Guild Wars 2

Hi everyone!

I’m an 80 ele and I need some help building for WvW. I like the scepter/dagger weapon combo for skirmishes (running between points/camps), and I use a staff for the big keep defends (to support).

Some questions I have:

Is scepter/dagger effective in WvW skirmishes?
What stats should I go for? I really want to ditch precision in favor of condition damage. My thinking is that WvW has plenty of “runners” (fleeing enemies with low health), and I think having increased bleed damage can finish off many foes. My goal is to alternate power/condition/toughness and power/condition/vit gear so I’m more durable and still have some oomph.
How useful is healing? I have superior sigil of life on my staff because I spend most of my time in water attunement healing foes (most of my time = i go back to water every time the healing cooldowns are up)
TRAITS! I love the might-stacking in fire, but otherwise I do not know how to build. A few suggestions would be nice. How’s earth attunement if im already focused on condition damage? I love all the movement speed buffs in air, but that might be a “nice to have” instead of a “need to have”

These forums are funny. I expected to find tons of great build advice, but instead all I see are people talking about how bad we are in PvP. That’s a shame, but I still want to make the best of it and I think we can do well in WvW.

I really want to get several people’s opinions here. I’m used to MMOs where there was only one “right” build and the rest were just sub-optimal. GW2 seems like it has a little more room for multiple builds, but as a game ages people tend to min-max and settle on the ‘best’ build.

Thank you sincerely for any helpful comments!

I feel bad bumping. I don’t normally like to do that. But I could really use some help. And if this info is available somewhere, please feel free to point me to the right place!

The only unfortunate thing about your advice is that it looks like you don’t play much scepter/dagger. Your staff advice is useful. During those epic 20 v 20 battles, staff is my weapon of choice. But I don’t like staff as much when running in between points and getting in those little 2v3 skirmishes. I like the scepter/dagger skills, so I’m just curious how people are speccing and gearing for effectiveness. power/precision seems to be common, but there are a decent amount of burns/bleeds for condition damage.

I heard one of the devs say they are working on buffing condition builds. I wondered, since EVERY skill with damage can utilize “power”, but only certain skills will use condition damage.

S/D in WvW against decent opponents will be the death of you, you may be able to get some hard strikes in and pull back but having your target withdraw into the cover of the zerg just rendered you useless. Plus you’re so much easier to focus fire being so much closer.

As boring as it sounds a Berseker staff glass cannon will be much more effective, just stay mobile, know how much you can be hit (not alot in zerker gear) and know when to withdraw.

The biggest frustration will be people pulling back/out/around of your AOE/CC before they’ve gone down but you’ll single handedly be able to break up large groups or gain/defend ground for your side but be prepared to die alot or sacrifice yourself for the team.

I do S/D Cond Dmg build and fare rather well in WvW. Started the build over the last 4 days. Even managed to solo kill a few thieves (which had always been a major issue with the Might-stacking build I had before). I tried doing the same build with D/D but I did not like it as much. I use D/D for PvE mainly.

The reason I did not like D/D in WvW was because of three reasons:
1) It keeps you too close to your target making you ridiculously squishy vs guards, thieves and warriors.
2) A bunch of abilities are too compact with their hit boxes. The lightning whip comes to mind.
3) Unlike PvE where mobs will group up making F2 and W2 abilities hit multiple targets easier, this sort of situation does not occur so much in WvW.

So, to answer your question… yes, I find S/D condition damage build to be very viable in WvW. My caveats with it are that Staff AoE stuff does not do as much damage and that it DOES take some practice and skill to get it right.

My advice, go to Heart of Mists (press H and select PvP on the left side and click go to heart of mists). Inside of there, go to the area to the north where you can fight 1v1 against AI of each class. Get use to them and what you can do to stop them. Will go a LONG way to defeating them in battle.

Just my 2 copper.

Marz, if you read closely I already mentioned that staff is my preferred weapon for the big zerg fights. But a lot of my time is spent roaming around smaller points, getting in little 3v3 skirmishes. That’s where I think the scepter/dagger could do well. Controlling the fight and bursting at key moments.

Enoch, it sounds like you have some knowledge of the build, but you’ve yet to share any of it with me! What trees are you putting traits in, which traits are you taking, and are you going power/condition, or FULL condition?

My thinking is still that power is king (every spell benefits from it, pretty much), then cond damage INSTEAD of precision, then my third stat will be a mix of tough/vit so i can survive these skirmishes.

Most of these replies seem to be geared around the big 50vs50 keep zergs, but I already know to grab a staff and keep my distance in those.

Moonpuncher.7250:

The only unfortunate thing about your advice is that it looks like you don’t play much scepter/dagger.

Yes, unfortunately, not any more. I tried it extensively for a while, but I like staff more.

Here’s a player who has done S/D since beta:

S/D “SSS” Signet Shield Spike

(I should have linked this before.)

I haven’t played a ton of WvW yet, but it sounds like I fall into the category you’re looking for (i.e. I tend to use a staff for any of the big battles, but equip S/D when I’m running around). I was originally going to try to make a very tanky build, but settled on something slightly more offensive. I’m only lvl 70, but my plan for traits is:

-10 Fire. The little bit of extra power makes a significant difference in the base damage for skills, which is especially helpful underwater where there’s not as many condition-skills.
-0 Air.
-30 Earth. Written in Stone lets me keep all my signet passives while I use them, which is pretty handy. The toughness helps a little bit, but I’m still a scholar class, so I can’t take too much fire.
-20 Water. The vitality and healing is nice (especially when I’m trying to do more support healing). Also I haven’t got it yet, but Stop Drop and Roll sounds pretty handy.
-10 Arcana. This is primarily for the boons when switching attunements.

I might pull 5 out of Fire into Water, but I’m not sure yet…

I don’t do well in 1 on 1 situations — that is to say, they’ve always ended with me being dead--, but we got into a little rolling 3ish v 3ish skirmish one time and I felt pretty effective.

Recently I’ve been trying to make more use of the blinding skills available (E3, A3, and the Signet of Air), along with the knockdown from Earthquake to keep some of the damage off of me, and stay alive long enough for all the condition damage to be effective. If I time things just right in PvE I can get off a Churning Earth on a mob without taking any hits (though usually they all get one shot in). Probably less effective in WvW since PCs are more likely to dodge out of the circle though, and Earthquake doesn’t keep them down long enough.

Hopefully that helps you out a little bit. I’m looking forward to seeing if there’s any other strategies mentioned here.

Moonpuncher.7250:

Marz, if you read closely I already mentioned that staff is my preferred weapon for the big zerg fights. But a lot of my time is spent roaming around smaller points, getting in little 3v3 skirmishes. That’s where I think the scepter/dagger could do well. Controlling the fight and bursting at key moments

Yip Moon my apologies man, sadly from my time in WvW against the servers we’re facing those smaller roaming fights are extremely rare (from Desolation here) since I only get to WvW around the more busy times.

As much as I’d love the luxury of running S/D it just isn’t practical for me although at times (usually after being ganked in succession) I just bust out my dual daggers and say “4Q if I’m going down I’m taking at least one of you with me” and RTL into a zerg ball for the laughs.

Stress relieve, a seriously undervalued commodity…

Sorry Moon, I don’t like to post info like that (this is a competitive game after all).

My build works best in small groups (5v5 for example)… in a zerg, staff still seems king. I roam with an Engi friend in RL. You’ll want someone that can stop targets as the S/D build does exceptionally better against immobile targets.

I learned a bunch of technique watching youtube videos on this forum. I particularly liked Lazarast and Kesil 3. In fact, a lot of my build, strategy and sequence uses a hybrid of the two.