Build: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 February 23, 2022 and is up to date for the April 16, 2024 patch.

Overview

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

Skill Bar

Staff

Staff

Utility

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.

Template Code

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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

Infusion
x18

Consumables

• • personal option

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 stats
• 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.

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 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 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 results in skill 3 being the standard skill for that attunement, for example Geyser 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 Glyph of Storms 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).
• Twist of Fate (and Mist Form 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.
• You can interrupt Ether Renewal by using stow weapon as soon as you are full healed in order to save time.
• Try to maximise time spent with Fire Attunement as your primary attunement where possible to maintain Power Overwhelming 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 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 effectively block the passage.
  • Healing Rain and Windborne Speed 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.
  • Lava Font 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 Persisting Flames modifier.
  • Lightning Surge is a quick cast and good damage, useful to pick off single targets. Try to cast it on enemies stacked to hit multiple foes.
  • Ice Spike gives significant 300-radius damage and justifies, along with the Water 4-5 skills, going into Water Attunement
  • Eruption is a heavy but delayed damage spike. Can be used as preventive ground pressure and for cleaving.
• Burning Retreat 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.
• Gust and Shock Wave 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 (Plasma Blast, Pyroclastic Blast and Pressure Blast) 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 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, situationally, movement impairing the enemy stack is more valuable than maintaining 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 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 Elements of Rage 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 Lightning Flash after you start casting it.
  • Use the "Burning Retreat trick" - Cast Meteor Shower 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 Lightning Flash 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.
  • Geyser and Healing Rain are water fields which can be blasted by you or your group for extra healing.
  • Lava Font is a spammable fire field which can be blasted for area might.
  • Static Field 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.
  • Eruption and Ice Spike 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.
  • Transmute Earth (Available after casting Magnetic Aura) 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

• Conjure Fiery Greatsword (FGS) provides great mobility, heavy short range AoE cleave 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 wielding 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.
  • 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 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. You can use this skill to move in the direction you are facing by simply not having a target selected.
• Fiery Whirl 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.
• Flame Wave 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.