29 replies to this topic

[veggies]

I'm interested in doing dungeons, but I'm not sure what build to use. Any suggestions would be helpful. Thanks

[SpelignErrir]

http://www.guildwars...-dungeon-build/

[lmaonade]

D/D Aura Share Elementalist

http://gw2skills.net...U4hiiZAA;TEATRA

Left heal skill blank because any of them work, though I'd recommend either ether renewal or signet of restoration

runes are up to you, you could take healing runes for more healing effects with water attune (2x dwayna, 2x monk, 2x water), aurashare can be adapted to any sort of build (whether damage, tank, or support) so choose whichever you want

sigils in daggers is also up to you, sigil of water is nice if you want to support more, sigil of battle for more might stacks, or sigil of endurance if you want those extra dodges

also left master arcane trait empty, though I'd recommend renewing stamina if you have adequate amounts of crit in your build

basic idea of this build is to share your powerful auras (air 3: shocking aura, water 4: frost aura), the cooldowns are medium long, but the effects are good enough that it justifies a whole build around it.
Everytime you cast an aura, you and all allies about 400 units radius around you get the effect, and all the boons that come with the traits (protection, fury, and swiftness)

with D/D, you deal anywhere from good to hefty amounts of dps, and can spread an adequate amount of conditions, as well as have a decent amount of utility, disrupts, and healing. You fight up close so it's recommended that you take at least some defensive stats in your equipment

you can change your utilities to whatever you see fit (I choose cantrips as a personal favorite), if you do not like/use cantrips you can change them, and remember to change the major trait "soothing disruption" on the water line since it has to do with cantrips. I use Arcane Wave for the extra blast finisher, so I can stack tons of might on my teammates using the Fire #4, Earth #4 and 5, and arcane wave. But everything is interchangable, I sometimes take out arcane wave for a conjure weapon (when they are needed)

Edited by lmaonade, 10 December 2012 - 09:56 AM.

[Nonlinear]

For dungeons I have been running a condition build and like it a lot (especially if you have the bleed stack all to yourself).  It is like the Krakatoa build but slightly different.  Pure condition damage with no reliance on crit.  

http://en.gw2codex.c...f-fire-for-burn

I have run SE p1 with it many times so it has enough DPS to get the job down despite being condition based (chain lightning owns the barriers anyway).  The combination of large stacks of aoe bleed + burn melts champs and adds.  I also feel that weakness on Earth 1 is underrated (and weakness is underrated in general) along with the earth elemental.  Fumble on big bosses makes a difference, (e.g. the last boss of AC p3, glancing ceiling fall from fumble means no knockdown) and the earth ele doesn't get gibbed against bosses and can take some shots.

Edited by Nonlinear, 10 December 2012 - 07:52 PM.

[veggies]

Thanks for the input everyone! I'm going to try out the D/D aura build. I'll let you all know how it goes. Thanks again.

[Thaddeuz]

I hit the level 80 with my Ele not long ago so i wasn't able to experiment different complete build with it like i did with my Engineer and Guardian so it may not be the best build out there. But anyway there is my Dungeon build for my Ele.

I put 30 in Fire, 30 in Earth and 10 in Arcane. This give maximum Power, Condition dmg, Condition Duration and Toughness. I put my hp to 16 000 with the vitality boss of the Carrion Armor Set which also give me Power and COndition Dmg.  I use Specter/Dagger.

I switch between Fire and Earth for DMG depending on the situation. I usually get started by getting near the target cast Ring of Fire (combo field) and cast immediatly Dragon's Tooth and Pheonix. These two combo finisher blast give me 6 stack of might and to all ally near me. I switch to Earth and auto-attack to stack bleed (a lot of dmg with trait :Salt Stone, Strenght of Stone and Serrated Stones). If someone else apply bleed and we reach 25 stack of bleed, i switch back to fire. If i'm in a group with a lot of melee i stay in fire and give them as much might as i can.

