Guild Wars 2

HI, I am a new player and yesterday I tried sPVP with my elementalist. I pretty much got my kitten kicked. I will be the first to admit that I am not a pro player but I am really struggling to make my D/D finish enemies.

Unless I had a team mate to work with me I could not 1v1 an opponent. I was simply not doing enough damage to put him down before he healed.

I am looking for advice on which particular skills to use, in general against 1 or 2 opponents so that I can actually kill them

Additional notes:
I tried 1v1 my friend in a ‘dual’ type situation. He is a ranger. When he was using sword, I simply could not kill him. We tried 6 times and he won every single time.

I am mostly lookin for skill combinations I should use, including which utilities, to quickly put down opponents before they destroy me lol

I have tried 2 builds.
20 water, 15 earth, 30 arcane, 5 air

and 30 fire, 20 rock, 20 arcane

I prefer no videos as I find the skills are activated too fast for me to see in detail specific combinations.

Thankyou to anyone who can offer advice to make me suck less lol

check out this thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Tanky-DPS-Elementalist-Videos-included

I used this build both leveling up, WvW, and SPvP. I’ve yet to find a class I can’t destroy in a 1v1 setting and even in SPvP I win most 2v1s I fight. I recommend leveling you character to max before you try sPvP.

Obviously your level/gear doesn’t matter for sPvP but it will teach how to use all of your skills appropriately. Getting the muscle memory down and learning the correct combo chains and what each skill does for you is big as an elementalist. You have 25 skills and every one of them has an important use in each situation. You really have to know your class, something that takes a while to learn and is hard to grasp by jumping into sPvP.

Forget Fire. Mostly useless trait line, and not worth the points.

10 Air – Zephyr’s Boon
30 Water – The 2 condition removal traits and cantrips grant regen
30 Arcana – Elemental Attunement, Evasive Arcana, and probably Final Shielding

Grab Lightning Flash, Arcane Wave, Cleansing Fire, Valk’s amulet, Sigil of Battle/Fire, Zerk’s jewel in amulet. 2x Monk, Water, Earth runes each.

You have tons of healing – so it’s a very active defense. 2500~ armor, but only around 14k HP. You have to have good reflexes, and decent APM to make it all work out.

RTL > Updraft > Shocking Aura > Burning Speed > Ring of Fire > Arcane Wave > Fire Grab. Should be able to knock 6k~ HP no crits if everything lands (except against bunkers). The trick is keeping Frost or Shocking Aura up as often as possible, and using your mobility and CC to stay on top of someone throwing everything at them. Swap attunements all the time. You can have 100% uptime on Fury/Swiftness, 10+ stacks of Might, 80% uptime on Protection (Use glyph of Elemental Harmony with Earth Attunement), 2x condition removal just by swapping to water (in an AoE no less), and another 3 from Cleansing Fire, and Arcane Wave is a blast finisher for Might stacks and burst.

Don’t forget Churning Earth + Lightning Flash. You can blink right on top of someone as CE is going off to make sure it lands.

Elites should be changed as needed. If you’re about to jump into a team fight, take Tornado. Pop is and cancel immediately. You just want the 24 seconds of Stability to ensure you can stay in the fight, and on the point without getting locked down. Otherwise, Glyph of Elementals. Use it with Fire or Water attunement. Fire for damage, Water for some extra healing.

Thankyou for your great advice I will be trying them out soon

I also have 1 other issue I would like help with. I click my skills. I know its bad but i do this for 2 reasons:

1 im female and have very small hands, i cant reach the f1,2,3 or 789 with 1 hand unless I leave my char standing still like a pint of milk.

2. Two of my fingers on each hand are ‘bent’ inwards (they look like they are broken) making it difficult to feel for keys without looking at the keyboard. I was born like this :P

Am i doomed to forever be at a disadvantage because of this? And is there any way i can get around my need for clicking skills?

try a nostromo
if you can afford to. i dont think you can play an ele by clicking skills. its way too complicated.
maybe.. i dont know.

the gw2 buttons fit nicely onto the nostromo.
good luck. i have just clumsey fingers sometimes and it helps not to dance on the keyboard.

Also keep in mind that the ele is complicated. it takes a while to learn how to use it.
try practicing on the NPC’s in the mist near the water training grounds.

To give you some help with -
1.) I swapped my f1, f2, f3, f4 key to z,x,c,v – its much more intuitive for me. a and d have become strafe left and right respectively (i see no point in having turn left and right, as I turn with my mouse). R is my heal. Q, E, and Middle Mouse Button are my utilities. Elite skill whatever floats your boat.

