Weaver - Staff Backline

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

Focused on: Strike damageUtility and Crowd control

Designed for: WvW Zerg

Expansions required: Path of Fire Builds

Difficulty:
TBD
This build was last updated on February 19, 2022 and is up to date for the March 19, 2024 patch.

Overview

A backline build providing damage, CC and field support. Requires a precise usage of skills and positioning to survive.

Template Code

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Skill Bar

Staff
Staff
Utility

Skill Variants

Heal

  • instantly restores a big portion of your HP, but loses condi hate.

Utility

can be swapped for:
  • , or for personal survivability when prone to being caught in CC often.

Specializations

Variants

  • higher sustain but loss in crit chance.

Variants

Arcane is an option over Air adding a mix of utility and damage.

Variants

  • ferocity boost and strong immobilize on Earth Attunement when using arcane skills.

Equipment

Head
Marauder
Shoulders
Marauder
Chest
Marauder
Hands
Marauder
Legs
Marauder
Feet
Marauder
Backpiece
Marauder
Accessory
Marauder
Accessory
Marauder
Amulet
Marauder
Ring
Marauder
Ring
Marauder
Staff
Marauder
Sigil
Sigil
Staff
Marauder
Sigil
Sigil
Rune
x6


Consumables

feast option with additional damage reduction.

Variants

Stats

  • Keep in mind this setup has 100% Crit chance with when changing gear.
  • Use as much Marauder Marauder as you feel is necessary then fill out with Berserker Berserker
  • Avoid inefficient stats like Valkyrie's. Marauder's is strictly better than Valkyrie's when considering effective power and health.

Sigils

  1. Swap for:
  • for Might Might uptime.
  • for more reliable crit chance modifier.
  • for tryhards.
  • Extra survivability.
  • good offensive filler sigil when kills are frequent.

Runes

  • Decent damage option for cleaving downed targets.
  • if not relying on for crit cap.

Food

  • highest damage option with frequent kills.
  • higher damage if not using or having a low {{Tooltip|Weakness}] uptime.

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 then Fire becomes your primary attunement and weapon skills 1-2 will be fire skills. Afterwards if you switch to for example then water is now your primary attunement and fire is 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 . 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 results in skill 3 being the standard skill for that attunement, for example with both primary and secondary attunements as water.

General

  • Having 2 Staffs is purely for the stacking sigil purpose. As soon as you achieve 25 stacks and gets out of combat you should swap back to the Staff without the stacking sigil.
  • Whilst being a full Marauder's build, you are still really fragile to power spike damage in general. Anticipating enemy movement and damage, and positioning accordingly is essential to survival.
  • All versions of are useful and are used for AoE pressure. Read their tooltip and figure out the best situation to use each, as they have different damage, duration, cooldown, etc.
  • This build requires rapidly switching between attunements. You can reduce the remaining cooldown on an attunement by switching it while you are still casting a skill (this will not interrupt the cast).
  • (and if equipped) will be used mainly for self defence as a repositioning tool to temporarily avoid ground heat to deny enemies tunnel visioning on you. Prioritize living over dealing damage. Twist of Fate can also be used to ignore movement CC due to Superspeed Superspeed.
  • You can interrupt by using stow weapon as soon as you are full healed in order to save time.
  • Try to maximise time spent with as your primary attunement where possible to maintain and other modifiers. Core elementalist traits which require you to be in a specific attunement are only affected by you primary attunement.

Staff Explanation

  • On the initial engage, you usually want to be in /X, where X is any attunement besides Fire. Therefore all your staff 4-5 bring some kind of utility. Afterwards, you can double attune Fire and use .
    • , and will be used mainly for the CC along with your team damage pressure. 's direction is based on your where your character is looking. Turn briefly while casting the skill to aim it and effectively block the passage.
    • and will be used to soften condition pressure and to remove soft CC on allies, respectively.
  • Staff #2 skills are strong damage fillers (with low cooldown) to rotate between while Meteor Shower isn't available. Bear in mind Ice Spike and Eruption aren't instant.
    • makes up a significant part of your sustained pressure after Meteor Shower. Look to cast it off cooldown to maximize ground pressure and to upkeep the modifier.
    • is a quick cast and good damage, useful to pick off single targets. Try to cast it on enemies stacked to hit multiple foes.
    • gives significant 300-radius damage and justifies, along with the Water 4-5 skills, going into Water Attunement
    • is a heavy but delayed damage spike. Can be used as preventive ground pressure and for cleaving.
  • is a powerful self defence and mobility skill which can be used to gain space between you and the enemy or to evade through damage by rotation your character into the opposite direction to where you wish to evade to.
  • and are 2 situational and somewhat unreliable projectile CCs that follow the terrain, and are therefore unable to hit enemies on ledges or across gaps.
  • Most of your Staff Dual skills are slow moving projectiles (, and ) with decent damage on impact. Try to cast then on downed and controlled enemies, or where the enemy will be moving to improve chances of hitting.
    • Going Air/Earth for and combo deals massive single target damage, but it's mostly situational and not encouraged.
    • and are decent soft CC sources and are easily accessible from Air and Earth. Just attune for these if, situationally, movement impairing the enemy stack is more valuable than maintaining DPS.

