Guild Wars 2

So I’m leveling an elementalist. I’m up to 26 now and dagger/dagger isn’t really working for me. The damage is nice, and I have lots of healing, but I feel like I’m made of glass.

I was wondering, is there any particular setup that would smooth this out? I’m kind of in a rush to 80 to get back into WvWvW with my guild [this is an alt/reroll].

Ele is possibly one of the worst exploring classes (to level up) until you’re level 80. For now, trait everything into damage until 80 so you can clear mobs fast. Yeah, you’re gonna miss out on survivability, but it’s for the short term. Always get blues (or green if you’re more wealthy) at 5 under your level to your level. Try running dungeons at 35 -80 if you can (Run AC and get your soldier’s gear early)! At 50, you have the choice to spend about 10-12 gold to craft your char to 80 (jewel, cook, artifice)- that’s pretty wise IMO if you have the resources. I feel your pain – it’s like, been there, done that haha. Don’t worry, it’s worth it.

Thanks, I appreciated it. What weapons would you say ease the pain most? I’ve only tried dagger/dagger, but I was thinking something ranged might be a little less dangerous?

S/D
20/0/20/30/0
Use cantrips when you are in trouble. Stay in fire as pretty much anything in PVE die every quickly. Switch to attunements if things get messy.

Dagger/dagger is probably your best bet. Learn to do rotations of attunements
Here’s something to get you started,
Air 3 4 (target) 2 5
fire 3 2 5 4
earth 4 3 3 2 (5 if mobs are weak as kitten)
if you need healing water (heal) 5 4 3 2
otherwise, air again
Do this until you get evasive arcana, but by then it gets more fun and you can use earth roll as a blast finisher for might stacking, in water for healing and condition removal, air is useless (blind), fire too (fire nova – not a blast)

Basic idea, fire + earth for damage/ might stacks
air for mobility/ closing gaps, running away, stuns/knockdowns
water for healing/ condition removal.

At that level you are made of glass. Ill keep it simple no need for a wall use http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lightning_Hammer and you should have a pretty easy time eating through mobs. If you have any money saved up look into crafting to 80 its makes it a whole lot simpler.

Raptured.9307:

Dagger/dagger is probably your best bet. Learn to do rotations of attunements
Here’s something to get you started,
Air 3 4 (target) 2 5
fire 3 2 5 4
earth 4 3 3 2 (5 if mobs are weak as kitten)
if you need healing water (heal) 5 4 3 2
otherwise, air again
Do this until you get evasive arcana, but by then it gets more fun and you can use earth roll as a blast finisher for might stacking, in water for healing and condition removal, air is useless (blind), fire too (fire nova – not a blast)

Basic idea, fire + earth for damage/ might stacks
air for mobility/ closing gaps, running away, stuns/knockdowns
water for healing/ condition removal.

This is exactly what I’m currently doing. It works fine until I’m fighting 5-6 mobs at once [which should be easy] , then I get messed up.

Oh if you’re fighting that many then you need a staff and kite them around lol.
It’s not as easy for ele as it is for warriors or guards to do because of your super low hp bar.
And yes, lightning hammer is very useful. The 3 and 5 skill on fiery greatsword are also pretty amazing

Ah okay, thanks. I’ll try that.

And yeah I’m probably a little spoiled, my main is a greatsword guardian haha

So spoiled lol.
literally going from the most survivable to one of the least survivable world explore leveling classes

I mean no disrespect, but if you want to get good you have to stick with it and learn to play. You need to stop playing like a guardian

I had some trouble in the beginning with my ele d/d ele untill i got the hang of it, now i’m blazing trough levels (29 now), soloing group events, facerolling mobs 4 levels above me.

It’s THE most fun class setup to play in the game if you get the hang of it.

I feel like the survivability of the D/D ele (in leveling PVE) is only second to the guardian IF you:
- use your movement skills properly,
- time your interrupts,
- use line of sight
- are blazingly fast with your key combos.

Tip: using Signet of Air helps trememdously with the kiting, and kiting = main survivability source with the Ele.

