Guild Wars 2

Hail ye lords of forums and meta. I have a question for y’all:

Why does no one ever make builds for scepter? Why is it all about dagger and staff? (This is for PvE btw, I’m not really fussed whether one is better than the other for PvP)

Anyway I’ve been running my scepter/dagger ele for as long as I’ve been playing ele (It’s not my main, don’t worry). I sometimes switch to staff as needed, I never use the main hand dagger I have in reserve.

Why? Because either I’m doing something terribly wrong with d/d or scepter is better Damage Per Hit (DPH) and is better area might stacking.

I could see perhaps that d/d is better sustained damage right? – as a berserker geared anything, how frequently do you get to sit in front of a boss spamming a sustained DPS rotation? I find there’s always a reason to duck out and recover and then go back into deal damage. In which case a sustained build is going to lose out on a burst. A burst DPS, bursts, then fannies about either for cooldowns or for healing, then bursts again. A sustained having to duck out to recover is losing DPS, a burst DPS is not.

Here’s my build http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJArYnMICNNgNYC2NAcYilBAzd1GbvtBBgBQBQoSWBOBA-TBROwAgV/ZkyPA7PITJIA-e

Also on that note I’ve been struggling to stay with tempest and not switch it out for arcane. The overloads are nice, specifically the fire one, but my rotation works much much better with attunement cooldowns and blast finisher on earth dodge roll.

Same build with arcane instead of tempest http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJArYnMICNNgtMA2NA8RghBALCADgCgUJrAngqNsGODA-TBROwAyUCOS5Hg9HAr+DA-e

My rotation is:
DT into fire ring>Phoenix>Aftershock(Arcane wave if ele)>Earth attunement>(Dodge roll if ele)Earthquake>Churning Earth(If there’s time, may save for next rotation)>Air attunement>zapzappow>Air Overload(Or into water to heal if in trouble)>Fire attunement>DT into fire ring>Fire grab and phoenix if off CD and then hit Fire overload>DT and fire ring if ready again>Earth for any blast finishers>Air for overload and then repeat in roughly the same order. Arcane brilliance gets used preferably in a fire field somewhere in that rotation and can assume dodge roll in fire field as first thing to do when switching to earth as ele.

So really would appreciate some other input here because I don’t appear to be able to see it and the d/d/staff focused builds don’t explain why well enough to satisfy me.

S/d burst damage is great. S/d blasting in fire is great – other than large hit boxes the DPH/Burst (whatever we wanna call it) seems like the better option. And then it’s got what seems to be a bit more condi damage on top, not that I ever pay attention to condi damage. I pug a lot so having an organised team is rare so I like to run ele so even if it’s a pug full of bunkers there’s enough might and fury that the run isn’t painfully slow, s/d seems to be the best for this.

Edit: I did try DPS tests of the same build once with d/d and once with s/d, this is why I’m thinking I’m doing something wrong with d/d, might stacks were lower with d/d and it took over half a minute longer to do the same amount of damage with d/d. This was the test golem, l used zero enhancements, just spawned the golem and let rip.

Edit 2: Just tested my s/d as ele on the golem, it was about 13 seconds slow to deal the same amount of damage but it had > 90% 25 might stack uptime. Which is going to be too much in a party. I seem to be able to keep up 15-20 easy enough as Tempest and I guess it’d only take one or two more people doing area might to be efficient. But then, when pugging stuff, even that can be a big ask. lol

Personally i only play S/F now with my own hybrid condy/toughness/heal build – I don’t really worry about meta, I do what works for me, a lot more fun – especially with a 20k condy burst to play with in wvw

The reason why scepter builds ain’t made/showcased for pve is very simple.
- In open pve, nobody care about what build you use, it only impact you yourself.
- In group content (fractal/raid/dungeon) players look for max damage which are usually stave or dagger build. Warrior are in charge of might stack since phallanx strenght has been implemented.

NB.: dagger and scepter are the same when it come to might stacking, just dagger is less cluncky, also, I higly recommend you to forget about dagger off hand for might stackin, focus is ways better.

The only place where specific builds matters is raiding and spvp, every where else any build works as long as you adapt to the encounter. I find Sceptre/Dagger offhand counter productive as your weapons have different ranges.