Build: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

Difficulty:

Hard

This build was last updated on August 25, 2023 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 patch.

Overview

A high skillcap Power WvW Weaver roaming build 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 hit you.

Skill Bar

Dagger/Focus

Utility

Skill Bar Variants

Utility

Viable choices for the 3rd utility slot include:

• Unravel - resets the CD on attunements and allows for double attuning immediately for its duration. This is great for accessing your defensive weapon skills on Earth and Air in case of an emergency, or proccing Elements of Rage.

• Stone Resonance - Stability and general sustain.

• Signet of Air - stun break on low CD.

• 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.

• Primordial Stance - mostly just for the Vulnerability stacking, could be a good source of extra damage if you can afford it.

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Specializations

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.

Runes

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

• Rune of Divinity - 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 influenced by both 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 has its own dual skill.

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.

• 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.

• 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.

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.

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

Related Builds

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