Rework weaver to better suit other weapons

[Mistra.4087]

Weaver was obviously designed with sword in mind and it shows. Dagger and scepter are in need of some love, and the only reason staff gets away with being good is for its ability to spam dps skills in pve/wvw zergs. I think one issue is #3 weapon skills are too important to get locked out of and double attuning feels awkward with the exception of air with fresh air. You're also locked out of important secondary skills until you go through another attunement. You tried to mitigate this by introducing unravel but unravel is never worth replacing another utility and has never been a thing. Take scepter for example, without double attuning we are locked out of phoenix in fire and our pitiful water trident. This also means when running focus we don't have immediate access to our earth 4 and 5 which are crucial for survival. Sword gets away with this because you have access to a heal/evade on water 2, mobility/cc on air 2, and an evade on earth 2 leaving you with more time and flexibility to access secondary skills you need.

 

Some ideas:

 

Merge unravel into aquatic stance and introduce another utility skill. Right now unravel and aquatic stance see very little use, merging into aquatic stance would give you a small initial heal and direct access to your important secondary and #3 weapon skills. This would mean if you wanted direct access to phoenix in fire stance for burst you need to use one of your heal charges which is a fair trade off. You could then introduce a new stance in it's place, even make it a worthless one no one will take like a generic boon steroid. This change would benefit all weapons, not just scepter.

 

Or you could rework scepters dual water skills. NONE OF SCEPTERS DUAL ATTACK WATER SKILLS HEAL OR GRANT REGENERATION. WHY? The only defensive option we have with scepter dual attacks is a meager 1 second evade in fire/water.

 

I don't even know where to start with dagger weaver, that is an absolute mess. A fun mess, but a mess indeed.

 

[Stallic.2397]

I've mentioned it in several threads. The mechanic of weaver is such a disservice to anyone not playing sword. I would play dagger/focus if dagger weaver wasn't such a mess.

 

It seems like introducing an F5 is impossible for weaver, but it would be nice if your dual skill was an F5. You'll then have access to skills 1-3 main attunement. No overlap.

 

Such a simple change and yet, it'll probably never happen.

[Auburner.6945]

Dual attacks are awful even on sword, all weapons need a rework in terms of dual attacks because they add nothing but an extra skill that might be a disadvantage in some situations. Never seen someone using a dual attack because it has such value in boon gain or any utility/control, it's just what comes from dual attuning, so instead of wasting potential hits, you use them to fill in the cooldowns.

 

Dual attacks need reworks. Imagine if dual attacks provided boons/control/utility, that would be really great and won't be that broken because we have a maximum of 6 dual attacks and not all of them could be used at all situations.

 

For unravel, it should've been F5, a part of weaver's mechanic. The lore shouldn't determine that such mastery of element means not going back to the basics, which means unravel should be F5, basic, not a utility slotted by choice.

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

I'd like to see air #2 with a lower CD, it's our only (good) leap, only close gap ... and 15sec is far too long.

Fire #2, make the fire field ... a fire field ! It should apply 1sec burning per pulse. I don't know, I find this logical, no ? It's like lava font which got a nerf without counterpart.

Earth #3, WTF is this ?? It should applies Immob or be faster or don't lock you on your position or give a counterpart like a reflect or something ... It's not 100 blades, it's bleedings ...

Water #2, pls revert nerf or let us direct the move.

Air/earth and Eart/water #3 : pls, better tracking or velocity; how many times the guy in front of me just did a sidestep to evade the skill ...

Stone resonance : give us a better initial barrier, and so lower the nexts. In general give us better barriers, not "400 barrier on dual skills" come on, this is ridiculous

Unravel : not bad, but core #3, *on sword, are not really worth it. In some way I on contrary find this skill to suit better with dagger and staff.

Aquatic stance : useless, trash. Need total rework. 1sec tick icd, need to stay melee, cast time ... "You need heals ? Sure, keep melee pressure and don't miss the ticks." Obviously useless with staff and scepter, and even dagger leaps. And weaver is not a healer or I really don't get the point of the spec, why it should heal allies ?

Superior elements : 10sec icd ? Really ? And still don't get why they nerfed to 10% precision in pve ...

[MoriMoriMori.5349]

> @"Auburner.6945" said:

> Never seen someone using a dual attack because it has such value in boon gain or any utility/control, it's just what comes from dual attuning, so instead of wasting potential hits, you use them to fill in the cooldowns.

Can't see your point here, sorry. Sword's dual-attacks seem quite useful. Fire-Air hits hard and "sticks" to up to 5 targets, dealing damage-over-time which follows them. Air-Earth is similar, but also lift them - what to not like about this one, it's perfect! Earth-Water hits hard and gives you so much needed range. Earth-Fire is absolute beauty, giving you barrier AND passive AoE damage at the same time, and has not that high CD, so you can use it regularly.