The strenght of my build for dungeon is his versatility in combat. I got my dmg output from both condition and direct dmg so i'm not usuless against object like turret. Even if someone bleed or Burn i can switch and continue to do good dmg. I got enough vitality and toughness so i'm not down often which is the best way to cut down you dps output and annoyed your party. As for my utilities skills i use Arcane Shield to allow me to revive ally in difficult situation or run through mobs. Lightning Flash is a must for me, its a stun breaker, allow me get the hell out of there when i'm in high dmg zone, replace my evade if needed, nice to run through mobs or even for revive ally in AoE zone as i can get out before the AoE drop me dead. The last skill i change it often, cleasing fire (condition removal) is my default skill, Conjure Ice Bow in AC is powerfull, Mist Form can save you life, Earth Armor too.

[RaoulDukeHST]

If you want to give your party the max your class has to offer,damage builds,or d/d are a complete fail.The staff is just to strong,so many fields,slow,cripple,stun,swiftness aoe,3 heals,double dodge,blind,reflect aura,huge amount of aoe damage spells.i recommend using a cantrip build,getting vigor and regen on cast(mist form,armor of earth and lightning flash are my favorites,cleansing fire is useless since ether renewal got buffed).

Ignore fire traits,just get 30 in arcana and water,get power,vit,toughness with berserker jewelry and berserker weapons,and you got yourself a a very hard to kill ele.The whole point of the ele is switching attunements,so i recommend starting the fights in earth,put down cripple,immobilize for those very important first seconds,then switching to fire for aoe dmg,then water for condi removal and keeping your party up with their hp.A person to blast your fields is very useful(hammer guard,thief).

Edited by RaoulDukeHST, 12 December 2012 - 02:22 PM.

[HederaHelix]

I love my Cantrip Build Staff Ellie for Dungeons... so much win and survivability, also ability to support your team.

[Dusty Friday]

There is a lot of ground for experimentation when it comes to dungeon Ele build, I give you that.

I would not recommend a D/D build for it, as that's too dangerous for you, especially if you are not in the proper gear. D/D is great for PvP and solo PvE, but I just dislike how it does in dungeons. Now, if you are doing Ascalonian Catacombs - feel free to use any build. But in tougher dungeons you want to have  the option to deal damage from range. Not to mention how weak the D/D healing is compared to Staff or S/D. You gain one extra aura and sacrifice your long range and a number of blast finishers.

My advice for you is to try out Staff and S/D as your main weapons at first. Don't rush into being a melee hero. With the Staff you have access to more combo fields and a lot of condition damage. Bear in mind that people WILL run out of your Healing Geyser, even if you explain to them that it's almost a 4k heal and it doesn't damage them. Often you will have to rely on your Healing Rain and just use Geyser for yourself, if others keep dodging out of it.

Another staff tip - you can actually cast your Meteor Shower for half the casting time it actually says on the tooltip. Simply start casting it, wait for the first meteor to hit the ground, then interrupt yourself by casting another spell immediately. The meteors will keep falling down. Also keep in mind that you are free to switch attunements while channeling spells and it won't interrupt you.

I loved playing with staff, but in my experience it doesn't scale well with healing gear. It begins to lack damage output, so you probably want to use it with offensive gear and build. Whatever people would tell me, I've played enough of these builds( with my healing gear) to know that S/D is a much better choice. This is what I play now and will probably keep using it for a while until it gets nerfed.
S/D provides a ton of blast finishers and condition removal. It works perfectly well with healing gear (Power/ Toughness/ Healing Power + Vitality/ Precision/ Healing Power) because when you start stacking up might and fury (assuming you are with an Auramancer S/D build) you will realize that your power goes above 3,100-3,200, your crit goes up to almost 50%, and you STILL have 1,400 healing power. So yeah, f*ck staff. But you should test all of the weapons nevertheless, to get acquainted with your class as much as possible. Change your builds a LOT, experiment and try to think about what your gear offers and how your build can support that, at least until you decide on what exotics you want to buy for your main build.

Edited by Dusty Friday, 12 December 2012 - 02:52 PM.

[AzureRogue]

Really minor, but in response to the above if you cancel meteor shower early it reduces the number of meteors that fall which will reduce your damage with the spell but still put it on full CD.

[Dusty Friday]

Does it? I've never actually tested this, though I am hearing this for the second time. Which means I will definitely test it later tonight and try to determine how it scales. This still sound off to me, as if this is true then it should apply for other long-cast-time-rooting spells as well.

Even if it turns out to be as you say - the full MS cast time is just way too long to be worth it. I'll write again when I've got some solid numbers.


