Guild Wars 2

Would there be any advantage to running fresh air with S/D instead of D/D in PVE? My understanding is that the AA damage of dagger air 1 is a key driver for building fresh air. Scepter air 1 is weaker, though it can executed in combination with other abilities (e.g., air 2). Other than might stacking, I am unsure of the benefits provided by scepter over dagger in PVE.

Scepter deals miserable damage by itself
The off-hand dagger is weak

Zelyhn, thanks for your prompt response. I presume you are a proponent of D/F with fresh air. I have seen guides referring to use of scepter with fresh air in WvW or PvP. However, aside from might stacking, I was wondering if S/D (or S/F) fresh air is competitive with D/D (or D/F) fresh air in PVE.

It is good in terms of might stacking but weak in terms of sustained damage. Using the LH is common way to overcome that damage deficiency.

I don’t think that fresh air is meant to be a trait for PvE since it adds some nice burst but not really that much sustained damage. Though the dagger autohit in air isn’t that bad it’s still weak compared to other classes/spells. Overall I’d say that scepter and dagger mainhand damage is quite the same (considering might-stacking) but if you really want to use fresh air I’d go for dagger. Like said the air-autohit is quite good and without points in arcana (I assume – else fresh air wouldn’t really make sense) you’ll sit a lot in air doing autoattacks. But you can also adjust your rotation so that you ’ll always be in air last before other attunements/your “rota” get ready so fresh air would be mostly redundant.

btw: in my opinion fokus is horrible in PvE

To be clear, my interest in fresh air pertains to personal story/open world PVE. In a group, one can rely on others to stack vulnerability, allowing for S/D (F) + LH with piercing shards. However, when soloing, I find fresh air to provide much greater flexibility. Without any backup, I have found LH to perform somewhat worse in cleave situations than lightning whip, perhaps due to the difference in attack speed. A 30/30/10/0/0 fresh air build, which I believe can be attributed to Zelyhn, performs nicely and is also amenable to prn use of LH. My query related to the substitution of scepter for mainhand dagger for might stacking, but I think the consensus is that would not be a good idea.

If you’re running overland solo I would simply use S/D. The burst is strong enough to kill any trash mob in one go, and there are enough burst skills (with Arcane Blast and Arcane Wave) to burst a second mob immediately after. It’s even possible to burst Veteran mobs from 100% to 0. Comparatively D/F kills stuff more slowly and doesn’t have the mobility of offhand Dagger to boot.

It’s when sustained damage is needed that mainhand Dagger can conceivably be better than Scepter. Those situations aren’t that common overland, but if it does happen, just equip the Lightning Hammer before engaging.

On a side note I think Fresh Air is rather subpar with S/D. Since I find S/D is better than D/F for overland play (and even in general – S/F can be useful however) I would simply choose a different build. If you insist on using Fresh Air, mainhand Dagger is probably best, since the autoattack is good and you can sit in Air Attunement while waiting for the skills in your other attunements to recharge.

Weapon debates aside, Fresh Air often does not benefit PvE main hand scepter builds as much as it benefits main hand dagger builds because scepter’s sustained damage in air is abysmal while dagger’s sustained damage in air is pretty decent.

As others have said, you want to use Lightning Hammer for sustained damage in combination with main hand scepter to basically burst + might stack (from scepter) and then make use of those might stacks via the large coefficients from Lightning Hammer. Since you can use LH for 15+ seconds without tanking your DPS, you can just sit in one attunement while the others are on cooldown.

I think scepter is horrible for open world because it’s terrible at hitting multiple foes consistently. D/D you’ll never not be hitting everything in the immediate area.

Jabberwock.9014:

I think scepter is horrible for open world because it’s terrible at hitting multiple foes consistently. D/D you’ll never not be hitting everything in the immediate area.

Honestly in PvE I think any skill that is single target should at least have a small splash radius. They can add balance to that however they want, such as reducing damage by 50% to non-targets, but the point is that this is an issue for any single target weapon or slot skill in PvE. The elementalist is able to work around this deficiency somewhat with lightning hammer, but there are other professions that can not.

Jabberwock.9014:

I think scepter is horrible for open world because it’s terrible at hitting multiple foes consistently. D/D you’ll never not be hitting everything in the immediate area.

Not really. Dragon’s Tooth and Phoenix are both AoE, offhand Dagger offers yet more AoE skills, Arcane Wave is also AoE, Sigil of Fire adds yet more AoE, and finally you can ball mobs up before bursting.