Guild Wars 2

I’ve stayed away from the magic professions for the most part. Just not feeling them. However I came across I thread titled Fire Elementalist which sparked my interest.

I really dig the fire animation and if it’s possible to make a build totally dedicated to fire only I would like to give it a go.

Now from what I’ve read you simply CANNOT PLAY as an Elementalist using only 1 attunement. The thread I came across seems to disagree.

Here is the link to that thread: http://www.guildwarsinsider.com/tips-building-good-fire-elementalist/

Have any of you tried this type of play style ? If so and if you were successful,mind sharing your secrets ?

If this is a bad idea,I also welcome that advice. No point in starting A fire only build if it’s pointless lol.

In PvE I guess if you trait correctly it has an alright amount of damage. However, you can only feasibly play this way if you are using a Staff and have a team to cover you, so don’t bother with it if you want to do anything but sit back and spam Lava Font all day. It is also arguable that the amount of utility you sacrifice by refusing to switch elements is detrimental to your overall performance, as well as the performance of anybody you decide to play with.

Leuca.5732:

In PvE I guess if you trait correctly it has an alright amount of damage. However, you can only feasibly play this way if you are using a Staff and have a team to cover you, so don’t bother with it if you want to do anything but sit back and spam Lava Font all day. It is also arguable that the amount of utility you sacrifice by refusing to switch elements is detrimental to your overall performance, as well as the performance of anybody you decide to play with.

Yeah, I’ve been watching some video’s on youtube and from what I’ve seen,its a must that you learn and switch between attunements to stay alive and deal the maximum amount of damage. No point in playing a profession in handicap mode.

Thanks for the reply.

I think it depends on the challenge of the content. For easier content (e.g. everything but fractals and PvP), your group probably won’t need help surviving and max damage dictates that you stay in fire. I’d recommend 30/10/0/10/20 with Pyromancer’s Puissiance.

HappyHubris.1096:

I think it depends on the challenge of the content. For easier content (e.g. everything but fractals and PvP), your group probably won’t need help surviving and max damage dictates that you stay in fire. I’d recommend 30/10/0/10/20 with Pyromancer’s Puissiance.

Do the trait points still work in your favor if you’re staying in fire or do you have to switch to that attunement to reap the benefits of the trait points ?

For example. If you put trait points on earth traits,lets say to raise toughness, will the toughness still work for you while in fire attunement ?

Also, can you solo pve from 0 to 80 only using the fire attunement ?

GuildWarsPlayer.5608:

HappyHubris.1096:

I think it depends on the challenge of the content. For easier content (e.g. everything but fractals and PvP), your group probably won’t need help surviving and max damage dictates that you stay in fire. I’d recommend 30/10/0/10/20 with Pyromancer’s Puissiance.

Do the trait points still work in your favor if you’re staying in fire or do you have to switch to that attunement to reap the benefits of the trait points ?

For example. If you put trait points on earth traits,lets say to raise toughness, will the toughness still work for you while in fire attunement ?

Also, can you solo pve from 0 to 80 only using the fire attunement ?

Trait point investment is always active. Certain traits may not be, such as Pyromancer’s Puissance, which requires that you be in Fire to gain might per spell cast. You can take the 5 Earth trait as an example of this as well. The toughness you gain by investing in Earth is always there, but that particular trait will only add additional toughness if you are currently attuned to Earth.

Also, I cannot see anybody soloing PvE without switching attunements. The recharges in Fire attunement don’t provide you with enough utility to have active defense.

In PvE, You can (and I did, still do) use it for everything.
Get Puissance and you can do Dungeons / Open World / Events … anything

In PvE, you can use it on Staff, Scepter AND Dagger …..

Staff and Dagger have amazing AutoAttack, and on scepter, Mobs won’t avoid you’r Dragon’s tooth ^^

it is possible to level in pve with only fire. i did with staff.
but you have to play tank.

just autoattacking down mobs is… very very boring. and deal very very little dmg.
you have to put down lava font and tank mobs in it. (Still very low dmg).

but staying in only 1 atunement. you will realy start to hate your elemental.
you are stupidly weak when using staff, and since you have to tank your mobs in your aoe lava font… well.. you get the picture..

