Weaver - Lightning Rod Roamer

The community gave this build a rating, making it second-tier: Good

Focused on: Strike damage, Mobility and Control

Designed for: WvW Roaming

Expansions required:

Difficulty:

Hard

This build was last updated on July 09, 2024 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 patch.

Overview

A high skillcap Power Weaver roaming build for WvW built around the Lightning Rod trait. LR Weaver is all about spamming CCs for both defensive and offensive purposes, as CC skills do high damage while also applying Weakness. In this case the best defense is a good offense, as the goal of the build is to keep enemies constantly pressured via CC skills - they can't exploit your low sustain if they can't fight back.

Skill Bar

Dagger/Focus

Utility

Skill Bar Variants

Utility

Viable choices for the 3rd utility slot include:

• Armor of Earth - great defensive skill and stun break on medium CD.

• Conjure Earth Shield - several strong defensive skills all rolled into one conjure, including an invulnerability and a block.

• Stone Resonance - Stability and general sustain.

• Twist of Fate - powerful stun break with an evade frame but on a rather lengthy CD. The cooldown however doesn't matter that much if you're able to end fights quickly.

Elite

• Weave Self - slightly lower CD than Tornado and has LR synergy. Good for setting up kills, could also be used defensively on Earth for damage mitigation. Tornado however offers more mobility and more CC.

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Specializations

Variants

• If you feel like you're getting a sufficient amount of Vigor from Invigorating Strikes then Arcane Restoration could be taken for more healing.

Variants

• Bolstered Elements - more sustain.

• Elements of Rage - more burst.

Equipment

Head
Marauder

Shoulders
Marauder

Chest
Marauder

Hands
Marauder

Legs
Marauder

Feet
Marauder

Backpiece
Marauder

Accessory
Cavalier

Accessory
Marauder

Amulet
Marauder

Ring
Cavalier

Ring
Cavalier

Dagger
Marauder

Focus
Marauder

Sigil

Sigil

Rune
x6

Infusion
x18

Relic

Equipment Variants

Sigils

Sigil of Superior Sigil of Absorption can be replaced by:

• Sigil of Superior Sigil of Air - consistent damage proc, and easier to get.

• Sigil of Superior Sigil of Draining - extra damage/healing that fits the build perfectly.

• Sigil of Superior Sigil of Energy - refills a dodge bar every ~10 seconds when you swap attunements, great defensive option.

• Sigil of Superior Sigil of Generosity - better defense against conditions, something the build struggles against.

Runes

• Rune of Superior Rune of the Scholar - if you want to go all in on damage.

• Rune of Superior Rune of the Holosmith - retains some sustain from the current rune, but squeezes in a bit more pressure. It's also easier to get.

Consumables

Food

There are plenty of viable choices:

• - passive damage mitigation and strong offensive stats.

• - armor ignoring damage and a bit of extra healing, a suitable budget option.

• - defensive option with more evasion.
  • Budget version:

Utility

• or .

Usage

Elite specialization basics

• Weaver allows the Elementalist to attune to 2 elements at the same time, and skills 1-5 are decided based on both. Let's call them primary and secondary attunements.

• If you swap to Fire Attunement then Fire becomes your primary attunement and weapon skills 1-2 will be fire skills. Afterwards if you switch to Water Attunement for example then Water is now your primary attunement and Fire's moved to secondary - now skills 1-2 are Water and 4-5 are Fire. Skill 3 is a dual skill created by a combination of your active attunements - Fire + Water for example is Steam Surge.

• The order of the attunements doesn't matter here, Water primary with Fire secondary has the same dual attack as Fire primary and Water secondary. Attuning to the same element twice gives you access to the "core" skill of the weapon, the skill you'd have if you weren't a Weaver.

General

• Signet of Restoration should seldom be touched, as the passive is extremely valuable. Note that several trait procs also count as skill activations and will benefit from the passive of this signet.
  • Unless you either have a high amount of Confusion on you, or you're already at maximum health, you should always be casting something (autoattacks will do too). This is to get the most out of this signet's passive.

• If taken Twist of Fate can be cancelled by stowing your weapon in rare cases when the full evasion isn't needed (let's say you have to cleave a downed target and must keep the pressure up, but had to break stun).

