Guild Wars 2

Ok first of all I got my ele to 80 a while ago but didn’t bother buying exotics for it yet and before I do i have some questions…

Everyone seems to suggest staff for ele in WvW but are D/D ele’s also viable or are they completely useless?

I like to heal and like to be defensive, damage isn’t that important to me as long as it doesn’t get too slow but what kind of PvE build would be best?

you need every weaponset for WWW and PvE…….and they are cheap enough to get if you learn how:

COF1 farming
Crafting them

for example…weapons costs something like 1-3 G each……you can buy 1-2 weapons in 1-2 hours play.

All players should have ranged and melee weapons on them even if not equipped. Different situations call for different weapons, and most Ele traits aren’t weapon dependant.

It ultimately depends on what you’re doing in WvW. Mindless Zerg vs Zerg is staff for sure as getting anywhere near their Zerg will result in an instant defeated state, though in all seriousness you can just Vapor Form back to your Zerg but eh, I don’t like risking it. For roaming you’ll want Daggers, as staff is just too slow and clumsy if you get stuck in a melee battle.

For basic PvE? It really doesn’t matter. Whichever you prefer, PvE is too easy to matter.
Unless you’re referring to dungeons, then that’s a completely different story. A supportive staff healer is always welcome in dungeon groups (obviously not speed run farmers.) In my experience running daggers gets you hit too much and running a bunker build in a dungeon to mitigate that is wasteful. Just leave the front line fighting to the professions built for it, and steer clear with the lowest base HP and armour in the game. But that’s just my opinion, I’ve seen my fair share of D/D dungeon runners.

For roaming and smaller sized zerg fights (say 15v15) D/D is super awesome. That might change with the culling patch since they will be able to see you immediately after RTL-ing in, but for now it works. If your server has lower populations and doesn’t have zergs everywhere (like mine) then you’ll never need to swap weapons, except for sieges.

For PvE anything is ok. Scepter + Dagger is worth considering too cause mobs are stupid and stay in Dragon’s tooth. Even Focus is good for all the defensive options it gives.

I run D/D all the time and then switch to Staff whenever were defending or even attacking a keep. sometimes i switch to staff when were facing a larger force too, all the combo fields you can drop really helps out your group, plus it’s nice being able to sit back and launch fireballs at all the baddies afraid to charge you Just make sure you switch to the blasting staff trait so you can make the most out of your staff abilities.

P.S. a staff ele can be great at covering a retreat and giving your buddies a little room to escape, and best of all you’ll probably survive the escape too