You could jump into water and throw down a healing rain..
But then you are locked out from fire, and now have even lower dmg.

And, since we only have 1 skill bar to use…
Elemental in my opinion.. is realy realy stupidly designed.

IF you have 4 skill bars.. (like most games wich requires alot of skills).
and also posibility to macro key binds more efficient.
Elemental whouldnt be the incredibly, stupid weak class, as it is now.

eldain, when you’re soloing you either want to burst down enemies before they can hurt you or swap to non-fire attunements to prevent incoming damage (e.g. snaring a melee enemy with water 4 or using earth 3 vs a ranged enemy).

The key to using a Pyromancer’s Puissiance build is to know when to drop out of fire in group content. For example, using water to heal injured allies or water/air/earth to snare and stun certain enemies. Damage dictates fire, but you want to keep your group running smoothly.

jumping into a CC atunement. make you lockout of your dmg atunement.

So you CC your mobs / enemy players. gratz. now you stoped them,
but your dmg just droped by 50 % also.

i played engineer alot. they dont have this crappy problem elementals has.
and engineers also have 4 kits to pick from if they want.
I can be in flamer, use my knockback, switch to elixir gun, slow them. switch to flamer again to shoot my napalm bomb. then switch to elixir again to poison them, and when they get to me again.. i still have my jump back poison field on elixir.

then back to flamer again.

i can do this all day. and iam not locked out.

why should elemental have this stupid lockout penalty.

simply put. its very bad design.

The solution would be to make trait lines apply to all attunements and spread damage out instead of commentating it in fire. That way you would never feel “locked out” of your damaging element. D/D works like this, but is boring for other reasons.

Lillian Wandom Hale.7102:

In PvE, You can (and I did, still do) use it for everything.
Get Puissance and you can do Dungeons / Open World / Events … anything

In PvE, you can use it on Staff, Scepter AND Dagger …..

Staff and Dagger have amazing AutoAttack, and on scepter, Mobs won’t avoid you’r Dragon’s tooth ^^

Alright….its on.

Thanks.

eldain stenlund.4306:

it is possible to level in pve with only fire. i did with staff.
but you have to play tank.

just autoattacking down mobs is… very very boring. and deal very very little dmg.
you have to put down lava font and tank mobs in it. (Still very low dmg).

but staying in only 1 atunement. you will realy start to hate your elemental.
you are stupidly weak when using staff, and since you have to tank your mobs in your aoe lava font… well.. you get the picture..

You could jump into water and throw down a healing rain..
But then you are locked out from fire, and now have even lower dmg.

And, since we only have 1 skill bar to use…
Elemental in my opinion.. is realy realy stupidly designed.

IF you have 4 skill bars.. (like most games wich requires alot of skills).
and also posibility to macro key binds more efficient.
Elemental whouldnt be the incredibly, stupid weak class, as it is now.

Okay. My plan will be to dump all my trait skill points into fire and earth. I’m thinking with all my trait points going into fire that will max out fire damage and with all the remaining points in earth this should max out toughness. I’m not familiar with what trait skills do what with Elementalist so whatever gives vitality I would say drop the remaining 10 skill points into that.

Then I’m going to invest in power vitality and toughness in light armor and mods, the same in trinkets, and power condition damage and either vitality or toughness in weapons.

As far as weapons go, since Elementalist can’t weapon swap in combat, I’m thinking staff, as you’ve all suggested and dual or double daggers.

I didn’t quite catch why are you doing this? As a goof? You lost a bet and now you have to level 1-80 elementalist only using fire attunument?
However if you are leveling the elementalist to actually play it as a main, you do not want to waste precious learning time (leveling) by noobing around and not learning the other 75% of the class. Starting the journey with goal: only fire, will only bring you harm.

