Non-staff dungeoning builds and tips?
For PvE I run S/D with full Soldier’s Armor/Weapons/Back and full Knight’s Jewelry. Sigil of Battle and Sigil of Fire for Weapons. Runes of Earth/Monk for boon duration because I’m a D/D Auramancer in WvW and I’m too lazy to farm a second set of gear.
In dungeons I act as a Might stacking bot… typical rotation is RtL>Updraft>Fire Switch>Ring of Fire>Phoenix>Dragon’s Tooth>Fire Grab>Arcane Wave>Arcane Blast>Earth Switch>Earthquake>Churning Earth>pop Arcane Shield so I don’t die while I’m channeling Churning Earth. All of this should be done before Ring of Fire runs out.
At this point you and your group have 13-16 stacks of Might, and a group of veteran mobs will be at about 25% health from your damage alone. Switch to Water if you need to heal up and play defensive, or go right back to Air and start the rotation again if you don’t. You and other melee will have 25 stacks of Might up constantly while you’re in combat with this rotation.
Traits are as follows: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhImOblRygjEA0DmEKQg8QFlHxMTNA;TYAquMeJ8y11QkpFA (copy+paste to browser.)
I know a lot of people who say that D/D is the way to go for PvE, but I disagree strongly. Love it for PvP, but in PvE D/D does way less sustained damage, less AoE damage in general, has worse Might stacking, and one of its highest damage attacks (Burning Speed) can be extremely dangerous/clunky to use in certain terrain. If you’re not going Staff, S/D is the way to go, imo.
I’d be interested in some more opinions on this as well. I play D/D and just tried dungeoneering for the first time last night and… it wasn’t pretty. After downing three times in the first fight I just switched over to my back up staff.
While I was able to stay on my feet the rest of the dungeon, I wasn’t spec’ed for it and just wasn’t having as much fun playing it as I do with my daggers.
at level 30 before i knew how to use D/D i was using scepter/focus in AC.
this worked pretty well.
Even got cudos for healing… comboing off of ranger water fields.
no EA.
the defensive utility and CC in scepter/focus feels nice. However i like the play style more of dagger/focus. weird i guess but i liked it when i tried it.
I am working on some concepts of a dagger/focus aura conjure build.
It actually feels like dagger dagger some as I am running around all over trying to unload aura and combos.