Guild Wars 2

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Here it is, my guide to the Dagger Dagger Ele in Dungeons and Fractals. Hope you all enjoy! Comment here, or message me in-game if you have comments/questions.

An example of what this build is capable of

So you want to take your Elementalist into dungeons, huh?

The Elementalist is an interesting class. They are one of the most versatile professions in the game, with access to 20 weapon skills at any given time. As a balancing mechanic against this versatility, however, the Elementalist has some of the lowest DPS in the game. Additionally, the Elementalist has a low HP pool along with light armor, making it one of the “squishiest” classes in the game, by default, anyway.

The Elementalist cannot support as well as a Guardian. An Elementalist cannot do the DPS of a Warrior. It does not have the Mesmer’s amazing utility. To be quite frank, in an organized group, the Elementalist really has no place, and you’re better off using one of these classes instead!

What the Elementalist excels in is if you aren’t in an organized, optimal group, and instead play with friends or guildmates who play random classes, or if you like to PUG instances rather than stay with a dedicated group. The Elementalist, despite its built-in weaknesses, is also given the tools to rather easily overcome its own weaknesses. When specced fully into the Water tree, the Elementalist has some of, if not the best, self and group healing in the game. Their ability to easily produce long lasting Fire Fields combined with a copious amount of Blast Finishers means that they are also able to build several stacks of might rather easily. A single double dagger Elementalist should be able to stack 9 stacks of might just through using Fire Attunement and Earth Attunement, combined with Evasive Arcana. The Elementalist can provide boons and self-sustain without really having to rely on anyone. In the end, the Elementalist is probably one of the best PUGing classes in the game.

The Traits

The first thing you need to know about Elementalists is that there’s basically only one good trait array. 0/10/0/30/30. It’s the same array that they use for WvW, PvP, and PvE. There are many reasons for this, but I’ll try to give you the most important ones:

*Every Elementalist should more or less max Arcana, regardless of the build. The reason is that Elementalists maximize their utility and damage to the group when they continually swap attunements. In order to do this, you want the time it takes to change attunements to be as small as possible.

*Evasive Arcana is the Elementalist’s strongest trait. It gives a blast finisher in Earth and a powerful heal in Water. The effects in Fire and Air are subpar, but the fact is with Evasive Arcana, your dodge rolls in Water and Earth become powerful spells as well.

*Of the non-Arcana trait lines, Water is easily the strongest. The 25-point minor trait Bountiful Power is a multiplicative ability that increases your DPS simply for partying with others (+2% damage for each boon you have on you). Water has access to some of the best traits in the game, such as Cleansing Wave (remove a condition when you attune to water), and has incredible self-synergy. For instance, you can take Soothing Disruption (cantrips provide Vigor and Regen when you use them) and Cleansing Water (to whomever you provide Regen, you remove one condition), to make all of your cantrips condition cleansers, on top of their other effects. Vital Striking (you do 10% more damage when you’re above 90% health) is an excellent damage multiplier trait. Finally, and most importantly, Water’s 15-point minor trait, Healing Ripple, provides a substantial heal (1302 at Level 80 + Healing Power) when attuning to water. A good Elementalist realizes that their best heals actually come from just using things in Water, rather than relying on the #6 Heal skill.

*The Fire trait line is garbage, and there’s almost nothing good in it. Earth has some decent, situationally useful traits, but falls flat when compared to other trait lines. That leaves Air, which is actually a very strong trait line, and has some of the best Adept traits out there. In particular, Bolt to the Heart (do 20% more damage against targets with less than 33% health) and Zephyr’s Boon (gain 5 seconds of fury and swiftness when you use an aura) are incredibly powerful.

There are two distinct trait specs that I would suggest for an Elementalist in dungeons:

The Condition Cleanser Cantrip Build

This build is almost completely lifted from WvW and sPvP, in particular, Daphoenix’s Guide to the Dagger Dagger Elementalist.
Traits here

This build is made with an eye toward heavy survivability along with great access to condition removal (probably the best in the game). For this array, you’ll want to equip 3 cantrips (Armor of Earth, Lightning Flash, and Mist Form are best, because Cleansing Fire becomes slightly redundant since your cantrips now all remove conditions). This is a very solid trait array, giving you:

*Zephyr’s Boon – Auras grant fury and swiftness
*Soothing Disruption – Cantrips grant regen and vigor
*Cantrip Mastery – Cantrips recharge 20% faster
*Cleansing Water – Remove a condition from an ally or yourself when granting regen
*Elemental Attunement – When you attune to Fire, you gain might. When you attune to Water, you gain regen. When you attune to Air, you gain swiftness. When you attune to Earth, you gain Protection.
*Renewing Stamina – You gain vigor when you crit. 5 second cooldown.
*Evasive Arcana – You burn foes when you dodge roll in Fire. You heal allies for 1302 + Healing Power and remove a condition when you dodge roll in Water. You blind foes when you dodge roll in Air. You bleed, cripple, and perform a Blast Finisher when you dodge in Earth. 9 second cooldown per attunement.