PS: DON’T use Lightning Hammer or Frost Bow because they become crutches – they don’t teach you anything about playing a D/D ele. You risk getting to 80 and not knowing a thing about how to play the class if you rely on them or a group to level.
It’s like learning a contact sport, you have to eat the pain in the beginning until you “learn karate”

Example of rotation (there are many more):
- air 2,3 then 5 to blow them away, 4 to catch up to them,
- then while they’re downed switch to earth 2, then knock them down with earth 4 then earth 5 for massive damage (use arcane shield to stay alive if taking damage and prevent interruptions),
- then fire 4 for added damage and kite away with fire 3, turn around and set them on fire with 2, massive damage with fire grab (5)
- at this point they are near you and you might have take some hits: do water 3 to chill them, then water 5 to heal and while they’re chilled use water 2 to deal more damage and heal yourself, hit water 4 to get the chill aura
- at this point if anything’s still alive, start over

I appreciate the help Ort but I’ve already been playing D/D ele in SPvP tourneys for weeks now and I do well. It’s not really a concern.

The point is, I’m basically impatient and just trying to steamroll to 80. I know all that stuff works, but I’m looking for something quick n’ easy to get me there with minimal effort, long story short.

So I’ll probably just craft my way up.

I felt like a god leveling as a D/D ele, what armor are you using?
I only used defensive gear at lower levels and rarely met anything i couldn’t kill.

Another nice combo that i used was S/D+Lightening Hammer, that hammer hits like a truck at lower levels and what i’d do was burst/load up on might with the scepter and then switch to the hammer if anything was left standing.
The blind at the end of it’s attack chain can really get you out of a pinch, some mobs swing so slow that you can keep eveb a group of them blinded aslong as the hammer lasts.

Ort, your combo works in that it is a rotation. But you miss out of the might stacks that you get with fire field+ blast and fire aura by fire field+ leap. That’s why it is common to go fire before earth.

Disastersaurus.3146:

I appreciate the help Ort but I’ve already been playing D/D ele in SPvP tourneys for weeks now and I do well. It’s not really a concern.

The point is, I’m basically impatient and just trying to steamroll to 80. I know all that stuff works, but I’m looking for something quick n’ easy to get me there with minimal effort, long story short.

So I’ll probably just craft my way up.

I leveled with Staff for the most part, and traited 15 Water for heals and condition removal. I think I dropped points into Arcane for the free boons and Lingering Attunements. My method may not be possible anymore, since it basically involved chain-running zergy world events and AoE spamming every mob I could for loot and kill credit.

I don’t know if any of the lower level world events have enough people in them for this to work now, but there may be a few.

I also ran a lot of AC with a similar build, and just focused on spamming combo fields and blast finishers. Earth 2 → Fire 2 → Arcane Wave; Earth 2 → Water 3 → Arcane Wave….repeat.

Until I got to 80 and had decent gear I found the high-damage builds to be too fragile to bother with, as I’d run out of cooldowns before all the mobs were dead.

+1 on conjured weapons. A fair number of ele players totally neglect/forget them, but they are easily one of the fastest ways to clear mobs as a lowbie.

Another survival tip and a slight change of playstyle: use both glyphs of elementals (lesser and elite) and grab Air 10’s quick glyphs trait. Earth ele is a heck of a tank and rotating between them gives you about 2 minutes of tank pets with only 20-25 seconds of downtime between summons. Elementals grabbing agro lets you use churning earth on dagger 5 all day on large groups.

Disastersaurus.3146:

I appreciate the help Ort but I’ve already been playing D/D ele in SPvP tourneys for weeks now and I do well. It’s not really a concern.

The point is, I’m basically impatient and just trying to steamroll to 80. I know all that stuff works, but I’m looking for something quick n’ easy to get me there with minimal effort, long story short.

So I’ll probably just craft my way up.

Or do the fast-lvling meta events (can do 43-48 VERY fast, for instance, in Hirathi Hinterlands with the centaur meta event), or get your guild to powerlevel you in dungeons.

No offense, but this entire post seems to be based around the fact that you can’t kill 5-6 mobs, at once, which for some reason you assume should be easy.

I leveled using d/d and thought it was easy mode. So far, I’ve lvled to 70 but I did it far faster than I did my warrior, mes, or ranger. I was able to easily do my story quests up to 7 or 8 levels higher than me, which gets you pretty killer xp, by kiting in earth and aoeing with fire. You get so much mobility in d/d that I rarely felt squishy because I could get away and heal so easily while still dosing.

I levelled with sceptor/dagger.

Not much of a learning curve. Ok all round dps and surviveability.

