Guild Wars 2

I’m looking for an easiest to use weapon for my new Elementalist. For PvE only.
Any suggestions?

scepter

and staff is hardest

Scepter/focus.

With dagger mainhand, you have to move and aim. That used to not be as true of staff, but now that it’s been weakened so much, you have to do that with staff too. (Different kind of aiming).

Scepter/focus has the worst defense, so you have to make up for that either by getting your burst right, including the attunement swapping, or making the right use of your utility skills.

But in scepter/focus, you can just sit in Earth, where your only offense skill is #1, and do pretty good single-target condition damage with pretty good defense. Then you can improve from there.

All that said — elementalist is not an easy class, and it’s gotten harder because of a bad nerf on 11/15 (part intended, part bug).

I mistyped. Scepter/DAGGER has the worst defense. Scepter/focus’ defense is very good; it’s the damage side of the weapon set that’s problematic.

CurtMonash.3498:

Scepter/focus has the worst defense

eh?
It has the worst mobility (no mobility skills at all! unless you count vigor to dodge more), but it has the best damage mitigation. armor buff, AoE blind, another blind, invulnerability, projectile reflect, and large AoE projectile protection.
you can facetank anything not immune to blind

CurtMonash.3498:

I mistyped. Scepter/DAGGER has the worst defense. Scepter/focus’ defense is very good; it’s the damage side of the weapon set that’s problematic.

oh ok. yeah. it does have less damage. NPCs don’t dodge dragon’s tooth though, so it’s ok

i used scepter focus in my ele’s first catacomb runs at 30 as an ele noob. it work well for noobling. there are a few good combos for might and if there is a rnager with a water field healing.

Scepter/focus might stacking is badly nerfed due to the new Dragon’s Tooth bug.

If your group is good, staff is probably the easiest. I’ve seen some people just sit in fire and 1,2,3,5 over and over. Not necessarily the best or most effective, but it is super easy and will put out some damage.

Easiest weapon to use? I’m afraid you would have to roll a thief for that.

People really think that Staff is the hardest weapon to use as an Ele? I must just be really weird then cause I do better with my Staff Ele than any other class+weapon combo in the game…

Bvhjdbvkjf.1987:

People really think that Staff is the hardest weapon to use as an Ele? I must just be really weird then cause I do better with my Staff Ele than any other class+weapon combo in the game…

1v1 with staff is hard.

SecondtoNone.7549:

Bvhjdbvkjf.1987:

People really think that Staff is the hardest weapon to use as an Ele? I must just be really weird then cause I do better with my Staff Ele than any other class+weapon combo in the game…

1v1 with staff is hard.

Oh! PvP it’s the hardest weapon to use, that I guess I can believe… I only do PvE though lol

it’s easy in pve when you’re always in a group that keeps the enemies from moving, and never have aggro on you

basically, it’s easiest against stationary targets. hardest against moving ones

reikken.4961:

it’s easy in pve when you’re always in a group that keeps the enemies from moving, and never have aggro on you

basically, it’s easiest against stationary targets. hardest against moving ones

Or you could try using staff air 5, water 4, and earth 4 to control their movement… plus the various other ways to inhibit your foes via utility skills if you so choose.

Relying on other people is for those who are too lazy to accomplish a goal themselves, perhaps that’s the only reason why staff has become so good for me.

Bvhjdbvkjf.1987:

Or you could try using staff air 5, water 4, and earth 4 to control their movement… plus the various other ways to inhibit your foes via utility skills if you so choose.

Relying on other people is for those who are too lazy to accomplish a goal themselves, perhaps that’s the only reason why staff has become so good for me.

uh yeah, that’s why it’s hard. hard =/= impossible

Thanks everyone for the suggestions!
So it will be Scepter/Focus or Staff. Gotta see which I prefer!

I use Scepter/Focus. Just sit in Earth as suggested and spam #1 skill. With Signet of Fire, you can just kite your victim till they bleed and burn to death. In trouble? Pop skill #4 in earth and use your heal.

personally i use staff and usually carry dagger/dagger I find it to be effective for most pve situations. I started off with putting my traits into water and will do earth as my second. also I try to take choose the optional traits that give me extra damage, so i don’t have to rely so much on my defense. other than that I stack toughness and vitality, and i try to pick up +power stats wherever i can. precision, condition, healing, and whatever else are pretty much non existent. Since thief is my main, i’m quite used to doing the whole “dodge and dump” play style so I find daggers a very comfortable fit with tons of utility.

My typical play style is reactive and I will change between earth/fire/air for primary damage, and water once I get low health. I will dump all of my skills regardless of the level of enemy or difficulty and then switch to a different attunement, dump and continue switching, which one I switch to next really depends on the situation,

However, I have been meaning to try out a build which focuses on a dagger/focus set up and stacks toughness and power. or vitality and power.

The best part of GW is never feeling stuck in a set up. the best advice i can give is to just experiment and don’t be afraid to die haha.

reikken.4961:

Bvhjdbvkjf.1987:

Or you could try using staff air 5, water 4, and earth 4 to control their movement… plus the various other ways to inhibit your foes via utility skills if you so choose.

Relying on other people is for those who are too lazy to accomplish a goal themselves, perhaps that’s the only reason why staff has become so good for me.

uh yeah, that’s why it’s hard. hard =/= impossible

If using the skills given to you is hard I hate to imagine how a dungeon run goes with you (more like anyone this applies to btw, not specifically you) in the party.

Do you consider any of the elementalists weapons to be hard to use? No, of course you don’t. We’re obviously talking relative difficulty. Read the topic title.

reikken.4961:

Do you consider any of the elementalists weapons to be hard to use? No, of course you don’t. We’re obviously talking relative difficulty. Read the topic title.

I’ve seen people posting combo chains in this forums for the other weapons that say to use such and such skills in this order and make sure to include this arcane utility at this point to do this damage and etc…

Can’t say I’ve ever seen it for Staff. And we’re talking about relative difficulty I think that kinda makes a point in favor of the staff that memorizing a chain of skills to be effective isn’t necessary.

Seems the OP choose what he wants to do anyways, I’m just saying that staff seems easiest to me.

well there are different levels of functionality. Given the nature of the topic, I was considering difficutly of using the weapon at a more basic level. No fancy specific combos that really don’t matter in PvE.

D/D is the easiest, but you should swap to scepter or staff in certain situations, and focus to absorb aoe in air. Staff is the hardest to survive using in PVP.

I’ve been using staff only. Initially it is hard to control the attacks but once you learn to use all of the elements – man ooo man it causes damage to several mobs at once. I have soloed many champions – not the highest end level ones but up to mid level.

What people are used to is spamming the same attack over and over from one spot. In this case if you can learn to move and attack at the same time it is an awesome technique.

This is one long chain combo I started using but it works well.

Fire (3,2) -> Earth (4,5) -> Air (5,3,2) -> Water (4,2) and back to Fire again.

Having the ‘Elemental Attunement’ and ‘Elemental Surge’ in the Arcane Skills makes the above combo pack some punch.