Guild Wars 2

My elementalist is currently level 32 and I’m starting to have difficulties leveling. I’m in the pirate part of the Gendarran Fields area and the enemies just do so much damage to me. Especially considering the fact that they’re all grouped up so I get swarmed by 3+ at a time. So, basically I’m here today to ask you guys what the most effective way to level up as an ele is. I personally like the staff more (especially in group fights) but solo it’s iffy I guess. I’ve played D/D also but I just feel I die too quickly (and yes I’m evading attacks etc.). My trait setup right now is 0/10/5/7- going for 0/10/0/30/30. Any ideas on weapons or anything at all? All help appreciated.

Do not go to Gendarran. It’s way too hard at your level.

Instead, go to one of the starter zones and clear that out. Afterwards, find areas that are below your level and grind those for dynamic events, poi, waypoints, vistas, and hearts.

The fact is that the Ele is a really difficult leveling experience (it was my first, so yes, I remember how awful it was), but as long as you go for easy points, you should be able to Dagger-Dagger your way through lowbie mobs and level as quickly as you can.

Not necessarily, you should still be able to level at your own range.

My suggestion: 0/0/10/10/0 (the last two points could start going into Fire)
The traits would be Earth’s Embrace (Trait III) in Earth Tree and Soothing Disruption (Trait III) in Water Tree.

Run with at least one cantrip (preferablly Armor of Earth) and purchase Sigil of Bloodlust (for your level) from the Black Lion Merchant. One last thing is to make sure your are correctly geared at your level. As in, full level 30 gear until about level 35 or 40 then full upgrade again.

Hopefully this helps.

Glyph of Lesser Elemental and Glyph of Elemental together give you high pet uptime. Summon the Earth Elemental and you can hide behind it as it tanks everything for you like a boss.

Glyph of storms, earth attunement. Just sayin….

2nd on the elementals to draw agro, especially the earth. Try scepter/dagger or scepter/focus. That will allow you to get off a nice ranged attack before the mobs try to get into melee range. Of course try to manage the pulls to your advantage, but yeah, you will get three and three is hard to handle. Pull the mobs thru your fire 4 and aoe them with your fire 2 & 3 for good damage and stack might. Chill them with your water 4, vulnerable with water 2 and blind with air 3 and earth 3, and keep your toughness up with earth 2. Your major damage is going to come with earth 4 followed by earth 5 and if they are agroed on the earth elemental, so much the better. Pop an Arcane Shield part way into churning earth if it looks like you will be hit or interrupted.

Use all the skills. Everyone of them gives you an advantage. Stay out of auto-attack as much as possible.

Make sure you have gear close to your level. The karma gear is nice but will lag your level by a significant amount. You can buy some crafted gear from the Black Lion.

Force leveling your character in lower easy levels will not teach you the skills you need to be the best when you are 80. You will only have learned to play carelessly. Learning the way to play to beat mobs 3-5 levels above you is the best way to go imo.

Air 5 btw is a frontal aoe knockback. Like that. Use all the skills.

Personally, I went through 2-3 of the starter zones before moving on along the personal story b/c ele was my first character and it took me a while to learn how to play it. You want to spec defensively at lower levels (max out water and get the trait to remove conditions on water-swap), and know that your ele doesn’t really shine until you get to higher levels and can have 30 in arcana (for evasive arcana) and at least 15 in water. It gets much easier from there.

You can really go with any of the weapon-sets but here is some advice:
-D/D is in your face, but you get a lot of damage mitigation vs. enemy mobs by using movement displacement abilities as they bunch around you. This gets easier when you can get 15 in water for the burst heal on swapping to water.

-Staff can be very effective if you are more measured with your progress. You can do some great things by pulling mobs with earth 2 (it doesn’t draw aggro until it explodes!) and either placing down earth 4 (cripple) right in front of it, or swapping to fire and dropping down fire-2 to get the earth combo finisher inside of it. If you use your cc’s effectively, individual mobs won’t get very close to you because they are too dumb to not just plow into your control.

-S/F can do ok, but Focus really shines in cutting down on ranged damage, which isn’t that significant at lower levels.

-S/D can do very well as you have access to two heals (water 3 and water 5), and the close-range combat can make landing dragon’s tooth much easier.

Utilities:
- Glyph of elementals (lesser and greater) works very well at level, especially if you get the earth one to tank for you and take the heat off while you kill the mobs.
- Glyph of storms in earth is also like a short invuln if you stand in it b/c mobs attack slow enough that every attack is blinded
- Signet of air is also pretty effective if you are channeling a skill, you can target someone and apply an aoe blind that will mitigate a lot of damage (again, mob attack rates are very low). This is an alternative to the zephyr’s boon, allowing you to trait more defensively w/o losing too much speed.
- Lightning hammer does some good things at messing people up and is effective leveling quickly. The only downside is you aren’t learning your weapon skills as much.
- Your defensive cantrips can be very useful for staying alive, mitigating damage, and cleansing conditions.

Lots of good advice above. A few random things I’d add:

Consider resetting your traits. 10 in arcane for the Elemental Attunement trait gets you regeneration on swap into water and protection on swap into earth, these are huge helps at dealing with damage. 10 in water would be my next suggestion.

Gear for power, vitality and toughness using preferably masterwork (green) gear within at least 5 levels of your current level. Don’t forget trinkets (I did on my first character and I was like “ah, that’s why I was dying a lot” when I finally discovered how much of the total stat pool they are responsible for) they are about half of your total stats from gear. Ignore gear with condition damage for now, and don’t worry much about precision until level 50-60ish.

Gendarran, especially the area with the highly clustered pirates, is a bit like some areas of the level 80 zone “Orr”. The combination of high damage mobs, terrain chokepoints and respawn rates makes it challenging for any class. Elementalists are a late blooming class, so a level 30ish area with endgame style mobs is pretty burly. Try Lornar’s Pass for a slightly less stressful experience.

After leveling engi,war,guard, thief and mesmer (and in the process of leveling ele), I dare say elementalist is quite easy. Right after warrior and guardian.
Because you have not only the huge amount of utility skills from level 1 (from attunement swaps) but also a lot of AOE-damage.

Tips for general leveling:
Upgrade you gear from TP every 10 levels at least – it doesn’t cost much but speeds up the process a lot.
Try to be as much zerk as you can. GW2 pve is all about “kill them before they kill you”. Learning to dodge and evade early will help you in high-end content too.