, which is crucial to your dps. A strong combo in air/earth is to do sword 2, dual attack 3, dagger 4. Each attack disables foe, granting you a lightning strike which will crit for over 2k each plus the enemy won't be able to do anything. If you get in trouble switch to water and use riptide. While you are going through the animation blast the water field with arcane wave, then switch to earth at the end to blast again with an earth skill. Arcane wave should be saved for blasting water and fire fields, not necessarily for damage, though it will give you a ferocity buff when traited.

 

[alexscr.4269]

> @Loboling.5293 said:

> For open world, I'm having great success with celestial weaver. Earth, Fire. I have about 1k condi dmg, and 2k power, but I feel like I tear through mobs. And my sustain is just amazing I can solo group events. (not sure if a lot of classes can do that, I've only really played holo (glass) and ele (glass and cele).

>

> Sword seems to excel at hybrid damage, but mostly condi. However, ele scales so well with celestial, for situations you don't need to maximize burst, it allows you to stay in the fight and keep damage up. Power is pretty bad with sword, you're better off with almost any other weapon. They could definitely buff swords power damage, while bringing down their condi slightly. (I suggest the fart burning utility, that procs 10 stacks of burning aoe, by reducing burning duration a bit) Then you'd have some more flexibility with sword.

>

> For now, sword weaver seems to have two main advantages, higher condition potential and maximizing the bruiser nature of the ele. You can't really capitalize on both at once, but I'm still amazed by my damage output with a defensive celestial set-up. I easily stack 20 burns in aoe within a few seconds.

>

> Until some changes happen, you'll have to get your damage from condi. (Although feel free to experiment, I'm just pointing out what I've observed)

 

Would you share your build please?

I've been trying to theory craft a PvE build for Weaver, with the Sword, and haven't been able to come up with something decent.

[Auroralie.3521]

> @Loboling.5293 said:

> For open world, I'm having great success with celestial weaver. Earth, Fire. I have about 1k condi dmg, and 2k power, but I feel like I tear through mobs. And my sustain is just amazing I can solo group events. (not sure if a lot of classes can do that, I've only really played holo (glass) and ele (glass and cele).

>

> Sword seems to excel at hybrid damage, but mostly condi. However, ele scales so well with celestial, for situations you don't need to maximize burst, it allows you to stay in the fight and keep damage up. Power is pretty bad with sword, you're better off with almost any other weapon. They could definitely buff swords power damage, while bringing down their condi slightly. (I suggest the fart burning utility, that procs 10 stacks of burning aoe, by reducing burning duration a bit) Then you'd have some more flexibility with sword.

>

> For now, sword weaver seems to have two main advantages, higher condition potential and maximizing the bruiser nature of the ele. You can't really capitalize on both at once, but I'm still amazed by my damage output with a defensive celestial set-up. I easily stack 20 burns in aoe within a few seconds.

>

> Until some changes happen, you'll have to get your damage from condi. (Although feel free to experiment, I'm just pointing out what I've observed)

 

What are your runes and sigils that you are using? I just purchased berserker for my armor, hopefully that helps.

[BlackBeard.2873]

Yea, I tried sword for all of 2 hours until I confirmed it was useless for PvE. In pvp, it is a very defensive set (lots of evades, swiftness procs, etc), but for PvE I stick with mostly dagger (and sometimes scepter). D/D with fresh air is actually quite fun and it swaps like crazy. With air/water/weaver fresh-air build you get some decent damage modifiers, and lots of quick swaps. You only swap into any element other than air for the skills you want, then double swap back to air (only pausing to start the skills you want). This works well because weaver forces you to auto-attack a bit, and dagger main-hand autoattack is our best by far.

 

Sword just feels slow, clunky, weak, and frustrating. Especially lacking effective gap closers...even dagger has more movement with way longer range. The whole weapon is a massive disappointment, just like warhorn was. They did a great job on the animations...but skill design dropped the ball BIG TIME.