Additionally, it should be noted that due to your traits, you heal a substantial amount when you attune to Water (as well as remove a condition, since Cleansing Water plus Elemental Attunement work together), and you also gain 2 seconds of fury whenever you swap attunements. The easy Protection granted by swapping to Earth attunement gives you another substantial layer of survivability. Thus, the build encourages you to constantly switch attunements at all times.

The Aura Sharing Build

This build is almost completely lifted from Zoose’s Guide to the Dagger Dagger Elementalist.

This is an aura sharing Elementalist, with the power to grant a good deal of fury and swiftness to himself as well as his team mates. It’s the build that I personally run in dungeons, and I think it’s just a bit better than the array above for PvE, once you get used to playing the Elementalist in dungeons.

Traits here
This build is made with an eye toward granting a good deal of fury and swiftness to your allies through your auras. Additionally, you trait more toward damage, while still retaining the ability to cleanse conditions for your allies. This array gives you:

*Zephyr’s Boon – Auras grant fury and swiftness
*Cleansing Wave – Remove a condition from yourself and your allies when you attune to water
*Vital Striking – Deal 10% more damage when above 90% health
*Powerful Aura – You share auras when you use an aura skill
*Elemental Attunement – When you attune to Fire, you gain might. When you attune to Water, you gain regen. When you attune to Air, you gain swiftness. When you attune to Earth, you gain Protection.
*Renewing Stamina – You gain vigor when you crit. 5 second cooldown.
*Evasive Arcana – You burn foes when you dodge roll in Fire. You heal allies for 1302 + Healing Power and remove a condition when you dodge roll in Water. You blind foes when you dodge roll in Air. You bleed, cripple, and perform a Blast Finisher when you dodge in Earth. 9 second cooldown per attunement.

As you can see, this trait array is very similar to the one posted earlier, but does a good deal more damage, while also still retaining the power to remove conditions from allies. You exchange having an insane amount of condition removal for having a simply moderate amount (still more than most other classes in the game) and gain the power to grant a good deal of fury instead. Elemental Attunement, Renewing Stamina, and Evasive Arcana are as strong as ever, and really don’t change from build to build. For utilities, I would suggest Arcane Wave and two cantrips (probably Mist Form and Lightning Flash).

So which of these should you use? It depends. I much prefer the Aura sharing build personally, and I feel that once you get a feel for the Elementalist, switching to aura sharing can be a significant boon to your allies (heh heh). However, I included the traditional Bunker-Cleansing-Water trait array because it’s the infamous one that’s been wrecking sPvP and WvW as of late. The Bunker-Cleansing-Water array is also good for tough bosses when you want to swap to staff or scepter and range something above your current personal skill level.

The Weapons

You should carry all of the Elementalist’s weapons. However, I’m going to be very frank that you should use Double Dagger most of the time.

Dagger Mainhand
This is your only melee mainhand weapon, and it’s a pretty darn good one at that. The dagger’s auto attacks are pretty subpar compared to other classes, but the #2 and #3 abilities have a ton of utility. Your strongest auto attack is Lightning Whip, which you almost certainly will miss all the time when you first start using it. I’d suggest spending a good long while just learning how to hit things with Lightning Whip, because it is your strongest spammable auto, and it will be frustrating to use at first. Don’t worry, just learn to stand back a bit, apart from your enemy, and you’ll stop missing. Drake’s Breath (Fire 2) does decent damage and you should use it when you can. Cone of Cold (Water 2) does amazing damage and heals yourself and allies for a substantial amount. Ring of Earth (Earth 2) is insanely strong and you should remember to spam this whenever it’s off cooldown, and you’re done with your other Earth rotations. Lightning Touch (Air 2) is garbage and you should never use it. Burning Speed (Fire 3) is a high damage skill-shot attack that you will also probably miss a lot when you first use it. However, once you learn to land it, you’ll find your personal DPS goes up substantially. Frozen Burst is a great spell, chilling in an AoE, and you should spam it when it’s off cooldown. Shocking Aura is borderline broken in PvP and it’s pretty darn good in PvE, so use it when you need to do more damage, since thanks to Zephyr’s Boon, it also grants you fury. Magnetic Grasp (Earth 3) is a 900 range immobilize and pretty good, and its chain attack, Magnetic Leap, is a Leap Finisher. If you have a Fire Field down, leap through your own fire field to gain a Fire Aura, giving yourself fury once more.