P.S. ArenaNet's tooltips are REALLY lacking definitive descriptions... MS doesn't even state the effective duration of the spell...

Edited by Dusty Friday, 12 December 2012 - 03:52 PM.

[Dusty Friday]

I tested this, and as I expected what AzureRogue said is not true, at all.

Used Steady Staff weapon. Both full-cast time and half-cast time inflicted crits for 380 damage and normal hits for 170 damage. This was done on the Heavy Armor golem. There is absolutely NO difference in the way this spell functions in both scenarios, except that one saves you time. At first I thought that some of the meteors don't hit the target when doing half-cast, but then I saw the same thing happening in full-cast.


So yeah - never do the full cast and don't trust anyone that tells you such things until you go and test them yourself with a steady weapon, which simply doesn't lie.

Edited by Dusty Friday, 12 December 2012 - 05:55 PM.

[RaoulDukeHST]

dusty friday you are wrong,the number of meteors cast gets reduced if you end the spell before it finishes cast.You went and tested it in the mists in a completely wrong fashion,AzureRogue was referring to the total cumulative dmg done by the spell,while you tested individual damage ticks done by individual meteors.

"So yeah - never do the full cast and don't trust anyone that tells you such things until you go and test them yourself with a steady weapon, which simply doesn't lie."

Very bad suggestion

[Dusty Friday]

Do you have any proof of this? I can confirm that a number of my meteors, regardless of what cast time I used, simply fall over a target and don't inflict damage. This is easily done by testing how many hits manage to land over a single, non-moving target, despite the fact that this is an AoE spell. In both cases I had samples when a single target was hit up to 4 times in a row, again with extra hits that just don't deal damage. I am not convinced that the damage output is less, as a lot the meteors will fail to hit even if they land straight on a target. In both cases I get relatively the same results as to how many hits actually land on the target. I did testing with two golems, next to each other. The results are absolutely not definitive, as in some cases the full-cast meteor shower landed 0-1 hits overall on both targets, while in some cases while testing the half-cast, I had up to 4-5 hits on both targets and as I mentioned sometimes the same target would get hit 3-4 times in a row.

So yeah, don't come here only to deliver your own idea of what the description of my suggestion is, not until you go test it yourself. From what I've seen this spell works fine, sometimes BETTER than the full-cast version of it. And If I am in a hot situation, where I need to react fast - I will surely not prefer to stay rooted for 4 and half seconds only to get 'a few extra meteors', which don't even guarantee you that many hits in total, as obviously this spell acts differently for each cast.

EDIT:

Tested it with the dummies in LA, to get a good idea of how AoE does. Full cast does indeed bring more meteors, but again - a lot of them don't inflict any damage at all. With the full-cast sometimes two meteors will drop right next to each other, but only one will deal damage. It appears there are more meteors, but it's hard to determine how much you gain depending on which of them are going to deal damage at all.

Edited by Dusty Friday, 12 December 2012 - 06:52 PM.

[AzureRogue]

It's actually not hard to determine if there's a difference.  And, in the future, please address my statements before claiming I'm wrong.  You simply proved that each meteor does the same damage no matter when you cut off the cast.  But it would be absurd to make a spell with a cast-time that requires you to stand still and then not punish you for incomplete casting.  I'm also not sure what rooting effects your referring to that gain full benefit when cut off mid-cast as most of the ones I've seen rely on pulses (which you get more of if you cast in full).

I'm not at home right now, but later tonight I will demonstrate empirically that a full cast does more damage (because of more meteors).  If you want to test it out before then go ahead.  Since it's an AoE spell field to determine where meteors can fall, and each individual meteor has a small AoE as well (and presumably there may be some limit to the amount that can hit any given target per second - explaining your results when two meteors seem to hit the same place around the same time), you need one of two things to test this out.  A target with a hitbox the size of your AoE (thinking Dragons as a good example) or a ton of enemies in one place.  The AoE testing field in the Heart of the Mists would make sense (not sure why you didn't use that).

Here's how you have to do it.  Turn on the combat log, let the golems respawn (if someone just killed some) then cast MS.  Write down total damage done by the spell (to all golems), and the total number of hits done by the spell.  Do this a few times.  Then do it at half-cast time interrupt.  I guarantee you will notice a huge difference in damage done in total (not per meteor).  And you don't need a steady weapon to test that - all they do is reduce the variance in your data making it easier to detect effect but this effect will be so large that you can do it in any gear (as long as it's the same gear for both casts).

