Guild Wars 2

43, power/precision traits and gear, I can pretty much gather an indefinite number of melee mobs and AoE them all down with no trouble.

However, seems like it only takes one or two ranged to kill me. Ranged attacks can’t be dodged with distance or strafing; Strafing around a centaur archer makes it shoot forward so it looks like its visually missing me, but still hits me.

I can dodge them, but at 10 second cooldown per dodge, i can’t exactly do it forever and Elementalist don’t seem to have any utility that reflect, just long cooldown/short duration blocks/invulnerability.

So, how do you D/D elementalist deal with it? Am i just gonna have to suck it up and switch to D/F?

i use power precision toughness gear (and vitality jewels etc).
I close with rtl or burning speed
Then i use all those stuns from DD

Remember than water 2 has a huge range a good damage and heals you.

It also helps to pick up the Arcana 10-point trait Renewing Stamina, which gives you a 33% chance on crit to gain 5 seconds of vigor (with no cooldown!).

I just kill them really fast

I use the skills offered to us e.g. knock downs and try to drop em’ as fast as I can. But yeah, I remember having some trouble with range monster when I level’d up, just takes some practice

I take the fight to them, and use the terrain to manipulate them. Once then are close its more or less the same as any other mob. By and large they won’t seek a huge distance like a player would, it seems most of the time the distance they stay at is about the same as where Ring of Fire sets the circle around you when cast.

Servanin.5021:

…Elementalist don’t seem to have any utility that reflect…

Yes they do. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_elementalist_skills

Staff – Magnetic Aura (Earth-3)
Scepter – Rock Barrier (earth-2)
Dagger – Frost Aura (Water-4), Shocking Aura (Air-3)
Focus – Fire Shield (Fire-5)

Any skill that ‘blinds’ (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Blind) or ‘chills’ (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Chilled) foes helps too.

utility
reflect
those are weapon skills, and only one reflects anyway

side note: “Fire Shield” really needs to be renamed. It doesn’t shield you in any way.
It would be the weakest skill in the game, except that it’s instant cast. It doesn’t really do anything.

Yeah, I just sucked it up and bought a focus and switch it out whenever there is an abundance of ranged enemies around.

Air and earth focus are great. Fire focus seem just awful though. Fire shield sucks, Flame wall is the exact same thing as ring of fire, but clunkier and only in a straight line.

Just close the gap with those ranged mobs, line of sight them
Doing fine on D/D pretty much all the time. Arcane shield and glyph of storms (earth) help well enough in PvE to take the edge a bit of those encounters.
No need to switch to focus really.

For me there isn’t a standard weapon set. If I know the next section is CQC I switch to D/D. If I know there will be groups of mobs I switch to staff. If I know the mobs will be primarily melee I switch to S/D. If I know that the mobs are primarly ranged I switch to S/F or staff depending on the LoS.

As an elementalist you should not rely on one weapons set for every situation. Collect them all and use them in the right situation. Traits hardly matter for the elementalist, just dont stack aura traits when using staff etc.