I could understand if you were asking for if you could be effective doing this from pure DPS perspective, like a dungeon situation.

You aswered yourself correctly on the third comment of this topic. So I hope you keep to that, just the later comments got me confused.

Also note that the link you gave is outdated, from the early times of gw2. Don’t follow that as a good templelate :P…

learning 75 % more of the class by using all 4 elements you say.

hmm.. no.. and yes.

Yes. only if you play the legendary Dagger/Dagger troll specc.

No, if you use any other weapon.

the second you change atunement. you lose 50 % dmg of the fire capable of.
(and fire is still low/medium dmg).

you need abit of humor for this part.
But this is actually what i see at the moment, and how the designers have made it.
(in a weird way).

*Iam the Great ELEMENTAL MAGUS…. BEHOLD.. i master ALL elements.
FIRE… WATER… AIR… EARTH…

Let my burning fire from below taste you… “pyro-flamus-lava-fontanus” (waving staff).

HEY… you… kitten #8230; yes you… stand still… iam trying to cast my might lava font on you.
…
your still moving??… ok.. let me show you my REAL POWER…
BEHOLD… … “cometukittenus-earthus”…
hey… you are supposed to stand still in my meteor shower… stop moving away from my MIGHTY AOE…

for your insolence of moving when iam trying to hit you…
i will DROWN YOU with my water…
“splash splash”…wtf is this crap…………..

meanwhile, his “friends”
the brotherhood of the sign of: “Dagger/Dagger”.. is laughing… … …*

eldain stenlund.4306:

learning 75 % more of the class by using all 4 elements you say.

hmm.. no.. and yes.

Yes. only if you play the legendary Dagger/Dagger troll specc.

No, if you use any other weapon.

the second you change atunement. you lose 50 % dmg of the fire capable of.
(and fire is still low/medium dmg).

you need abit of humor for this part.
But this is actually what i see at the moment, and how the designers have made it.
(in a weird way).

*Iam the Great ELEMENTAL MAGUS…. BEHOLD.. i master ALL elements.
FIRE… WATER… AIR… EARTH…

Let my burning fire from below taste you… “pyro-flamus-lava-fontanus” (waving staff).

HEY… you… kitten .. yes you… stand still… iam trying to cast my might lava font on you.
…
your still moving??… ok.. let me show you my REAL POWER…
BEHOLD… … “cometukittenus-earthus”…
hey… you are supposed to stand still in my meteor shower… stop moving away from my MIGHTY AOE…

for your insolence of moving when iam trying to hit you…
i will DROWN YOU with my water…
“splash splash”…wtf is this crap…………..

meanwhile, his “friends”
the brotherhood of the sign of: “Dagger/Dagger”.. is laughing… … …*

lol…funny stuff.

I think it depends on your build. I’m going for a tanky build with high survivability so staying in fire for the majority of combat works perfect for me.However, when I get into trouble, I do find myself jumping into air and speeding off lol…

yes. iam also using fire mostly. (i like fire).
But iam here and there, rarely tho. using another element.

I can throw a healing rain when i do wvw over a group. trying to be nice.
or i can sometimes use the air nr5 stun circle..
Oh.. i have used water AoE slowing 1 – 2 times also. also just out of boredome.

but iam using dmg oriented geared. so my healing rain and stuff are kinda crap anyways.

using autoattack. lavafont and nr3 fire blast. thats about it.
nr4 when i see ppl coming. speed back abit and run like hell.
nr5 when we attack a keep. or guard it.

abit boring. but its the only way to keep some dmg up.

eldain stenlund.4306:

yes. iam also using fire mostly. (i like fire).
But iam here and there, rarely tho. using another element.

I can throw a healing rain when i do wvw over a group. trying to be nice.
or i can sometimes use the air nr5 stun circle..
Oh.. i have used water AoE slowing 1 – 2 times also. also just out of boredome.

but iam using dmg oriented geared. so my healing rain and stuff are kinda crap anyways.

using autoattack. lavafont and nr3 fire blast. thats about it.
nr4 when i see ppl coming. speed back abit and run like hell.
nr5 when we attack a keep. or guard it.

abit boring. but its the only way to keep some dmg up.

