Eles with...swords???

So I recently got back into the game after a long hiatus, and for some reason I see a load of elementalists running around with sword and shields.
Now don't get me wrong, they look cool, better than the butt ugly staves us eles are usually saddled up with but I don't see the point, us eles are squishy, why equip frontline weapons?
I've asked a few in-game but the responses I usually get vary from none, to "lol noob".

So can anyone please tell me what the point is of equipping an ele with a sword instead of a nice staff?

Same reason any caster class should equip sword+shields. You get the half of the AR bonus of the shield and two fortitude mods.

Then you switch to your efficiency set(40/40) everytime you want to cast a spell. And then can fall back on the shield set to take less damage.

Hope this helps.

sword and shield=60 health and 8 armor, may as well have more health/armor when you don't need the energy you can get from "proper" off-hands or staves. can also be an axe or spear, really.

EDIT: also, what ^ he said.

i've seen an ele using daggers and dagger attacks in AB

The aim of equipping sword/axe/spear + shield is having a better defensive set when u need it. Not only eles, but casters in general use to do this

That's AB anything and everything works there.

so that's why i saw a war using [skill]backfire[/skill] against me

If you switch weapons, then wouldn't it be better to have a sword pommel of defense? Because if you put the sword away, then you lose all the health bonus, resulting in a absolutely no benefit at all (same as if you never had that health bonus in the first place). But if you have armor instead, then that armor bonus would have prevented damage before you put your sword away. This is why I think conditional health boosts are worthless.

Yeah, you take on mesmer shrines a few times and watch your casters get chewed up, it gets you thinking.

[skill]Stoneflesh Aura[/skill] + [skill]Armor of Earth[/skill] + [skill]Shockwave[/skill] + [skill]Stone Striker[/skill]

plus any of the "Conjure" spells, with a corresponding weapon prefix (Conjure Flame + Fiery Sword/Axe/Dagger/Scythe)

I do that in Pve sometimes, pretty nice build actually (modified Terratank build, the base can be found here.

might explain it a bit too, in addition to above posts

Taking a Conjure is kinda pointless with Stone Striker on your bar....

could be but the base energy of a war is 20e and backfire is 15e and casts a bit long too
a war shouldn't be doing such a thing in the first place, and you can tell me his armor is equipped with runes of attunement and radiant but then again, what kind of a war uses that kind of armor?

whoops, forgot about that...which is funny, cuz i tried that once... :P

Also keep in mind that a caster sword can have enchanting mods and +5 energy all the time, unlike wands which don't have any enchanting mod and only provide +5 energy while enchanted/or while health ^50%.

This is funny, cause I was discussing this with one of my monks the other day: a Warrior, without a large energy demanding build, could carry Backfire to help shut down a caster.

I wouldn't put on Radiant armor to do it, I'd carry a +15e staff and swap out like a caster to my high energy set, cast, swap back and then work adrenal skills after that.

Backfire's casting time is long, but you have to hope the other sides interrupters are focused on your casters and not you when you toss it on them.

Welcome to the Guild Wars of caster weapons. It made it so inscript weps with a q 13 could add a +5 energy and 20% enchant and still be worth something depending on the skin.

As for the eles, haven't seen to many of them with the caster set, yet its huge with most monks.

It's nothing to do with value and skins. Caster weapon use originated in PvP where skins have no value anyway.

A normal spike consist of Orb and shatter in addition to wars unloading. Cracked armor will nullify your armor bonus, shatter is armor ignoring. Extra health is universally useful against spikes.

Most people idle in their efficiency sets anyways and only switch when they're getting spiked. So the time when you're most concerned about the health bonus is when you need to have it equipped. If you die in your efficiency set then you've failed

I see, but that seems more PvP than PvE to me.

+20 % enchanting and in ha piercing slashing and all the major buffs in pvp