I didnt try out dagger/dagger until i turned 80.

D/d, while loads of fun and incredibly powerful is super hard mode when compared to GS guardian. I have both at 80 and its like going from super easy mode to super hard mode so dont beat yourself up. Someone once told me playing a d/d ele is like playing street fighter 4 against a pro – i loved that analogy. Lol.

Go sceptor/dagger or just craft your ay there. Or both.

D/D really is quite good for levelling.

Just make sure your hotkeys are comfortable and you can be really automatic.

D/D ele is actually pretty easy to play and things become pretty automatic after a while.

If anything, it’s worth levelling D/D just to get used to it.

Ravidel.8546:

Disastersaurus.3146:

I appreciate the help Ort but I’ve already been playing D/D ele in SPvP tourneys for weeks now and I do well. It’s not really a concern.

The point is, I’m basically impatient and just trying to steamroll to 80. I know all that stuff works, but I’m looking for something quick n’ easy to get me there with minimal effort, long story short.

So I’ll probably just craft my way up.

Or do the fast-lvling meta events (can do 43-48 VERY fast, for instance, in Hirathi Hinterlands with the centaur meta event), or get your guild to powerlevel you in dungeons.

No offense, but this entire post seems to be based around the fact that you can’t kill 5-6 mobs, at once, which for some reason you assume should be easy.

But I do think it should be easy. It’s what I’m used to on literally every other class I’ve played. 8l

Also, thanks for all the advice, guys! I’ll try out conjured weapons.

First skill to learn as Ele is Conjure Lightning Hammer :p That should bring u up to level 30+ easily. Then learn Fiery GS.

There you go, you have a good and easy time leveling. Of course when you hit the level 50 or 60 mark, craft level to 80. Mobs gets harder to spam 1 on Lightning Hammer.

As a fellow Guardian main (Hammer), and Ele leveller I share your pain – it took me a while to get a feel for D/D capabilities compared to the relatively bullet-proof Guardian. I hit 80 yesterday, no crafting, just combining PS steps (got to around lvl 65) with exploration and XP boosts from doing my daily.

I’d suggest sticking with D/D to get a feeling for the mechanics, but as suggested you need to pick your fights a little.

My tendency is to stick with daggers when solo, swapping to staff just for group encounters where AoE isn’t likely to see you rushed by 23,000 angry Skelk. Fiery Greatsword saw me through countless Vet events and skill challenges, and is good in a pinch where you have to clear large numbers in a tight spot. For dagger fights, staying mobile helps lots, and just running tight circle-strafes while laying down fire fields can do a lot to keep you alive.

I’m glad I stuck with daggers personally, interested to see how they stack up in dungeons/fractals (which I haven’t run with Ele at all yet). Funny thing is, I can see myself falling back on ranged/support staff build there as I built Ele because of the lack of ranged options on my Guardian (Sceptre auto-attack says hi)

…of course, I appreciate that I’ve not helped your search for a ‘shortcut’. I did have a lot of fun levelling D/D though, and I think it’s worth sticking with, but I appreciate that one man’s fun is another’s worst nightmare.

Thanks for this thread. My ele levelling stalled out at low 50’s. I switched to what was at the time my 10th level warrior and never looked back. I was surprised at how easy it was to kill, well, everything I came across. Wasn’t possible to do on the ele. I knew it took more work but things never really clicked.

This thread did it though. I’d read others, but since reading this for the last few hours I’ve been exploring and killing stuff MUCH more easily. D/D really does far more damage than any other combo. Much more mobility too.

Thanks to all who contributed :)

D/D was quite easy to level for me. Google: “crystal desert dagger dagger elementalist guide” for a guide that extrapolates off of Daphoenix. I was able to handle 6-9 mobs with no problem so long as I continued to move/dodge. I was also able to handle veterans two levels above me and sometimes two veterans at a time. I would only switch to s/d and kite when the fight called for range due to the fight mechanics.

One thing, I upgraded my gear every 10 levels with all rare gear. This helped tremendously as well.

Glyph of storms, in earth.

If 8 seconds of near invulnerability isn´t enough for you to clear mobs, nothing is.

Its quite easy to lvl.
Use glyph of storms in earth for aoe blinds, get a few combos out to build might, get a lightning hammer and wipe everything with auto-attck while changing att for buffs.