Guild Wars 2

Hey how you do, my name is Finalbreath I have been playing Elementalist since launch. I have no prior GW experience other than betas and even on the betas I played other classes.

The Elementalist is described as a direct damage class and a glass cannon in the different strategy guides I have peeked at. Now taking that information and ignoring all the support roles the Elementalist “can” fill and focus on the damage portion.

People who choose a ranged spell caster such as this one usually see themselves throwing fireballs and seeing the health of the mobs they are attacking physically move when they hit them. The Elementalist in its current state you wont see this and this is why. We have five weapon combinations Staff, Scepter/Focus, Scepter/Dagger, Dagger/Dagger and Dagger, Focus.

Of the weapon combinations if you simplify what they do its easy to remember (based off the fire skills which have the highest DPS numbers)

Staff= AOE – All of the abilities have an aoe aspect and common mmo experience tells you that AOE=lower single target DPS. You don’t AOE one target down “usually”

Scepter= Support Main Hand – This weapon brings blinds/defense cool-downs and endurance regeneration for more dodges

Focus= Defense Off Hand – this weapon brings amazing shields/knockdowns and even an invulnerable.

Dagger Main Hand= Condition Weapon – This weapon based on your Elemental Aspect applies conditions.

Dagger Off Hand – Condition Weapon- This weapon again applies a multitude of conditions based on elemental aspect.

Now where in those weapon descriptions do you see anything that says “Here is the boom!”. Its not there I am sorry but its not but that is OK because we still have an option for a flat out DPS spec.

I suggest Dagger/Dagger with these stat priorities

Condition- Super powerful stat because it effects both bleeds and burn.

Power- Will help your damage on a more general level.

Toughness- Take big hits like a champ!

Vitality- Take more hits like chump!

Precision- Generally worthless in my personal opinion. We have no Big spells that we cast often enough to matter.

For your Cantrips (is that the right word?) I use

Heal Slot————-Glyph of Elemental Harmony————Buff/Heal very awesome
Fifth Slot————-Arcane Shield——————————————-60 cd to stop 3 attacks
Sixth Slot————Arcane Blast———————————————-20 cd single target attack
Seventh Slot——Arcane Wave——————————————-30 cd Instant AOE attack
Elite Skill———Fiery Sword/D Golem——————————-Fiery sword will be the biggest numbers you see and D Golem (asura ability) is the only pet i have seen that taunts and lives effectively.)

So now looking at the abilities you have we will focus on just two trees Fire and Earth.
The fire tree gives you Dragons breath a channeled Frontal Cone Burn Stacking Ability. A leap for survival/DPS. Ring of fire for more condition stacking and finally a decent single target spell that does bonus damage for target being burning.
If you quickly use all of these abilities (and dump your arcane spells for extra damage) you should have bout 15 secs of burning condition on the target(s).
Now switching to Earth you can dump Churning earth ( Channeled AOE with hinder and bleed effect) Ring of earth (AOE bleeds) and if needed earthquake for a stun. If your target still lives flip back to fire and start again!

So you put 15 secs of burning and at least 10 stacks of bleeds on your target(s). Of note please remember bleeds stack for more DAMAGE and burns stack for more DURATION.

So by stacking the condition stat you can benefit from it in both fire and earth.

Now to further push this damage I use the following traits
Fire -10% more damage in fire , 5% more damage to burning targets and fire spells add 5 might.

Also of note fire traits increase duration of conditions

Earth-Armor of Earth at 50% health, toughness when channeling spells, and 5% more damage when in melee.

Also of note earth increase condition damage.

the last trait is kinda a preference based on you air can give you 25% more damage to low health targets but arcane can give you a arcane shield or lower CD on your arcane spells.

So i know this is probably the worst write up possible for how to play a class grammar and reading wise but if you need further clarification please say something and I will try again.