Like I said, I'll do that later tonight and post the numbers along with some statistical tests.  So, please, don't ask for proof but then show your own "proof" that is not designed well enough to address the question.

[Nonlinear]

RaoulDukeHST, on 12 December 2012 - 02:22 PM, said:

If you want to give your party the max your class has to offer,damage builds,or d/d are a complete fail.The staff is just to strong,so many fields,slow,cripple,stun,swiftness aoe,3 heals,double dodge,blind,reflect aura,huge amount of aoe damage spells.

I agree with this.  Save d/d for pvp.

As a condition ele (eruption spam) you don't have access to any fields except for racial skills (e.g. Radiation Field) if you spam eruption and toss boulders.  You don't need to dance around (unless you are bestroying obstacles, then use either fireball for single or chain lightning for multiples)  as a condition ele, just spam eruption, a couple Earth 1s in between casts, refresh burning with fire signet, use Sandstorm, etc.  You have plenty to do in earth in between eruption casts, I only swap to water to remove conditions then cycle through fire or air and lay down fields until earth is back up.  You have projectile and blast finishers on boulder and eruption so as condition you are better at finishing ally fields instead of putting down your own.  It synergizes very very well with guardian fields because guardians can't spoil your bleed stack.

When I spec GC I go heavy fire and it's the same thing I'm in fire almost the whole time and only swap to water to cure conditions and provide a weak geyser clutch heal or swap between air/earth/water for AOE swiftness/regen/prot through elemental attunement when running or kiting or w/e.

Edited by Nonlinear, 12 December 2012 - 08:23 PM.

[Geeri]

Nonlinear, on 12 December 2012 - 08:22 PM, said:

I agree with this.  Save d/d for pvp.

I don't agree with you at all; at least, in the extent of my personal experience (which is 6 story modes completed and 9 paths spread over 5 dungeons). Up until now I have had no issues with my D/D auramancer build, playing to tank and support the rest of my party.

What I will admit that D/D is not always the best weapon setup for the party in all situations or with all possible setups, which is why I run with a build that can also be (somewhat gimped but) successful with a staff, if I get the time to change my trait choices (i.e. not respec my points, just alter the choices). However: I do think that D/D can be more successful than Staff in situations as well. As an example: I was running CoF P2 without a meaty-person (or any melee for that matter) today and was thus tanking with my D/D setup in full Power/Toughness/Vitality gear, which works wonders.

Besides, I think this game is not about finding "the best build" in general, but finding what works for you. Something that allows you to help your team in some way while having fun in the mean time. Only D/D does that for me and I do think that I am extremely useful in many parties. Besides, in most cases, a smooth dungeon run comes from people avoiding damage and helping each other back up, not from big numbers, considering you do "enough" damage as a party.

[Dusty Friday]

I'll be interested to see your results, AzureRogue. My point with testing the golems was pretty simple: good teams will usually have a pull-back skill in at least one of their players, which often results in a very small zone, full with a lot of enemies. It made sense to test out how many of these meteors will eventually hit that one target, knowing that most of the time someone will just pull mobs together at one spot. I am pretty sure that the whole cast will have some % of dps increase when tested on a big AoE scale with tons of enemies, but the situation I described above happens very often, in my experience at least.

The tests I did were inconclusive and in no way professionally done. If I am to truly test it, I'd have 100 samples (at least) of each casting type, test how the two spells do in both AoE and single-target environment, and also record the meteor showers a few times in order to play them back in slow-mo and be sure how many of them fall with each type of casting, and how many actually deal damage.

I am not so sure about the AoE aspect of every individual meteor you mentioned, it doesn't look that way. I am trying to figure out if each damage tick has an internal CD of some kind, or it's just randomly generated as most things in this game (unfortunately).

Edited by Dusty Friday, 12 December 2012 - 09:56 PM.

[Nonlinear]

CoF p1 and p2 can be completed with anything because everyone GY cheeses the only DPS check in the dungeon (guarding magg).  The Searing Effigy makes me want to take nap in support heavy pugs.

