Guild Wars 2

Guys, is there a way of testing pve build efficiency, cause i cant decide on my build. Staff in fire/lightning/tempest is doing a lot of dmg. Tried D/d build with same traits, seems fair enough too, but i want to see some facts.

Btw thy does every staff build use GM trait in fire for lava front instead of might buffing on fire cast? I can easily maintain 12-15 might stack by myself with that trait. Are those 2 sec of lava front more efficient than 12-15 stacks of might?

So, i wonder if there is some sence in playing eles in PVP since u can just pick a ranger/warrior/mesmer/every other class except thieves and do ur job better, easier and safer?
Tested a lot of builds, tanky/semitanky/dd/supp/tempest(ffs). Staff is not quite usefull, cause u get focused in no time. DD is all about facetanking with a class with only 11-15k hp (and thats suicidal). Scepter, is there a scepter in this game? In the most def build i could get, every warrior or ranger 3shot me. Full zerk = 1 -2 shot while all of our save mechs are down.
So i came down to the main question, what use can u make out of ele in PVP?
Im not saying im a pro player or something, on the contrary, played as ele for about a half a year, but i cant simply figure out a way to make ele work in PVP. If anyone could answer the questions above or/and give some tips to get this horse(ele) running, i would pretty much be gratefull.

Thank you guys!
The problem with berserker builds is that i am not skillfull enough to play it at viable level. I need some more practice, with more solid builds.
I think i will try “knight” item build, which Bandit mentioned, looks decent from what i see.

But there is one question unanswered:
Why does noone build defence stats? Are defences broken or something (i mean like formula vice)? What happens if in PVP a full zerk meets a full def player, which one will have an uper hand? Will def build mitigate all of zerks damage or just a small portion?

I have got another question, is healing a viable stat for elementalists? I mean is it worth on getting for support purposes, does it scale well with water attunement?

Sorry for so many questions, tried to study Wiki, but hadnt had much luck understanding it on practice.

Hey guys,
I am a new GW2 player and i am in desperate need of help on my build.
I started playing GW2 as a mesmer, but that profession is kinda difficult for me to start. So i then decided to roll a elementalist, leveled my ele to lvl 72 and noticed that only one build works for me – staff fire/air berserker. D/D is kinda difficult for me, cause low range low survivability.
Tbh i am quite bad at GW2 at the moment and i dont like being killed in a single nuke by any vet/champ monsters. So i was thinking is it possible for ele to build tanky and still be effective pve/pvp. Hadnt seen any defensive builds here and i dont actually care about the meta, im more of a casual player myself.

So i thought that condi+vitality+armor stats could be usefull for a full earth/water/smtn build, is it viable? So far im concerned that staff earth autoattack skill does like no damage at all. So is a geomanser of some sort a viable build right now, and can anyone give me some insights on how to build my ele tanky and still be usefull (at least in solo play or some simple dungeons)?

P.s. im not a native english speaker, so go easy on my grammar please =)
P.p.s. why does noone goes defensive builds in GW2 (even guardians go berserker)?