Guild Wars 2

So….. I’ve been looking into this a bit and I’m a bit stuck.

1. As a mainhand, it seems S/x-LH builds both out-DPS dagger builds and stacks more might.

2. As an offhand, d/d is inferior to everything and in a s/x build, dagger is barely a DPS increase and focus again stacks more might.

So, is dagger just a bad weapon choice for PvE?

d/f does more damage than s/x + LH if you have very good rotations, but LH is easier to play and thus more reliable if you mess up… however, if you are dying a lot, LH will be a lot worse since sceptre damage is trash without LH auto.

for harder content, d/f builds will serve you better since they’re more versatile than staff and are less reliant on conjures for damage than s/x, and you get full use of the skills.

offhand dagger is easier to stack might with, because it’s a larger fire field (easier for others to blast and to land DT in). RTL is also nice mobility of course.

You need to distinguish between open world content, dungeons with pug groups, dungeons with a guild group, difficult content such as fractals. Staff for example, is good in open world content and certain situations in dungeons/fractals. For dungeons with pug groups and difficult content, d/f is an excellent choice in my opinion. For optimized runs, use S/D +LH for its superior might stacking capabilities and highest dps.

I want to point out though that d/f does very good dps and does just SLIGHTLY worse than S/D + LH. The numbers of lightning whip seem small, but one has to consider that it’s a double attack. It does two attacks in 1,15 seconds while a full LH attack chain takes 2,8 seconds. If I calculate my dps from just auto attacking after might stacking against the veteran giant in cursed shore (with normal dungeon food and sigils, no bloodlust), I get about 7k dps for d/f and only a few hundred more for LH.

IMHO, the only “bad” choice for level 80 pve content is d/d.

That’s good to hear, since personally I think staff and SLH rotations completely invalidate the point of being an elementalist: being versatile as the elements themselves and constantly switching in and out between them.

Ie, not just camp on fire or AA-ing with a hammer 90% of the time. That sounds like to me a massive failure in skill balancing and content design (heard the original dungeon lead got fired, not sure if it’s true).

All weapon sets do well in the right situations (even d/d in pvp and for leveling) and it depends on your playstyle what you prefer. If you don’t like LH, go for d/f which is completely viable. Considering this versatility, the ele is in a quite good spot in pve and I think it’s not justified to talk about bad design here. Dungeon content design is another story.

What I mean is that, to illustrate with an example: warriors. For pure DPS specs, axe and GS are both very strong, and both have their situational uses. However, on both, there’s the problem that Berserker’s Power is so strong that’ll achieve optimal play, you’re forced to not use your Burst Skill at all, and rewarded for passive play, which is just very silly.