These terms refer to using one or two skills while your other abilities are on Global Cool Down (often abbreviated to GCD). It’s not related to Weaver, the crafting job that makes clothes.
How Does Weaving Relate To The GCD?
To understand weaving, we’ve gotta cover the Global Cool Down first. Typically when you use a weapon skill or spell, you won’t be able to use another until the GCD runs down. By default, this is 2.5 seconds – which might not seem like a lot of time, but it’s actually quite long compared to other MMOs. This actually results in XIV feeling pretty slow in comparison (at least in the beginning) for players changing over from other games. It’s deliberate, though. They want you to get intimately acquainted with your rotation, to be able to move with the fight and line up your positional attacks. Global Cool Down can be reduced by equipping gear with certain stats. Skill Speed can reduce the GCD on weapon skills, and Spell Speed reduces it for, well, spells. Whether or not Skill/Spell Speed is necessary for your class is another article. But you should be able to find out how important it is to you by checking out your meld priority. I recommend SaltedXIV for easy to read guides on your respective job. And certain skills are not affected by GCD. These skills can be used at any time. They don’t trigger the GCD either, so you can use them during downtime in a rotation to keep the damage up. These skills are sometimes referred to as oGCD – Off Global Cool Down. They do have cooldowns of their own, too. But you can use these while waiting. And we call this “weaving”: casting your oGCD abilities in between your standard rotation. “Double weaving” is simply using two of those skills while the GCD runs down.
What Are Some Examples Of Weaving/Double Weaving?
I main Gunbreaker, which isn’t a spectacularly complicated class to play. It does have a few good examples of weavable abilities, though. The bulk of my damage output comes from spending my Aether Gauge to launch long combo attacks, which can leave me with a decent bit of GCD time. Gunbreaker can weave a handful of abilities into their GCD time without breaking their combo, basically ensuring they’re outputting the maximum amount of damage available to them at the time. Blasting Zone delivers an instant, 800 potency attack. Bow Shock is an instant AOE that applies damage over time to anything caught in it. Rough Divide, intended as a distant closing ability, attacks for 200 potency and carries two charges. Rough Divide can be used one after the other for a total of 400 potency. I’ve covered how potency works previously, so I’d recommend checking that article out if you’re lost here! The important thing is I can use all these skills in the short window between my GCD abilities, minimizing the amount of downtime in my rotation. Not only does this help the game feel faster, but it’s key to efficiently using your full arsenal of abilities and playing your job as well as possible. I’ve made the point before that a lot of these terms don’t really apply unless you’re desperate to push progression in high-tier content, but weaving is a practice everyone should get into. Whether you love running dungeons and trials or not, weaving makes your rotation as efficient as possible.
How Do I Know When To Weave/Double Weave?
That’s really down to the class you’re playing, and going into that in detail for every class is beyond the scope of this post. As mentioned above, SaltedXIV is a useful resource to check out for definitive answers on that subject. Here’s generally how it might go: Use a GCD ability. You’ll see that every other ability on the Global Cool Down is now unable to be cast until the timer runs down. Some skills will remain available – these are your oGCD abilities. The aim is to weave these skills between your GCD ones. They’re typically instant cast, so they’ll trigger as soon as you hit the button. They have their own independent cooldown too, so you’ll be back to using your GCD abilities until they’re good to go again. The skills to weave can depend on a number of factors – like your progress in a fight, the amount of enemies around you, or what stage of your rotation you’re in at the time. So do some extra reading, understand your rotation and the encounter, and you’ll be weaving like a pro in no time.
