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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 January 14, 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 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.
  • 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 Stability and general sustain.
  • Primordial Stance - decent damage boost when used on Air, but it's a very greedy option on an already low-sustain build.


Elite

  • Weave Self - slightly lower CD than Tornado and has LR synergy. Good for setting up kills, could also be used defensively on Earth for damage mitigation. Tornado however offers more mobility and CC.


Template Code

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Specializations

Variants

  • If you feel like you're getting a sufficient amount of Vigor Vigor from Invigorating Strikes then Arcane Restoration could be taken for more healing.

Variants

  • Bolstered Elements - more sustain.
  • 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.


Usage

Elite specialization basics

  • Weaver 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 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 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.
  • 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 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 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 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 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 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.


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Ratings

This build has a rating of 4 stars based on 11 votes.
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4 stars
Vinny gave this build 4 stars • October 2024
Still one of my favorite Power Weaver builds. Requires a lot of finesse in timing skills and you can't just blow all your buttons into something. Decent dueling potential, decent condition cleanse if you go Relic of Mosyn or Woven Stride. Personally play pure-glass with Zerker/Deadeye, but I can't recommend it unless you know your risks.
4 stars
Hanz gave this build 4 stars • June 2024
Another decent weaver build, but not sure if I'd recommend it for beginners. The damage and CC is amazing once you get used to it, but sustain's on the low end and therefore it requires good situational awareness / understanding of CDs. Annual update: still works, remains one of the harder ele builds to play
4 stars
Glasstone gave this build 4 stars • May 2024
I sort of agree with the previous commenter but with the decline of support guard's popularity there's much less stability in teamfights so I think right now the build's performing a bit better. You definitely need practice with this, if the enemy team identifies you as the weak link you can easily throw with this, but a good LR ele can still decide fights with all the CC and damage it has.
3 stars
BlobTheBob gave this build 3 stars • March 2024
Like all LR builds its very matchup dependent. If the enemy has stability you lose a significant portion of your damage, making it weak in teamfights and in many matchups vs bunkers or other duelists. The weaver variant is also quite weak to condi pressure. Its strengths are its numerous defences with earth shield, evades, self healing, and its burst damage when you are able to chain cc targets.
5 stars
Eemortal gave this build 5 stars • September 2020
Solid build, finding myself liking the rotation the more I play with it. Going too defensive on this build counters the whole point of it, your a CC machine that acts like a thief but can survive 3 out of 4 1-1’s. Gotta know which fights to take and which ones to leave. Holosmiths and burn guardians are to two scariest ones, else, I can stick it out in most fights and have good disengages with teleport or even tornado. I have climbed to first and second tier platinum with this and had a lot of fun doing so.
5 stars
Diegolg20 gave this build 5 stars • May 2020
U need avatar build i give 4.5
4 stars
Soggystocking gave this build 4 stars • April 2020
Updated review: I was a little unkind in my first review due in part to my usual playstyle. 4 stars is now about right Pros: great utility in teamfights, 2v2s, +1 situations with CC and weakness and Tornado is kind of OP. Dramatically amplifies the true output of your teammates by locking down opponents. Huge burst potential. One with air gives fantastic movement across the map and in combat. Cons: awful dueling build. Doesn't have the damage sustainability to win against tankier specs 1v1. Struggles massively against condi builds, especially condi+toughness builds. If your team is very bad, this build really struggles to pick up the slack. If your team is equal to the opposing team, this build is excellent. Summary: you're a thief with much better teamfight utility but worse at everything else.
4 stars
Aditya Cyfer gave this build 4 stars • April 2020
The only decently playable weaver now. If this gets nerfed. Weavers must be a "PvE" only class. It's a strooong side noder but very weak to condis. Since it's Condi meta now, you have to pick your fights very carefully. Follow grimmjack for more guidance
4 stars
Utrex gave this build 4 stars • March 2020
A decent build, offers lots of CC/weakness spam and sustain options. Another variant I really liked... recommend trying Avatar amulet for a more duelist approach as well as a tankier version (barriers and heals scale up, Mender's is overkill). I also take Conjure Earth Shield for ranged CC and invuln, and magnetic aura. For heavy condi (as 2v2's suggest as of late) Rune of Orr or even Svanir coupled with a passive Water Signet will significantly help alleviate pressure.
4 stars
Christeroph gave this build 4 stars • November 2019
Posted a comment about this below - Forgot to rate it. Not a bad build. If you want a bit of a challenge with Ele, this is your boy. See my comment below for full review! :)
4 stars
Sezic gave this build 4 stars • October 2019
I actually really enjoy this build! It feels like I'm running a fresh air sword build but the dps feels viable in pvp due to the dagger's many dashes, extra range, and extra sustainability against the current meta. On top of that, focus has always been a really good pick for spvp because of its utilities as an offhand. I did end up swapping the sigils for more condi cleanse and also swapped elements of rage for invigorating strikes for a little extra sustain, but overall the idea of this build is great!

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