You arent going to get a correct answer on what is best for PVP. It's all preference. I will generally say, pick a sustain set and pick a damage set and pair them together, and if possible, alternate weapons so you can run a monster set as well.

I personally run Spinners (damage) and Lich (sustain) in PVP. I carry both a Spinner fire and lighting staff so I can swap depending on situation, and I pair them with a back bar Lich Resto staff. This allows me to wear a 2 piece monster set and have different 5 pieces active on both bars. Lich in particular is a set that is nice to only have on one bar so you can control when it goes off.

The Downside to this is that the lich resto is a grind, and the spinner staffs are a little spendy. You certainly dont have to go with these two.

Other good damage sets include: BSW, Necro (if you have a pet), Julianos, netch's (if running mostly lighting skills).

Other good regen sets include: Seducer (if you want to craft or wear heavy), Amber Plasm (this one is very popular but its a grind. The idea is to stack stam regen to manage your magic with dark conversion), Warlock, etc.

Those lists are certainly not exhaustive. To comment on a few things you mention. First, red mountain is a stamina set. Basically everything else you listed was a magic set. Unless you want to respec your toon to stamina (and ignore every other set on that list), red mountain is a big no no. A lot of magic users do run DW for the extra spell damage, but I personally prefer a staff. The big upside to dual wield is that you can go 5/5/2 on that bar. Vicious Death can be nice, but I dont see it as a particularly great battleground set. This set is designed to bust zergs (large groups of players).

For PVE, gear is pretty easy (although the weapon grind can be a nightmare). If running a pet, your 5 piece is necro with front lighting and back bar fire. If not, your best bet is netch's touch with double lighting. Julianos is in third place. The monster set you want in most situations is Ilambris. For Jewelry, you want Moondancer=Master Architect>Infallible Aether>Willpower. If you dont have trial gear, willpower is your best bet. Your weapons you generally want to be sharp. VMA is best on your back bar and you want your front bar to match your jewerly if wearing trial jewels. If not, you can just run a random lightning staff. If you dont have VMA or trials weapons, the best bet (although spendy) is to run Sharp Necro weapons and farm moondancer/aether jewelry and one armor piece. That grind is really not bad. You could do it in one run with the right trial group.

seedubsrun wrote: »

Pretty sure @Oreyn_Bearclaw covered all you'd need to know. The only thing I'd add is in regards to dual wield. Having a destro staff front bar and dual wield back bar used to be very popular and some still use it I'm sure. I've seen it used mostly where you would put 2 points into the Dual Wield skill lines Twin Blade and Blunt passive then run 3 Queen's Elegance jewelry and 2 sharpened Elegant swords on the back bar, 2 piece Molag Kena and would use the Overload ultimate to make your light attacks from it very powerful. It was excellent in dungeons and vMA but then they nerfed the max ultimate you can store from 1000 to 500 and that build fell out of favor around then.

You can still run 2 sharpened swords on your back bar with the mentioned passive active for a solid boost to your damage. The problem is most people run AoE and buffs on their back bar and attacks on their front so as soon as you go to your attack bar you'd lose the benefit.

I've been curious since the changes to Netch's Touch recently to try the old Overload setup with it to see if the additional spell damage makes up for the 50% loss to maximum Ultimate. Figured Elegant's 20% increase to light/heavy + Netch's 400 spell damage to lightning attacks + Kena's 516 boost to spell damage could be pretty crazy. Plus you'd have a free slot on your front bar you could still run a Maelstrom lightning staff on. I saw they adjusted Kena a bit so not sure if it still works with Overload can't remember what the change was. If you're feeling experimental try it out. Would be interested in the results.

I have been meaning to mess around with Netchs and elegant. I just got my nethes set together last week, and I bought gold elegant rings when they were in the vendor about a month ago. I could still see it being useful for VMA or burst in PVP. 500 ultimate is not a lot, but it should be enough to burn most any 4 man or VMA boss.

I will let you know who it goes. My plan would be to run Elegant Jewlery and DW back bar, Netchs body, and either ilambris or Kena head. The lighting on ilambris alone with netch hits very hard. Might be the better option because you will sustain much better.