 

Though it may not be great for other weapons, I guess, I haven't really tested those in combat yet.

 

> @"Auburner.6945" said:

> For unravel, it should've been F5, a part of weaver's mechanic. The lore shouldn't determine that such mastery of element means not going back to the basics, which means unravel should be F5, basic, not a utility slotted by choice.

 

Couldn't agree more on this one. Currently, if you want more or less complete build for you Weaver which plays more or less smoothly, you just must dedicate all your utility slots (and even Elite one!) to stances. What means that ALL your core utility skills are not used at all after you've reached lv80 (as due to power-creep bound to new weapons coming with those e-specs core classes are mostly obsolete and only worth something as "for fun" option for OpenWorld). This is totally ridiculous as it kills all variety and makes most of profession's mechanics unnecessary. Such a waste.. Moving Unravel to F5 would at least free one utility slot you could use for some core utility skill you liked from times you were a simple Ele.

 

They really need to nerf all e-specs back to the level of core professions (well, may be make their DPS **a bit** higher, like 20-30% higher max), then also reduce HP pools and damage of mobs and bosses somewhat, accordingly (as I believe those were intentionally boosted to somehow make them sustainable due to that powercreep, at least for HoT and PoF maps).

 

[Bamm.6975]

I think the only reason sword Weaver works as well as it does it due to water 2. This is a powerful low cool down on demand heal where as all other heal skills are behind two attunement swaps. Other weapons might become viable of there was a similar quality / available heal skills in skills 1 or 2 on them.

[Arkaile.5604]

> @"MoriMoriMori.5349" said:

> > @"Auburner.6945" said:

> > Never seen someone using a dual attack because it has such value in boon gain or any utility/control, it's just what comes from dual attuning, so instead of wasting potential hits, you use them to fill in the cooldowns.

> Can't see your point here, sorry. Sword's dual-attacks seem quite useful. Fire-Air hits hard and "sticks" to up to 5 targets, dealing damage-over-time which follows them. Air-Earth is similar, but also lift them - what to not like about this one, it's perfect! Earth-Water hits hard and gives you so much needed range. Earth-Fire is absolute beauty, giving you barrier AND passive AoE damage at the same time, and has not that high CD, so you can use it regularly.

>

> Though it may not be great for other weapons, I guess, I haven't really tested those in combat yet.

 

You need to experiment more with all of the attacks, including the ones you listed. They aren't all that great on anything but a dps golem and there are reasons for that.

 

Pyro Vortex (fire/air): The vortices created by this attack are stationary (radius of 90) with the only thing which "sticks" to enemies being a 2sec burn. The skill itself only takes 0.5sec to use, which is reasonable, but the majority of this skill's damage comes from the small, stationary aoes it creates. Only effective if something stands in them.

 

Gale Strike (air/earth): Slower to use than other dual skills, taking 3/4sec to use, but it has nice cc on it. The problem with this one is that it's slower and only hits in melee range (130 units) - good luck making use of it outside of pve. The damage may as well not even be there unless you're playing a condi weaver, and it's sub-par even then.

 

Natural Fenzy (earth/water): The range is nice, but it really should have been given more range to compensate for the nerf which prevents eles from casting it on targets behind themselves. In its current state, it isn't great or terrible; it's just okay and it sees use simply because it's one of sword's two ranged attacks.

[Dadnir.5038]

Well... Rework is a big word. The main issue is that weaver's dual skills on core weapon tend to not be worth the cool down and cast time. It's like ANet's dev were deadset on making those skill some kind of long cast time burst skills. Most of those skills would be more fun to play and play against if they weren't focused on some "burst" were accessible more often.

 

For example, who the hell will want to burst with 8 stack of bleeding for 3 second, with a 15 second CD? What's the point of such a skill? Fiery frost, steam surge, mud slide are 3/4 second cast time skill, who would want and evade skill with a cast time? Who would even think that such a thing is a good idea? I know ANet's dev think highly of these dual element's skills but come on 15-18 second CD skills on a spec that's supposed to be fast paced and change often element, it's overkill. The skills aren't even affected by the CD recharge from attunment traits...

[Arheundel.6451]

> @"Bamm.6975" said:

> I think the only reason sword Weaver works as well as it does it due to water 2. This is a powerful low cool down on demand heal where as all other heal skills are behind two attunement swaps. Other weapons might become viable of there was a similar quality / available heal skills in skills 1 or 2 on them.

 

Yup...add a small CD to riptide and see all the "white knights" scattering at the wind like..dust..also do not forget **twist of fate**, purely a gimmick spec not good at anything but trolling bored players