Build:Weaver - D/F Lightning Rod

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

Focused on: Strike damage and Control

Designed for: PvP Conquest

Difficulty:

Hard

This build was last updated on October 15, 2024 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 patch.

Overview

A Power Weaver build for PvP which uses the trait Lightning Rod to add extra damage to its many CC skills while also mitigating direct damage through the Weakness LR applies. Here the best defense is a good offense. While the low sustain coupled with the reliance on melee range makes this build rather unforgiving to play, it's very satisfying to pull off.

Skill Bar

Dagger/Focus

Utility

Slot Changes

Utility

Viable choices for the optional slot include:

• Conjure Earth Shield - several strong defensive skills and even some CC all rolled into one conjure.

• Armor of Earth - great defensive skill in general, works against any form of pressure.

• Twist of Fate - stun break + an evade frame right after. Could also replace Signet of Air, it's a matter of preference.

• Stone Resonance - Stability and general sustain.

Elite

• Tornado - more CC and potential to prevent revives. Less self-sustain and potential to swap between attunements for more damage and rapid access to Superspeed between Air and Earth swapping.

Template Code

[&DQYpOiUeODl0AHQAHAEAAJAAAADmAAAAlgAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACLwAxAAA=]

Copy Template Code

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.

• Woven Stride - more condition cleanse.

• Elements of Rage - more burst.

Equipment

Dagger

Focus

Sigil

Sigil

Rune

Amulet

Relic

Equipment Variants

Amulet

• - more experienced players could go for Berserker too, giving up survivability for higher damage. Take Rune of Warrior to compensate for some of the lost HP.

Relic

• Relic of Mosyn - reduces the issue of cleansing non-damaging conditions with Sigil of Cleansing. Dagger has a lot of skills with evades. It also offers some degree of defense against Weakness which could hinder your burst attempts.

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.

• Cycle fire ⇒ air ⇒ fire ⇒ air to maintain Swiftness while roaming between capture points.

• 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.

• 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 when you're out of CDs. Air/Earth is especially good at cleaving downed targets because not only can you add Convergence and Grinding Stones to your autoattack spam but also instantly proc Relic of Fireworks with Magnetic Wave, boosting the damage of the whole sequence.
  • When cleaving a downed target going from Air/Earth to Air/Air should be considered too, you get to maintain the pressure with Lightning Whip while gaining access to Shocking Aura and its transmute skill Transmute Lightning for an AoE Stun that could halt the rez attempt of the enemy team.

• 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.
  • Tornado's also quite good at quickly neutralizing enemy capture points.

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.

• 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.

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

• 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.

Top Streamers

• Twitch: Grimjack

• Twitch: Phantaram

• Twitch: Blamthrax

• Twitch: Boyce

Related Builds

• LR Roamer - WvW roaming version.