D/D Auramancer has it's strengths but IMO it isn't in dungeons.  Auromancer is great in PvP and has burst, mobility, survival, condition removal etc. but it only has two finishers on the OH in Earth and one OH field in Fire and they are on fairly long CDs and use different attunements.  Auras really shine when there are lots of people who can be stunned trying to hit you and your mates which is rarer in dungeons and quite common in WvW.

Edited by Nonlinear, 12 December 2012 - 10:30 PM.

[RaoulDukeHST]

Geeri, on 12 December 2012 - 09:47 PM, said:

I don't agree with you at all; at least, in the extent of my personal experience (which is 6 story modes completed and 9 paths spread over 5 dungeons). Up until now I have had no issues with my D/D auramancer build, playing to tank and support the rest of my party.

What I will admit that D/D is not always the best weapon setup for the party in all situations or with all possible setups, which is why I run with a build that can also be (somewhat gimped but) successful with a staff, if I get the time to change my trait choices (i.e. not respec my points, just alter the choices). However: I do think that D/D can be more successful than Staff in situations as well. As an example: I was running CoF P2 without a meaty-person (or any melee for that matter) today and was thus tanking with my D/D setup in full Power/Toughness/Vitality gear, which works wonders.

Besides, I think this game is not about finding "the best build" in general, but finding what works for you. Something that allows you to help your team in some way while having fun in the mean time. Only D/D does that for me and I do think that I am extremely useful in many parties. Besides, in most cases, a smooth dungeon run comes from people avoiding damage and helping each other back up, not from big numbers, considering you do "enough" damage as a party.

I did over 500 explo dungeons on my ele,the difference between d/d and staff in terms of what it brings to the party is huge,staff wins hands down.If we are talking about having fun,then yeah,you can run any weapon combo you like playing,it's up to the player if he wants efficiency or fun.(in my case,the more efficient i am,the more fun i have,so it works for me)

[Rumstein]

I would recommend using the noted D/D aura build (0/10/0/30/30 etc), however try with staff + conjure flame axe. That'll give you ranged, decent to good heals, field effects and 2 auras.

[Geeri]

RaoulDukeHST, on 12 December 2012 - 11:03 PM, said:

I did over 500 explo dungeons on my ele,the difference between d/d and staff in terms of what it brings to the party is huge,staff wins hands down.If we are talking about having fun,then yeah,you can run any weapon combo you like playing,it's up to the player if he wants efficiency or fun.(in my case,the more efficient i am,the more fun i have,so it works for me)

Oh, I agree that staff probably works as well (or probably better) than D/D; my main point is that D/D is not not an option, depending on what the goal is. Personally, if I have the choice between playing staff Ele and not playing, I choose not playing in most cases, that is how much I resent it. I don't mind it in individual situations, but I simply hate the general playstyle. But that's just me :-)

Anyway, there's multiple builds out there, with all weapon combinations available (except maybe focus?), that are useful (enough) in dungeons. From there on out it's a question of what you want and what you like. What is your playstyle, how do you want to contribute, what is needed in the team or for the dungeon and how efficient does it need to be?

[oni88]

RaoulDukeHST, on 12 December 2012 - 02:22 PM, said:

If you want to give your party the max your class has to offer,damage builds,or d/d are a complete fail.The staff is just to strong,so many fields,slow,cripple,stun,swiftness aoe,3 heals,double dodge,blind,reflect aura,huge amount of aoe damage spells.i recommend using a cantrip build,getting vigor and regen on cast(mist form,armor of earth and lightning flash are my favorites,cleansing fire is useless since ether renewal got buffed).

Ignore fire traits,just get 30 in arcana and water,get power,vit,toughness with berserker jewelry and berserker weapons,and you got yourself a a very hard to kill ele.The whole point of the ele is switching attunements,so i recommend starting the fights in earth,put down cripple,immobilize for those very important first seconds,then switching to fire for aoe dmg,then water for condi removal and keeping your party up with their hp.A person to blast your fields is very useful(hammer guard,thief).

Just curious, what do you put your other ten trait points into ? I'm leaning towards earth but I'm not sure if Armor Earth is worth it.

[veggies]

Asuran Acolyte: Do you have a specfic trait setup in mind for the builds you discussed?

