Guild Wars 2

My level 24 elementalist is great in the open world. I get CRUSHED almost anytime I enter a story area though. It’s always 5 enemies at a time, and I just don’t know how to deal with them. I use scepter/dagger which gives amazing utility, but even swapping to water for heals, dodging, I’m taking far too much dmg. I’m sure Armor of Earth will help, but I’m not big enough to get it yet. How exactly do you get through them without dying at least twice?

I use double daggers, drop lots of conditions, CC/kite. Frozen Burst is one of my favorite skills for this, but all but fire attunement has solid CCs/debuffs. The one skill I rarely use solo is Churning Earth. You usually get beat down too fast while you’re channeling, even if you knock down beforehand.

That said I too have struggled with a few encounters where they drop mobs right on you after a cutscene. Eles, especially early on, really need to be able to choose how and when to engage. It’s tough when you’re caught flat-footed.

Some are easy, but some are just nightmares. As a highly experienced raiders in many other MMOs, I hardly die in dungeons but I guess I have died a lot more in the story instances in this game. The concept of aggro in this game is sort of obscure as well. Even if you do nothing to the mob, not even healing anyone, they would chase you all the way until you run out of instance. Not even the lesser elemental or elite skills will help because they all lack AoE taunt to keep aggro and they die real quickly. Most of our cc are non-instant cast which add up a lot of damage if you tried to cc.

They need to test those story quests with a casual elementalist and that should fix for other classes too. FTM it seems to be balanced only for warriors and guardians.

Rainshine.5493:

I use double daggers, drop lots of conditions, CC/kite. Frozen Burst is one of my favorite skills for this, but all but fire attunement has solid CCs/debuffs. The one skill I rarely use solo is Churning Earth. You usually get beat down too fast while you’re channeling, even if you knock down beforehand.

That said I too have struggled with a few encounters where they drop mobs right on you after a cutscene. Eles, especially early on, really need to be able to choose how and when to engage. It’s tough when you’re caught flat-footed.

A little tip with churning earth: knock then down with 4, use glyph of storms so that they’re in the aoe, then 5 your heart out without worry of getting eaten nearly as quickly.

I agree I am at level 17 with my elementalist and I am loving everything except a few story quests. Some of them can be too difficult and even with your NPC allies it is still hard, I just cannot do enough damage to make progress. I find myself constantly fighting to survive and revive myself.

For now I try and stun everything and use push backs combo’d with the utility that gives you 5 criticals for the next 5 attacks which does help. What other utility would be best for these lower levels pre-20 to help my character out in these story modes?

Xylidya.4318:

Rainshine.5493:

I use double daggers, drop lots of conditions, CC/kite. Frozen Burst is one of my favorite skills for this, but all but fire attunement has solid CCs/debuffs. The one skill I rarely use solo is Churning Earth. You usually get beat down too fast while you’re channeling, even if you knock down beforehand.

That said I too have struggled with a few encounters where they drop mobs right on you after a cutscene. Eles, especially early on, really need to be able to choose how and when to engage. It’s tough when you’re caught flat-footed.

A little tip with churning earth: knock then down with 4, use glyph of storms so that they’re in the aoe, then 5 your heart out without worry of getting eaten nearly as quickly.

Very nifty tip, thank you! That’s a skill I don’t think I’ve really given a fair shake to. I had been using Arcane Shield for this since yesterday (figured out instant casts don’t interrupt channels!), but Glyph of Storms seems to have a lot of utility. I’ll pop it on my bar during my next adventure.

I’ve just finished personal story on my elementalist today so a few things I used. For weapons, I use either staff, or scepter/dagger with traits in earth and water (vitality+toughness for survival, condition damage for bleeds/burns). I use elementals in harder fights, since they manage to attract attention of mobs quite often (at least thats my impression) and they are priceless against veterans.

In fight, I usually try to just keep monsters bleeding/burning while running. Early on, I used a lot of staff fire skills. Monsters tend to run through Burning retreat; Lava Font combined with Arcane Wave gives combo field effect and deals really high damage if monsters stand in it; Flame Burst and Fireball do some extra damage and, if situation allows and mobs ignore you, Meteor Shower spices things up. With enough condition damage, Eruption on staff earth has turned into my favorite attack, as most normal monsters die after 2 of them (assuming they get hit by both and you survive till they bleed to death). Other skills used mostly for CC and healing.

With scepter/dagger, Stone shards and Churning earth were a powerful combination (even Stone shards alone can do a lot, if you let them stack up). Having 2 burst heals (Cleansing wave and Water Trident) can save you in tough situations and on fire you have some of the most damaging abilities (Dragon’s tooth when it drops on the mob, Phoenix when it hits 3 times, and Fire grab when target is burning, which he will due to Flamestrike). Scepter/dagger has turned out to be my favorite single target combination for tough bosses.

It all comes down to having someone (earth elemental, NPCs) who keeps monsters in one spot. With toughness/vitality gear, you could probably take a lot of beating yourself, but tanking 3 or more mobs would usually be out of question. Also, I believe you can have some friends join personal story instance with you. I think they need to be in the same area and meet level requirements though.

I use Scepter/Dagger. My utility spells are glyph of lesser elemental, and then 2 other defensive abilities. For my elite ability I use Hounds of Balthazar (though that’s irrelevant since you can’t use them).

The most important thing is to constantly kite, and to make sure you’re in the right affinity. Don’t just switch randomly. Generally you should be opening with fire, earth when mobs decide to eat you, and then water when you need to heal up.

One useful trick to know the range of the mobs. Generally they have a maximum range that they will run. So sometimes when you have to fight a group of mobs you can run so that all but one or two will reset, kill the one or two that didn’t. And then repeat.