-I know the staff is awesome.
-I know Dagger/Dagger is the vanilla Ele.
-I personally use the Scepter, and enjoy the hell out of it.
… But what about the Focus?
I know it has good defensive benefits, but is it worth it over the Dagger offhand? Does anyone ever go Dagger/Focus or Scepter/Focus and if so, why do you prefer it? What kind of builds could viably incorporate a focus without too much damage sacrifice?
what i like about using the focus which i have for a few days now was how defensive is lets you be the number 4/5 earth skills have saved me so many times !! if ur going skittenneed to last long enough for ur DOT dmg to tic them down and u need the fights to last a bit longer than a burst build which the focus helps u do. signet of fire i think is a much so u can stay in earth to do constant bleed dmg and have both fire/bleed going. plus the focus is great when ur fighting a pistal thief and they pop out of stealth and u hit earth 4 while bleeding them and they basically kill themselves lol. its fun but its not burst so the fights tend to be longer and u dont require the constant attuning and mobility of the d/d ele.
I used focus in dungeons.
I have used it a few times in spvp.
It has some situational uses vs trebs in wvw and such.
after i could stand my own with d/d i got a little better at all ele weapons.
focus has a good deal of group friendly utility.
I also like using focus with conjures. This is how i used it in spvp briefly. they compensate for the lower dps.
I think its also possible to use less arcane in a setup like this.
I mainly use scepter dagger and just swap out to the focus when needed.
Yeah i mainly use the focus in dungeons and dagger for spvp/wvw for rtl speed is king
I been running D/F religiously for the past couple months. I don’t sacrifice any damage. I can instant kill any glass cannon, even heavy armour, with my full combo.
See that guy with Twilight at the beginning? Instantly dead. The first scene is my burst build, the rest are a tank build involving Rune of Earth and Aura sharing.
It’s WvW, where crit damage stacking is unbalanced anyways. Does not work in sPvP.
I use focus mainly for Ascalonian fractals and the harpy fractal. That is, for the projectile destruction. Comet AoE daze is nice as well for crowd control, but that’s about the only useful thing focus offers. Obsidian Flesh is not really necessary with Mist Form slotted and offhand dagger CC and escapes.
If Fire attunement for the focus were looked at, it’d become a lot more attractive/
I used D/F for a while. It was quite a bit of fun. While the build was initially for sPvP, it worked well for PvE (though, due to lack of AoE, not so much for dungeons). I stopped using it because I was getting bored from the lack of challenge, as it was oh so difficult for me to die. I still like focus, and am hoping this upcoming patch buffs it up, but, outside of some specific scenarios, D/F is often blatantly more gimp than D/D, which is unfortunate.
I find it useful for entire party survival on arah trash mobs like risen elementalist, mage, hunter, champion spider: those that have hard-hitting projectiles.
Could be kinda nice on volcano, dredge, asura fractals for blocking shaman’s agony shots and elemental’s sticky shots, dredge suit’s bombs and turret\trash dredge shots, harpy knockback and boss agony shots respectively.
If only swirling winds worked like feedback and had lesser cd, but well that will be too much. :p