Dagger Offhand
Dagger Offhand has some of the most consistently strong high cooldown abilities for Elementalist that it makes other weapon sets feel underwhelming. Ring of Fire (Fire 4) does a significant amount of damage, inflicts burning, and lays down a 6-second fire field. Fire Grab (Fire 5) does a lot of damage to burning foes but, like a lot of Elementalist abilities, you’ll miss it a lot due to the odd hit detection. Once you learn to hit with it, you’ll do a great deal of damage. Frost Aura (Water 4) is great and you should use it when you need fury, probably spamming it off cooldown like most Ele abilities. Cleansing Wave (Water 5) does a great deal of healing (1302 + Healing Power), and you should use it when you need a quick burst heal. Ride the Lightning (Air 4) is the reason Elementalists are such a pain in WvW and PvP, giving an amazing amount of distance. It’s a great way to get back to a foe, and does a good deal of damage. It’s not something you should spam off cooldown, however, but you should use it as needed, or when you need to run through trash. Make sure to turn off auto-targeting when running off-hand Dagger elementalist so that you can use this ability to run past enemies without targeting them automatically. Updraft (Air 5) is basically another dodge, as well as an AoE knockdown, as well as gives you a great deal of Swiftness. Use as needed. Earthquake (Earth 4) does a great deal of damage, knocks down in an AoE, and more importantly, is a Blast Finisher. Churning Earth (Earth 5) is your strongest damaging spell, inflicting 8 stacks of bleed, 4 stacks of cripple, a gigantic amount of damage, and is also a Blast Finisher.

Scepter
This is the first weapon Elementalists start out with, and strangely, almost all Elementalists I meet quickly abandon it as soon as they can. I never understood why, since it’s a very strong ranged damage weapon if you need one. Phoenix (Fire 3) can be awkward to land, but has some great abilities (removes all conditions and grants vigor when it returns) and Dragon’s Tooth (Fire 2) is pretty easy to land on most mobs since they often just stand around. Shatterstone (Water 2) is a nice low cooldown damaging attack and you should use it off cooldown is better left unused, and you should just use Water autoattack. Water Trident (Water 3) heals for a ton, and you should use it if you or an ally needs a burst heal. Lightning Strike (Air 2) and Blinding Flash (Air 3) are low-cooldown high damage abilities and should spam them off cooldown whenever you get the chance. Rock Barrier (Earth 2) is a good spell to start combat with, granting you a good bit deal of toughness, and Dust Devil (Earth 3) does a good bit of damage and blinds in an AoE. Solid and spammable off cooldown.

Focus
Highly underrated but very powerful in the right situations. Focus has a defensive skillset that you’ll use when the team needs protection from bad guys that sit back and shoot at you dangerous projectiles. Swirling Winds (Air 4) offers 6 seconds of projectile destruction. It’s very strong, especially in cases where you need projectile deflection, such as the Harpy Fractal, the Shaman Fractal final boss, and Mossman in the Swamp Fractal if you and your team are ranging him. Flamewall (Fire 4) is pretty bad but it at least provides a Fire field. Fire Shield is pretty weak as well and more or less only there to proc with Zephyr’s Boon for more fury. Freezing Gust (Water 4) is a ranged Chill and is thus quite powerful in certain situtations. Comet (Water 5) is a ranged knockdown and actually knocks down opponents long enough to land a Dragon’s Tooth (hint hint). Gale (Air 5) is another ranged knockdown. Magnetic Wave (Earth 4) reflects projectiles shot at you for 3 seconds, and Obsidian Flesh (Earth 5) grants invulnerability for 4 seconds. It’s very solid.

