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The original was posted on /r/guildwars2 by /u/AmeDesu on 2025-07-03 02:04:46+00:00.
Introduction
Greetings. I want to bring attention to my favorite elite specialization, the one that made me stick to the game when I was just starting 5 years ago. It still is one of the few reasons I keep returning to this game despite Tempest and Catalyst overshadowing it in all 3 game modes, open-world PvE, build variety, and the noticeable lack of development time spent on this specialization in particular. I've got 3k hours on Elementalist, so I have a decent understanding of the class.
Quickly about boons
Let's start with the obvious. After the removal of unique party buffs and homogenization of roles to BoonDPS, BoonHeal and DPS, we rarely see classes, that can't fulfill any other roles than DPS, which has led to skewing statistics and showing only the most comfortable, useful, or strongest builds of the patch (See rifle Mechanist, FA Tempest, condition Virtuoso stacking, etc.). Now, the whole game's end-game PvE is structured around the presence of quickness and alacrity, making players get used to the feeling of using their favorite builds with those in mind. Before that, Chronomancer, Firebrand, and Renegade brought those boons, so the presence of these boons was fairly unnoticeable in the open world.
When it comes to the open world, if you put your thoughts aside for a moment about the open world not mattering, we will usually see boon-providing DPS builds as they are comfortable to play and, most of the time, survive much better, especially after the jade protocol ICD nerfs, which generates boons much rarer than it used to be. While I don't come to bring a solution, I want to shed light on the existence of Service Chip Modules introduced in EoD, which could provide quickness/alacrity in combat and be limited to only working outside of instanced content.
Gameplay and traits
Finally, when it comes to Weaver, it was created with dual attunement and Weave-Self in mind, making players get used to timing the entrance into the last attunement for the Perfect-Weave. While I don't mean to use this as an excuse, even in the instanced content, the lack of full uptime on both quickness and alacrity makes this specialization feel extremely unfun to play. A specialization designed with a low attunement cooldown to constantly dip in and out feels bad without some personal alacrity. We've got some niche and pretty useless traits: Elemental Refreshment and Elemental Pursuit.
When it comes to the later aforementioned trait, it's too situational and competes with incredibly useful in both PvE and PvP Superior Elements and Master's Fortitude, but Elemental Refreshment is too minor and was created back with PoF with weaver being a bruiser-duelist, which is overshadowed by the current celestial or even FA Catalyst builds. A built-in alacrity is necessary for such a specialization, which dips in and out of the attunement and utilizes a combo system for its survivability more than this little barrier could ever offer. Yes, Relic of Rivers felt amazing, and most of the classes abused it (and they could utilize it better), resulting in a noticeable nerf in PvP and WvW.
Weapon design and utility
Speaking about utility or, rather, the used-to-be lack thereof, we have noticeable improvement to the Elementalist's core utility toolkit with many tweaks and reworks over the past few years, which makes me hope again and write this post. Absolutely loving the new Arcane Echo skill, letting me either mind game or use an impactful utility weapon skill twice when it's needed.
Playing sword Weaver always felt like a dance with nicely synergizing off-hand options, allowing me to play both reactively and proactively in all game modes, especially in the end-game PvE, where I can dip into air or fire for gap closers, CC, and water or earth for evade frames, then quickly returning on track with my rotation thanks to the low attunement cooldowns. All the old weapons during Weaver's release received very well-designed dual attunement skills as well.
Starting with the SotO's Weaponmaster Training, we're allowed to use both warhorn and hammer as Weavers.
First of all, I understand, it was made solely for Catalyst to access, but I want the developers to prioritize utility skills in the 2nd slot while designing weapons for an Elementalist. Currently, with hammer skills as an example, we have utility skills occupying slot #4: Crashing Font, Immutable Stone, Wind Storm (Burst of healing, block, CC). If those were to occupy slot #2 on the skill bar, it would make it much easier for Weaver to both reactively and proactively dip into the needed attunements, which is especially important for dual-wielded weapons, while not impacting Core, Catalyst, or Tempest in any way, examples shown below:
https://preview.redd.it/m3ua7sj5bkaf1.png?width=250&format=png&auto=webp&s=93623247ce3eea03c7671725828033bbab6ed943
https://preview.redd.it/fkw8qd56bkaf1.png?width=249&format=png&auto=webp&s=af64dba2a86302c0a66537366302387b118a06d7
https://preview.redd.it/dsjbrx66bkaf1.png?width=250&format=png&auto=webp&s=351c367e6af42b5b35198f31abe5f13512ff424e
Dual Attunement Skills
Hammer's dual skills were made in a rush, even if we could get a proper design. Seeing reworks to so many weapons and remembering a short period we had a fairly viable PvE condition hammer weaver build, which was gutted for the newly released condition weapon (pistol) to be in the spotlight, makes me write this post in hope or mere cope for my favourite elite specialization to receive much needed improvements.
I want to introduce an old, poorly edited thought of mine, something we possibly could've gotten. A condition weaver build, which would mostly focus on using all 6 dual attunement skills as well as full attunement skills for a grand finale finisher. This would be in line with Weaver's elite fantasy and would utilize Elements of Rage, perhaps even drastically underused Unravel. Applying various damage and control conditions (very short duration on hit) with much shorter duration for the spinning orbs duration in WvW and PvP, quite kiteable too.
https://preview.redd.it/2b2lygjhbkaf1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=e9640bc72a62d02fb7ccf5d6816b4082addac15d
There is a lot to say about Spear introduced with Janthir Wilds, but I wouldn't bring anything up that hadn't already been said. While the visuals impressed many players, most of the dedicated elementalists players (as I know of) simply didn't enjoy the weapon. No excuse not to design proper Weaver skills with its gameplay and traits in mind. Who would've guessed a weapon with 5 similar skills reflavoured for 4 attunements didn't impress anyone? Sadly, I don't have concepts for its changes ready, so I won't propose anything here.
Auras
There is, perhaps, 1 thing I have to say about the dual attunement skills: aura invoking dual skills are bad. They are close to useless and lazy. We have both Tempest and Catalyst utilizing auras extremely well, being able to create even more or benefit from them, but aside from Burning Rage for fire aura for PvE min-maxing, it's never useful for Weaver. Yes, I specifically mention pistol's conditional auras based on bullets: Frostfire Flurry, Flowing Finesse, and even spear's Frostfire Ward (duh). Not only are auras fairly niche, but from these accessible by Weaver, we have a 10% damage reduction and 1 second of chill from frost aura, which is negligible, and a fire aura. Purely useless, could've been anything else. Give me a boon strip on bullet consumption, reveal in a small area, come on...
Сonclusion
Weaver is an incredibly unique elite specialization, which covers class fantasy none of the competitor MMORPGs or other video games that I know of can offer. It doesn't need that many changes, but it requires being thought of when you design a weapon toolkit with proper development time dedicated to the dual attunment skills.
As for specializations, who don't provide either quickness or alacrity like Weaver, I can only point out Holosmith, who feels as much terrible without quickness in my opinion (for open world), but you will not see it nearly as often compared to unkillable scrappers offering so much utility, sustain via barrier, superspeed, quickness, function gyro and other boons or mechanist all around. (Same for weaver with the o...
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