Guild Wars 2

After leveling my Guardian to 80, I decided to try an Elementalist next.
And oh, what a pain. I’ve chosen the Human Noble, Circus storyline, and more than once I had trouble completing the missions.

The last one of the Circus, defeat the Ringmaster while he hypnotizes the crowd, I simply… couldn’t. No way.

But, in the end, I succeeded, using a strategy I perfected from enduring so many hardships, and I’ll share with you guys: After you get zerged and down, just press 1 to deal some damage until you die. Now’s the important part, click the Retry from a Checkpoint. This will make you spawn right next to your objective, AoE again, and die.

By my 4th or 5th death I managed to kill all of the mob, save for the boss, which took me another death or two whenever he got some more adds.

Now, really, this sucks. I find Elementalists awesome in PvP and for general killing/looting. Support is great, AoE is great, damage is great… but soloing melee + ranged + boss REALLY sucks.

I think Elementalist is OP in PvE and sucks in PvP, why? Elementalist is a complicated class to use, for exemple: If you use a staff, you need to use all of your skill, not only fire because you think the other element sucks, its not like a warrior, with a warrior, you use you attack skill and do damage, and thats it. But with an elementalist, you need to use strategies. I personnaly start by using earth element with a staff, i use 2 to do some bleeding and then i use fire then switch to water, etc… I never had problem doing my personal storyline, most of the quest were done when i was 1-2 or 3 level under the recommended level.

I also can solo up to 10 monster at the same time by using strategies, i think thats a bit OP.

Well, you did switch from probably the easiest class to the hardest.

Toughness/vit are your friends, don’t underestimate the water/earth trees, and be prepared to die, a LOT. Also, i have found S/D my favorite for PVE. Churning Earth + Lightning flash is probably the best opener, especially vs multiple mobs. If you haven’t already, practice dodging… a LOT. when 1 hit can take you to sub 50% health it is a pretty important skill to master.

Arcane shielding at 25% health and earth armor at 50% health are probably the most important traits you can get for solo survivability.

Ele is an amazingly fun and complex class to play. Other classes seem so boring to me now, they just sit there and spam the same 2 or 3 skills and everything falls dead. As an ele if i did that to a single even level mob i would probably wind up taking a dirt nap.

Same for me. I tried some other classes and they don’t appeal me. Elementalists have to fight each fight, they can’t rely on spamming 1, and that’s what makes them so interesting. I’d love a bit more damage on air attunement tho.

Something I wrote in another forum:

Spend 10 points in Earth Magic and get [Salt Stone]. Earth gives Toughness and Condition Damage, both is very helpful.
Fire Magic, Water Magic and Arcane Power are all suitable for your next 19 points.

Use Earth #2, but don’t use the followup which shots your armor at your foe, instead let it run out; dunno if it’s a bug but if you simply let it run out it has no cooldown which means you can have its +armor all the time.
Switch every ~20 seconds to Fire for the #4, #2, #3 combo to get 6 stacks of Might, finikitten with either #5 or Earth #4. You must be in close range for this combo, though.
To bridge the time until Earth is ready again (or use it before switching to Fire so you can imminently back to Earth after the Fire combo) use Air #2, #3. #4, #5 is a good set up for the Fire combo.
Throw in Water #3, #4, #5 as needed.

Use the Signet, auto attacking counts as casting spells; it may not heal as much as the Glyph when activated but its passive healing adds up.
Glyph of Storms helps a lot, if cast while attuned to Earth (which you will be most of the time) it creates a Sandstorm which blinds every foe in it, basically makes you invulnerable for a short time.
Use Cantraps.

At level 40+ you can try out the Lightning Hammer Ele.

Maybe it helps.

I love the randomness of the word filter…

“Same for me. I tried some other classes and they don’t appeal me. Elementalists have to fight each fight, they can’t rely on spamming 1, and that’s what makes them so interesting. I’d love a bit more damage on air attunement tho.”