Staff
High skill cap to use, and pretty awkward at that. The main thing is that it can be really hard to land most of this weapon’s attacks, and the auto-attacks themselves do incredibly low damage. In most dungeons, you’re probably better off using Daggers or Scepter. There are some cases where the Staff is really nice to have (such as clearing lots of trash or lots of enemies, such as the Ascalon Fractal), but overall, especially for newer players, I’d point you in the direction of the other weapon sets first.

So which weapon set should you use? Double dagger, almost all the time. You swap to Scepter Dagger or Scepter Focus when your personal skill level is insufficient to melee the enemy in question (or if your Agony Resistance demands it, in the case of higher level fractals). Otherwise, try to force yourself to use daggers at all times, since as a Melee weapon, they do more damage.

Utility Slots and Elites

Your utilities depend a bit on what you’re trying to do. Generally, since I run aura-sharing, I like to run 2 cantrips (Lightning Flash and Mist Form) and Arcane Wave for the Blast Finisher. This is also a decent combination with the Cleansing Water build. Generally, you’ll find that as an Elementalist, your weapon set provides enough utility that all you really want are cantrips and probably Arcane Wave or Arcane Shield. Conjure Lightning Hammer does a hilarious amount of damage but locks you out of your other weapon skills and is this probably not worth it. Use Frost Bow when you need to destroy objects.

For your Heal skill (#6), I would suggest Signet of Restoration. Ether Renewal is also decent if you need more bursty heals, but I find Signet of Restoration is just much stronger in PvE.

For your Elite, you have two decent choices. Conjure Fiery Greatsword actually only does really great damage if you’re on a wall and you can use Fiery Whirl (Greatsword 3) to slam all hits into a target (think Subject Alpha from the Crucible of Eternity Dungeon). Fiery Greatsword is also a great choice if you’re in double dagger and need a ranged weapon, since the auto attack on Conjure Fiery Greatsword does a great deal of ranged damage. As of late, I’ve found that the Elemental from Glyph of Elementals is still probably the better choice in many situations. Summon an Earth Elemental if you need a tank, a Water Elemental if you need heals, an Air Elemental for good ground control and damage, and a Fire Elemental for pure damage. The Earth Elemental is probably the most useful one in PvE.

Gear

Now this is where things get interesting. You are a double dagger Elementalist going up into Melee with low HP and low armor. What should you equip for dungeons?

Probably full Berserker gear with Ruby Trinkets. For your runes in your armor, I’d suggest either Boon Duration Runes (Superior Rune of the Monk, Superior Rune of the Water, Major Rune of the Water) or Ruby Orbs. The former is better for support, and the latter is good for damage. I’d suggest that if you’re starting out, go with the Boon Duration runes to get the most out of your various support abilities and boons you provide (an extra few seconds on Protection from swapping to Earth Attunement and a good several extra seconds of Might from all your fire blast field finishers does wonders for your party’s survivability and DPS).

Why full Berserker on trinkets and armor though, you might ask? Because in dungeons, the most important thing, generally, is dealing damage and killing enemies as quickly as possible.

The thing is, most dungeon mechanics are about one-shot mechanics that will down most characters in one hit or so anyway. Stacking survivability is a waste, especially on a character like the Elementalist which has so little in the way of HP and Armor that you might as well not try to increase those in PvE, at all.

If you are somewhat paranoid about your own survivability, just note that unlike other classes, you have a surprising amount of self-sustain available to you. Your primary means of healing will be auto-attacking (which triggers Signet of Restoration), attuning to Water attunement (which heals about 1600 HP for you), dodge rolling in Water Attunement (which heals another 1600 HP), using Cone of Cold (which heals about 800 for you) and Cleansing Wave (which heals another 1600 HP). If you’re out of /all/ of these, then you can pop the signet. Don’t forget that, also, due to rapidly swapping attunements, you gain Protection from Earth attunement for a sizable time, which reduces the damage you take by 33%.

For your sigils, you should take Sigil of Battle in your offhand dagger, and Sigil of Perception in your mainhand dagger (gain 10 to Precision per kill). If you really want to minmax, swap out your mainhand weapon for a dagger that has Sigil of Accuracy (5% crit chance) after you max out your perception stacks.

For consumables, Master Maintenance Oil is great (or if you’re cheap, Quality Maintenance Oil will do). Your food should be either Omnomberry Pie (or Mixed Berry Pie if you’re cheap) for survivability with lifesteal on crit, or Omnomberry Cream for 20% boon duration (and the extra Magic Find is always kinda nice). I’d suggest carrying around both and switching as needed. The Omnomberry Pie is probably the better choice though, because of the constant stream of lifesteal.