[AzureRogue]

Dusty Friday, on 12 December 2012 - 09:54 PM, said:

I'll be interested to see your results, AzureRogue. My point with testing the golems was pretty simple: good teams will usually have a pull-back skill in at least one of their players, which often results in a very small zone, full with a lot of enemies. It made sense to test out how many of these meteors will eventually hit that one target, knowing that most of the time someone will just pull mobs together at one spot. I am pretty sure that the whole cast will have some % of dps increase when tested on a big AoE scale with tons of enemies, but the situation I described above happens very often, in my experience at least.

The tests I did were inconclusive and in no way professionally done. If I am to truly test it, I'd have 100 samples (at least) of each casting type, test how the two spells do in both AoE and single-target environment, and also record the meteor showers a few times in order to play them back in slow-mo and be sure how many of them fall with each type of casting, and how many actually deal damage.

I am not so sure about the AoE aspect of every individual meteor you mentioned, it doesn't look that way. I am trying to figure out if each damage tick has an internal CD of some kind, or it's just randomly generated as most things in this game (unfortunately).

Well, given that my initial comment is that cutting off casting will reduce meteors that fall (which will inherently affect how many hit) I'm going to present my analyses based on total damage done per cast (sum of all damage for all meteors) and in terms of numbers of hits (ie total number of meteors producing damage) as these are easiest to track in the combat log and doesn't rely on recording.  Also, before I begin, I'd like to point out that for the sake of the statistics I'm not sure why you'd want 100 samples each.  All increasing your sample size does is reduce your standard deviation, making it MORE likely that you'll detect differences.  As such, I stuck with smaller sample sizes (inherently putting my position at a slight disadvantage).

I disagree with your statement about any good team having a pull-back skill for two reasons.  First, there are plenty of good runs I've been on that were played well and no one had a pull-back skill.  Second, even if, say, a guardian pulls mobs to them with GS they will not all be on one spot, or the guardian may have to kite a bit, etc.  In that spirit, I present the results of my tests on the mob of golems first (I'll follow up with a test on individual golems).

I'm using the same gear (though not stable - which again adds more variance working against my opinion) for all tests.

For AoE vs Heavy Targets in Heart of the Mists these are the results (N = 5 per group, 10 total):

Full Cast Mean Damage (standard deviation) = 104231 (6203)
Half Cast Mean Damage (standard deviation) = 68980 (11681)
t-test: t(8) = 5.96, p < .001

Full Cast Mean Number of Hits (standard deviation) = 45.8 (4.1)
Half Cast Mean Number of Hits (standard deviation) = 28.0 (4.1)
t-test: t(8) = 6.91, p < .001

I also tested damage numbers on a single heavy target in the Heart of the Mists, here are those results (N = 5 per group, 10 total).  One additional half-cast was excluded as it didn't hit the target at all (seemed unfair to include floor performance).

Full Cast Mean Damage (standard deviation) = 6931 (1989)
Half Cast Mean Damage (standard deviation) = 3596 (1552)
t-test: t(8) = 2.96, p = .018

Full Cast Mean Number of Hits (standard deviation) = 6.0 (1.4)
Half Cast Mean Number of Hits (standard deviation) = 3.0 (0.7)
t-test(8) = 4.24, p = .003

Anyone else can follow these up however the want.  It's clear (to me at least) that cutting off meteor shower halfway reduces damage overall because of the number of meteors striking either against a group or a single target.  I'll let this thread get back underway now (sorry for the distraction).

[RaoulDukeHST]

oni88, on 13 December 2012 - 12:02 AM, said:

Just curious, what do you put your other ten trait points into ? I'm leaning towards earth but I'm not sure if Armor Earth is worth it.

it is worth it,i do dungeons where i do not fall to the ground not even once,most of the time your hp is very low,you are or have been disabled,so a stability/protection spell is a nice investment.My suggestion is just to try things,and find a build you like.

Geeri, on 12 December 2012 - 11:21 PM, said:

Oh, I agree that staff probably works as well (or probably better) than D/D; my main point is that D/D is not not an option, depending on what the goal is. Personally, if I have the choice between playing staff Ele and not playing, I choose not playing in most cases, that is how much I resent it. I don't mind it in individual situations, but I simply hate the general playstyle. But that's just me :-)

Anyway, there's multiple builds out there, with all weapon combinations available (except maybe focus?), that are useful (enough) in dungeons. From there on out it's a question of what you want and what you like. What is your playstyle, how do you want to contribute, what is needed in the team or for the dungeon and how efficient does it need to be?

