Guild Wars 2

I’ve been leveling an Ele, PvE for now but WvW and PvP when fully leveled. I’ve been using S/D and Staff mostly. From what I’ve been seeing D/D and Staff are the best. However, as I’m still learning, I am having difficulty with when to switch between attunements, and what attunments to switch to. While solo roaming I generally camp earth, and fire. But in groups for champs I try to rotate between them. What would be a good rotation, and what skills to use when rotating? (for S/D and staff) Right now I am only level 54, and not trying to go for a “build” as of yet (because without full access to traits, and stat specific gear, it’s kinda pointless) but am looking for suggestions/advice on what rotations, and skills to use to be the most effective at my current level. Thanks!

For staff pve, you just spam 1,2 and 5 off cooldown, and use 3 to proc your fire 5 damage modifier. S/D is really squishy, if you’re dying use focus offhand instead. The base rotation you should adapt to your needs is something like: fire 2, fire 4, fire 3, earth, earth 4, earth 5 if prestacking might and you have time for it, switch to water or air depending on your build, use air 2 and 3 with rtl if you’re using an air conjurer build,and conjure a hammer/ ice bow/ fgs. For utilities, signet of fire, arcane wave, and lightning hammer are a possible offensive setup. Since you’re not 80 yet and probably don’t have special damage modifiers, you’re not forced to camp in any attunements for your conjure, but it’s better to get the hang of it faster. If you don’t mind doing low tier damage, you can decide to not use LH and camp between air and fire. Those rotations are all for pve, in pvp there’s no set rotations, most S/D builds are bursty and are really effective with the fresh air trait you don’t have, and staff just switch attunements depending on their need.

I don’t suggest S/D for anything in PvE other than for premight stacking, which might be a little over your head right now if you’re new to the class.

D/D is generally not that good of an idea unless you’re soloing in open world. If that’s the case, then go for it. You should generally stack might for yourself by starting in fire and opening with either burning speed or ring of fire, swapping to water and using #3 (frozen burst), using your heal for the blast finisher (if it’s arcane brilliance) and swapping to earth for #4 along with using arcane wave (utility) as well. Then just camp air, as dagger’s best DPS is air’s autoattack.

To add to the above, if you’re solo roaming in open world it might be better to use the glyph heal instead of arcane brilliance unless you’re surrounded by a lot of trash mobs. Glyph gives 3 stacks of might if used in fire attunement, resulting in the same you’d get from arcane brilliance in a fire field. Glyph can also be used for swiftness when running around if used in air attunement, which is nice.

When you get to dungeons you’ll probably want to be using D/F a lot, because while S/F + LH is fantastic DPS, you’ll find that pugs tend to be annoying little ****s that steal your LH and if that happens, you’re stuck with awful DPS. I don’t suggest scepter in pug dungeon runs unless you’re with people that you know aren’t stupid. :P

Hmmm I’ll have to look into that. Thanks! ! I do switch to s/f occasionally. Im mostly mapping right now, so unless im doing a world boss, im pretty much solo.