Q:
Best build for levelling?
Try out everything and see what combos work for your play style. Any weapon can work, and in PvE you can pretty much do anything and be fine. Leveling is your chance to try out all of the weapon skills and traits to learn them and understand their strengths/weaknesses.
If you are having trouble surviving, pick up “renewing stamina” asap (its one of the best traits). Most newer players don’t understand that vigor is one of the strongest boons in the game. After that, getting some points in water is a great idea as the regen will help a bunch, and the 3-point minor in water will help keep you up. If you can go up to master-tier, getting Elemental Attunement is almost necessary for many playstyles, but not always needed in PvE.
I use a standard bunker build with either S/D or D/D for general world roaming, but it takes a lot of traits to really start shining with your auras, cantrips and healing ability. But once you get up there, you pretty much never die, you can take on large groups of mobs easily and lots of mobility to keep moving.
I like D/D a lot, beacause a lot of aoe ability for tagging, good mix of blast finishers and auras, instant healing ability and lot of mobility. S/D can be a bit more forgiving, particularly low level, because you can engage from a distance. You also get 4 blast finishers to use with a fire field for might stacking, but less auras which is more important before you trait out your auras.
First two trait points would go into arcane power to get vigor on critical hit; really important for playing D/D.
Next four trait points would be into water to get cantrip recharge reduction and vigor and regen on cantrip usage.
Next two would probably be into arcane power for the boons on attunement swap.
Then 2 into lighting for fury and swiftness on aura.
Then final four into water for condition removal on regen and arcane power for elemental effect on dodging.
Slot skills for me are earth armor, lightning flash and mist form and I swap out earth armor sometimes for ice bow to use when I need ranged in an event. I don’t like cleansing fire, because once you get traited, you have plenty of conditional removal. Cantrips will remove 1 condition from regen, swapping into water will remove 1 and water 5 will remove another.
Healing skills are ether renewal or signet. Personal preference is signet.
Elite is elemental glyph.
Beyond that, it’s really about learning how to play D/D. Stuff like getting your timing down to use all your blast finishers before your fire field expires, how to pull yourself thru a fire field with Earth 3 for the third aura, rotating your auras to keep fury up with your might stacks which is where a lot of your dps comes from, repositioning yourself with lighting flash when using Earth 5, etc, etc