Rotations

Your most typical Starting Rotation is this:

Burning Speed (Fire 3) → Fire Grab (Fire 5) → Ring of Fire (Fire 4) → Dodge Roll and swap to Earth Attunement as you do so do perform a blast finisher in your Fire Field → Arcane Wave to perform a blast finisher in your Fire Field → Earthquake (Earth 4) to do a blast finisher in your Fire Field → Churning Earth (Earth 5) to do a blast finisher in your Fire Field.

This will give your allies 12 stacks of might. You’ll also get 3-9 more from Sigil of Battle as you continue to fight and change attunements.

For starting attunement, you should generally begin in the Air attunement. This gives you inherently quicker mobility thanks to Zephyr’s Speed in the Air tree, a good gap closer with Ride the Lightning, and the ability to start up Fury by popping Shocking Aura. You’ll generally engage by letting one of your allies strike the enemy in melee first, then use Shocking Aura, then quickly swap to Fire Attunement to begin your Starting Rotation.

When you need to heal or cleanse conditions, you perform a Healing Rotation:

Attune to Water [Heal for 1600] → Dodge Roll in Water [Heal for 1600] → Cone of Cold (Water 2) [Heal for 800] → Cleansing Wave (Water 5) [Heal for 1600]
For a total heal of ~5600!
If you’re already maxed in health at any point in this rotation, you can stop and continue to fight normally.

As you exit the Water attunement, remember to spam Frozen Burst and Frost Aura if they’re off cooldown.

Generally, it’s pretty common for me to first use my Starting Rotation, then use my Healing Rotation because I’ll have taken a hit or two while doing all of those attacks.

When you need to engage, a great way to start is with Burning Speed (Fire 3). It does a great deal of damage, creates a Fire Field, and acts as a sort of gap closer against enemies.

When you’re waiting for things to go off cooldown and need an auto attack to spam, your best bet is Air Attunement’s Lightning Whip. If you need to “range” an enemy, swapping to Water Attunement and using Vapor Blade lets you attack from 600 range.

Your general philosophy as an Elementalist is “press all the buttons so you can press more buttons”. While other classes like the Warrior encourage you to stick to your autoattack since it’s generally the most efficient way to maximize DPS, the Elementalist is the complete opposite. You only use your autoattack if you have to – it’s pretty weak. A good guide is, when something’s off cooldown in an attunement, use it.

For a guide to better dagger dagger play, I suggest looking at Zoose’s guide to the Dagger Dagger elementalist. This video has a great deal more number of rotations explained, and expands upon all of the abilities the Dagger Dagger elementalist has (though he focuses on sPvP as opposed to PvE Dungeons).

Also, I do suggest you check Daphoenix’s guide to the Dagger Dagger Elementalist

Key Bindings:

So here’s something I think that gets a lot of newer players when they try and pick up the Elementalist. It’s a class which simply demands greater use of its Class Abilities (the F1, F2, F3, and F4 skills) than any other profession. Enough so that if you actually leave your default bindings to F1-F4, you’ll find the class clunky and difficult to play unless you’re either very agile or have large hands.

For this reason, while I won’t demand that you totally rearrange your keybindings just to play an Elementalist, I do think that you should try to find a better place to put your profession skills. One that I personally use is Ctrl-A for F1, Ctrl-E for F2, Ctrl-D for F3, and Ctrl-F for F4. This doesn’t have to be the way you bind your keys, but leaving them at default at F1-F4 can often be one of the greatest physical barriers to using the Elementalist to its fullest potential, in general.

Also, turn off auto-targeting when using D/D Elementalist if you want to be able to use Ride the Lightning (Air 4) to quickly move around the battlefield. It’s also generally a good idea to turn it off because with a weapon set like D/D, you want great control over the direction of your attacks. Also, I’d be surprised if you didn’t already have this, but make sure to Show Skill Recharge for all of your skills. Turn off Melee Attack Assist. It’s a terrible setting.

General Dungeon Strategy:

One of the things you’ll find in the balance of GW2 is that ranged damage, with some exceptions, does significantly less damage than melee damage. It’s for this reason that I find the D/D Elementalist is so strong in general – it’s the melee set of the Elementalist, so it manages to provide a great deal of damage while capitalizing on the Elementalist’s general utility (the power to provide boons and support from the four elements – Might from Fire, Heals and Regen from Water, Swiftness and Fury from Air, and Protection and Knockdowns from Earth).

