Weaver - Freshweaver
The community gave this build a rating, making it second-tier: Good
Focused on: Strike damage and Mobility
Designed for: PvP Conquest
Expansions required: 
Difficulty:
Hard
This build was last updated on June 01, 2024 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 patch.
Overview
A PvP Weaver take on the Fresh Air archetype with a steep learning curve, focusing on burst damage and +1ing fights. One of the hardest Elementalist builds to play.
Skill Bar
Scepter/Focus
Utility
Slot Changes
Heal
- - adds much needed cleansing to the build in case you're having trouble avoiding conditions, or if the enemy team is overloaded with them.
Utility
- over - it's a better defensive skill overall, albeit on a higher CD. It can also negate more attacks, even
Unblockable attacks. Arcane Shield allows you to stay on the offensive instead. - over - offers much needed
Stability and Barrier instead of a block. Allows you to stay offensive while being difficult to interrupt. - over - a much more risky alternative to using Lightning Flash, offers more damage, a
Blind and low CD stun break over a skill that allows you to abuse Z-axis.
Template Code
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Specializations
Variants
- can be taken if you wish to sacrifice some healing for a more evasive setup.
Equipment
Scepter
Focus
Sigil
Sigil
Rune
Amulet
Relic
Equipment Variants
Amulet
- - a much less forgiving version of an already hard build. You would swap to instead of .
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 becomes your primary attunement and weapon skills 1-2 are going to be fire skills. Afterwards if you switch to 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 .
- 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 is going to be a part of your burst rotation.
General
- The build makes little to no use of .
- Keep swapping in-and-out of repeatedly while roaming between capture points in order to maintain
Swiftness.
- Note: attuning to air twice in a row doesn't give swiftness the second time.
- The condition applied from depends on your active primary attunement when your hits the target, not the primary attunement you are in when you cast the skill. If you want to inflicting
Immobilize to set up a burst then you need to remain in until the skill lands - or swap into earth right before it lands.
- 's purpose is twofold.
- Mobility: and are excellent movement skills that can help you disengage from fights if your defensive CDs ran out, or if you want to get to the other capture point as soon as possible.
- Cleave: AoE in the build is rather clumsy, except for and . Use these whenever you need to cleave down a downed enemy.
- is best used in earth for the
Protection.
- 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 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 , and .
- All of your hard hitting abilities should go off after double attuning to .
- Burst combos that require an enemy to stay in place (such as the ones involving ) should be used after firing in 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:
- ⇒ for the
Might - Cast and time it in a way that it goes off right after you've swapped to Air
- Note: in this specific case, if you already have an active buff before beginning the chain, should be used after the second in order to benefit from the Air modifiers and .
From Earth primary Air secondary:
From Earth primary Fire secondary:
Survival
- makes it easy to kite most specs. The
Chill from Water skills like helps too. Avoid melee as much as possible!
- CCs can be used for shaking off pursuers.
- 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.
- 's barrier application is always useful.
- Swapping to Earth is a great way of instantly gaining Protection, even when you're stunned.
- and 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.
- and are your last resort defenses in situations where neither CC nor projectile denial will keep you alive. You should only use these when other options are either unavailable or not going to suffice.
Top Streamers
- Twitch: Grimjack
- Twitch: Zeus
Related Builds
- Core Fresh Air - Core, F2P PvP version of the Fresh Air archetype.
- Freshweaver Roamer - WvW roaming version.
Ratings
Have to agree with Glasstone here, the build has an extremely high learning curve, like, higher than shatter chrono yet it lacks any of the payoff you would have from a chrono. There was hope for a while when they buffed scepter a year ago but since Cata became so dominant they nerfed it down, leaving weaver sorely in the dust while Cata and core ele were still viable archetypes. Can't lie, half of the issue is the fact that weaver is just undeniably weak in pvp right now, even it's strongest duelist and roamer builds get beaten by the weakest of other classes. Playing the piano shouldn't be a prerequisite to a good build and this clearly shows that, can't handle conditions, can't handle cc, alot of its damage disappears if there's projectile hate because of the earth 2 into air combo and the dual attacks just don't hit hard enough to justify any of it.
I'm sorry but Mr Pumpkin's out of his mind if he thinks this is a 5/5. The damage is high yes, but everything else is lacking. Nothing's changed since PoF when it comes to this build so the old comments are still relevant, it's always been a meme glass cannon build. It works, sure, I'm not denying that, but I'd consider this to be the worst of the FA builds. Good players can use this to stomp plebs in ranked but there's a reason why you'll never see it in a competitive setting. It's a build to play for fun mostly, not for competitiveness and it shouldn't be treated like some hidden gem because it isn't. Most people will fail on this build since the learning curve is so steep and the payoff isn't there. I've never seen an FA weaver on my team and think to myself "thank god we have one of those".
Power creep swung around again and this is ridiculous. The damage nuke is nuts and much of it forces a dodge or goes through projectile blocks. Be sure to check the date of reviews on here when reading about what's good rn. 😄
After the Scepter mini-rework and the buffs to several elementalist skills this build had quite a few combos opening up for it again.
I believe it has improved post-update in terms of general viability, while it isn't Fresh Air Catalyst, it can still fill a pretty specific nieche, and be damn fun doing it too.
