Guild Wars 2

With all the changes that have taken place with conditions, I’ve found that as a sub-par elementalist player I’ve been able to come up with a dagger/focus and dagger/dagger build that do decently well, in my opinion, in solo PvE. The take down time on single mobs is faster in some cases than my main (ranger). I know this is probably a poor way to judge a build, but that’s the limit on what I have.

Anyway, what I’d really like to know would be if it’s possible to do a Staff build that is viable in solo PvE now that we’ve had some condi changes.
I’ve run staff builds in the past (mostly zerker) and found that ..well.. it was just better to go back to d/d or d/f. In groups, where I’m not having to hold aggro, staff is great, but solo it’s been pretty bad.

So my question is: with the exception of ascended gear, is there a stat set and build that would make a viable solo PvE Staff elementalist that could be used by a non-pro player? (“non-pro” meaning that I’m by no means a hardcore player, but I do like to try and solo a champ here and there).

Staff ele is probably the most viable PvE build you can have, right up there with GS warrior. I did zerker staff ele from level 1-80. It taught me how to kite, how to dodge properly, and how to use my abilities in consistent rotations to get combos.

The thing with this game is that zerker is and always will be (unless condis get buffed even more) the best stat combo. While staff has less defensive options than focus, you can still kite mobs easily using water 4, earth 4 and 4, and air 3 and 5. Against trash mobs, just LoS them around a corner, pop glyph of storms in earth, then spam lava font until everything is dead. Staff is viable for soloing, I can solo arah with it (though prefer to use d/f for more dps and survivability)

In solo PVE you can always use conjured weapons to make up for what your main weapon lacks if you need it.