Focus is a great weapon,very underrated,you can combine it with a scepter and make a tank/dps ele,kind of a battle mage,very effective in dungeons without guardians

Edited by RaoulDukeHST, 13 December 2012 - 08:45 AM.

[MisfitAndy]

Staff doesn't necessarily work BETTER than D/D, it is just different.  A different playstyle.  It is better for AOE damage and for heals, but it is worse for single target DPS.  The AOE damage is even arguable because churning earth deals a heap of damage, but a lot of it is condition.

You definitely need to gear and spec properly regardless of what weapon choice you make.

I switch between D/D and staff depending on the range requirements and skill levels of those players in a dungeon.  Sometimes there are fights where direct damage AOE is boss, so I want meteor shower.  Some fights I want to be up in the action, so I go d/d.  In either case, I generally roll with an aura/support build and gear according to my needs (damage or healing).

Meteor shower, by the way, is ineffective if you half-cast it.  You lose out on a large number of hits.  I had heard this a long time ago, and tested it out, and could tell right away that it wasn't doing as much damage.

[Dusty Friday]

We really did slide off topic here for a while, didn't we... The problem with small-scale testing with only a few samples is that you receive results that vary. I don't see how a small sample is better in any possible way. If you detect more differences, then you have more material to work with. This is exactly why doing a 10-sample test can only provide a rough idea, because as I mentioned - at times I'd get better results from the half-cast, at other times not single or up to 1 meteor hit a target, and so on. Half-cast brings less food to the table, but I will always prefer it in a heated situation. If there is no pressure on the elementalist's shoulders in the specific situation - there is no real problem with doing the full-cast. What I want to know is what determines which meteors deal damage and which don't, as well as if you can control that in any way (perhaps a certain zone of the full-area AoE effect is hotter than the rest of it).

And yeah, sorry for going so off-topic. It's pretty obvious that S/D is a far superior choice than D/D for dungeons anyways.

[HurricaneMP]

I use the a D/D Aura build for dungeons - Hotw and Ac so far, I'd recommend it aslong as you have decent enough gear and have had time to practice with it in general Pve, the amount of boons you can supply to your team is crazy, the speed and versatility of the build is great too.
I run 20(IV,VI)/10(I)/10(V)/10(III)/20(V,VI).

Staff is also great for dungeons, with good team support and Aoe,
Just try a few builds/weapons and see what you are most comfortable with

[Nonlinear]

When I want to max my direct damage I'll spec something like 30/30/0/0/10 or 20/30/0/0/20 and spend all of my time in fire slinging Fireballs and laying down Lava Fonts with a staff.  They can finish the field if they aren't laying their own on top of it.  I also use FGS on certain bosses and swap the might trait for the conjure trait, it destroys things like Destroyer of Worlds and the Searing Effigy, which are pretty popular runs.  

With berserker gear and a couple knight trinkets for some survival my Fireballs crit on mist golems for like 2.5k or so every second and they do splash damage.  Sigil of Fire adds even more AOE, goes off a lot with my high crit and does great damage.  I can Fireball crit for over 3k when target is less than 25% health, especially with Arcane Blast.  I currently use soldier crests but am going to save up for divinity runes on my DPS set.

I use endurance food and don't need as much "survival" because I stand at 900-1200 range.  I almost always slot Mist Form though just in case, my bar is usually Glyph of Storms, Arcane Blast and Mist Form.  Sometimes I'll swap out Storms or Mist (on easy fights) for Arcane skills so I can get the 3% crit damage from the Air trait.  I'm in fire almost all the time, save my other attunements for defense related purposes or things like swapping to air and hitting 4 between encounters to swiftness the party.  Swap to Water to remove conditions and grant regen, swap to Earth to snare/root/reflect and grant protection, swap to Air for the swiftness, the stun field, the blind and the pushback.  With proper skill choice this is enough to get me through without the need for putting traits into Water or Earth.  Power/crit/crit damage all syngerize well so the 30 points in Fire and Air work together with your gear to put Fireball crits over 2.5k and 3.0k-3.2k crits when target is <25% hp.

Edited by Nonlinear, 13 December 2012 - 04:35 PM.