[Loboling.5293]

> @juno.1840 said:

> > @Loboling.5293 said:

> > For open world, I'm having great success with celestial weaver. Earth, Fire. I have about 1k condi dmg, and 2k power, but I feel like I tear through mobs. And my sustain is just amazing I can solo group events. (not sure if a lot of classes can do that, I've only really played holo (glass) and ele (glass and cele).

> >

> > Sword seems to excel at hybrid damage, but mostly condi. However, ele scales so well with celestial, for situations you don't need to maximize burst, it allows you to stay in the fight and keep damage up. Power is pretty bad with sword, you're better off with almost any other weapon. They could definitely buff swords power damage, while bringing down their condi slightly. (I suggest the fart burning utility, that procs 10 stacks of burning aoe, by reducing burning duration a bit) Then you'd have some more flexibility with sword.

> >

> > For now, sword weaver seems to have two main advantages, higher condition potential and maximizing the bruiser nature of the ele. You can't really capitalize on both at once, but I'm still amazed by my damage output with a defensive celestial set-up. I easily stack 20 burns in aoe within a few seconds.

> >

> > Until some changes happen, you'll have to get your damage from condi. (Although feel free to experiment, I'm just pointing out what I've observed)

>

> It's hard to hit 2k power and 1k condi wlth celestial unless you trait Fire+Earth and take the condi-power conversion traits. Also you must be including food and utility buffs. These things I just listed are not unique to celestial (as in any gear setup can do it).

>

> I'm confuzzled on your comment: " my sustain is just amazing I can solo group events" -- because I think sustain is extremely lacking. You can go arcane+water but then you lose those fire+earth condi conversions. Also celestial doesn't provide great toughness, vitality, nor healing power -- just enough to be better than zero, but not nearly as good as a stat set design for survival.

>

> Honestly you'd be better off with a condi-set than celestial since you can take the power/precision/ferocity stats and redirect them to condi/vitality/toughness/expertise.

 

Here is my build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAsdncMAFNgNNAG5C8RgFBA7eVHrv1DxgdwNMIAEKPAA-jBiAQBAUHA/0CAgHAgpU/RCnAA0o8zmKB93+DAA-e

 

I don't need food for the stats I mentioned. Trust me, the sustain is incredible for open world and story missions. Just did a mission where you want to avoid alerting sentries. I ran right through, alerted sentries, pulled everything, and killed it all. Group events are quite slow. (I brought down the branded Hydra in about 10 minutes solo) But I find the weaver very flexible, so long as you ensure a decent amount of condition damage.

 

Power is more of a benefit to running sword than the main focus. I sometimes swap in lightning flash. But, I know power works well for scepter weaver and staff weaver. Sword and dagger seem more hybrid (with a inclination towards condi). If you want to run power weaver, I suggest staff, scepter or at worst, dagger.

 

I ran a build with arcane utilities and traitline instead earth, and it worked really well for open world as well.

 

Once, I get some condi gear for my ele, I'm sure to see sword weaver in it's intended form. For now, I settled on a hybrid condi build using my wvw roaming set.

[Jski.6180]

> @Razor.6392 said:

> My guess is that anet was tired of ele reigning supreme in the power dps charts.

>

> It won't be long before staff weaver gets nuked.

 

Sadly staff weaver not doing much work as all of its burst skills are projectiles and slow ones at that. So often they miss (weird hix boxes) or are simply killed by anty projectiles. Weaver is the joke class of PoF did they really take 4 years to make this?

[VaLee.5102]

> Weaver is the joke class of PoF did they really take 4 years to make this?

 

They turned the whole concept into a salad until not even they could understand what they wanted from it anymore.

[Diak Atoli.2085]

I find Power Sword/x works very well. I'm using a similar build to Bunnytown.7801, though I'm running Air/Water/Weaver with Signet of Stone and glyphs.

 

Lightning Rod hits pretty hard, and sets up weakness for Superior Elements, though for now I'm using Master's Fortitude. There's also something really satisfying about floating an enemy with Gale Strike and then faceplanting them with Earthquake. Maybe it's just me?