I found this all to be very helpful

Thanks for the thoughts

You mention the unimportance of precision. This is for an increase in crits, not chance to hit. Hi precision= high crit chance= more dps

Honestly when it comes to stat prioritizing it all depends on what attunement you are imo. I go power, precision, crit when I am using daggers or scepter because I am mostly in my fire spec. Dragon’s tooth can hit pretty hard. Also the fact that you cannot stack burning on a target only refresh it so I think condition damage doesnt help that much with burning. Maybe I am wrong.

There is no way I can go dagger spec in dungeons because I will just Die instantly. I need to go range and for me, Power precision crit works best. So far one Issue I am seeing with my elementalist (Especially in PvP) When it comes to damage output, we are pretty below par, in relation to how squishy we are. Atleast from what I am noticing. My guardians hybrid damage/tank spec can dish out more damage than my glass cannon elementalist. I love playing my ele in pve, but when it comes to spvp they are really lacking.

yes… because everyone knows elementalist is supposed to DPS only in melee and do no damage from afar…
You HAVE to use your utilities to deal damage. Mostly with arcane spells. Giving you litterally no defensive utilities on the class with the less vitality and thoughness while having to be upclose to fight. THIS MAKE NO SENSE. We are a caster class that HAS to fight in MELEE and we deal LESS damage then other CLASSES while being the most SQUISHY of all. A warrior is harder to kill in full squishy spec and gear then a full defense spec and gear elementalist!!!
Elementalist needs to be seriously looked at. They need to increase every single missile speed by at least 3x their actual speed. They need to take half the AoEs on the staff and change them to something either instant or fast missile. They need to buff up every single damage we deal by A LOT. They need to change lot of useless spells like air attunement 2nd ability for staff and dagger while changing the lightning shield on dagger main hand to something that help DPS. They need to reduce the CD on attunement swapping. They need to improve lots of our traits that are currently worthless.

Elementalist needs to be fixed.
While warrior, guardian and rogue require their deserved nerf.

ckooken-Maybe i didnt explain well enough why precision in my mind is worthless if you look at the spells you cast as an elementist there isnt enough “direct” spells to warrent stacking the stat at all. nothing off focus looks “crit-worthy” nothing off daggers with the exception of dagger off hand. Staff maybe but who really thinks crit aoe is worth it? Precision does not truly make sense. Now look at all the abilities that can be affected by condition stacking do you see the difference? Also dagger dagger is easy to survive I do not have an issue at all but I also use my heal and dodges are you doing the same?

Chris thank you for your point.

Snaple you seem really angry I apologize for not stating this earlier but I am speaking more for PVE than PVP I am sorry.

Betch Thank you for the kind Statement.

Adversary.7325:

The Elementalist is described as a direct damage class and a glass cannon in the different strategy guides I have peeked at. Now taking that information and ignoring all the support roles the Elementalist “can” fill and focus on the damage portion.

I don’t know what guides you are reading, but i think this is the first part that’s wrong, and because everything in your post is built on this assumption, everything that follows is wrong as well.

The elementalist has a huge variety of weapon skills at his/her disposal. Let’s take the staff as an example: You can apply burning, bleed, vulnerability, chilled, blind, stunned, weakness, crippled and immobilized, and most of these are AoE. You can also (just using the staff) buff your allies with might, swiftness, frost aura and regeneration (by using the combo fields together with erruption). You also have the most potent healing spell in the game at your disposal, which doesn’t only regenerate in a huge area, but also removes up to 3 conditions over 9 seconds. And it combines with erruption to give another extra healing to everyone nearby. Oh, and you can reflect missile attacks and knock back/down enemies as well.

On top of all this, you also probably have the best AoE damage of all classes.

All this isn’t even considering utility spells (arcane wave makes the buffing much easier for example).

And now you also want top notch single target damage and survivability on top of it?

I haven’t played that much with other weapons, but from what i can see they also have a lot of utility on them, although not as much as the staff.

Imo people still have the mage of other games in their mind and think the elementalist is a glass cannon like in other games. It’s not, it’s an extremely versitile supporter which also has great AoE damage, but you have to use your tools, and not just “focus on fire and earth”, the elementalist can use all 4 elements.