I know, I find it weird that air is supposed to be our single target damage dealer but our only skills that hit like a truck are AoE. Air needs to do a LOT more damage or make more of the skills hit more than one target.

darkcool.8615:

I think Elementalist is OP in PvE and sucks in PvP, why? Elementalist is a complicated class to use, for exemple: If you use a staff, you need to use all of your skill, not only fire because you think the other element sucks, its not like a warrior, with a warrior, you use you attack skill and do damage, and thats it. But with an elementalist, you need to use strategies. I personnaly start by using earth element with a staff, i use 2 to do some bleeding and then i use fire then switch to water, etc… I never had problem doing my personal storyline, most of the quest were done when i was 1-2 or 3 level under the recommended level.

I also can solo up to 10 monster at the same time by using strategies, i think thats a bit OP.

“I think Elementalist is OP” right when you said this I just put on the shock face Ele in OP in the same sentence maybe doing the bwe but come on are you serious?

I got my elementalist up to level 80… I’m next to flat broke with 30silver and can’t even use all my traits because the book from the elementalist trainer is so kitten expensive. At level 55 and up that is when it really gets expensive to where you’ll be breaking even to losing money around level 70 to armor repair and teleport frees when defeated.

Today I got to the top of Zizier’s Tower on the Straights of Devastation map. There was a Veteran undead that spawned and took me out in only 4 hits. A guardian came up and soloed the thing without losing more then 1/4 of his hp. He lost 1/4hp because he didn’t realize it was up there and it got two hits in before he attacked.

Playing Elementalist is apparently putting the game on super hard mode. We need to be rebalanced in PvE. Danicco, get used to dieing in 3-4 hits and on champion monsters, get used to 1-hit and sometimes no “fight to survive” as in your defeated in the same hit that took you out. If your in a good guild, hide behind everyone and shoot using the staff as your best bet.

Speaking only for PVE, I liked being able to AOE multiple mobs at the same time…in fact, I think I had a much easier time with Ele than my Mesmer. I won’t say weather it’s op or not since I’ve only played 2 classes….but I felt that it’s not the nightmare that everyone seem to think playing Ele.

Try scepter/dagger for solo pve instead of staff. Things die plenty fast once you learn to stack 12+ might boons on yourself consistently.

No, the Elementalist isn’t the nightmare to play that most people make it out to be.

It is however, a pain to learn how to play it. Only after you know dodges, attunment swapping, combos AND what gear to pick will you start to enjoy it.

But then, you’ll enjoy it immensely.

lightning. i play my elementalist almost exclusively dual dagger (which has the fewest survivability skills of any elementalist weapon btw), so i’ve basically got the squishiest weapon setup of the squishiest class, and i haven’t died in a fight with <5 mobs for 2 weeks. also, i have no problem gaining gold; i have somewhere around 50g right now.

elementalists are awesome if you have an idea of what you’re doing. if you’re just using as staff in PVE and playing it like you would another class, you are royally screwed. and dead. and poor from paying all the repair fees.

basically, L2P. you’ve got two arcane shields. that’s 6 hits worth of invincibility. use it. depending on your weapon-set, you have a TON of slows and snares or a TON of knockdowns. use them.
you also have a nearly invincible earth elemental able to tank all your damage for you. use it.

What gear to pick? Now how would we go about that? I tend to find I get what I’m given.

When it does get ridiculous in story missions I strip naked and use Lava Tomb. That and Glyph of Storms (Protip: Glyph of Storms is AMAZING in PVE, either in Earth for aoe stacking blind or anything else for impressive damage) gets me through most anything except some of the more psychotically unbalanced bosses and traps.

In general Ele is an uncomfortable learning curve. Way too many of our abilities are highly situational at best, combine that with being incredibly easy to kill and it makes for a brutal learning curve. When you get through the other side it isn’t pretty and we still have some very severe weaknesses but I haven’t found it so bad yet. On the other hand I’ve just hit level 56 and am about to brave the level 55 zones. This may be where it all goes wrong…