Guild Wars 2

I’d like to get some advice on the best weapons for PvE Explorable Mode dungeons. Greatsword seems to be a shoo-in: Great direct damage, AoE, and buffs all in one package. But what can I pair with it? Staff does questionable damage, and doesn’t scale with the same stats. Sword/Focus and Sword/Pistol require 600 and melee range for 3 and 2/1, respectively, which is the exact opposite of what a GS-wielding glass cannon wants. Scepter/pistol is ideal on paper but terribly underwhelming in normal play. I’d like to avoid condition damage in general due to its inherent issues.

I’ve mostly been running with GW/S+F, but I feel like sword 1 & 2 put me needlessly close to the enemies and require constant range juggling. How do you slay enemies of Tyria?

I think you underestimate staff, I use GS/staff combo currently, and while most of my major dps comes from GS, the staff saves my life consistently, has utility in chaos storm, which you can effectively gain 2 chaos shields with staff and then swap back to GS after dropping a couple clones/illusions. plenty of time for you GS cooldowns. Staying alive with staff while your whole party is downed and healing themselves has saved my groups from complete wipes, i keep the bosses/mobs attention. hard to revive them, but if at least one or 2 can get up on their own, there ya go.

I’ve been trying Greatword/Staff in Dungeons and it seems to work decently. Much safer than GS/S+F, but I’m worried about a lack of scaling. Does anyone use this combination endgame, and how do you cope with the diverging gearing (e.g. power vs condition damage)? Do you recommend a power or condition damage staff?

I was thinking of focusing more on shatters and going for something like this: http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/mesmer#0|0|0|0|0|0|0|20|1764|1750|0|20|1759|1815|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|30|2227|1775|2223|0|0|1|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|

i was testing GS/staff in dungeons and it work fine … the build i was using is more phantasm focused not shatter … it scales better with power .. GS is used for dmg and cc staff for its super defensive abilities ..
signet of inspiration + water/monk runes and u can have very nice boons duration
which u can share
but one warning … its fine in dungeons only
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQJAWRlwzCoXVTmGadJhJF9G5nPEd0CIpQ1puUBcD

cheers Xixsa