I agree though that they need to change something about the second air spell on the staff, the damage is too low and the blind doesn’t last long enough for it’s long cast time. Increase the damage, or make it an instant cast with a longer cooldown.

Naryoril
its from the brady games stratgy guide that i bought and got autographed at the Austin Opening Launch Party.

Secondly your attitude is confusing. You rage at me for discussing the damage of the elementist and when I state that I dont want to play a support you say that I have support so therefore I HAVE to play it? So guardians have to tank? Healing spells are nice but they dont do much when you dont have a heal rating. I have noted your comment and now kindly ask other players to ignore you.

And to be fair the exact quote is “…the use of formidable direct damage…..”
and to also be fair I think glass cannon is a fair descriptive way of describing the glass due to the hit points but your right we should be more “glass women handguns”

Adversary.7325:

Snaple you seem really angry I apologize for not stating this earlier but I am speaking more for PVE than PVP I am sorry.

It’s the same thing for PvE.
We receive way more damage from mobs and deal less damage then anyone else if we don’t use all our utilities for damage purpose.
Our only + is that even if all our AoEs are worthless, we have enough worthless AoEs to make decent AoE damage.

I went 30/10/10/0/20 using a staff; power/prec/crit dmg with the rune that stacks power per kill. Use this for farming.

Also stacked Power/Toughness/Precision on most of my gear except jewelery which is toughness/vit/prec. So far, I die way way less than going glass cannon gears. It is quite noticable going from pure dps set to this when it comes to takin dmg. I still dish out some pretty hellacious AoE dmg, or so it seems since I have only played ele to 80 so far.

Anyways, now to make multiple weapon sets to fill different needs since the rune on current staff is terrible for instances. Using mainhand and offhand is better for single target I believe plus you can use two runes; many those runes are pretty good.

Ele was fun to play… I now play a Guardian b/c twohand sword makes me feel less kitteny. This MMO however makes me feel like I’m playing a kitten character most of the time anyway regardless of what profession I pick.

snaplemouton.1294:

Adversary.7325:

Snaple you seem really angry I apologize for not stating this earlier but I am speaking more for PVE than PVP I am sorry.

It’s the same thing for PvE.
We receive way more damage from mobs and deal less damage then anyone else if we don’t use all our utilities for damage purpose.
Our only + is that even if all our AoEs are worthless, we have enough worthless AoEs to make decent AoE damage.

Agreed and well stated! But my argument is against using said worthless AoE damage and instead trying to single target damage as much as possible. Also I do not find AoE damage a fun way to level or play the game when I am doing stuff.

fixit.7189:

I went 30/10/10/0/20 using a staff; power/prec/crit dmg with the rune that stacks power per kill. Also stacked Power/Toughness/Precision on most of my gear except jewelery which is toughness/vit/prec. So far, I die way way less than going glass cannon gears. It is quite noticable going from pure dps set to this when it comes to takin dmg. I still dish out some pretty hellacious AoE dmg, or so it seems since I have only played ele to 80 so far.

Anyways, now to make multiple weapon sets to fill different needs since the rune on current staff is terrible for instances. Using mainhand and offhand is better for single target I believe plus you can use two runes; many those runes are pretty good.

Very valid point using survival stats to increase your DPS by keeping yourself up for longer time and though I do feel that is a valid way to play your character I much rather trade my survival for DPS as long as the DPS is effective. I feel that this setup is the most valid of pure DPS and I challange others to try it too.

AoE survival setup is doable and pretty effective to farm events. Lots of loots too. Not so effective in instances which would require another load out entirely. Wish there was…a dual spec. /inc flames

edit. like to point out something I learned long ago as a MMO player: you do zero DPS while dead.

Kalithro.6532:

Ele was fun to play… I now play a Guardian b/c twohand sword makes me feel less kitteny. This MMO however makes me feel like I’m playing a kitten character most of the time anyway regardless of what profession I pick.

