1 hour ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:
Talk about headscratchers. I don't know how you could play any spec at all without quickness and not think "This would be a lot better if it had quickness!"
Let me give an example. There was a fractal requirement for me this weekly, and normally I do that on Scrapper for obvious reasons. For kicks and giggles, I decided to attempt this on a full berserker weaver today. I selected Uncategorized, one of the few that doesn't have some weird switch gimmick that requires multiple players, and I proceeded to complete the entire thing without going down once.
The build I used was this:http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGgAwilZweYKMKmJOqKrvOA-DSIYR0wfG1KBqQBIzzCAUB-e though a small note that for the second and final boss, I used Glyph of Elementals instead of Weave Self. Now, this build of mine isn't super defensive. The only real changes you'll notice from a standard DPS build is taking Bolstered Elements over Swift Revenge, and Stone Resonance over Primordial Stance. I could've made more changes to the build, but I never needed to.
The first boss I largely used hit and run tactics, as I usually do, since standing in place for basically any build here will spell certain death when all four of them start wailing on you. I'd go more aggressive and take advantage of Fresh Air to unload as many dual skills as possible if I either had my barrier sources up, or if I had my CC skills up. The standard Fresh Air CC rotation can break their bars pretty easy at low level, letting me wail on them. Once two of the champions were down I just wailed on the Shaman until it was dead. The scariest part was when my game froze for a bit, and I found myself nearly dead after 10 seconds of everybody standing in place.
The second boss I pre-emptively used Glyph of Elements to summon a water elemental, since this room has high unavoidable damage ticking constantly. Otherwise, the fight is a pretty basic tank and spank: dodge when it shoots the laser, cycle to water/earth and blast the water field when running low on health, stagger barrier sources, going full offense otherwise.
The final boss was definitely the scariest part. Individually the mechs were no threat, since it was really easy to stun them and DPS them down. The water elemental was there mostly for the Raving Asura. Things got dicey when all the golems activated, because I kept getting chain-stunned over and over again. There was a brief period where I had to just flat out run away for awhile, swinging while water attuned to gain enough health while my defensive skills left cooldown. Once they did after six seconds, I came back and finished off the last two golems using the same strats. Was this harder then when I use Scrapper? A bit. I could've made it easier by equipping a focus instead of a dagger. There were some tradeoffs, like how I found it much easier to CC the enemies on Weaver than on Scrapper, but the lack of projectile management in my build was a killer.
See, throughout that entire fractal, Quickness wouldn't have been a crucial part of the battle. It would've made the skills come out faster, but the overall impact would have been that I used a few more auto attacks during the bar breaks and burst phases. I still have the same number of high damage skills, which all have the same cooldowns, quickness or not. If anything, what I missed more throughout this fight was Alacrity. Having Alacrity would've provided a greater safety net, let me get to skills faster (thus significantly increasing damage and evades), and shortened the disengagement moments for when I needed either barrier or CC skills.
Thus, the conundrum that is this thread. I have a fuzzy memory, but my memory is telling me that for many years the large complaint about Weaver was it's alacrity dependency for rotations. That alacrity dependency is felt in long fights and high pressure situations, where the greatest thing holding you back is attunement swapping to get to all of your skills. Not the skill executions themselves. Then, when this thread shows up, suddenly everyone forgets the alacrity dependency and starts riding the quickness train. Why, exactly, did everyone drop the plot and jump aboard this new thing? Is it just because you like to complain about ele? There's no way that weaver would get both personal quickness and personal alacrity if it were buffed, and most of the players here should know that. You're all abandoning the more important possible buff in lieu of more auto attacking.
