Guild Wars 2

I’ve decided that my 4th level 80 shall be an Elementalist.

Mat costs have skyrocketed, so crafting to 80 won’t be a cost-efficient option. I’m going to test myself to see how fast I can level this character to 80 via the normal way (Exploring, dynamic events, story quest, etc.).

My question is, is there a particular strong PVE build I should know about to speed this process?

The reason why I ask is because I recall hearing of a Lightning Hammer pve build that made leveling quick and painless.

I wondered if anyone’s followed a build for the journey to 80 that has proven to be very effective for them. Thanks in advance!

I recently leveled an Elementalist to 80 the old fashioned way, and I found D/D to be the best weapon setup for leveling, and I tried all the options a bit. Check out the D/D guide in this forum for traits, and since you’ll be in melee range a lot, you’ll want to try to keep some Vitality and Toughness on your gear where you can without sacrificing Power too much. Try to find a good balance.

Although, I did switch to Staff at lvl 50 as I planned to play Staff in WvW and I wanted to practice the playstyle for the last 30 levels. I’d imaging D/D only gets better for those levels though as you add more traits.

What makes d/d so attractive for me (in exploration, anyway) is the near-permanent swiftness! Zoom zoom!

I had picked up a lightning hammer from an ele on a level 10 mesmer alt and the auto attack hit for 150. Very strong.

d/d ele is soooo fast. XD it’ll definitely “speed” up the process. Other than that d/d is actually very high survivability bc of how fast you move and basically evade a ton of stuff with all the gap closing, leaps, cc etc and high damage rate. It’s def a great solo build. I had no trouble solo-ing champions. i needed the help of my fiery gs though which adds more range and more movement to the solo ele, that spinnning gs move really makes difficult things np xD

I just finished lvling my Ele to 80. I don’t pvp, I am pve exclusively. I have all exotic gear and runes.

I am not the most skilled player, however, I can hold my own. After trying many builds and gear setups in the mists, I have come to the conclusion that anyone who CLAIMS to be able to solo a champ is outright lying or hacking.

It IS NOT possible to solo champs. Don’t even begin to think you can. You will NOT have the survivability, no matter what anyone says. Go ahead and give it a try and see how quickly the champ beats you down.

Now if there are champ mobs out there I don’t know about that are very weak (basically vets with a champ symbol around their name) then I don’t know about them and haven’t tried to solo them.

But any Champ that I have tried to solo couldn’t be done. Again, go ahead and flame me for saying this, but I know what the truth is.

Notsure.7028:

…
I am not the most skilled player, however, I can hold my own. After trying many builds and gear setups in the mists, I have come to the conclusion that anyone who CLAIMS to be able to solo a champ is outright lying or hacking.

It IS NOT possible to solo champs. Don’t even begin to think you can. You will NOT have the survivability, no matter what anyone says. Go ahead and give it a try and see how quickly the champ beats you down.
…

Many of the champion mobs ingame are melee oriented that have slow and dodgeable attacks when you got to know the couple special attacks they have.

I don’t really go around looking for champions to kill but I remember killing some invading ogre champ (you know the ones who wipe out a whole town alone) while leveling in some norn zone, taking like 30 minutes. And then a harder one in Town of Nageling Ascalon town invasion requiring tighter timing as his attacks were always one shot + aoe fear.
It takes ages to solo champ with little reward. I don’t know what you mean by “survivability” as most champ attacks one shot anyway, or 2 shot. You have to evade their attacks, no choise really.
Though now with full 80 exotics downleveled such tasks would be alot alot easier.

Anyway I always had more success with staff while lvling, but I did have tendency going too deep with many mobs with the daggers. Can be real kitten fighting alot of risens in daggers unless you build and gear to survive that.