This statement is very true I have found that on most classes I find myself running from mobs but I assume that is a design not a flaw. Which is one of the reasons I chose to play elementist I figure since my character is wearing a dress he doesn’t feel bad bout running in circles :p

Would try your load out if I could, but getting the neccessary items is very expensive. To convert to proper dual wield would cost over 10g alone which I certainly don’t have atm.

fixit.7189:

AoE survival setup is doable and pretty effective to farm events. Lots of loots too. Not so effective in instances which would require another load out entirely. Wish there was…a dual spec. /inc flames

edit. like to point out something I learned long ago as a MMO player: you do zero DPS while dead.

I was actually surprised that we could not carry the books that reset our traits. For a game that we can instantly change so much between pulls its odd that traits are a pain to redo.

fixit.7189:

Would try your load out if I could, but getting the neccessary items is very expensive. To convert to proper dual wield would cost over 10g which I certainly don’t have atm.

I thank you for your intelligent posts and comments. I hope I didn’t seem too harsh to the other guy. Hopefully you can give it a shot at a later point I am sure you will like it. A high mobility High Dps fight that becomes a race between your health and the targets. Something I felt was missing till I tried this.

Adversary.7325:

Naryoril
its from the brady games stratgy guide that i bought and got autographed at the Austin Opening Launch Party.

Secondly your attitude is confusing. You rage at me for discussing the damage of the elementist and when I state that I dont want to play a support you say that I have support so therefore I HAVE to play it? So guardians have to tank? Healing spells are nice but they dont do much when you dont have a heal rating. I have noted your comment and now kindly ask other players to ignore you.

I didn’t rage at you, if you felt this way, i apologize.

Nowhere in the Brady Games guide does it say anything about the elementalist being a glass cannon. In fact, the 2. paragraph of the “Elementalists in PvE” chapter (page 162) says the same thing i do:

“Indeed, elementalists’ power lies in their flexibility. Their ability to shift almost effortlessly between damage dealing, healing, and buff/debuffing is second to none. Even in the middle of a fight, you can switch from high area-of-effect damage to keeping everyone healed, and then back tho wholesale desturction.”

And i don’t say you have to play support, but i say you can’t complain about bad single target damage and survivability when you have amazing support and excellent AoE. If you refuse to use the best parts of the elementalist because you don’t like to use them you probably picked the wrong class.

And you ask others to ignore me because i don’t have the same opinion as you? Uhmm… ok…

Edit: typos

Thing is I still do some decent dmg, I think. My AoEs while in events are hitting for upwards of 3k per hit (with full 25 power stacks). With 44% crit, I seem to crit alot too. And when the mobs inevitably aggro and all turn to gank me, I can survive a bit of punishment; when I geared all out dps I would get fragged over and over after dodge meter is used up.

I can see the merit for highest DPS possible but I can also say that surviving longer is viable too.

They need to open up class forums, dang it. :S

If you only play in two attunements you’re not remotely playing to potential. I’m a mediocre ele but that much is obvious.

Naryoril.6507:

Adversary.7325:

Naryoril
its from the brady games stratgy guide that i bought and got autographed at the Austin Opening Launch Party.

Secondly your attitude is confusing. You rage at me for discussing the damage of the elementist and when I state that I dont want to play a support you say that I have support so therefore I HAVE to play it? So guardians have to tank? Healing spells are nice but they dont do much when you dont have a heal rating. I have noted your comment and now kindly ask other players to ignore you.

I didn’t rage at you, if you felt this way, i apologize.

Nowhere in the Brady Games guide does it say anything about the elementalist being a glass cannon. In fact, the 2. paragraph of the “Elementalists in PvE” chapter (page 162) says the same thing i do:

“Indeed, elementalists’ power lies in their flexibility. Their ability to shift almost effortlessly between damage dealing, healing, and buff/debuffing is second to none. Even in the middle of a fight, you can switch from high area-of-effect damage to keeping everyone healed, and then back tho wholesale desturction.”

