The following answers are all in a PvE context:
a) – ascended, infused zerk trinkets;
- ascended, infused zerk/assassins weps with Force/Accuracy/Night/Dungeon sigils;
- exotic zerk/assassins armor with Scholar runes;
- crit dmg + power/prec food;
- double bloodlust or double perception stacking sigils on a second set of exotic/ascended weps (either S/D or D/D);
I didn’t specify the exact balance between power and prec in gear, food, and stacking sigils because it differs based on your trait setup and group buffs. I’ve calculated it for a few of the builds I use for S/D, but you’ll have to do it yourself if you use a different spec and want to maximize damage.
b) If you choose S/D, use LH and don’t go 30 into Air for Fresh Air. The goal of S/D in PvE is to stack the maximum amount of might in the shortest amount of time, then use LH for continuous blast finishers, blinds, and higher damage (which also happens to be AoE). Builds to choose from include: 30/10/10/20/0, 30/0/10/20/10, 25/25/0/10/0, 0/20/25/25/0, and post-Dec 10th update, 10/10/25/25/0 for Conjurer trait at Adept.
The rotations for all the above specs are very similar. I’ve described some of them here: The Ele Meta
c) I’ve attached a pic that’s a gallery of my current Ele styles (unfortunately, the forum keeps giving me an error when I try attaching a high-quality .png, so I attached it as a .jpg). In that pic, I included armor styles and color schemes, as well as my DCUO signature. I don’t have one for GW2 yet =(
d) There are a few good-looking focuses, but I forgot to take pics of them when I was putting together the gallery attached to this post. The Arah focus looks great (it’s a blue dragon, similar to the Arah daggers I showed) and so does the Zojja focus (it’s kind of a serrated red shield, similar to the Zojja scepter and dagger I showed).
e) Yes, you should try out staff. The two standard staff builds, 30/20/10/10/0 and 30/10/10/10/10, will both be getting buffed by the Dec 10th update due to an additional 5% damage modifier (which will work out to more than a 5% damage increase via multiplicative stacking of modifiers). Blasting Staff will also be moved to Adept, so that will probably be useful in the 30/10/10/10/10 build.
Beware though: max-DPS build for staff ele is possibly the most boring gameplay ever, of any class. It also stacks less might for your group due to an absence of blast finishers (it only has 1, and that one’s delayed). I’ll have to recalculate damage for the builds after the Dec 10th update, but it will probably still do slightly less damage than S/D + LH.