For staff: Just get 20 arcana as soon as possible for Blasting Staff. Then you are pretty much done.
Great base for any staff build is 0/0/0/20/20 and you can build any direction from there. Really you can distribute rest of the points anywhere you like and find quite equal argument for all. 30 fire, 30 earth, 10 fire 20 air, 20 fire 10 earth …
The fotm and FotM lvl 80 specs are still waiting for you after lvling, no need to think only about those.

For utilities choose arcane wave (damage and comboing), mist form and third one of your choise – try Glyph of Elemental/Arcane shield/Armor of earth/Lightning flash/ANYTHING. Doesn’t hurt to try different when your core is tight.

Notsure.7028:

I just finished lvling my Ele to 80. I don’t pvp, I am pve exclusively. I have all exotic gear and runes.

I am not the most skilled player, however, I can hold my own. After trying many builds and gear setups in the mists, I have come to the conclusion that anyone who CLAIMS to be able to solo a champ is outright lying or hacking.

It IS NOT possible to solo champs. Don’t even begin to think you can. You will NOT have the survivability, no matter what anyone says. Go ahead and give it a try and see how quickly the champ beats you down.

Now if there are champ mobs out there I don’t know about that are very weak (basically vets with a champ symbol around their name) then I don’t know about them and haven’t tried to solo them.

But any Champ that I have tried to solo couldn’t be done. Again, go ahead and flame me for saying this, but I know what the truth is.

I don’t think it’s impossible to solo the champs. They do have those special attacks that will squish you, but once you get the hang of dodging them you can chip away at their life bar until you win the fight. I generally avoid those fights because they simply aren’t time efficient. Taking 15 minutes to a half hour to kill one mob is by and large just a massive waste of time that could be spent completing hearts, gathering materials, and making money.

Sure they can be killed, but the experience gain (or lack of anything substantial) makes killing champs a waste of time, imo. Now “grouping up” and working an event is a different story of course.

Lightning hammer + 20 in fire for 10 more charges. Rest doesn’t really matter, survivabilty or damage stuff whatever you want.

Notsure.7028:

I just finished lvling my Ele to 80. I don’t pvp, I am pve exclusively. I have all exotic gear and runes.

I am not the most skilled player, however, I can hold my own. After trying many builds and gear setups in the mists, I have come to the conclusion that anyone who CLAIMS to be able to solo a champ is outright lying or hacking.

It IS NOT possible to solo champs. Don’t even begin to think you can. You will NOT have the survivability, no matter what anyone says. Go ahead and give it a try and see how quickly the champ beats you down.

Now if there are champ mobs out there I don’t know about that are very weak (basically vets with a champ symbol around their name) then I don’t know about them and haven’t tried to solo them.

But any Champ that I have tried to solo couldn’t be done. Again, go ahead and flame me for saying this, but I know what the truth is.

As you were saying?

You most certainly can solo champs as a D/D ele, I have solo’d quite a few. The most memorable to date are the Spider champ guarding Provernic Crypts in the Gendarran Fields and the the Ettin Champ in the SE of Lornar’s Pass that is right by the vista.

The Spider’s pretty much a one trick pony with its poison, which is surprisingly week. The only other issue is the hatchlings that spawn and the oozes in the hallway. Oh, speaking of the hallway, the Spider is on a fairly short leash and resets if you go to far down the hallway where you fight it (don’t fight in the room, the spike traps will down in seconds).

As for the Ettin champ, the only real issue I encountered was that s/he/it took me over 10 minutes if not more to kill, he has tons of health and a Vet Ettin (Vettin?) respawns right near him that you have to periodically deal with as well. Fortunately, the Vet goes down fairly quickly if you focus fire him. The trick is just to keep moving and rotating through all your attunements.

Oh, the one vet that I never did manage to bring down was a Champ Cave Troll. He applies something like 6xbleeds per hit and they hurt like the dickens. He also has a ranged knock-down and a snare and the cave trolls respawn in that area relatively quickly and and their knock-down is annoying as hell. I attempted him like 5ish times then said screw it and gave up