4 stars for being very fun, as opposed to potent. You will not affect match outcomes much with this build. Ultimate "run & gun" playstyle. I think the build needs an update, the trait "final shielding" is a 240 sec cd now, as such "Elemental lockdown" is a better choice, also I take the trait "arcane precision" due to the weakness it provides. One key to the playstyle is activating skills with the target behind you, this is possible for many skills in this build, and the ability to fire behind you along with your great speed is what makes the build somewhat competitive against melee once they close in. I also choose tornado for the elite, cd on fiery greatsword is just too long.
With the widespread damage nerfs, this build has lost a lot of its potential. It no longer has enough damage to justify its limited utility and survivability. You will have to land multiple burst combos in a row to down someone, all while struggling to kite and sustain through condi pressure and cc combos. The build still functions as a fast paced and highly mobile burst build, but its effectiveness has decreased significantly.
if u want real range w/ dmg and dont want to get melted after someon touch u, just play ranger/engi. in the current spvp environment, even the meme builds that functions similar to FA weaver either has more survival or chase down potential that also has dmg somewhere similar to this build. Just don't bother w/ this build as of right now. If u dedicate yourself trying to learn this build, it'll only cause disappointment as the build has minimal sustain. Any movement impair condition will pretty much force u to use lightning flash since u can't afford to take any dmg w/ the pathetic base health pool ele has, coupled w/ the fact that a good portion of side node builds can jump on to u in a blink of an eye thanks to your sceptor's range.
Fresh air no longer has that damage.
One burst combo used to bring out heavy target golem to 30%, now to completely down a player you have to do atleast 2 main burst combos and then numerous air autos. They nerfed it so bad, it's really laughable and unplayable. Even grimmjack doesn't want to play fresh air. People who never played FA, will never know what piece of elite art it used to be.
Permanent superspeed when engaging, no need to face target (unless using Plasma Beam or Arc Lightning) simply splendid burst when in the hands of a master. Less sustain than core FA but because you have a good kiting kit you're able to use mobility to your advantage. A very difficult build but it's a high reward for its risk. (Used Arcane burst variant)
The main problem this build has is sustain. As you know, Mirages are mobile and a single touch from them is enough to condi you to death! Be extra careful around Mirages.
Has some pros and cons.
What I like:
1) FA weaver makes better use of Focus than any other weaver build because it can rotate the primary attunement to secondary in no time, so it has better access to Earth 4-5.
2) Higher burst than core FA.
What I don't like:
1) You're locked to a single attunement for way too long once you're in air. Not being able to swap around reactively is going to cause a lot of problems. I said it can rotate attunements better than other weaver builds, but still much worse than core ele or even tempest. In air this is a free kill, utilities can only buy so much time.
2) Very minimal sustain, even for a burst build.
3) Feels clunky and handicapped, I think weaver was made with sword in mind and anything else is going to be okay-ish at best.
That being said it can be a lot of fun when it works, and has a fairly high skill cap.
EDIT: back from the archives because it's seeing play again, updated usage a bit
After the patch, weaver mender sword/dagger is much much better.
Disclaimer: Played this build for over 90% of my ranked games in the past 9 months including the time when it fell out of meta so I am extremely biased.
THE BAD:
1 - Mediocre at best survivability with some of the worst condition removal of any viable build
2 - The actual damage of the bursts isnt that impressive when compared to some other builds, particularly certain Mesmer builds
3 - Poor cleave outside of Firey Greatsword
4 - Bad RNG on crits leading to a Raging Storm not activating until an arcane blast lands can unexpectedly decrease your burst far more than you expect
5 - Weakness can single handedly shut this build down due to denying Fresh Air resets
THE GOOD:
1 - The sheer variety of possible bursts allow you to almost immediately transition from one target to another, combined with the fact you're ranged this makes it one of the more useful bursty builds to have in a teamfight
2 - Almost permanent in combat superspeed makes certain specific builds a non-threat to you
3 - Some of the best defense against projectiles
4 - Great access to blinds
5 - Suffers less than almost any other ranged build against projectile blocks and reflects
6 - The bursts from this build are far harder to avoid than bursts from Mirages or Deadeyes for example as they don't have an equivalent audio cue to a summoned phantasm or a Deadeye leaving stealth
Also, the biggest reason to play this build is just how insanely fun and fast paced it feels to play
Very strong. Water into fire into lightning will demolish anything, asumming you have good positioning.
One of the best dps ranged burst builds atm, can carry teamfightd if you can position well due to being able to wipe scourges and others out easy
marvelous burst, and incredibly nice condi cleanse better then core fresh air. definately one of the succesfull non Firebrand,Scourge,Mirage and Spellbreaker builds out there.
Insane burst build it is the perfect counter against avatar Sw/D weaver build.
it gets raped by other ranged burst build though. But really this and avatar are the 2 best usage you can make with weaver in PvP
I personally run with scholar rune, get rid of water traits, run arcane 2,3,2. Run lighting flash, arcane shield, and arcane blast. Taken a liking to glyph of harmony as well. You'll definitely see a massive damage spike when you 2x swap to air, then go in for an air/fire 3 (plasma beam) and 2x swap to air before the channel finishes, all while dumping air 2 and arcane blast. The damage is destructive. The draw back to this build is that you can't handle condi pressure, you also have to per-determine what weapon skills you might need and set yourself up for them just in case. So always keep in mind, your needing a defensive cd (ex: earth 5) your gonna need to force it open with FA in most cases. This build is one I highly recommend to veteran FA players.
Comments
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