Weaver - Starfire Roamer

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

Focused on: Hybrid damage, Mobility and Sustain

Designed for: WvW Roaming

Difficulty:

Normal

This build was last updated on September 14, 2023 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 patch.

Overview

A Celestial Weaver build for WvW roaming with excellent condition pressure and sustain but somewhat limited mobility.

Skill Bar

Sword/Focus

Utility

Skill Variants

Utility

• Armor of Earth over Signet of Air - this is a choice between a stronger defensive skill on a longer CD (Armor) and more frequent stun break access but on a weaker skill (Signet).

Template Code

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Specializations

Variants

• Burning Fire is also a viable option in case you'd need more condition removal.

Equipment

Head
Celestial

Shoulders
Celestial

Chest
Celestial

Hands
Celestial

Legs
Celestial

Feet
Celestial

Backpiece
Celestial

Accessory
Celestial

Accessory
Celestial

Amulet
Celestial

Ring
Celestial

Ring
Celestial

Sword
Celestial

Focus
Celestial

Sigil

Sigil

Rune
x6

Relic

Equipment Variants

Sigils

• Sigil of Superior Sigil of Cleansing - great option if you're having trouble dealing with conditions.

• Sigil of Superior Sigil of Energy - a great boost to sustain in general and dodge rolling has synergy with several traits as well.

Relics

• Relic of the Mirage - improves condition variety, making it harder for enemies to cleanse your more important ones.

Consumables

Food

• - food equivalent of Celestial and excellent passive damage mitigation, fits perfectly.

• - non-Ascended Celestial food option.

• - one of the most popular consumables amongst roamers, provides excellent sustain and even a bit of damage.
  • Budget version:

Utility

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 Twin Strike.

• 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). Another application includes pressuring targets through Primordial Stance and Lava Skin whilst evading incoming attacks.

• Dual attuning (having the same primary and secondary element) in general isn't recommended, but there are a few niche uses for it. One example would be attuning to Fire twice in order to squeeze more condition cleansing out of it in a limited time frame.

• Might stacking happens passively through Pyromancer's Puissance. It's yet another reason for spamming autoattacks as much as possible when in combat (and attuned to Fire).

Damage

• This build is all about stacking Burning.

• Primordial Stance can instantly add burst to any attack skill you're using:
  • When it comes to offense, you can't go wrong with activating them on Fire Attunement - fire has the highest raw damage output.
  • Air Attunement is also a good choice for both because of the Vulnerability stacking, but this condition's effectivenes severely depends on how pressured your target is - especially when it comes to the glyph which only stacks one condition type at a time. If the target doesn't have any damaging conditions and isn't being focused by your team, Vulnerability doesn't do much.
  • Note: all 5 charges of the glyph go off based on the attunement you were in the moment this skill was used, swapping attunements doesn't change anything.

• As for weapon skills, your heavy hitters are Flame Uprising, Lava Skin, and Pyro Vortex. The latter two also pulse damage each second for a period of time, making them synergize well with Primordial Stance.

• Flamewall doesn't do much in duels because it's so easy to avoid just by not stepping on it, but it's a rather decent skill for downed cleave if dropped directly below the target.

Burst combo examples

Fire Attunement primary, Earth Attunement secondary

1. Primordial Stance
2. Lava Skin
3. Flame Uprising
4. Swap to Air Attunement
5. Pyro Vortex

Air Attunement primary, Earth Attunement secondary

1. Primordial Stance
2. Gale Strike
3. Swap to Fire Attunement
4. Pyro Vortex
5. Flame Uprising

Sustain and how to dealing with conditions

• The trait Smothering Auras provides a steady stream of cleansing:
  • Swapping to Fire Attunement applies Fire Shield, cleansing one condition. Swapping to another attunement from fire gives you access to Transmute Fire which cleanses another 2 conditions by detonating the aura.
  • Fire Shield can be combo'd by using a leap finisher such as Polaric Leap or Flame Uprising in a Flamewall.

• When auras no longer suffice Magnetic Wave is what you should use. This is the best anti-condition skill in the build, instantly removing 3 conditions upon being used.

• The trait Invigorating Strikes grants a steady stream of barriers. Dodging on Water and Earth attunements has even more defensive benefits thanks to Evasive Arcana - the first dodge after attuning to Water acts as an AoE heal / cleanse while the first dodge on Earth is a blast finisher which can be combo'd into the field left behind by Riptide.

• Most of the sustain comes from combining Water Attunement with Earth Attunement:
  • The order doesn't always matter. Going from Earth to Water lets you blast Riptide immediately with Magnetic Wave for extra healing whilst cleansing conditions and reflecting projectiles. Going from Water to Earth allows for blasting Riptide's water field through an Evasive Arcana empowered dodge + Earthen Vortex.
  • Skill #2 of both attunements has an evade frame in case you'd want to avoid incoming damage.
  • Attuning to Earth serves as an instant source of AoE Protection application which is quite handy especially if you're CC'd and can't cast anything else.

• Earth / Fire is also an alright combination because of the cleansing from the auras and the barrier from Lava Skin.

• Obsidian Flesh is the best defensive skill in the build, making you immortal for its duration (except for fall damage).

Basic healing combo

1. Dodge in Water Attunement to proc the relevant effect of Evasive Arcana.
2. Use Riptide.
3. Swap to Earth Attunement for Earthen Vortex or use Magnetic Wave if you were in Earth prior to switching to Water. Use them in the field created by Riptide. You could also go Earth ⇒ Water ⇒ Earth and do both.
4. Swap to Fire Attunement for the Smothering Auras + Sunspot combo.
5. Lava Skin for the barrier.
6. Optional: when you swap out of Fire, use Transmute Fire if cleansing is needed.

Related Builds

Fire Weaver (sPvP) - Conquest PvP version.