And i don’t say you have to play support, but i say you can’t complain about bad single target damage and survivability when you have amazing support and excellent AoE. If you refuse to use the best parts of the elementalist because you don’t like to use them you probably picked the wrong class.

And you ask others to ignore me because i don’t have the same opinion as you? Uhmm… ok…

Edit: typos

Please check page 142 but I do not wish to argue this point. I am simply stating how do you come into a dps conversation advocating support? Thats like going to the butcher asking for bread.

Rainshine.5493:

If you only play in two attunements you’re not remotely playing to potential. I’m a mediocre ele but that much is obvious.

Once again sir I am talking about damage you can play the other aspect all you like. Using your heals from water is viable but in my mindframe and my gear I see little to no use for casting a heal on myself. Because I can A) Heal myself for a small amount of health that does not negate damage done to me if i get hit again or kill the target and heal after the fight. in these examples I am not talking bout the heal cantrip. Also lighting seems to not be effective. it brings 1/3 of the dps and in most cases the effect is not worth the cd of changing aspects on one of my dps abilities. Though I will say in dagger/dagger I do fight champions starting with the air run speed and the lightning aura to stun them. so I think a broad statement of only using two elemental aspects is doing it wrong is not what you should be getting from this.

Instead think using two aspects is being more efficient.

Elementalist has the advantage that we can switch between 4 different skill sets depending on the situation. No other class has that kind of versatility. If you’re only using 2 attunements of the 4 then you ARE doing it wrong. Each has a purpose, you need to recognize when that purpose is and use it then.

Fire – AoE with condition damage and area denial

Water – healing, slows, regeneration, stun.

Air – individual DPS, stuns, blinds, knockdown.

Earth – defense, bleeds, cripples

Look at all of those options, if you aren’t taking full advantage of every single one you are definitely doing it wrong. Elementalist isn’t your traditional wizard from other MMOs, sitting far away and hitting with one time high damage spells isn’t their job description. You picked the wrong class if that’s what you want. If you want the class with the most versatility in any situation however, then elementalist shines.

On top of that you can FURTHER customize it by switching weapons before a fight. Anticipating a big group fight, grab your staff for AoE. Gonna be one on one, pull out the daggers. I personally prefer the utility of the focus versus a second dagger though.

I think one of the more obvious things a touch borked is the animation times vs damage that is going on on some of the attacks. I get that themantically we are chanting a spell, but some of the times when the damage starts especially in our aoes the fight is over

Personally I don’t think Ele dmg in pve is low, the problem is it is hard to achieve. And the effort that is spent to achieve it really only puts you on par with other classes. With scepter/dagger you can get silly fire burst dmg but it is connected to the fire ring. On top of the burst combo you also end up with 14 stacks of might for when you switch to you next element. But for the burst combo you need to have the mobs inside of of the circle. This obviously takes a lot of practice and some luck.

Also you have to constantly switch between all elements, know the cool downs for all the spells and know how to maximize their effectiveness. And for all of this you simply get the same amount of dmg as the other classes. You are also way squishier, so you need to be able to do this and really not get hit. I really like that the class is complicated, I just wish that it gave some level of pay off if you play it correctly and not just make you on par with everyone else.

Adversary.7325:

ckooken-Maybe i didnt explain well enough why precision in my mind is worthless if you look at the spells you cast as an elementist there isnt enough “direct” spells to warrent stacking the stat at all. nothing off focus looks “crit-worthy” nothing off daggers with the exception of dagger off hand. Staff maybe but who really thinks crit aoe is worth it? Precision does not truly make sense. Now look at all the abilities that can be affected by condition stacking do you see the difference? Also dagger dagger is easy to survive I do not have an issue at all but I also use my heal and dodges are you doing the same?

Chris thank you for your point.

Snaple you seem really angry I apologize for not stating this earlier but I am speaking more for PVE than PVP I am sorry.

Betch Thank you for the kind Statement.

