Weaver - Staff Backline

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The community gave this build a rating, making it top-tier: Great.

Focused on: Direct damage, Support, Control.

Designed for:

World vs World

Overview

A backline build providing damage, CC and field support. Requires a precise usage of skills and positioning to survive.

Skill Bar

StaffHealingUtilityElite

Skill Variants

Heal

• instantly restores a bigger chunk of your HP, but loses condi hate.

Utility

• for personal stability when prone to being caught in CC often.
• additional blast finisher and solid damage.

Elite

• lower attunement cooldown, which can be useful for a quick succession of AoE skills, and CC in close range.

Specializations

Variants

• for more condition clear
• to maximize uptime and damage from
• if having high Might uptime from other sources.

Variants

• and These traits add significant damage, but only if you can catch the enemy in your CCs (especially ) without Stability.

Variants

• higher sustain but loss in crit chance.

Variants

Arcane is an option when having proper boon uptime.

Variants

• ferocity boost and strong immobilize on earth when using arcane skills.

Equipment

6x

Superior Rune of the Scholar

18x

Mighty WvW Infusion

Consumables

feast option with additional damage reduction.

Variants

Stats

• Keep in mind this setup has 100% Crit chance with when changing gear.
• Use as much Marauder's as you feel is necessary then fill out with Berserker's
• Avoid inefficient stats like Valkyrie's. Marauder's is strictly better than Valkyrie's when considering effective power and health.

Sigils

• Extra survivability
• good offensive filler sigil when kills are frequent

Runes

• Better damage option if sitting under 12 Might
• Decent damage option for cleaving downed targets.

Food

• highest damage option with frequent kills.
• higher damage if not using or have a low uptime.

Usage

Elite specialization basics

• Weaver allows the Elementalist to attune to 2 elements at the same time, and skills 1-5 will be decided based on both. Let's call them primary and secondary attunements.
• If you swap to then Fire becomes your primary attunement and weapon skills 1-2 will be fire skills. Afterwards if you switch to 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 influenced by both active attunements ⇒ Fire + Water for example is .
• 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 has its standard skill, for example, .

General

• Whilst being a full Marauder's build, you are still really squish to Hammer revs and power damage in general. Antecipating heating and positioning properly is essential to survive.
• This build requires rapidly switching between attunements. You can reduce the cooldown on an attunement by switching it while you are still casting a skill (this will not interrupt the cast).
• and will be used mainly for self defense as reposition tool, temporarily avoiding ground heat and denying enemies tunnel visioning on you. Prioritize living over dealing damage. Twist of Fate can also be used to ignore movement CC due to Superspeed.
• You can interrupt by using stow weapon as soon as you are full healed in order to save time.

Staff Explanation

• Try to stay in with at least one of your attunements to maintain and other modifiers.
• On the initial engage, you usually want to be in /X, where X is any attunement besides Fire. Therefore all your staff 4-5 bring some kind of utility. Afterwards, you can double attune Fire and use .
  • , and will be used mainly for the CC along with your team damage pressure. 's direction is based on your where your character is looking. Turn briefly while casting the skill to aim it and effectevily blocking the passage. Gfycat:
    See GYF for explaination
  • and will be used to soften condition pressure, benefiting from the large radius, and to remove soft CC on allies, respectively.
• Staff #2 skills are strong damage fillers (with low cooldown) to rotate between while Meteor Shower isn't available. Bear in mind Ice Spike and Eruption aren't instant.
  • makes significant part of your sustained pressure after Meteor Shower. Look for casting it off cooldown to maximize ground pressure.
  • quick cast and good damage, will be used to pick off single targets, try to cast it on enemies stacked to hit multiple foes.
  • whilst being Water gives significant 300-radius damage and justifies, along with the Water 4-5 skills, going into Water Attunement
  • gives reliable damage, assuming the the slow proc time. Can be used as preventive ground pressure and for cleaving.
• Most of your Staff Dual skills are slow moving projectiles (, and ) with decent damage on impact. Try to cast then on downed and lock down enemies to ensure it will connect, or where the enemy will be moving to.
  • Going Air/Earth for and combo deals massive single target damage, but it's mostly situational and not encouraged.
  • and are decent soft CC sources and are easily accessible from Air and Earth. Just attune for these if, situationaly, movement impairing the enemy stack is more valuable than maintaing DPS.

Meteor Shower

• is your main damage source, but it has a long cast time. Try to place it on spots the enemy stack will tend to be, rather than where it is now. Very useful for cleave.
  • If you realize the skill won't connect, you have a small window to cancel (stow) the skill before the meteors start to go off, putting it on a 4s CD.
  • Watch out for the incoming damage from Retaliation, be ready to heal up.
• Try to double attune to proc right before casting this skill.
  • Going into , as soon as possible for the extra ferocity, is good to keep Meteors damage enhanced.
  • If equipped, can be used while channeling Meteor for a bigger damage spike.
• By the end of the channel, you can find yourself out of position or focused by enemies. You can avoid this in two ways:
  • Use after you start casting it.
  • Use the " trick" (see GYF). This way avoids using but you can find yourself even further away from your zerg. Gfycat:
    Burning Retreat Trick

Conjure Fiery Greatsword

• (FGS) provides great mobility and a damage boon when wielded. It can be used after casting to increase the damage.
  • You should still swap attunements, mainly between and for damage, while yielding the FGS. Try to double attune, at some point, to proc .
  • Remember that you can retrieve the FGS conjured on the ground if you are still around. It stands for 30s.
• Cast on top of downed enemies and/or the enemy stack. Despite the small radius, it hits 10 targets and should be used after to maximize damage.
• will be used mostly for mobility, chasing down and bursting a single target or repositioning.
• will be taken mainly to deal damage in melee range, while evading through enemies. Try to use it after Firestorm.
• spam it while on melee to maintain DPS after you burned through the FGS skills, but it isn't worth to drop yet.

Videos

• YouTube:
  [wHo] Solemn
• YouTube:
  [dE] Yaspire