Guild Wars 2

This is the only reason im still playing my Elementalist. I didnt like staff, unless i went fire or maybe water for support. I frikking love D\D in all its forms, but really like it in air, and i use earth for show.

Now, would i be viable only sticking to 2 elements, or am i kittening myself? I might actually reroll my Elem into a Necromancer if im hampering myself to much this way.

I read alot about attunment dancing in the Elementalist forums, and was hoping i could play some other way then just spamming attument swaps all the time.

No, you would not be viable playing without fire and water.

Our #1 skills on daggers are not good enough to use much. By not using all 4 attunements, it means you’re waiting for cooldowns since you’re just using a few attunements.

And if you’re waiting for cooldowns, that means you’re doing a lot of #1 attacks while waiting and those are bad.

Also, dagger elementalists especially dearly rely on the healing produced from water attunement right now. Switching to it for the heal from trait, getting regen from the switch on trait, getting soothing mists for another lesser regen on trait, removing conditions on the switch on trait, rolling while in water for a heal if you have 30 in arcane etc. The best stuff in water is just the act of switching to water, and switching to water means you have to switch out of it to be able to switch to it again. Water is how you stay alive, you can’t play without it.

As for damage, so much of a dagger eles damage comes from fire #2-#5 that playing without that is just not viable. (Especially fire #2, that’s your prime attack for general gameplay). Fire #3 and #4 are your combo fields, which you can activate for 3 stacks of might anytime you apply a blast finisher (generally earth #4, earth #5, or arcane wave utility…or all 3 of them for 9 stacks of might).

Core function relies on the boons from the 10 point arcane trait too every time you switch to an attunement…which means switching alot. If you load up on boon duration (which I do and which many dagger eles do), along with 10 in air for swiftness/fury on auras, you’ll be perma swift with huge uptime on regen, protection, and fury. Our sources of might have long duration, so adding boon duration to it means you almost always have stacks of might floating around even if it’s leftover from the fight you were in 10 seconds ago.

TLDR: You’ll do more damage AND be more survivable AND be more mobile by using all 4 attunements as a dagger ele.

Takes some practice but you’ll find it’s rewarding and fun, once you get a handle on what you’re doing and particularly after you’re at a level where you’ve gotten a lot of trait points. Having played all 8 classes (4 of them to 80) I actually feel incredibly bored on non elementalist characters, including engineers. Attunement switching often feels wonky early on, mainly due to lack of experience and lack of traits to support actually doing so, but it really comes together for truly fun gameplay later on.

Thank you for a well written answer. I’ll keep playing my Elementalist some more, and try some more attunment dancing.