Meteor Shower

  • is your main damage source, but it has a long cast time. Try to place it on spots the enemy stack will tend to be, rather than where it is now. Very useful for cleave.
    • Try to be in a safe spot while channelling. If you get interrupted mid-cast, the amount of meteors and, thus, the total damage will be lower.
    • If you realize the skill won't connect, you have a small window to cancel (stow) the skill before the meteors start to go off, putting it on a 4s CD.
  • Try to double attune to proc right before casting this skill.
  • By the end of the channel, you can find yourself out of position or focused by enemies. You can avoid this in two ways:
    • Use after you start casting it.
    • Use the " trick" - Cast right after casting Burning retreat and the Meteor Shower will be queued to cast at the target location after the rollback ends. This avoids using but you can find yourself even further away from your zerg.

Combo Fields and Finishers

  • Staff has a number of useful combo fields which can be used to gain extra support for your group.
    • and are water fields which can be blasted by you or your group for extra healing.
    • is a spammable fire field which can be blasted for area might.
    • is a lightning field and can be blasted for area swiftness, although this is rarely used for this purpose.
  • There are a total of 3 blast finisher skills on staff which can be used to blast you or your allies fields for support. This is mostly utilised to gain stealth for your squad by blasting smoke fields or healing and cleansing by blasting water and light fields respectively.
    • and are low cooldown blast finishers and should be used when the commander calls for blasts if possible. Just be aware of the delay on both these skills.
    • (Available after casting ) is another blast centred around yourself. This is useful for blasting stealth by starting in Earth/Earth Attunement and casting Eruption followed by Magnetic aura then Transmute Earth, then attuning to fire to be ready for your damage spike.

Conjure Fiery Greatsword

  • (FGS) provides great mobility, heavy short range AoE cleave and a damage boon when wielded. It can be used after casting to increase the damage.
    • You should still swap attunements, mainly between and for damage, while wielding the FGS. Try to double attune at some point to proc .
    • Remember that you can retrieve the FGS conjured on the ground if you are still around. It stands for 30s.
    • You cannot cancel skills by using stow weapon while wielding a FGS (You can drop the FGS with swap weapon to cancel in emergencies though)
    • FGS skills are rather short (600) range so it can be somewhat risky to use. Timing and positioning is key.
  • Cast on top of downed enemies and/or the enemy stack. Despite the small radius, it hits 10 targets and should be used after to maximize damage.
  • will be used mostly for mobility, chasing down and bursting a single target or repositioning. You can use this skill to move in the direction you are facing by simply not having a target selected.
  • is a low cooldown mobility skill with evasion and damage. This allows you to you deal damage in melee range, while evading through enemies. Try to use it after Firestorm. If used against an obstruction or while immobilised you will spin in place, dealing heavy damage to nearby enemies.
  • spam it while on melee to maintain DPS after you have burned through the FGS skills, but it isn't worth it to drop yet. Can be cast while moving in any direction without requiring you to face the target, just beware of projectile reflects.

Videos

  • [www.youtube.com/ksH3fc814qY [wHo] Solemn]
  • [www.youtube.com/tTL-GyY022g [dE] Yaspire]


Ratings

This build has a rating of 4 stars based on 2 votes.
Log in or register to rate this build.
3 stars
Goon gave this build 3 stars • March 2023
There is basically no reason to run this in a group over any other build. However, this is a fantastic build to play as a pug and is one of the most fun builds to play in wvw.
4 stars
Arete gave this build 4 stars • June 2022
A decent selfish damage build, but somewhat difficult to play and arguably inferior to DH and even longbow berserker in the same role. Still worth bringing a couple in a zerg if you have dedicated Staff ele players.

Comments

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