[juno.1840]

> @Loboling.5293 said:

> > @juno.1840 said:

> > > @Loboling.5293 said:

> > > For open world, I'm having great success with celestial weaver. Earth, Fire. I have about 1k condi dmg, and 2k power, but I feel like I tear through mobs. And my sustain is just amazing I can solo group events. (not sure if a lot of classes can do that, I've only really played holo (glass) and ele (glass and cele).

> > >

> > > Sword seems to excel at hybrid damage, but mostly condi. However, ele scales so well with celestial, for situations you don't need to maximize burst, it allows you to stay in the fight and keep damage up. Power is pretty bad with sword, you're better off with almost any other weapon. They could definitely buff swords power damage, while bringing down their condi slightly. (I suggest the fart burning utility, that procs 10 stacks of burning aoe, by reducing burning duration a bit) Then you'd have some more flexibility with sword.

> > >

> > > For now, sword weaver seems to have two main advantages, higher condition potential and maximizing the bruiser nature of the ele. You can't really capitalize on both at once, but I'm still amazed by my damage output with a defensive celestial set-up. I easily stack 20 burns in aoe within a few seconds.

> > >

> > > Until some changes happen, you'll have to get your damage from condi. (Although feel free to experiment, I'm just pointing out what I've observed)

> >

> > It's hard to hit 2k power and 1k condi wlth celestial unless you trait Fire+Earth and take the condi-power conversion traits. Also you must be including food and utility buffs. These things I just listed are not unique to celestial (as in any gear setup can do it).

> >

> > I'm confuzzled on your comment: " my sustain is just amazing I can solo group events" -- because I think sustain is extremely lacking. You can go arcane+water but then you lose those fire+earth condi conversions. Also celestial doesn't provide great toughness, vitality, nor healing power -- just enough to be better than zero, but not nearly as good as a stat set design for survival.

> >

> > Honestly you'd be better off with a condi-set than celestial since you can take the power/precision/ferocity stats and redirect them to condi/vitality/toughness/expertise.

>

> Here is my build:

> http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAsdncMAFNgNNAG5C8RgFBA7eVHrv1DxgdwNMIAEKPAA-jBiAQBAUHA/0CAgHAgpU/RCnAA0o8zmKB93+DAA-e

>

> I don't need food for the stats I mentioned. Trust me, the sustain is incredible for open world and story missions. Just did a mission where you want to avoid alerting sentries. I ran right through, alerted sentries, pulled everything, and killed it all. Group events are quite slow. (I brought down the branded Hydra in about 10 minutes solo) But I find the weaver very flexible, so long as you ensure a decent amount of condition damage.

>

> Power is more of a benefit to running sword than the main focus. I sometimes swap in lightning flash. But, I know power works well for scepter weaver and staff weaver. Sword and dagger seem more hybrid (with a inclination towards condi). If you want to run power weaver, I suggest staff, scepter or at worst, dagger.

>

> I ran a build with arcane utilities and traitline instead earth, and it worked really well for open world as well.

>

> Once, I get some condi gear for my ele, I'm sure to see sword weaver in it's intended form. For now, I settled on a hybrid condi build using my wvw roaming set.

 

Not pure celestial, and you did take Fire+Earth for condi-power conversion.

 

> @Loboling.5293 said:

> Trust me, the sustain is incredible for open world and story missions.

 

Are you Mr. Trump now ("trust me")? Kidding aside, where's your sustain coming from? Signet of Restoration and Diamond Skin? That's almost nothing to be honest. With a total armor of 2600, you're pretty fragile. You do have 18.4k of health, so that's not bad (but it doesn't count as sustain really).

 

I started out with a nearly identical build (it's posted in the forums pre-launch) with pure celestial, Fire + Earth, Sword + Focus, and also used the defensive Weaver traits. It was a beat-down, especially with condi-pressure.

[Alwayshappy.2549]

I am running hybrid, but I have no issues with sword tbh. Damage is great, survivability is even better. Have to add that I'm not a hardcore ele (as in ''officially comparing dps numbers on a golem, finding the perfect sigils, etc - I just play what I like and see if it works for me), but it has been my main for years now. Not sure I like it more than Tempest, but it feels like my damage really increased. Just lose a lot of support (that I had with Tempest). Running focus as offhand. Plus it gives me an excuse to use Bolt and The Minstrel as a weapon set. Kinda nice.

