Guild Wars 2

After a very long break from the game, I’ve returned, and have my elementalist in full exotic gear with ascended amulet and the 6-piece scholar runes, and running the staff build with a sigil of force and sigil of accuracy. I’ve been running dungeons fairly successfully and want now to get into fractals. I’ve tried to help myself as much as possible by looking at guides, watching videos, reading old forum posts, but I wanted to ask the ele community a couple of questions about what people expect of an ele in these scenarios.

1. Might stacking. Is this even a thing anymore? I’ve looked at posts and guides where by starting in fire with scepter/focus and switching weapons, an ele can single-handedly get 25 stacks. I haven’t tried it yet and it seems to require perfect execution to get it right. But those posts and videos were before the tempest spec was introduced. And it seems like in most dungeons I’ve done, people just leeroy jenkins pull everything as fast possible and don’t even wait for something like that. Based on my limited knowledge, I can’t stack much might in staff alone without screwing up the rotation or slotting skills I wouldn’t use during the pull. Can you guys set me straight on what I should do to pull my weight on that score and what’s expected of me?

2. Staff or dagger/warhorn? Right now only my staff is exotic and I made the investment to put a sigil of force on it, so that’s what I run right now. I will be working on getting an exotic dagger and warhorn next. As far as what I like, I don’t know because when I came back to the game, I leveled all the way from level 39 to 80 and have done the first 2 HoT maps with playing staff exclusively. I have never tried dagger/warhorn, but know I’m expected to know it. Is it better in group play to use dagger/warhorn or staff. Does it differ depending on the dungeon or fractal, and if so which ones?

3. Skills. So far, I have always run Wash the Pain Away for the heal, slotted Conjure Frost Bow, Glyph of Storms, Signet of Fire and Rebound for the elite. I don’t have the experience to know when it might be best to slot something else depending on group composition, as I don’t know very much about the other classes yet, as the ele is my only character. I also don’t know the different encounters well enough to know when I should slot something else out. From what I’ve looked at, almost every guide I’ve seen has listed those, and so have used those. Can you offer any suggestions about when I should choose different skills for the slots?

Any and all suggestions/advice would be welcome. I appreciate it

1. Might stacking isn’t as big of an ele job anymore like it used to be. If you are dropping your fire fields and can blast, by all means do it but for the most part…you don’t really worry about it. I mean you can go through the motions but really, it’s not necessary anymore. Fractals are a frantic place and the higher level ones, when the mobs pull those might stacks off of you it hurts

2. Either…carry both weapon sets, the only trait you have to change is Bolt to the Heart to Fresh Air. Staff is great if you can keep the mobs in your Lava Font and can take those meteor impacts. Also the water fields are nice to have. Dagger/Warhorn is better for the targets that move around. For fractals, either works…just depends on your preference.

3. Aftershock or Feel the Burn can replace Ice Bow if you’d like to have another quick and easy aura. Ice Bow isn’t the be all end all anymore. If you need more survivability, maybe Arcane Shield. It’s really a free slot though to play around with as the other two are standards for an Ele to bring.

I’d say don’t be afraid to crawl or walk at first before you start running. The best way to learn what to do, what not to do and how to react when something bad happens is to occasionally f up and adapt to a situation.

If we’re only talking about dungeons and fractals, there’s room to play the field and try stuff out for yourself. Personally, that’s the most fun part of the game is the experimentation and learning. Stagnating and going through the motions is boring to me :p

For fractals, they are designed well to ease you in to them and get used to the different maps as you level up your personal fractal level and garner more agony resistance. You can do like up to 25 without AR so really you can jump right in and start learning. If you just run low level fractals in PUGS practically everyone you group with are inexperienced too , so they won’t hassle you if you don’t know the fights.

Low level fractals are significantly easier than dungeons. So coupled with the above posters advice, just go for it.