Guild Wars 2

For one reason or another, when I first purchased this game, I decided to play an Asuran Elementalist. I had since not had time to play the game, but have decided to pick it back up again. Playing some of the random events and quests in the starter area, I find that I am quite weak, and have trouble defeating even NPCs that are near my own level. Is this a bad combo from the start, or am I just missing something key in playing this game?

Race doesn’t effect stats in any way. Only difference is a few racial skills that don’t matter all that much and racial armor skins.

My Asura is an Ele

Gamewolf.9375:

For one reason or another, when I first purchased this game, I decided to play an Asuran Elementalist. I had since not had time to play the game, but have decided to pick it back up again. Playing some of the random events and quests in the starter area, I find that I am quite weak, and have trouble defeating even NPCs that are near my own level. Is this a bad combo from the start, or am I just missing something key in playing this game?

Elementalist is one of the hardest classes in the game. It has the lowest base HP pool and the lowest base armor. Its survival is dependent upon active defenses- kiting, dodging, active recovery abilities. Later in the game, at high levels and once you’ve learned them, they can put out some of the highest damage in the game or be built to be nearly impossible to kill, but they’re a brutal first class.

The main thing I have to ask is if you’re moving around in combat and switching attunements often. Every class should move while fighting, but ele especially needs it- while warriors, guardians, and rangers can get away with being immobile in most open-world PvE, elementalists will quickly get overwhelmed if they allow the enemy to catch up to them. In addition, you have to shift through your attunements constantly to keep the enemy under control and do damage. Here’s an old video of myself playing my D/D ele against a bunch of mobs, to better illustrate the point: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMec3mSGPzg&feature=youtu.be

As someone who leveled an ele from launch, I can say I went through the same troubles as you did. The full story being here. Now, I can’t imagine myself maining any other class, but it was rough early on.

If you still want to learn your ele, I’ll gladly help you out. I’ll answer any questions you have to the best of my ability, and run with you if you’re on a NA server. Just PM me in-game anytime or send me a mail there or on the forums.

Race makes no difference.

Ele is quite powerful but takes skill to play to it’s full potential. You have to learn to swap attunements constantly to keep up the most effective rotations.

try this guide for suggestions:-
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Guide-Mastering-the-D-D-ele-7-15-13/first

Ele is very hard starting out. You can take barely any hits and have no way to keep enemies off you. Much later on you get better once you start unlocking traits that help you stay alive longer, but that won’t be until around level 20. Until then, try to keep fights one on one and feel free to run away if more than 2 enemies start attacking you.

Purchase and use defensive skills like Arcane Shield to keep yourself alive longer. Also focus on condition damage in your attack rotation and then just keep away from the enemy until they drop dead. That has been the safer tactic for me thus far.

Don’t despair! Like everyone has said Elementalist is just a interesting class to handle at first. Personally I played a Ele in GW1 and picked one up here, and they are two very different breeds. xD Gladly I had some practice in the betas to better understand.

But yes, stay on the move. Some weapons may help you more then others. Personally I think it comes down to preference. Staff offers a lot of crowd control and self support, but doesn’t offer as much damage as say a Dagger does, but you are able to keep the enemy away from you and burn it down.

Personally I found a good Staff rotation to be: pull with fire/lava font in front of them. Use fire escape if you need to. Then water for another slow, then drop the ice spike. Then earth for another slow and the earth burst skill. Lightning offers a lightning wall that stuns most enemies if they walk into it, except I think bosses (champions/veterans). You can vary in all this. I do all the time. That was just a general killing pattern I could take.

Dagger offers mid-range damage spells that vary greatly. And it usually puts out the most damage I’d say of the weapon sets. I’d put Scepter and Focus in this area as well as both are good and may offer a little more ability. Pick what you like though and find easy to use. Even though we can’t actively switch weapons in combat like other classes you are free to use them all and switch outside of combat.

Also once you better understand those, should look into experimenting with combos. Elementalists are the masters of combos. They can easily do combos with themselves or other players to give themselves more damage and other buffs. Can find a list of those here: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo

But the number one factor of Ele is obviously to switch attunements. This is your weapon switching and it really opens an array of spells to you to keep yourself alive.