What this means is that you’ll often find yourself up in the front lines, sort of forced to really, due to the melee range of your weapons.
The first thing to note is that as daunting as it can be to be in a PUG wearing light armor with Berserker stats while you’re up in melee while everyone else insists on ranging, it’s actually not nearly as bad as it sounds. The reason for this has to deal with the way enemy aggro works in this game. You will have such a low armor class and with nothing in your earth tree, the only classes that will have as low toughness as you will be other Berserker Light Armor classes. So if you’re in a party with all Eles, Necros, and Mesmers wearing all Berserker gear, you might be in a bit of a tough spot, but that’s fairly rare.

In truth, whoever has higher armor than you will generally draw aggro thanks to the way aggro works in this game. The trick then, as an Elementalist, to retaining your survivability, is to stay with your party, and allow them to engage first. Once they do, you can freely move up into melee distance (maybe closing the gap with Ride the Lightning) and attack your foes from behind.

Like most Elementalist builds, your cantrips are your lifeline. If you’re feeling nervous, equip 3 cantrips. If you’re feeling pretty confident, slot in Arcane Wave and Conjure Lightning Hammer and only have one cantrip. Generally, 90% of the time, I run with two cantrips (Lightning Flash and Mist Form) and Arcane Wave for the Blast Finisher in Fire Fields. Either way, Elementalist cantrips are some of the best stun breakers in the game, and each offers incredible utility, so experiment with them, and see which ones you like.

Conclusion:

I hope this guide helped you, and I’m still in the process of editing it, but I wanted to get it out there to get some feedback right away. Please leave comments in the respective thread I posted this in, and I’ll make sure to read them. I will be editing this guide over time.

The D/D Elementalist is one of the most difficult classes to master at first, but once you manage to do so, allows you to play the game in a frenetic and action-styled way that many other classes simply can’t do. You’re constantly moving, weaving in and out of enemies, while dealing a moderate amount of damage and providing a steady stream of powerful bonuses to your allies. You can’t provide the Defensive bonuses of a Guardian or the Offensive bonuses of a Warrior, but you can provide a little bit of what both do, each, without really having to give up anything. In conclusion, for the purposes of random groups or casual groups to go out dungeoning with, the D/D Elementalist is almost always an excellent addition to the party, because it can work with anyone, and provides a good deal of support no matter who’s in the party.

I hope you enjoyed this guide! Please leave feedback in the thread, or message me at my GW2 username, Neko.9021.

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Neko.9021:

Shatterstone (Water 2) is a nice low cooldown damaging attack and you should use it off cooldown.

You’d do more DPS by just using the Water autoattack.

Chaosky.5276:

Neko.9021:

Shatterstone (Water 2) is a nice low cooldown damaging attack and you should use it off cooldown.

You’d do more DPS by just using the Water autoattack.

Wow, I’m kitten . Thank you for telling me that. I will adjust the guide to reflect this.

Did you seriously claim that the staff is worthless for dungeons?

Between Frozen Ground, Static Field and Meteor Shower, you can clear groups blazingly fast. Nothing the scepter does comes even close to that. And Dragon’s Tooth is even trickier to land since it’s a one-hit or miss.

ThiBash.5634:

Did you seriously claim that the staff is worthless for dungeons?

Between Frozen Ground, Static Field and Meteor Shower, you can clear groups blazingly fast. Nothing the scepter does comes even close to that. And Dragon’s Tooth is even trickier to land since it’s a one-hit or miss.

This is what I said:

Neko.9021:

Staff
High skill cap to use, and pretty awkward at that. The main thing is that it can be really hard to land most of this weapon’s attacks, and the auto-attacks themselves do incredibly low damage. In most dungeons, you’re probably better off using Daggers or Scepter. There are some cases where the Staff is really nice to have (such as clearing lots of trash or lots of enemies, such as the Ascalon Fractal), but overall, especially for newer players, I’d point you in the direction of the other weapon sets first.

So no, I did not say staff is “worthless in dungeons.”

However, the fact is that in dungeons, melee attacks are generally better because melee attacks do more DPS than ranged ones. It is for this reason that I suggest the D/D Ele most of all when trying to clear dungeons. Scepter is nice because it has good burst damage attacks from range. Staff is good for clearing lots of trash.

