Not sure if there are any leveling guides out there, maybe someone more organized and less rambly than me could make one.
Most of the builds assume you are 80 in full exotic gear (which you will be fairly fast, leveling and gearing up in GW2 doesn’t take long compared to many MMOs). Pretty much aim to approximate the stats of the level 80 builds in proportion, and build more defensively at first if you get downed often.
Any PvP build will work in PvE, to some extent. Players can hit as hard as PvE bosses in many cases, and are generally less predictable (once you learn their patterns you can pretty much get away without any defensive stats to speak of, human players don’t always stand in the same place using the same abilities, well, some don’t).
Not sure your level, or how much of this is redundant, but here:
I usually recommend putting the first 9 trait points you get into the water line, then when you get the tenth one go to the trainer and reset your traits (a silver or so at most, don’t buy another manual!) and put 10 in arcane and take the elemental attunement trait. That way you’ll have some hitpoints for your first few levels while you learn to dodge and time self-heals, vitality scales well at low levels, giving a flat 100 HP for each trait point which is a ton at that level. The 10 point trait in arcane gives a boon each time you switch attunements, earth and water really help with protection (-33% damage taken) and regeneration (heath recovery over time) and can be better active defense than the passive HP boost from water. The other option is leave the first 10 points in water, take any of the good traits there and put your next 10 into arcane (still would recommend dropping those points into earth for the toughness, then resetting them into arcane after you have a full 10 more at level 31(?) as you don’t really get any benefit from arcane points without the full 10 there for the major trait). Bottom line: resetting traits is cheap, play around with it till you can stay alive.
As for leveling, there’s some things that apply to the first character of any class to some extent.
-Gather all the nodes you see and craft with the materials. Pick 2 crafts and level them to max as you level, two maxed crafts gives 20 character levels of exp on top of what you get gathering (daily and straight exp per action). Sell what materials you don’t need to buy ones that you do. Craft on Thursday nights or Friday mornings to get the highest bonus exp chances, using the crafting boosters from the black lion chests is cool if you get them free, but not really worth buying keys for.
-When entering WvW before level 80, you will be upleveled to 80 with stats based around your current build. Vitality, toughness and condition damage stats are the best with this scaling. Try to have gear as close to your level as possible using those stats, and put trait points into the lines which give them as well. Because of the scaling math, a level 20 elementalist with all trait points in water and all at-level vitality gears will have several thousand more hitpoints than is even possible at level 80 in full exotic gear. Surviving in groups in WvW isn’t hard at all at low levels, just don’t build to do massive damage, because you won’t, the weapon damage scaling doesn’t work the same way (the same level 20 with 10 in air and all precision gear would have a huge amount of critical damage, but still very low base attack, due to weapon scaling so high multipliers of low numbers = still low damage).
-Learn to use all the weapon options available. They all (attempt to) have specific situational uses.
-Explore. Do every dynamic event you come across if possible and hang around after, watch the npcs, follow them if they go on talking, often events will chain into multiple events (not every event chains, but many do, and often you will complete the hearts in the area doing this also). Map completion rewards can be pretty lackluster until the 60+ zones, but the exp gained from unlocking all the areas and hearts adds up to quite a bit. Gather as you explore.
-Don’t bother with rare (yellow) quality gear as you level. Masterwork (green) is plenty for everything and the difference in stats isn’t much, while the difference in cost adds up to several gold over the course of your leveling. You will outlevel it fast anyway. Salvage white quality gear with basic salvage kits. Sell unwanted blue/green drops to npcs (or TP if green/yellow and the selling price is higher than the npc cost + TP fee).
Rambling enough for you?
Hats off to all the ones who stood before me, and taught a fool to ride.