Yes I understand what you are trying to say, and dagger dagger is pretty decent dps. Especially with stacking condition damage. My point is, going duel daggers in a Dungeon is going to offer you nothing but a quick death. Especially in explorable mode. Trust me, Ive tried it…For me, scepter, offhand dagger or Staffs with stacking crit damage and precision offers me the most DPS while staying alive. Sure duel daggers with condition damage might offer the highest amount of dps, but when you are dying in every pull its not worth it.

ckooken.8190:

Yes I understand what you are trying to say, and dagger dagger is pretty decent dps. Especially with stacking condition damage. My point is, going duel daggers in a Dungeon is going to offer you nothing but a quick death. Especially in explorable mode. Trust me, Ive tried it…For me, scepter, offhand dagger or Staffs with stacking crit damage and precision offers me the most DPS while staying alive. Sure duel daggers with condition damage might offer the highest amount of dps, but when you are dying in every pull its not worth it.

I have to fully agree with this, while dual dagger is my favorite weapon combo to play, at 80 in dungeons it is just a quick trip to downed state even with a full “tanky” build.

Adversary.7325:

Rainshine.5493:

If you only play in two attunements you’re not remotely playing to potential. I’m a mediocre ele but that much is obvious.

Once again sir I am talking about damage you can play the other aspect all you like. Using your heals from water is viable but in my mindframe and my gear I see little to no use for casting a heal on myself.

If that’s all water attunement had to offer, I’d perhaps agree. You can’t just damage in this game. You can’t. You HAVE to use CCs/debilitate your enemy to stay alive, which air and water both can do. You’ll also do more damage to a target with vulnerability on it. EDIT: And that doesn’t even take into consideration the condition removal water gives you, which is huge/necessary at certain times.

It’s like somebody only using one weapon on a warrior because they only like that weapon. They’d be doing it wrong, too.

Diskonekted.8167:

ckooken.8190:

Yes I understand what you are trying to say, and dagger dagger is pretty decent dps. Especially with stacking condition damage. My point is, going duel daggers in a Dungeon is going to offer you nothing but a quick death. Especially in explorable mode. Trust me, Ive tried it…For me, scepter, offhand dagger or Staffs with stacking crit damage and precision offers me the most DPS while staying alive. Sure duel daggers with condition damage might offer the highest amount of dps, but when you are dying in every pull its not worth it.

I have to fully agree with this, while dual dagger is my favorite weapon combo to play, at 80 in dungeons it is just a quick trip to downed state even with a full “tanky” build.

Dagger / Dagger maybe fun but is implemented poorly into the game. I just think it is way to easy to get into the downed state. I really hope Anet does a major overhaul to the downed state system. I find it boring and it makes me feel like a kitten (g i m p).

I agree that being dagger/dagger is a risk but I feel well played it will be the best dps in the games current state and you are also correct in reminding the player base that it is a high risk high reward spec to play. But to be honest I have played a lot of games that messing up once will get you killed. This game the downed state seems more of a reward for trading dps for survival. The point of course is not to mess up and get hit. Also I would like to remind the thread I am proposing this information because it seems like more and more elementists are getting funneled into Staff AOE with Pets or support. So like I said at the start this spec/thread is more focused on doing damage and feeling effective at it. Something a lot of players say they are missing.

Adversary.7325:

So like I said at the start this spec/thread is more focused on doing damage and feeling effective at it. Something a lot of players say they are missing.

We are far from being low on damage. We get very high damage from having both direct and condition damage in our spells. There is 2 problems to our profession
1. Our survivability is so low we are either forced into having massive amount of survival stats in order to survive which gives us no damage at all or be lucky and fight a boss that doesn’t hit you all the time with unavoidable stuff.
2. All of our abilities are WAY too slow. All we have is AoE that take time to explode or deal damage over a long duration, delayed spells that take time to hit and EXTREMELY SLOW MISSILE SPEED attacks. Only the air attunement get the fast attack, and thoses attacks tickle at the most squishy high DPS spec.
In a game where moving and dodging is king, how can we even hit a target with theses kind of abilities? On top of it, we are probably the profession with the lowest amount of CC in the game. And most of them won’t hit because it’s too slow.