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 February 15, 2025 and is up to date for the March 11, 2025 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

can be replaced by:

• - consistent damage proc, and easier to get.

• - extra damage/healing that fits the build perfectly.

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

• - better defense against conditions, something the build struggles against.

Relics

• - on this build both of Claw and Fireworks perform roughly the same. Between 4 attunements and a CC focused weapon set there are plenty of triggers for both relics, you should have nearly permanent uptime on the damage boost with either of these options.

Runes

• - if you want to go all in on damage.

• - 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.