Damage

• Lightning Rod is the bread and butter of this build, causing every CC effect in the build to add to your damage. The general playstyle revolves around weaving together hard hitting skills such as Plasma Burst with CC for burst damage.

• Your most dangerous skills tend to be dual skills, especially those related to Air Attunement:
  • Plasma Burst on Air + Fire (this is the most damage you can do with 1 skill).
  • Grinding Stones on Air + Earth (damage over time, adds to other burst attempts).
  • Katabatic Wind Air + Water (raw damage AND LR synergy, one of your best skills).
  • Mud Slide on Earth + Water (Lightning Rod synergy).
  • Ashen Blast on Fire + Earth (raw damage).

• Convergence has a delay, you could combo this with other high damage skills like Plasma Burst or Katabatic Wind for a quick burst.

• If taken Attuning to the same element twice grants Elements of Rage, which is a decent damage increase. Unravel makes obtaining this buff easier. Best attunements to double attune to are Air and Fire.

• Air Attunement is the most important one in the build and should be attuned to often, both for damage and sustain. Convergence alone could provide a ~50% AoE Weakness uptime and it does really good damage, while Lightning Whip is the go-to cleave skill in the build.

• Tornado is good at finishing off low HP targets, making sure they don't get to heal up while also damaging them with Lightning Rod procs. This works on downed targets too so you could use it to disrupt rez attempts. Even if enemy players have Stability or a Guardian is casting Signet of Mercy Tornado could launch the downed enemy into the distance to deny it.

Burst combo examples

Water primary, Earth secondary

1. Mud Slide
2. Swap to Air
3. Convergence
4. Comet
5. Katabatic Wind
6. Swap to Fire
7. Plasma Burst

Air primary, Earth secondary

1. Grinding Stones
2. Convergence
3. Swap to Fire
4. Gale
5. Plasma Burst
6. Drake's Breath

Air primary, Fire secondary (ranged burst)

1. Convergence
2. Precast Plasma Burst
3. Lightning Flash to your target's location in the middle of casting Plasma burst

Sustain

• Lightning Rod plays a major part here as well, constantly mitigating damage trough Weakness spam.

• Sustain's low in general, especially when it comes to handling conditions. Cleansing is limited to your sigil, dodging on Water Attunement, and Magnetic Wave. Perhaps your best tool against conditions is Obsidian Flesh, which makes you immune to incoming conditions and causes you not to take damage from the ones already on you for its duration.
  • Earth #4-5 in general are some of your strongest defensive tools. Due to their placement on the skill bar however, as a Weaver you may not gain access to these skills immediately when swapping to Earth Attunement. This can be solved by using Unravel in case of emergency. Unravel's also great for grabbing Shocking Aura on Air Attunement.

• Superspeed from One with Air lets you kite melee opponents should you need some breathing room.

• Swapping to Earth is an instant source of Protection, you can do this even while stunned.
  • If you're on Air then double attuning to Air isn't a bad idea either. You gain access to Shocking Aura which is an instant CC. Not only is that capable of stopping burst attempts, it also applies Weakness via LR synergy.

• Steam Surge (Fire/Water) creates a Water field with a very short duration, but it's just enough to blast for a bit of extra healing if you swap to Air right after with either Plasma Burst or Katabatic Wind.

• Some of the dual skills have baked in defenses, like damage reduction on Grinding Stones, Blind on Ashen Blast or evasion on Steam Surge.

• If you're on Water primary and Earth secondary you could use Mud Slide, swap to Fire, and follow up with Steam Surge to build distance while evading attacks.

• Earth and Air have some great skills for fighting ranged projectile users: Swirling Winds on Air secondary, Ring of Earth on Earth primary, and Magnetic Wave on Earth secondary.

• Lightning Flash is an excellent panic button. With this (and good reaction times) you can teleport out of harm's way all the way to the highground or leave fights altogether.

• Tornado could be used to disengage from fights. Skill #5 is a great mobility skill that also does AoE CC, and using the elite procs Arcane Shield which can block a couple of attacks.

Related Builds

D/F Lightning Rod (sPvP) - Conquest PvP version.