I think this whole post just explained why you hate the staff so much.
You just really don’t know how to play it. Proved it in your post.

paleeshi.1924:

eldain stenlund.4306:

yes. iam also using fire mostly. (i like fire).
But iam here and there, rarely tho. using another element.

I can throw a healing rain when i do wvw over a group. trying to be nice.
or i can sometimes use the air nr5 stun circle..
Oh.. i have used water AoE slowing 1 – 2 times also. also just out of boredome.

but iam using dmg oriented geared. so my healing rain and stuff are kinda crap anyways.

using autoattack. lavafont and nr3 fire blast. thats about it.
nr4 when i see ppl coming. speed back abit and run like hell.
nr5 when we attack a keep. or guard it.

abit boring. but its the only way to keep some dmg up.

I think this whole post just explained why you hate the staff so much.
You just really don’t know how to play it. Proved it in your post.

It sounded about right, how about you prove him wrong by detailing the “correct way.”

I see nothing wrong with eldain stenlund.4306 play style if it works for him. The beauty of making a build is the ability to make the build to your individual play style. What works for eldain stenlund.4306 may not work for you and vice versa.

Personally I would like to lean towards fire being my main power used.

Thanks to for all the replies.

[/quote]
I think this whole post just explained why you hate the staff so much.
You just really don’t know how to play it. Proved it in your post.[/quote]

well. thats my whole point.

Staying in fire, with berzerk gear. is the only possible way to get atleast some small dmg output from the elemental class. (switch and you drop 50 % dmg).
and i play it Ranged dmg. the way it should be on a mage class.

stereotypical or not. if you have the weakest amor and lowest hp pool.
you need to play your class as ranged.
but for some reason we are given DD and melee… realy messed up and weird.

I just dont understand how anyone can design a class this wrong as A-net have done.

its not that its hard to design a character class.
Class: Mage(elemental) / spell caster / ranged.
Dmg: High.
Survival. Low.
Mobility. High.

thats the base to go from. not realy hard is it.
after this. just create cool spells wich Fits the base profile.
*Fireball.
*Lightning strike.
*Cone of Cold.
*Dragons breath.
*Fire lance.
*Icey touch.
*Fire storm.
*Earthquake.
etc etc.

you get the idea.
Just make a ton of spells.
And then you sit down and see wich matches most to the base line.
But also give a few “oh crap” skills. (defensive ones, but not too many).

and in a few minutes you have your Class made.
now you just balance and tweak it against the other.
but always remembering the Base line.
High dmg. Low surival. High mobility.

Remember toughness increases your agro too, might be safer to go for the vitality in water for your tankyness or just go fire/air/arcane with tanky gear :p

Eldain, just stop, go play a mesmer or something. And you can easily play high damage low survival glass ele successfully if you know what you’re doing.

EVERY class gets melee and ranged options, that’s the point of the bloody game. I personally love being up close as a mage archetype, you have no imagination.

Toughness is one of the many factor when it comes to calculating aggro, not a sole one. Full zerker guardian in melee might as well generate more aggro than an ele with a staff and a bit of toughness.

I personally playing my elementalist found that once you are used to attunement swapping it becomes second nature. It helps I played classes similar to this in other games (Bard in Everquest, etc.)

haviz.1340:

Toughness is one of the many factor when it comes to calculating aggro, not a sole one. Full zerker guardian in melee might as well generate more aggro than an ele with a staff and a bit of toughness.

That’s why I said increases.

I pretty much have a good idea how to play Elementalist the correct way and I must say the profession is not a favorite of mine.

I prefer weapon swap over attunement swap.

With my play style I found myself looking to swap between D/D and staff. That reason and that reason only is why I prefer other professions above Elementalist lol.

I’m not saying the Elementalist profession isn’t a good one, its just not one of my preferred professions.