[Clownmug.8357]

It feels like most of the #2 skills and dual attacks hit for less damage than auto-attacks, and the autos already feel weaker than other profession's. I don't think the sword is any good for condi either, mostly just 1 or 2 brief stacks of burning or bleed. I'm guessing some might think it's good because they're using Primordial Stance alongside it. One saving grace is that it does seem to work well with Lightning Rod at least, as others have mentioned.

[Auroralie.3521]

> @alexscr.4269 said:

> Would you share your build please?

> I've been trying to theory craft a PvE build for Weaver, with the Sword, and haven't been able to come up with something decent.

 

You can't use the sword with tempest, sorry.

 

 

[mbhalo.1547]

After trying out sword/dagger weaver in open world and story for a few hours i went back to sc/wh FA tempest for the rest of explortion and story.

[lucadiro.4519]

Honestly I just love the sword.... a lot of evades, a lot of cc and some mobility with air and water 2. Combined with a dagger offhand is very mobile, while with the focus as a crazy susistain.

Also I love the play style it bring with weaver specialization, very dynamic... I totally love it!

But yes some skills just miss raw damage numbers (or just doesn't scale well with power) so I really hope in some buff like:

 

-faster AA chains

-some dual skill buffed (I think air/earth and earth/fire are fine since one is a strong cc and the other is a condi focused skill that pulse)

-air 3 and fire 3 should have some serious damage buff.

 

These change would be wonderful both in pve and pvp.

I don't know if they will be enough to make sword weaver a competitive dps class in pve but is a start.

 

But the most important thing is that I hope a-net will not nerf weaver trait line to tone down staff but instead nerf the staff's skills that benefit too much from it (aka meteorshower+lava font)

 

[Azel.4786]

> @lucadiro.4519 said:

> But the most important thing is that I hope a-net will not nerf weaver trait line to tone down staff but instead nerf the staff's skills that benefit too much from it (aka meteorshower+lava font)

>

 

I seriously don't understand this opinion.

 

Staff is overperforming and Sword is underperforming exactly because of the crazy trait line %damage buffs and even then sword is abysmal.

 

Wouldn't you rather have the sword skills buffed and in place have interesting traits that like, you know, other elite specs have that offer interesting new alternatives for the class and are very build defining?

 

And on the topic of damage, I also don't understand people saying - Oh sword damage isn't so bad... most people in this topic are showing builds that are almost 100% focused on damages (specially so on the trait and skill choices that are almost only %damage buffs) and with 10x the work another class has to do.

 

Seriously, a lot of other classes - with similar stats and without having to invest so heavily in traits + skills + gear to damage are able to ditch out more damage than sword weaver with barely more than a single button press, while you have to practically hunt every single %damage trait + damaging skills + damaging gear to be able to try and get to their level (and still fall short).

 

Sure, with a herculian investment in damage Sword can ditch out some damage that is not the equivalent of healing your enemy, but you have no other option or interesting stuff besides that (you can barely branch out on your skills or traits or you don't do any damage). And you think that is good? You seriously happy with that?

 

I tell ya, when I went and decided to make a mesmer I realized that in open world PvE and in PvP / WvW roaming I am able to damage (particularly so to enemy players), I can still offer great utility (portals, signet of inspiration, stealth) and I don't even need to invest so heavily in damage if I wanted to - GASP I had options and mesmer isn't even great for Raid damage (but unequal in support - so again, build diversity).

 

Other classes are offering much more than ele, while we are relying on %damage to try and fill the DPS role which we are sure to be nerfed from - and then you will truly realize we never had anything else besides broken damage in a niche combination on a large stationary hitbox.

 

Now just to be clear, don't get me wrong, I like the sword skills - they are nice to look at and (damage aside), only a few of them could use a bit of change to make them a bit better (particularly earth 2 should be a leap forward and a Air+Earth needs to be a tad more reliable), but the damage is terrible plain and simple and the traits are not fun at all.