Guild Wars 2

Hi, I am still new to the game and I was wondering if anyone had any advice for my ele. The main way I have been leveling has been running the champion train in Queensdale and this has become kind of dull. Any advice for leveling an ele or leveling in general would be much apprecated

I wouldn’t recommend the champ train. It might be efficient, but it’s mind-numbingly tedious. I would recommend exploring the world, doing map completion (renown hearts, points of interest, etc.) You’ll get to see a lot of places that way and go up against a lot of different enemies in different situations, and I think that’s more valuable when you’re just starting out than learning to farm the same events over and over in a mob.

As for Ele in particular, just try not to engage too many enemies at once while you’re learning to play the class. It’s a bit complicated, with all the attunements to swap between, but if you’re patient, it’s a ton of fun once you get the ropes.

Don’t level via the champ train on your first character. Not only is it dull, sometimes in poor company, and likely to burn you out on the game even before you’ve played it, it won’t give you the chance to really explore the world and learn your character.

The best all-around way to level for new players (and the real heart of the game) is exploration. Fill out hearts, walk around the area picking up PoIs and vistas you come across, do skill challenges you find, and do every event you come across. You’ll round yourself out well in that you’ll have numerous waypoints unlocked by the time you reach 80, and you’ll get to experience and learn the combat beyond simply zerging something down. Learning the combat especially is important if you’re planning on doing dungeons or PvP.

Elementalist is one of the hardest first classes to play in that you must move constantly, use your skills actively to counter attacks, change attunements often, and know when to dodge. I would recommend first investing in gear with defensive stats (toughness or vitality) and, once traits are unlocked, putting points into Water, Earth, or Arcana. If you’re having a lot of difficulty, by all means feel free to try out other classes.

If you have any other questions, feel free to ask here, or PM me in-game by typing /tell Falunel in chat. Welcome!

Thank you! Would it be better to go all vitality or should I try to add other things like power and precision too?

Kuduka.3860:

Thank you! Would it be better to go all vitality or should I try to add other things like power and precision too?

My personal rule of thumb when leveling was this- if I struggled to survive, I would stack defensive stats. As I got more comfortable and got better at avoiding damage, I would gradually trade out my defensive armor for offense.

I have leveled three elementalists by this rule- my first ele was all defensive, as I didn’t know the class and died a lot. By my third ele, I was able to build full glass while surviving well. Ultimately, build so that you are comfortable, and constantly practice active defense via dodging, skill countering, and so on. Stack defensive stats if you are struggling to survive, but use those stats only as a safety net/training wheels while you learn active play- don’t rely on soaking up damage.

Kuduka.3860:

Hi, I am still new to the game and I was wondering if anyone had any advice for my ele. The main way I have been leveling has been running the champion train in Queensdale and this has become kind of dull. Any advice for leveling an ele or leveling in general would be much apprecated

Upgrade your armor when you can, at least every 10 levels. You can usually keep up just from drops. Eat food to get extra xp from kills and get whatever buff the food comes with. Remember, you can usually survive a bad fight by running away. Most mobs lose aggro very quickly. Running away will not work as well in WvW. When you hit level 30 give wvw a try.

Regarding weapon choice for leveling an elementalist, I can give the following recommendations:

- Avoid main-hand dagger between level 15 (when monsters start fighting back in earnest) and level 60 (when you start acquiring three-stat equipment and unlock the last tier of traits). Due to the requirement to be close to your enemies to use dagger skills, you may have trouble staying alive, since an undergeared elementalist tends to be fragile.

- Off-hand dagger can be very useful at all levels, as many of its skills are area effects centered on you, and the Fire 4 skill is a fire field that can easily be used to create combos.

- Avoid the focus off-hand while leveling. The weapon has many niche uses, but it tends to support a strategy of outlasting enemies. This is something elementalists only really develop on the later levels (mostly due to low armor values in combination with low health).

