Guild Wars 2

Is it terribad like, say, s/s warriors or is it actually viable?

I love this setup but I do like to not feel like dead weight in a group so….

It’s fine. For dungeons, Focus is probably more useful but OH Dagger isn’t bad.

Here’s Dekeys’ video build on Dagger/Focus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Sr5tJKLfZk

Well, say, compared to warrior offhand axe, is this more ‘undesirable’?

(Sorry everyone I DG with, offhand axe makes using axes so fluid, and Whirling Axe is possibly my 2nd favorite skill in the game to Infiltrator’s Strike, so I can’t give it up)

OH Axe for Warrior is completely useless in PvE… so… I guess OH Dagger is better if you compare it to Warrior’s OH Axe ;3

Offhand Dagger has some mobility and a CC, as well as some decent burst and another fire field. It’s certainly not a completely terrible choice. I just think that in many cases you’ll find the invulnerability and projectile block on Focus to be more relevant in harder content.

Also, the mobility of OH Dagger is better in open world PvE. I’d really only take focus if I was in a dungeon or getting ready for a hard fight.

Neko.9021:

OH Axe for Warrior is completely useless in PvE… so… I guess OH Dagger is better if you compare it to Warrior’s OH Axe ;3

Offhand Dagger has some mobility and a CC, as well as some decent burst and another fire field. It’s certainly not a completely terrible choice. I just think that in many cases you’ll find the invulnerability and projectile block on Focus to be more relevant in harder content.

Also, the mobility of OH Dagger is better in open world PvE. I’d really only take focus if I was in a dungeon or getting ready for a hard fight.

In 90% of the dungeons you would do normally, it consists of stack stack stack>FGS>instakill. So… I guess we don’t need that reflect lol.

Offhand axe does…occasionally have its uses. Sort of. Like for tagging mobs.

The whole point of going d/f was that you’d still be able to mighstack and do reasonal dps without the use of conjures so you could keep the defensive utility of your focus for hader/soloing content.
Going d/d defeats that purpose because the mighstack combo is slower and you lose the defenses a focus offers.
Viable? Yes. But definately inferior, other weapon sets have a lot more to offer.

^just looking at the list of focus skills, it looks like dagger has more damaging skills though.

And didnt churning earth blast at the start of the cast? Or did they nerf that?

But anyways, as long as its not like, stupid bad as using Death Blossom or something, I’d probably still use it. I just never really saw the point of min-maxing in GW2 cos the game doesn’t really reward you for doing so.

Churning earth blasts at the end. Dagger has a bit more damage but no defensive utility, using churning earth in the middle of battle is quite dangerous as well and it’s very likely you’ll have to interrupt the channel. If you want more damage and don’t care about utility you’re better off with a s/f or s/d conjure build.
I suppose d/d is ‘good enough’ just as you say, it’s just that for every purpose in pve there is a better weapon set than d/d.

Going /f is not really about min-maxing and more about staying alive when pugging/soloing high lvl content. If somebody kittens up I can take care of myself, you don’t have that when you’re running a different weapon set.

petyr baelish.9675:

Churning earth blasts at the end. Dagger has a bit more damage but no defensive utility, using churning earth in the middle of battle is quite dangerous as well and it’s very likely you’ll have to interrupt the channel. If you want more damage and don’t care about utility you’re better off with a s/f or s/d conjure build.
I suppose d/d is ‘good enough’ just as you say, it’s just that for every purpose in pve there is a better weapon set than d/d.

Going /f is not really about min-maxing and more about staying alive when pugging/soloing high lvl content. If somebody kittens up I can take care of myself, you don’t have that when you’re running a different weapon set.

I’m just looking at focus and thinking, apart from Swirling Winds, I don’t really see anything I can save my kitten with.

I mean, Obsidian Flesh looks nice but it looks like a ‘oh crap’ button instead of a rotational mitigation, and going ‘oh crap’, switching to earth, then hitting OF means I’d likely be dead.

Is there any reason why conjures work better with a scepter?

The reason you use Focus instead of Dagger for Dungeons is a bit hard to explain, but it really entails going through both sets and realizing that, at the end of the day, other than being slightly more damaging and mobile, OH Dagger doesn’t really offer that much compared to Focus. Given, in PvP where players have far less health and mobility is key, OH Dagger can be of great use. However, an extra 10k Firegrab and the damage from Ring of Fire is really about it in terms of more damage. Churning Earth is a straight up DPS loss because of the long channel. Focus also has faster and more reliable blast finishers thanks to Earth 4 and Water 5, so in terms of Might Stacking, it’s better.

An invulnerability on Obsidian Flesh is really strong, just because of the nature of the encounters the game has. PvE enemies hit slow and predictably and rarely do mass, unavoidable damage. When they DO hit a lot, it’s generally for a short burst of time. So timing an Obsidian Flesh because you know that you’re about to encounter what would be a lot of damage, and then just switching back to Air for more damage generally ends up being quite useful.

In general, MH Dagger builds take advantage of Fresh Air so they can swap attunements, so you can still use the defensive skills of the Focus in Water (a daze), Air (projectile block and a very long KD), and Earth (Cleanse and an Invuln), all while still being able to DPS with the autoattack of Lightning Whip, since that’s your main source of damage.

