Leveling trait build?
For an easy time, start with points in earth. gives you armor and condition damage, and the rank 1 traits are nice, like the +10% damage or the buff to bleeds. nothing else gives you so much of both offense and defense
if you just want to kill things fast and want to rely on your boss dodging skills to stay alive, then go with fire, and take that +10% damage in fire (or conjurer if you want to use those a lot). water has NO good rank 1 traits, but the stats on it are nice for turning yourself into a BEAST tank, so if you want to facetank, get it after earth, but otherwise stay away until later. air and arcana are weak at low levels, also.
Also, condition damage is the way to go if want to be able to fight things that are higher leveled than you, as conditions ignore levels, which direct damage gets dramatically reduced against higher level enemies. but they become immune when they’re 10 levels higher
and I wouldn’t recommend staff for level 29 and below. it’s a lot weaker without blasting staff, which requires 10 points in arcana, and taking 10 in arcana as your first 10 points is not worth it at all as it gives no stats, and the stats are the most important part early on