Tips to learn weaver (ele)?

[BeetlePie]

I like the class and the idea of combining elements, as well as its animations. But on the other hand, I find it overwhelming to learn based on what I've been researching. I'd like to see if there's anybody who felt like this at some point and give me some advice not to be discouraged.

[Totally Innocent Chatbot]

As somebody who mains condi Weaver, honestly I just copied a popular DPS build posted on Metabattle (what they have posted there has changed quite a bit since I put my build together) and started rolling with it. Don't worry too much about perfecting your rotations or learning every single skill combination right off the bat, just start it simple and learn things as you go. As you get more familiar with different abilities through experience, you'll be able to understand better how they "fit in" and work them into your normal attack patterns naturally.

For as complicated as Weaver rotations often appear, the underlying concepts behind them are relatively simple. For condition-focused DPS, you spend the majority of your time just attuning your way from full Fire to full Earth and back again (Fire/Earth > Fire/Fire > Earth/Fire > Earth/Earth > Fire/Earth, repeat), firing off all of your damage-focused skills that aren't on cooldown at each step along the way, and autoattacking with skill 1 to fill in the gaps; for power DPS, it'll probably be about the same except rotating between Air and Fire instead. Your CC skills for breaking blue bars tend to come from Air, Water, or some combo with one of those, so you don't need to switch over there all that often.

Things get a bit more complicated when you're trying to make full use of the Weave Self elite skill, since it wants you to rotate through all four elements within a certain length of time, and the buffs it gives highly encourage you to wait as long as possible before attuning to the fourth and final one. But the underlying concept is still the same - most of your damage comes from two primary elements, and the others just get thrown in partway through for a bit of extra utility, or when your "core" skills are on cooldown.

Yes, it's more button presses than you may be used to on other classes, but overall I think that people really overstate how "complicated" Weaver really is. And whenever you're not locking yourself into a rigid damage rotation, it's also one of the most versatile ways to play Elementalist with how rapidly you can swap attunements to deal with any situation. With 26 different weapon skills within any one weapon set, the most complicated part is really just familiarizing yourself with what each one actually does, and why it is or isn't a good one to focus on using as a result.


For any curious, my build is a Sword/Focus Weaver with pure Viper's stats on all gear, built primarily around stacking and maximizing Burning damage, with extra Bleed thrown in as a secondary condition damage source.

[mysaga]

Weaver is quite a challenge to learn. It might actually help if you learn another elementalist build first in order to get a basic understanding of the skills and traits. In general I also learned my professions best by first trying to come up with a build myself and checking afterwards with the resources (see above) - because this why you try to understand your abilities first and will be able to understand the build guides even better.

Sometimes it is better to be flexible and use a skill based on the actual situation rather than sticking to your optimal rotation. In order to pull that of, you need to actually understand your skills and how to modifiy your build for certain situations if applicable.
Still you want to pull of the rotation, which is just a lot of training your muscle memory with the training golem. And trying to apply it to actual game situations. Don't be worried to much about following the optimal rotation completly all at once and instead focus on getting the fundamentals right (see above).

Keep in mind, that builds are really dependend on the content you are doing. Expecially for elementalist you might want to have more survivability for the open world content (where you might end up fighting stuff alone or a pretty random group) than builds for raids/strikes provide, as there you are relying on the group composition complementing you.

[Teratus]

Elementalist is a hard class in general to play even competently and Weaver takes it a whole other step further lol

[BeetlePie]

Thank you all for your answers, especially @Totally Innocent Chatbot and @mysaga. I think you're both right, I should look for a guide that gives me an overall understanding, but not obsessing over perfect rotations ultimately. Adapting is crucial, and that's only possible with flexibility and good understanding.

[Tiberius]

The sw/focus rotation for (solo) open world is fire > earth > water > lightning. You want to swap attunement quickly. Fire 2 + earth 2 is the might generation, water 2 + lightning 2 is for self heal. The class used to synergize very well with rune of sanctuary barrier generation, but idk what ppl use nowadays