Guild Wars 2

I have engineer level 80 now and a guardian level 40(played until I finished the first order quest line to unlock the next thing at the char selection screen). So far I liked the engineer. A bit slow with doing damage but I never had a problem with staying alive(and I know there are a lot of builds for good damage too but I like the way I am playing him now). Guardian good at staying alive and good at damaging too. Also damaging more than 1 mob and good at farming fast.

But now I tried elementalist… thought it was supposed to be a big damage dealer and easy to farm with that class. But seems a bit harder to me. Good damage and the staff has some nice AoE with good damage but usually the mobs move to attack you(if you solo and I like to solo a lot and go only with others for the events where usually lots of people are at one place). So mobs usually move out of the AoE if you are not placing it at your location and stay melee.

I died more often than with the other 2 classes I tried. Any recommendations? I tried a bit scepter and dagger. Feels a bit than staff.

What traits? Still need to unlock more traits and and skills. Only level 13 at the moment and don’ t know which skills to chose. And if possible I want to play without having to change the attunements every few seconds… too much inconvenience… the other classes were possible without swapping weapons and staying in one weapon(and engineer without kits).

Is there any way to play like this and lets say take 2 or 3 mobs at the same time without needing to swap attunements every few seconds and without going downed every time? Or wrong class and only for pros and should I go and try one of the other light armor classes. In some other threads I think people said necromancer was better? (With the minions he should have better survivability?)

Simple non-blast finisher combo
1) Earth
2) Earth →Eruption
3) Earth → Unsteady Ground
4) Fire → Lava Font/Flame Burst
5) Pew Pew auto attack

Blast Finisher combos
1) Air → Static Field (can use other combo fields in other attunements)
2) Earth → Shockwave
3) Earth → Unsteady Ground (sometimes optional)
4) Earth → Eruption
…choose your own adventure time…
5a) Fire → Lava Font (make sure on top of eruption)
5b) Water → Geyser (make sure on top of eruption)
5c) Water → Frozen Ground (make sure on top of eruption)

In staff, if you are fighting one mob at a time, then you are doing it wrong. I am up to three vets at once. Still working on four.

imo d/d is best and most fun for pve. I think it by far has the best farming since you have so many aoe attacks that come out fast… drakes breath especially is awesome for tagging since it hits 5 mobs each tick with 4 ticks and usually does enough damage to net the kill, and it’s fun just getting in the enemies face. Even before popping that though you can flame leap, fire ring and arcane blast and hit almost everything.

For combo field explanation there is another thread that is exceedingly useful.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/How-do-combos-work

Ithkrul.2813:

Simple non-blast finisher combo
1) Earth
2) Earth ->Eruption
3) Earth -> Unsteady Ground
4) Fire -> Lava Font/Flame Burst
5) Pew Pew auto attack

Blast Finisher combos
1) Air -> Static Field (can use other combo fields in other attunements)
2) Earth -> Shockwave
3) Earth -> Unsteady Ground (sometimes optional)
4) Earth -> Eruption
…choose your own adventure time…
5a) Fire -> Lava Font (make sure on top of eruption)
5b) Water -> Geyser (make sure on top of eruption)
5c) Water -> Frozen Ground (make sure on top of eruption)

In staff, if you are fighting one mob at a time, then you are doing it wrong. I am up to three vets at once. Still working on four.

Just a note, Unsteady Ground is not a combo finisher at all and Shockwave is a Projectile Finisher, along with Stoning (the auto attack). The only Blast finisher in Staff is Eruption but via Traits and Utility skills, Staff has other ways to get Blast finishers.

I found sceptre and dagger to be the easiest and safest way to level. Just run around with full condition and toughness gear throwing earth 1 on your target 4x then move to the next mob.

You are correct that unsteady ground is not a combo finisher and that shockwave is a Projectile.

I use Unsteady ground usually in WvW to help ensure my blast hits my target. And Shockwave as a “root.” These are probably the more simple combos to achieve, not utilizing Arcane Evasion.

I found sceptre and dagger to be the easiest and safest way to level. Just run around with full condition and toughness gear throwing earth 1 on your target 4x then move to the next mob.

Eruption works as well, if not better. One eruption applies 72 ticks of bleeding in total, which is the same as your 4 sets of daggers, although at half the speed.

Eruption is a huge AoE however, which is a massive advantage as long as you can hit with it. And really, hitting with it shouldn’t be a problem. Not only does it have a fairly large area, but you can also

• cast it before aggroing mobs, guaranteeing the hit.
• use lesser earth elemental and earth elemental to hold targets in place.
• place frozen ground to chill the targets before casting the eruption.
• just plain kite the mobs into it.
• just stand still and take some damage while waiting for it to detonate.

I tried a bit with double daggers now. And with elementals too. Not that bad. Also I went after completing the asura starter area to the sylvari starter area because it is nearby. Being downscaled and still a bit higher than the mobs in the area it is okay now. Will try back to go same level after I completed the Caledon Forest. 15-25 zone should reach higher mobs after some time that are same level again. I think I will go for elementals and maybe other AoE as utility skills and try a bit that way.

it seems that in orr i can kill more enemies of any most other classes ._. with DD…(except warriors <.<).

i can get 6+ mobs possibly more, and if i take too many i still have solid chances to escape….

Staff isn t really a weapon for soloing…DD is much easier.

You can take many hits but the points is that you won’t almost be hit…

And trust me i m a casual (but competent) player so no uber skill required ._.//

Luthan.5236:

Is there any way to play like this and lets say take 2 or 3 mobs at the same time without needing to swap attunements every few seconds and without going downed every time?

yep there is but it is not the way elem is meant be played. U can easily take up to 5 or more mobs (including one veteran), can solo most of the champions but you have to be d/d attunements swapper, have propper build and min 100h elem experience.
I play elem for over 400h by now and can do things in pve that even wariors are not able to do.
First try playing tanky-balanced build like this:
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B1IiR0yJmAY_NW1aY0ZfcElQMjg
The longer you play and the better you become go more into damage (rampager set, berserker is a lot worse for dd elem). You will kill faster but have to evade almost all attacks – which requires some experience.
And rebind your keyboard (or buy 12 buttons razor mouse). Playing elem the right way on default key binding is not possible.

Lol. I’m not buying a mouse just to play one game. ;-) But rebinding keys sounds good. But I don’t think there is a way to rebind keys per character? I would prefer to have different key bindings on each char then rebinding would be more fun. Especially with the F1-F4(for the skills I could just change the skill order to change the key positions a bit).

I don’t think I’ll play more than 100 hours. Only until level 40 to now to play priory quest for the unlock at login screen.

Then trying next class. I don’t think I want to try champions or veterans with 4-5 adds. Thats more something I’d like to try with guardian. Too much running around is a pain. As long as I can do 1 veteran with maybe 2 additional mobs or 3-4 normal mobs it is okay. Seems not that hard now that I tried a bit with elementals… and still need to unlock traits.

I heard a lot of people said the first levels were harder… but probably this is for a lot of classes since you don’t have traits and they start to make you really powerful(and make the game interesting in my opinion… only skills and it would be boring).