Guild Wars 2

So I played a little during beta but have a long weekend and decided to spend some time in Tyria! I’m wanting to play an Elementalist and am curious, how are they solo? As a cloth wearing mage, I’m assuming we’re squishy and we don’t have pets like the Ranger or Necro to help with aggro so I’m curious about their survivability rating. I’m looking for a class I can play long term and I play PvE only.

Thanks so much everyone in advance for your replies =)

I started off playing betas as a necro, thinking that would have been my main (being it was my main in GW). I chose to make an ele first to get the name I want (everyone knew me and my elementalist as Killing in GW and “Killing” was the name I wanted on my ele) and i leveled him up to 80 first. I got addicted as an ele. We’re squishy…totally squishy…in fact, from my experience in playing and what I see/hear from others, the only safe route to play as an ele is a bunker. You need high heals and high vitality and toughness. It’s really fun and a great challenge. If you like pain in the butt, high risk low reward playing then you’d like ele. I have troubles playing at times but as I play more the more dominating I see the ele as being…specifically bunker lol. Anyways…I say either ele or mesmer!

Well buddy, you’ve picked up a spectacular class.. I myself play ele quite a bit atm and im having no trouble going solo or group play. Ill paste in the build i use from my guilds website. Its really durable and doesnt have too many counters but im sure you will work it out.. find everything i know below in the spoiler part.

Exenisel.5410:

So I played a little during beta but have a long weekend and decided to spend some time in Tyria! I’m wanting to play an Elementalist and am curious, how are they solo? As a cloth wearing mage, I’m assuming we’re squishy and we don’t have pets like the Ranger or Necro to help with aggro so I’m curious about their survivability rating. I’m looking for a class I can play long term and I play PvE only.

Thanks so much everyone in advance for your replies =)

:D hellow newb, I’m swim and I like shinies and helping newbs

I main elementalist tried all other classes but can’t help but stick to elementalist because its soooo much fun to play. All the other classes seem kinda slow. (except for main-hand sword ranger with quickness, that one is fun too).

As for cloth and pets:
We got elemental summons that go well if you do a long-range glyph build.

We got amazing survivability (almost as good as wariors but thieves and mesmers outwit us in pvp, *when played correctly); but you won’t have to deal with those since you’ll be doing pve.

A safe start would be getting cantrips for utility skills and some water and arcane traits.
most people like having 10 in air, I prefer 20 because of the 20% more dmg on foes with 33% remaining health or the trait that gives boons when you use a glyph.

The mokittenn weapon set is D/D, most effective weapon set in pve at lower lvls would be S/D because you can use 4 blast finishers in the fire field adding up to 12 might which is a very good damage boost since you will most likely not be traited into doing damage.

Another thing that I’ve seen work with the staff is a Glyph AoE build.
20 in arcana for the bigger aoe fields; utilities: glyph of storms, ice bow and a fiery greatsword.
Cast 2 and 5 in fire atunement then ice bow no. 4 followed by fiery greatsword 5, then fire 2, attune to earth for glyph of storms (aoe blind ticks every second) followed by 2 in earth and then water no. 4, air no. 5 to keep enemies inside the AoE spams.

Honestly I’ve never been able to do the full rotation in pve because I have yet to find anything that can survive this onslaught. Get the sigil that gives quickness on crit so you can cast the AoE’s a bit quicker.

Something else that works for D/D in pvp attleast (probably also in pve) is 15/15/15/15/10 + a sigil that procs damage around you on weaponswap. This’ll give you the most PointBlankAreaOfEffect spells possible. Get something like arcanewave and arcane shield and a cantrip in your utilities, Tornado is also a fun PBAOE but not very good at damaging. It sure is a fun build though.

This is all that I’ve researched so far build-wise.

Stat-wise I’ve found that anything works but Condition damage and vitality aren’t near as important to an elementalist as all the other stats. So if you buy or use weapons or armor try to use ones that have anything except those two.
Stats that work well for us are Boon Duration (not really a stat but more of a pre-requisite), healing power, toughness and any power you can get your hands on.

If you do go for arcane utility skills then Crit. Dmg would be a very good choice too.

Why all of you are saying about d/d elementalist? Staff is worthless in solo pve?

Kreslin.6832:

Staff is worthless in solo pve?

No it’s not, but dagger is faster (and maybe a bit easier). You can use just about any weapon in PvE and do well with it. Including staff.

DrFutzLoop.5316:

My preference for weapons is D/D with a sigil of bloodlust and perception on each. This allows for up to 25 stacks of +10 precision and power.

2 stacking sigils don’t work together.

The amount of horrible advice on these forums makes my face hurt.

Also consider scepter/dagger or staff. Dagger/dagger in PvE will have you up in a mob’s face most of the time, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you know what you’re doing, but as a newbie may cause you some problems. Scepter gives you a bit more distance to play around with, which will (generally) help you avoid a fair bit of damage. Consider it a very effective set of “training wheels” that you may actually enjoy more than the dagger/dagger set in the end.

In general, all of the classes have one common mantra: don’t soak damage up, avoid it entirely. The elementalist, with its low health pool and cloth armor class, just takes this a bit further than other classes. Until you’re used to kiting and avoiding damage, I would highly recommend avoiding melee combat.

Also, do note that the two stacking sigils in Swimsasa’s build will not function together. Replace one with an effect-on-crit or stat bonus for best results.