Build:Weaver - Fresh Air Roamer

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

Focused on: Direct damage and Mobility

Designed for: WvW Roaming

Difficulty:

TBD

This build was last updated on December 12, 2022 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 patch.

Overview

S/F Fresh Air is a WvW roaming build which focuses on burst damage whilst avoiding damage by utilizing superspeed, projectile hate and invulnerabilities to make up for its squishiness.

Skill Bar

Scepter/Focus

Utility

Template Code

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Equipment

Head
Marauder

Shoulders
Marauder

Chest
Marauder

Hands
Marauder

Legs
Marauder

Feet
Marauder

Backpiece
Marauder

Accessory
Dragon

Accessory
Dragon

Amulet
Dragon

Ring
Dragon

Ring
Dragon

Scepter
Marauder

Focus
Marauder

Sigil

Sigil

Focus
Marauder

Sigil

Rune
x6

Infusion
x18

Note: if you don't want to invest into Ascended Dragon's stat pieces, Exotics from the Trading Post will do just fine. The trinkets are relatively cheap, here's a list of them from the official wiki.

Second set: you may have noticed a Focus on the second set, this one's for the tryhards. While Elementalists can't swap weapons in combat, they can still stack Bloodlust on random PvE mobs before fights using the second set then switch back to the first set once they're ready to PvP. The Bloodlust stacks will remain active without the need to sacrifice a sigil slot on the PvP set. It's enough to put 1 weapon into the second set as they'll inherit the missing one from the main set. If you have no intention to stack Bloodlust before fights then you don't need the 2nd set! It's not mandatory.

Consumables

Food

There are plenty of viable choices, including:

• - highest possible damage option, great stats plus armor ignoring damage/healing procs.

• - passive damage mitigation and same stats as the Cilantro Lime one.

• - highest damage non-ascended option.

• or - armor ignoring damage and a bit of extra healing/precision, decent budget option.

• - defensive option with more evasion.

Utility

• or , whichever is cheaper at the moment.

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 Fire Attunement then fire becomes your primary attunement and weapon skills 1-2 will be fire skills. Afterwards if you switch to Air Attunement then air is now your primary attunement and fire's moved to secondary - now skills 1-2 are air and 4-5 are fire. Skill 3 is a dual skill influenced by both active attunements ⇒ fire + air for example is Plasma Beam.

• 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.

• It's possible to attune twice in a row to the same element, and doing this with Air Attunement is going to be a part of your burst rotation.

General

• The build makes little to no use of Water Attunement.

• Keep swapping in-and-out of Air Attunement repeatedly while roaming in order to maintain Swiftness.
  • Note: attuning to air twice in a row doesn't give swiftness the second time.

• The condition applied from Elemental Surge depends on your active primary attunement when your Arcane Blast hits the target, not the primary attunement you are in when you cast the skill. If you want Arcane Blast to inflicting Immobilize to set up a burst then you need to remain in Earth Attunement until the skill lands - or swap into swap into earth right before it lands.

• Conjure Fiery Greatsword's purpose is twofold.
  • Mobility: Fiery Whirl and Fiery Rush are excellent movement skills that can help you disengage from fights if your defensive CDs ran ou, or if you need to chase after someone.
  • Cleave: AoE in the build is rather clumsy, except for Fiery Whirl and Firestorm. Use these whenever you need to cleave down a downed enemy.

• Glyph of Elemental Harmony is best used in earth for the Protection.

• Arc Lightning isn't interrupted when you change attunements. Starting the channel in air and swapping to any other attunement is an excellent way of recharging air through Fresh Air as this skill hits multiple times in a short period of time. This is also a great filler in general.

Burst damage

• This build bursts by rapidly unloading instant cast abilities on top of a channeled one.

• The 3 main channeled skills you're going to use in bursts are Plasma Beam, Earthen Synergy and Fracturing Strike.

• All of your hard hitting abilities should go off after double attuning to Air Attunement.

• Burst combos that require an enemy to stay in place (such as the ones involving Fracturing Strike) should be used after firing Arcane Blast in Earth Attunement for the Immobilize.

Notable burst combos

These are some potential combos you can use based on the techniques outlined above. The quicker you pull these chains off, the better.

From Fire primary Air secondary:

1. Fire Shield ⇒ Transmute Fire for the Might
2. Dragon's Tooth
3. Plasma Beam
4. Arcane Blast
5. Air Attunement
6. Air Attunement
7. Lightning Strike

Note: in this specific case, if you already have an active Elemental Surge buff before beginning the chain, Arcane Blast should be used after the second Air Attunement in order to benefit from the Air modifiers and Elements of Rage.

From Earth primary Air secondary:

1. Rock Barrier
2. Earthen Synergy
3. Arcane Blast
4. Hurl
5. Air Attunement
6. Air Attunement
7. Lightning Strike

From Earth primary Fire secondary:

1. Rock Barrier
2. Fracturing Strike
3. Arcane Blast
4. Hurl
5. Air Attunement
6. Air Attunement
7. Lightning Strike

Survival

• One with Air makes it easy to kite most specs. Avoid melee range at all costs!

• CCs can be used for shaking off pursuers.

• Shatterstone is a source of spammable Chill which you can even place behind your back when running away. Chill is great at building distance.

• Abuse spots on maps that break teleport skill pathing when the enemy team has Thieves, Revenants, and other such specs with teleports. Use the terrain to your advantage in general, it's very important for builds as squishy as this one.

• Magnetic Wave and Swirling Winds provide excellent protection against enemies who use projectiles. These however do not work against unblockable projectiles, and some ranged builds - such as this one - are mostly unaffected by projectile reflects and blocks.

• Obsidian Flesh is your last resort defense in situations where neither CC nor projectile counters will keep you alive. You should only use it when other options are either unavailable or not going to suffice.

• Blinding Flash is great at avoiding crucial skills by blinding enemies, and it also shuts down Power-based specs in general with the Weakness.

Related Builds

• Weaver - Freshweaver - Conquest PvP version.

• Elementalist - S/F FA Roamer - core/F2P version.