Mix 'em.

My electro tank (and darned if I can recall offhand which two sets she uses - has dual weapons on one bar and sword and board on the other, with one from each set so swapping bars makes no nevermind.

For example, a set like Sunderflame, it is obvious I have to put it on my front bar. But other sets like Leviathan and Mora Tong, it is hard to figure out if I have to put them on the front bar or back bar.

BTW, I am Stamina DK.

Thank you

There are many interesting and useful tips here, but the short answer is it has no effect which weapon you put on which bar. It is the grouping of the skills to which the above answers apply. Front bar and back bar are just terms to differentiate between one and the other.

Say you have a set (e.g. Relequen) which you NEED to attack once every 5 seconds to trigger it, you're likely going to want it on permanently as you may spend longer than 5 seconds on your back bar. Where as a set with a constant buff (e.g. Spriggans) could be front barred since it's active as soon as you swap to that bar and doesn't have to be built back up.

The current 'meta' for stamina is Relequen (20 stacks, lose after 5 seconds) and Beserking (5 stacks, lose after 5 seconds), in the case of this if you front barred Relequen you would lose 20 seconds worth of stacks, where as if you front barred Beserking you would only lose 5 seconds worth of stacks. So front barring Beserking is the least loss should it drop off which is what people will go for.

However the difference here is with sets like burning spell weave, where you get a buff for 8 seconds, then a downtime of 4 seconds. For this set you would front bar it, since you ideally want to be on your back bar during the 4 seconds downtime so essentially you aren't losing anything.

Doing this you can also control when the 8 seconds of spell damage procs (similar to the post about Lich above) and front barring it will give you 500 spell damage when you swap to your front bar, which is when you're doing the most damage where as if you had this active all the time you could proc this when you're on your back bar, which is when you're doing the least damage.

5 piece sets will proc on whichever bar you have the complete set on. A lot of people will use 3 pieces of armor and the staff will count for the remaining 2. Some sets lend themselves well to being active on one skill bar (not having this set staff on both bars), which allows for something like a Master, Maelstrom or Asylum Weapon on the other bar.

People are giving very confusing answers and this doesn't need to be complicated.

Your sets should be active on each bar if you have set them up properly. The Summerset update made this a lot easier because 2H weapons count as two set items. This means you can run two five-piece sets and a monster set with 100% up time on everything, regardless of what bar you're on.

Yes, that was a new change with Summerset. All two-handed weapons count for 2 set items now.