I enjoy the firestaff PvE play style a lot more than the LH one. LH is really poor in PuGs, which I generally run, because fire fields aren’t being laid down as much and I with most melee classes, you’re running in and out of combat, and dodge rolling when needed, which means you can’t dps. With the fire staff build you can continue to dps while moving out of things to be avoided while only losing 10% damage, until it’s safe to go back in melee again.
LH build is only really good when you have another class to lay down fire fields, if not, then fire staff all the way. I just hope people will start to understand LH isn’t the end all be all of elementalist dps.
For instance, last night I was told to learn my class. I was kind of shocked, seeing as I was adding a lot to the group with damage and support (healing raid when someone needed it, reflect aura when I was being focused by ranged classes, setting up AoE might), and they told me LH was the way to go and all their elementalists run that build. So I had to explain to him that it wasn’t as great as he thought it was. The sad part was he didn’t even have an elementalist. He said his guildies ran that, but never mentioned himself.
He was on a Warrior, enough said, really.
Staff is good for a lot of things. What I’d add is dagger offhand is usually out of favour compared to focus offhand in PvE. You’ll see a tonne of builds around which utilise it as the weapon of choice.