Weaver - Staff Backline

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

Focused on: Strike damage, Utility and Crowd control

Designed for: WvW Zerg

Expansions required:

Difficulty:

TBD

This build was last updated on January 19, 2022 and is up to date for the April 16, 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

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

Utility

Glyph of Storms can be swapped for:

• Armor of Earth, Mist Form or Stone Resonance for personal survivability when prone to being caught in CC often.

Specializations

Variants

• Master's Fortitude higher sustain but loss in crit chance.

Variants

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

Variants

• Elemental Surge 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 Superior Elements when changing gear.
• Use as much Marauder as you feel is necessary then fill out with Berserker
• Avoid inefficient stats like Valkyrie's. Marauder's is strictly better than Valkyrie's when considering effective power and health.

Sigils

1. Swap Sigil of Superior Sigil of Impact for:

• Sigil of Superior Sigil of Strength for Might uptime.
• Sigil of Superior Sigil of Accuracy for more reliable crit chance modifier.
• Sigil of Superior Sigil of the Night for tryhards.
• Sigil of Superior Sigil of Energy Extra survivability.
• Sigil of Superior Sigil of Frenzy good offensive filler sigil when kills are frequent.

Runes

• Rune of Superior Rune of the Eagle Decent damage option for cleaving downed targets.
• Rune of Superior Rune of the Thief if not relying on Superior Elements for crit cap.

Food

• highest damage option with frequent kills.
• higher damage if not using Superior Elements 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 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 Pressure Blast.
• 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 standard skill, for example, Geyser.

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 squish to Hammer revs and power damage in general. Antecipating heating and positioning properly is essential to survive.
• All versions of Glyph of Storms are useful and will be uses 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 cooldown on an attunement by switching it while you are still casting a skill (this will not interrupt the cast).
• Mist Form and Twist of Fate will be used mainly for self defense as reposition tool, temporarily avoiding ground heat and denying enemies tunnel visioning on you. Prioritize living over dealing damage. Twist of Fate can also be used to ignore movement CC due to Superspeed.
• You can interrupt Ether Renewal by using stow weapon as soon as you are full healed in order to save time.

Staff Explanation

• Try to stay in Fire Attunement with at least one of your attunements to maintain Power Overwhelming and other modifiers.
• On the initial engage, you usually want to be in Fire Attunement/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 Meteor Shower.
  • Unsteady Ground, Frozen Ground and Static Field will be used mainly for the CC along with your team damage pressure. Unsteady Ground's direction is based on your where your character is looking. Turn briefly while casting the skill to aim it and effectevily blocking the passage. Template:Gfycat
  • Healing Rain and Windborne Speed will be used to soften condition pressure, benefiting from the large radius, 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.
  • Lava Font makes significant part of your sustained pressure after Meteor Shower. Look for casting it off cooldown to maximize ground pressure and to upkeep Persisting Flames modifier.
  • Lightning Surge quick cast and good damage, will be used to pick off single targets, try to cast it on enemies stacked to hit multiple foes.
  • Ice Spike whilst being Water gives significant 300-radius damage and justifies, along with the Water 4-5 skills, going into Water Attunement
  • Eruption gives reliable damage, assuming the the slow proc time. Can be used as preventive ground pressure and for cleaving.
• Most of your Staff Dual skills are slow moving projectiles (Plasma Blast, Pyroclastic Blast and Pressure Blast) with decent damage on impact. Try to cast then on downed and lock down enemies to ensure it will connect, or where the enemy will be moving to.
  • Going Air/Earth for Pile Driver and Lightning Surge combo deals massive single target damage, but it's mostly situational and not encouraged.
  • Lahar and Monsoon (weaver skill) are decent soft CC sources and are easily accessible from Air and Earth. Just attune for these if, situationaly, movement impairing the enemy stack is more valuable than maintaing DPS.

Meteor Shower

• 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 channeling. If you get interrupted midcast, 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.
  • Watch out for the incoming damage from 24px Retaliation, be ready to heal up.
• Try to double attune to proc Elements of Rage right before casting this skill.
  • Going into Air Attunement, as soon as possible for the extra ferocity, is good to keep Meteors damage enhanced.
• 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 Lightning Flash after you start casting it.
  • Use the "Burning Retreat trick" (see GYF). This way avoids using Lightning Flash but you can find yourself even further away from your zerg. Template:Gfycat

Conjure Fiery Greatsword

• Conjure Fiery Greatsword (FGS) provides great mobility and a damage boon when wielded. It can be used after casting Meteor Shower to increase the damage.
  • You should still swap attunements, mainly between Fire Attunement and Air Attunement for damage, while yielding the FGS. Try to double attune, at some point, to proc Elements of Rage.
  • Remember that you can retrieve the FGS conjured on the ground if you are still around. It stands for 30s.
• Cast Firestorm on top of downed enemies and/or the enemy stack. Despite the small radius, it hits 10 targets and should be used after Meteor Shower to maximize damage.
• Fiery Rush will be used mostly for mobility, chasing down and bursting a single target or repositioning.
• Fiery Whirl will be taken mainly to deal damage in melee range, while evading through enemies. Try to use it after Firestorm.
• Flame Wave spam it while on melee to maintain DPS after you burned through the FGS skills, but it isn't worth to drop yet.

Videos

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