Just adapt the keyboard to your hands and what makes sense to you. Don’t stick with the default setup if you are not forced to!

If you need any other help you can always message me in game, I only periodically visit the forums.

Hope that helps!

And remember you can also do key combinations with like ctrl and alt. So it may even make since to have your attunes be like CTRL + 1, 2, 3, 4 or something…all up to you in the end.

If you’re planning on transitioning from a Fire combo into an earth combo, popping Ring of Fire after Burning Speed is a total waste.

1) It does no damage to your target, assuming you’re on top of them (which you should be).

2) More importantly, you waste a lot of the duration that could be used for getting 6 might stacks from earthquake/churning earth, and a fire aura if you’re magnetic grasping a fleeing target through it.

Simple Air → Fire combo is RtL, Updraft, Burning Speed, Drakes Breath (only let it tick once), Firegrab.

You can then, if the cooldowns are available, easily transition into Ring of Fire, (Magnetic Grasp if you need a Fury proc), Earthquake, Churning Earth (optional switch to Water before CE finishes casting to proc sigil of battle and/or grab Frost Aura for chill or Fury if you didn’t get it procced off Magnetic Grasp), and Arcane Wave (if you have it – I personally don’t use it) as part of your Earth combo, which will hit like a truck, and give you a lot more sustain for the rest of the fight due to the huge might stacks, and the fury/swiftness stacking. Optionally use Lightning Flash to reposition CE before it lands for maximum effect (you only need to start the cast in a fire field to gain the triple might stacks), and/or Armor of Earth to prevent the cast being interrupted and give you another couple of boons for the Bountiful Power damage.

Simples!

@Arc
Your point #1 isn’t correct i think. Ring of fire does do some direct damage to your target if you’re on top of them (unless it’s bugged, the tooltip says it does damage), but it’s not much. The bulk of the damage from ring however is the burn which only occurs if they pass through the boundary.

Everything else you said however is spot on, it’s better to save it for later. Just clarifying

Gaming hardware like a Razer Naga AND Nostromo are a must in my book to play a dd ele. Being able to swap attunments, use abilitys and move with purpose at the same time is key. Once you’ve elimated the physical barrier you can execute your abilities at will.

My build is 00303010. I have the water signet, arcane wave, vapor form, arcane shield and the elite glyph of elementals. With all that defense my killing strategy is to wear down my opponent. I use the cc set up my burst combos one after another.
I usually win 90% of the 1v1 fights I get into but I struggle with 1v2. I suppose it should be that way lol.

I agree with most of the advice here, but remember one thing.

Churning Earth is a 3 second cast time. Where I come from, that’s a red light for immediate CC. The fact the cast animation is so telegraphed makes this a spell I rarely use. Also don’t forget 1 Condition remover wipes away all that bleed, but at least the DD Dps of the spell is quite good. If you can get it off.

Don’t underestimate Arc Lighting either. It can do decent damage if you get lucky on crits and build fury. I play Sceptor/Dagger for minis, but Dagger/Dagger is looking much more viable, especially since most fo the attacks are cone based now rather than single target. I just like the 300 range.

@zombyturtle

Hand size aside, I would never play a game using any key beyond the vertical 5, t, g, b line on my keyboard. I remapped my keys all within fingers’ reach. I have done so with all mmos, WoW warrior tank included, using ctrl, alt, etc. Lucky for you, neither alt nor control is necessary in this game. Here is my layout:

Attunement/Class Skills (You will use these often as an ele.):
1-4

Weapon Swap (n/a for an ele, but mapped all the same):
Mouse-3 (middle mouse button/wheel)

Movement:
W: Forward
S: Backward
A: Left Strafe
D: Right Strafe
Jump: Right and Left Mouse Buttons (thumb and pinky on a typical 5-button mouse)
Dodge (the USEFUL jump): Space

Attack:
1-5: Q, E, R, F, Z

Heal:
Shift-R (This is a holdover from my WoW days; shift-anything would suffice.)

Utility:
1: X
2: C
3: V

Elite:
Shift-Space

Hope this gives you some ideas. Ele is a tough class to play, but so rewarding in both pve and pvp. You have to be fearless enough to jump into combat and quick enough to use all of your skills and attunements. The day Anet lets me swap weapons I will be a D/D god.

Also, @Suctum, I find that churning earth works fine after a well placed earthquake. By this time, the smart ones usually would rather run than attempt a CC, if they even if they have CC off CD. The dumb ones… meat on spikes. Also, when defending points, in all the chaos, there are sometimes players unknowingly running into the ring right as it goes off. While it should be well placed, I usually find a way to use our most damaging skill when it is up.