- Staff can be decent for leveling, and some people swear by it. It requires fighting at a distance, and some skills actually support this strategy by creating distance between you and enemies. Be warned, it is the slowest of the elementalist weapons, and it relies heavily on AoE skills that require you to keep the enemy in the area for maximum effect.

- Scepter is my personal favorite while leveling. It has distance, and it deals mostly decent damage. However, many of its best skills are single-target, and you can easily be overwhelmed if you face multiple foes. (Combining with off-hand dagger somewhat compensates for this, but not completely.)

Finally, consider equipping at least one defensive utility skill (e.g. Arcane Shield, Mist Form, Signet of Earth, Armor of Earth), especially while you are still learning all your weapon skills and how they can interact. This will allow you to escape situations that threaten to overwhelm you.

Thanks to you all! My current setup is a staff with all vitality armor at the highest required level I can (level 20). I have glyph of storms, signet of air, and signet of earth. My healing skill is the one that grants me health on every spell (can’t remember what it’s called). Is this a good setup for how everyone was suggesting? Any more to add would be much appreciated.

Kuduka.3860:

Thanks to you all! My current setup is a staff with all vitality armor at the highest required level I can (level 20). I have glyph of storms, signet of air, and signet of earth. My healing skill is the one that grants me health on every spell (can’t remember what it’s called). Is this a good setup for how everyone was suggesting? Any more to add would be much appreciated.

Glyph of Storm is a nice skill but I am really not a fan of it. The cooldown is just too long even when traited. Inside of a dungeon you could use it on one boss and by the time you get to the next one it could still be recharging. Outside of a dungeon is probably even worse, use it once and by the time it recharges you could have gone through several dozen mobs.

On the other hand I use Arcane Shield which has an even longer recharge and I use it untraited. :P
However it serves a very different purpose. It functions as the big red button for when things go down hill.

Signet of Air is nice since it is also a a blind and a stun breaker which means if you get knocked down you can use it to get back up and prevent the following attack from hitting.

The earth elemental summoned with Glyph of Lesser Elemental and Glyph of Elemental is a decent tank, especially if you support it a bit with weakness from earth and healing from water.

I use the Signet for the heal slot as well but I have both faster recharge for signets and I keep the passive effect of signets even after using them. Without those it would probably be better to use Glyph of Elemental Harmony or Ether Renewal. Unless you feel like you need the condition removal it then go with Glyph of Elemental Harmony since Ether Renewal takes a while to activate which is not so great if you are in the middle of dying.

Im also leveling ele, lv41 so far. Been using only d/d so far actually, havent really touched staff at all. You can still kite with d/d (alternate with fire 3 → 4 → 2/5 → air autoattack for max dmg) , just need to change attunements a lot and use the right skills to stay alive. Its a little challenging at 1st but also very fun. My skill setup at this point is mainly built for mobility since I am running arnd a lot. the healing Glyph just for the swiftness when attuned to air. Signet of Air at all times for obvious reasons, Arcane Shield and Armor of Earth/Arcane Wave. Get Fiery GS when you unlock slot for ulti. Traitwise I am just winging it haha. I first had 0/10/0/0/10 with Zephyr’s Boon and Elemental Attunement. +10% move speed when attuned to air is a nice bonus with this traitline. I’ll probably retrait since I hit 40 but same traitlines, 0/20/0/0/20 what I’ll be aiming for.

Kuduka.3860:

Thanks to you all! My current setup is a staff with all vitality armor at the highest required level I can (level 20). I have glyph of storms, signet of air, and signet of earth. My healing skill is the one that grants me health on every spell (can’t remember what it’s called). Is this a good setup for how everyone was suggesting? Any more to add would be much appreciated.

With leveling, the best setup is the one you’re most comfortable with.

I personally leveled my first elementalist with staff until 24, at which point I discovered daggers and found that I preferred them much more. I leveled her the rest of the way to 80 with double daggers and had no issues. My second elementalist was leveled with dagger/focus, which had less mobility and bursting power but some strong shields, anti-range, and spot CC abilities that made soloing champions and difficult skill challenges easy. With my third elementalist, I decided to go out of my comfort zone and use a staff, which I’ve been faring much better with than on my first ele thanks to experience.