Except that d/d isn’t melee weapon set, it’s a close range one.

1- Elementalist are not one of the -must have- PvE profession in the game atm.
However Thor and Condition builds does pull a kittenton of damage.

2- Not playing staff in a group (apart from obvious projectile reflection event) is doing it wrong. Fire field uptime is higher on staff, water fields are matchless support utilities.

The only reason to play D/D is if you already have a staff Elem in your group.

2- Dagger primary does NOT deal more damage than Scepter. And is melee and so hardly allows to stack damage only stats and utilities.

3- Using Cantrips means you dont use Signet of Fire, Arcane utilities or Glyphs (Sotrms!). Lowering both your DPS and group utility.

4- Intelligence is not needed for proper Elem gameplay. It drops (if 30 points spent in a 0 support and 0 dps trait line) your atonement swap from 15 to 10 seconds.

If you pay attention, all critical ability are either very less than 10 sec CD (generally #2) and pushes you to spend some time attuned to this element or much more than 15 (#3, 4, 5) meaning they arent really affected by intelligence at all.

There are 2 reason to invest into Arcane line for PvE : Blasting Staff and Elemental Attunement.

5- Evasive Arcane is a good trait. But it has 2 major flaw to be interesting in PvE:
a/ It requires 30 points invested into a bad trait line
b/ You don’t control it. If you dodge for the effect you may run out of end to avoid damage, if you dodge the damage you may waste internal cooldown (10s is actually important) or the end on a useless effect.

PS: One of the major reason of Elem’s PvE bad reputation is the flood of EA/Cantrip D/D Elem doing junk dps and dieing stupidly in melee.

Neko.9021:

This is what I said:

Neko.9021:

Staff
High skill cap to use, and pretty awkward at that. The main thing is that it can be really hard to land most of this weapon’s attacks, and the auto-attacks themselves do incredibly low damage. In most dungeons, you’re probably better off using Daggers or Scepter. There are some cases where the Staff is really nice to have (such as clearing lots of trash or lots of enemies, such as the Ascalon Fractal), but overall, especially for newer players, I’d point you in the direction of the other weapon sets first.

So no, I did not say staff is “worthless in dungeons.”

No, but it comes down to it. Hard to land and worthless damage doesn’t exactly scream ‘pick me’. When a well placed meteor shower actually does a good amount of damage. And it’s recharge won’t matter that much, because you won’t need it much more than once per fight, and by the time you get to the next group, it’s recharged.

Staves are very popular in dungeons currently and there’s a good reason for that. It may not be your weapon of choice, which I totally respect, but given that AoE was pretty much designed for dungeons, the staff does very well there.

Neko.9021:

Chaosky.5276:

Neko.9021:

Shatterstone (Water 2) is a nice low cooldown damaging attack and you should use it off cooldown.

You’d do more DPS by just using the Water autoattack.

Wow, I’m kitten . Thank you for telling me that. I will adjust the guide to reflect this.

Shatterstone has an insane aftercast delay preventing you from using any of your skills before it explodes. I don’t think that’s intentional… if it is I don’t know what they were thinking when they created this skill. That delay makes the skill totally worthless in any situation, if you also consider how easy it is to avoid (by walking, not even dodging) and the pathetic damage it deals…

innocent ouarior.1954:

2- Not playing staff in a group (apart from obvious projectile reflection event) is doing it wrong. Fire field uptime is higher on staff, water fields are matchless support utilities

The only reason to play D/D is if you already have a staff Elem in your group.

Not really, a D/D can survive better than a Staff Ele while dealing a lot more damage. Playing a staff in a group is doing it wrong, staff is only needed when range is absolutely important for survival and even Guardians/Warriors switch to ranged. If you have a Mesmer and Guardian they can take care of support and make your Staff meaningless in comparison, so you can easily switch to something useful (D/D or S/D). Now if you don’t have a Mesmer and/or Guardian for support you are doing a wrong dungeon run, but then changing to Staff might be better.

2- Dagger primary does NOT deal more damage than Scepter. And is melee and so hardly allows to stack damage only stats and utilities.

It deals a LOT more damage than Scepter, also, it’s not melee, it’s closed ranged.

3- Using Cantrips means you dont use Signet of Fire, Arcane utilities or Glyphs (Sotrms!). Lowering both your DPS and group utility.

