Pro/Cons of Staff-Daggers-Scepter-Focus
D/D Right now the only viable way to get things done, requieres a very especific set of runes, masteries and utility skills in order to suceed due to our lowest stats in the game and the fact that we scale from healing power and boons (water 25 traits give you 2% damage increase per each boon, with arcana 30% boon duration and constantly getting boons from cantrips and the weapon sigils you can have 5-6 boons at a time non-stop, especially if youy use these runes which gives you every possible boon in the game for 3 secs after using an elite).
S/D Semi-viable, if you have some condition damage, very iffy, only works on people who doesnt have condition removals or blind people who cant see dragon tooth and walk out of it (aka noobs). Has decent burst and once again you need very especific rune sets, focusing mostly in surviving since you have to go melee to do most of the stuff and sinc 50% ofyour damage is condition based, you have to last enough to see the fruits of it.
S/F Defensive set, mostly aimed at trying to survive and stack conditions on enemy, pretty much you can leave fire/earth as your DPS decreases by a lot and air only offers some KD and blinds with whirling defense, water is completely useless.
Staff- Works only in WVW when sieging and in some cases small skirmishes where the minimun is at least 15 people on each side. Other than that our weakess weapon set, despite what everyone else can tell you. Survavility on it is minimal, once someone or something gets to you it is relaly hard to do anything since it has long casting times and the only defense you have left at that point is dodge (2 per 20 secs). Right now it is a topic is discussion as how unreliable its damage is and several advises have been given (which none have been heard)
Trident; Dont even try to fight underwater, it is not the worst weapon set, but agaisnt a mesmer, thief, ranger, warrior or necro you wont be able to do much.
Legendary SoloQ
A lot of your answers seems to miss the fact that I asked froma PVE point of view. I do not intend to play PVP at all.
They’re all very viable for PvE. The main differences is in their role rather than their range though.
Staff is AoE, with many combo fields that get stronger the more players make use of it.
Daggers are up close, to deal a lot of burst damage.
Scepter has some good blast finishers, combined with an offhand it can stack a lot of might, and better against single targets.
Focus is mostly defensive, especially against projectiles. It also has a ranged daze and knockdown.