Also, Scepter has terrible sustained damage and it breaks my heart when I see someone use it in dungeons without ever using a conjure. It’s really low. Like super, super, super low compared to the damage of Lightning Whip, Lightning Hammer, or Lava Font spamming. However, because Scepter has two low CD blast finishers as opposed to MH Dagger’s one blast finisher, it’s better to use it for Might Stacking, then dropping down Lightning Hammer and attacking with that. However, to be honest, for most people’s play, I strongly feel that a Dagger/Focus build is the best thing to play with casual groups.

Mainhand scepter allows for higher might stacking. You use LH to compensate for the low damage on scepter in between might stacking rotations, LH aa is also stronger than dagger aa in air. So it’s more of a ‘scepter works better with conjures’ instead of ‘conjures work better with scepter’ this may sound a bit vague but I hope you understand what I’m trying to say here :p.

You forgot about the earth 4 reflect and condi cleanse on focus.
On obsidian flesh: what Neko said. It’s also quite useful for rezzing downed teammates in critical situations or when you don’t want to interrupt your rotation by dodging an attack.
When fighting mai it’s useful to have both obsidian flesh and magnetic wave as a backup in case you fail to block her teleport with ring of earth or when she’s too close to you to attempt it. When fighting lupicus in phase 2 I rotate between swirling winds and obsidian flesh to mitigate the damage from his necrid barrage. There are obviously more examples but I think both cases show really well where the offhand focus is by far superior to offhand dagger.

Neko.9021:

The reason you use Focus instead of Dagger for Dungeons is a bit hard to explain, but it really entails going through both sets and realizing that, at the end of the day, other than being slightly more damaging and mobile, OH Dagger doesn’t really offer that much compared to Focus. Given, in PvP where players have far less health and mobility is key, OH Dagger can be of great use. However, an extra 10k Firegrab and the damage from Ring of Fire is really about it in terms of more damage. Churning Earth is a straight up DPS loss because of the long channel. Focus also has faster and more reliable blast finishers thanks to Earth 4 and Water 5, so in terms of Might Stacking, it’s better.

An invulnerability on Obsidian Flesh is really strong, just because of the nature of the encounters the game has. PvE enemies hit slow and predictably and rarely do mass, unavoidable damage. When they DO hit a lot, it’s generally for a short burst of time. So timing an Obsidian Flesh because you know that you’re about to encounter what would be a lot of damage, and then just switching back to Air for more damage generally ends up being quite useful.

In general, MH Dagger builds take advantage of Fresh Air so they can swap attunements, so you can still use the defensive skills of the Focus in Water (a daze), Air (projectile block and a very long KD), and Earth (Cleanse and an Invuln), all while still being able to DPS with the autoattack of Lightning Whip, since that’s your main source of damage.

Also, Scepter has terrible sustained damage and it breaks my heart when I see someone use it in dungeons without ever using a conjure. It’s really low. Like super, super, super low compared to the damage of Lightning Whip, Lightning Hammer, or Lava Font spamming. However, because Scepter has two low CD blast finishers as opposed to MH Dagger’s one blast finisher, it’s better to use it for Might Stacking, then dropping down Lightning Hammer and attacking with that. However, to be honest, for most people’s play, I strongly feel that a Dagger/Focus build is the best thing to play with casual groups.

I don’t know. If I knew what was coming, it’s not a problem. I can dodge it easily with a dodge or a evade skill easily. When I get killed, its ddwn to basically 2 things:

1. Did not see an attack coming, boom dead. I probably won’t have time to OF for that lol.
2. Heavy pressure by a ton of mobs, in which I don’t think 4 seconds will make much of a difference.

OF does seem like a very good skill for resing just-downed allies though.

Mai’s teleport skill is undodgeable and can only be negated by blocks, invuln and reflects (if you reflect it you’ll get pulled towards her though).
Most of lupi’s attacks require 2 dodges in order avoid all the damage so using swirling winds or obsidian flesh prevents you from having to burn trough your endurance bar or might save you when you don’t have enough endurance left.
You can use obsidian flesh while you are under the effect of CC and can’t dodge.
Focus is the best weapon you can bring as an elementalist to the lost boss fight in the grawl fractal, it’s also very useful for the harpies in the uncategorized fractal.
Obsidian flesh prevents you from getting into combat, I often use it during long skips in arah in between harpy feather cooldowns.

If you really want to use OH Dagger, go for it. Just saying that Focus seems better in utility and defense, hence why it’s used in the “meta” build for MH Dagger Ele.

DD is good if you just need an autoattack and conjured weapons :/
its awful if used as DD is meant to.

Aside from Fractals, D/D is good for when you’re feeling really lazy and you’re pugging with a not-so-great group (at least this is my mentality when I use it).

When I feel lazy, I throw my conjure everywhere. D/D is only good, next to staff, when doing map completion and role playing. In dungeons, it is slightly better than most for stacking bloodlust and some dead map skipping in Arah p2. I just face palm when I see other D/D ele using Churning Earth in dungeons.

I never really understood why Churning Earth was made like what it is today. It was originally a charge attack, which would have been awesome and everypne’s response was ‘Ooooo’ and ‘aaaa’, but for whatever reason Anet decided to scrap that concept despite that.

Then throughout release to now, people have been struggling to find a use for in in either game mode, because even in PvP, you need so much setting up for it, it’s just not worth it.