Signet of Fire isn’t worth anything, Arcane Wave can be used in place of a Cantrip, but not needed much for DPS. Glyphs aren’t the most useful utilities, and Storms is a terrible skill.

4- Intelligence is not needed for proper Elem gameplay. It drops (if 30 points spent in a 0 support and 0 dps trait line) your atonement swap from 15 to 10 seconds.

I wouldn’t call a boon duration boost trait line “useless”, I wouldn’t call Elemental Attunement (a party wide buff) useless, nor Evasive Arcana, Blasting Staff (for staff users) or Renewing Stamina useless. It’s actually the best trait line Eles have, by far.

5- Evasive Arcane is a good trait. But it has 2 major flaw to be interesting in PvE:
a/ It requires 30 points invested into a bad trait line
b/ You don’t control it. If you dodge for the effect you may run out of end to avoid damage, if you dodge the damage you may waste internal cooldown (10s is actually important) or the end on a useless effect.

1. It’s the best trait line
2. You can actually control it, the internal cooldown is per attunement

ThiBash.5634:

Neko.9021:

This is what I said:

Neko.9021:

Staff
High skill cap to use, and pretty awkward at that. The main thing is that it can be really hard to land most of this weapon’s attacks, and the auto-attacks themselves do incredibly low damage. In most dungeons, you’re probably better off using Daggers or Scepter. There are some cases where the Staff is really nice to have (such as clearing lots of trash or lots of enemies, such as the Ascalon Fractal), but overall, especially for newer players, I’d point you in the direction of the other weapon sets first.

So no, I did not say staff is “worthless in dungeons.”

No, but it comes down to it. Hard to land and worthless damage doesn’t exactly scream ‘pick me’. When a well placed meteor shower actually does a good amount of damage. And it’s recharge won’t matter that much, because you won’t need it much more than once per fight, and by the time you get to the next group, it’s recharged.

Staves are very popular in dungeons currently and there’s a good reason for that. It may not be your weapon of choice, which I totally respect, but given that AoE was pretty much designed for dungeons, the staff does very well there.

I fail to see how Meteor Shower can do a good amount of damage in a dungeon, even mobs can easily move out of the effect and sometimes they don’t take any damage at all (even while inside), oh right it works well on Burrows in AC.

ThiBash.5634:

Between Frozen Ground, Static Field and Meteor Shower, you can clear groups blazingly fast. Nothing the scepter does comes even close to that. And Dragon’s Tooth is even trickier to land since it’s a one-hit or miss.

What do all of these skills have in common against any boss in any dungeon? They are all terrible.

maddoctor.2738:

Stuff

Too deep to unwrong, giving up.

innocent ouarior.1954:

maddoctor.2738:

Stuff

Too deep to unwrong, giving up.

actually he just wrote the best post in this thread….
when most things in dungeons are just immune to CC using a CC weapon is just plain bad…..

Staff is an awful weapon for pve…if you don t need 1200 range, there is no reason to equip one.

and trust me i tried so hard to make staff viable…what most people failto realize is the weapon got nerfed since the launch and constantly at almost every patch.

The reason is that most unexperienced players of other classes still think that meteor shower is a problematic OP skill….

I mean with that huge red circle and all that fireballs from the sky it has to be OP!

And no….unfortunately i am not joking……you can see most of those comments of ele pwning in www with meteor shower in most www threads :| and even some PvE.

We are to the point that the least nerfed weapons are the most viable.
D/D were good but recently scepter/focus are getting better as they nerf D/D.

But they are nerfing even focus so we will be forced in conjured soon….

The truth is that D/D Eles suck in Dungeons.
Staff Eles too.
Lightning Hammer/Fiery GS are the only options making elementalists useful in dungeons.

Dub.1273:

The truth is that D/D Eles suck in Dungeons.
Staff Eles too.
Lightning Hammer/Fiery GS are the only options making elementalists useful in dungeons.

Regrettably, it changes this proffesion to nothing more than autoattack spammer and occasional fiery whirlwind/rush.

haviz.1340:

Dub.1273:

The truth is that D/D Eles suck in Dungeons.
Staff Eles too.
Lightning Hammer/Fiery GS are the only options making elementalists useful in dungeons.

Regrettably, it changes this proffesion to nothing more than autoattack spammer and occasional fiery whirlwind/rush.

This +1000

I ownder how people can enjoy them….
Roll a warrior and get 2 at once with added armor and HP.

Warrior has actually more depth than conjurer.