Just take some practice. I’m sure you’ll get to enjoy Ele if its a class you really want to play. And honestly the first 20 or so levels can be kind of rough. Ele does suffer from some drawbacks but it can become a very enjoyable class if you are looking for it.

Good luck!

Thank you all very much for your replies! That makes me feel much better that I am not alone. I will definitely keep it up and try my best to use these techniques when in combat.

Eles get better the higher level they get…

Consider the cantrips, armour of earth (you can have this twice, one as a utility skill and another traited), mistform, blink and cleansing fire. You can trait a very, very good build around those and become very, very hard to kill.

The elite elemental skill helps a lot too, the earth elemental can tank for you and the water one heals you and your aliies.

There isn’t a bad combo from a PvE combat point of view.

Asura actually have a bit of a PvP advantage in that they are smaller and can visually be harder to see for other players. They have some pretty good Racial skills as well.

As a low level ele, it is especially important to keep your armor updated and to possibly concentrate more on improving vitality and toughness for survival (even to the point of where you put your early trait points). Later in the game you can alter that strategy but sub LVL 30 you really need to focus on staying alive. This includes the following:

1) Dodge when needed. Evasion can save you, don’t waste it. Later, there are traits that will actually let your Dodges be used offensively as well as Evade damage.
2) Always think about an escape route. You are squishy and may need to “retreat in a controlled manner”.
3) Defensive skills should not be ignored.
4) FORCE yourself to change attunements (elements) often during battle. This is crucial to improving your damage potential later in the game so if you don’t get used to it now, you should seriously consider another class. You can play an Ele as a “fire mage” or whatever (only using one or two elements), but you will be playing handicapped.

Again, later in the game, an Ele’s damage potential increase and you can alter you play-style based on this rule: Dead opponents present reduced risk to me.

As said race isnt it.
Ele is very squishy and difficult to master, bad combo.
I couldnt get the hang of Attunement swapping and gave up on my Ele (wich is lvl55 btw)

dagrdagaz.4913:

As said race isnt it.
Ele is very squishy and difficult to master, bad combo.
I couldnt get the hang of Attunement swapping and gave up on my Ele (wich is lvl55 btw)

Played ele up to 80 and continued in WvW up to about rank 100.
D/D isn’t at all ‘squishy’ if you build it right. Staff is a ranged dps so doesn’t need much toughness anyway.

It’s an exciting, fast playing class with a lot of tricks up it’s sleeve. It has so many skills available that you always have something unexpected to throw at other players.
Oh, and it has the most devastating mass extinction AoE burst in the game, Churning Earth.

Contiguous.1345:

dagrdagaz.4913:

As said race isnt it.
Ele is very squishy and difficult to master, bad combo.
I couldnt get the hang of Attunement swapping and gave up on my Ele (wich is lvl55 btw)

Played ele up to 80 and continued in WvW up to about rank 100.
D/D isn’t at all ‘squishy’ if you build it right. Staff is a ranged dps so doesn’t need much toughness anyway.

It’s an exciting, fast playing class with a lot of tricks up it’s sleeve. It has so many skills available that you always have something unexpected to throw at other players.
Oh, and it has the most devastating mass extinction AoE burst in the game, Churning Earth.

D/D is absolutely NOT squishy in any respect. I remember going from mid 50’s to 80 using a D/D arc/water build, and I was solo’ing group events attunement juggling and healing myself constantly by dropping back to water attunement for an instant heal and regen, dodge-rolling for a heal(30 arc trait. loved it so much.) and just dropping a cleansing wave when that wasn’t enough. Constant Vigor boons helped immensely as well. Not going to say it didn’t take forever, as I was stacked in healing power gear. But I could solo group events if I had a mind to. Ele is an insanely fun, and definitely challenging class to play. Probably why I love it so much. Biggest thing to remember is. Elementalist is sort of the late bloomer of GW2. you’re not as powerful early on, thanks to the way some classes scale with others. (a lvl 20 ele compared to a lvl 20 guardian, for instance.) But, depending on how each player builds, they often fall into their own strengths and weaknesses by the 50’s, and are completely different beasts by 80. All too often when I’m doing solo stuff on my 80 ele, I wish I was recording it, just to show off how amazing the class is.