So there’s a lot of viable leveling setups- just use what suits you, and don’t be afraid to tweak. If you want a few tips regarding your current setup, here are a few regarding Glyph of Storms.

Glyph of Storms has a long cooldown, but a long duration and some special effects. Like all glyphs, it changes effects depending on what attunement you’re in. Fire is generally best for straight damage, water is for slowing down large groups, air is for breaking the AoE cap limit (use it against large, clustered groups of 5+ enemies), and earth is for damage-over-time and defense.

Glyph of Storms in earth attunement (aka Sandstorm) is very useful when fighting multiple enemies, as it lasts around 9 seconds and continuously blinds enemies in the AoE for that duration. One key part of playing ele is knowing how to combo skills. A good combo with Sandstorm is to lure a group of enemies together, drop Sandstorm on yourself when they get close, and then stack Meteor Shower and Lava Font on top of them while shielded by Sandstorm. I’ve also used Sandstorm to counter ranged enemies, since they don’t walk out of AoEs, or cast Frozen Ground/Static Field → Lava Font → Firestorm on multiple enemies to quickly snare and burn them.

Ether renewal is one of the best healing skills for an elementalist.

Staves are better at AoE, and do better in groups. For soloing, scepter or dagger as a mainhand will be faster, with dagger as the lowest survivability.

Between offhands, dagger does more damage, focus is more survivability and control. I’ve grown to love projectile nullification and reflection it provides, the invuln, and the freezing effect a lot. Fire Aura is kind of the weak link in the focus skill set.

Between defensives, earth armor is too weak to keep you alive against many bosses’ ultimate attacks, mist form prevents you from using healing skills or whatnot. A combination of Arcane Shield and Ether Renewal tends to yield the best results, but if you’re still having problems a second defensive skill may help after Arcane Shield as the first.

Also, don’t discount Lightning Hammer. For world exploration it’s incredibly useful as its skill 5, when Blasted by your other skills, can give you up to 1 minute 20 seconds swiftness per use… and when you bring yourself to above 15 Might by whatever means, Lightning hammer does very high AoE damage at medium range to everything when autoattacking.

I usually run up to a mob group, summon lightning hammer on the way, drop skill 5 on the group, blast the finishers with the mobs still in the area, then when all the blasts are done I get 4-6 dead mobs’ worth of experience and drops, and 1 minute 20 seconds of swiftness to move to the next area – then pick up my second Lightning hammer before running off.

Done correctly you have permanent swiftness when clearing the map.

My usual combo rotation is Dragon Fang (Blast 1) ->Fire Wall (Fire Field) -> Phoenix (Blast 2, cure one condition) -> Fire Aura (Burning to enemy, Might to self on hit) -> Dodge towards Fire Wall (Fast approach/evade all initial ranged mob attacks) -> Elemental attunement swap: Earth mid dodge (Protection: 8 seconds, 3 Might from weapon sigil) -> Earthquake skill at end of dodge (Blast 3) -> Magnetic Wave at Fire Wall (Projectile Repulsion – 3 seconds, cure 3 conditions, Blast 4) -> Arcane Blast at Fire Wall (Blast 5) -> Summon Lightning Hammer, Autoattack 3 times before Fire Wall fades (Blast 6).

In 8 seconds, I get 21 might lasting ~ 38 seconds (at 190% boon duration). When the Lightning Hammer fades in the ~27 second mark, I repeat this process, and this gives 25 might permanently, while using the second Lightning Hammer to do more AoE damage.

This rotation may vary slightly depending. Players and bosses require more use of accessory skills like Water’s 2 control skills or Air’s projectile nullification and control. Earth 5 invuln and Arcane Shield are used in cases of stun and/or impending lethal damage, water skill 3 is used to heal. Water dodges are also used when Lightning Hammering for healing without having to pause DPS much.