Guild Wars 2

I’ve noticed a lot of questions around about the elementalist class and as I believe it is the hardest and most intricate class to play it boggles my mind that there was no beginners guide to the class. So what I have here is a beginner’s overview of the weapons, utilities traits and some play style tips for the Elementalist.

I will not have all the answers here for you but I will try answer what I can and hopefully more elementalist will love this class as much as I do. This guide will not give you the perfect build to run with, but it will give you a good place to start and an idea of what skills/weapons would complement the playstyle you are looking for with your elementalist.

Weapons Overview
Slot skill overview
Healing
Arcane
Cantrips
Glyphs
Conjures
Signets
Elites
Traits and spec
Attunements and swapping
Combos
Armor Weapons and Trinkets

Your weapon is the most important part of your build. It will dictate 80% of the abilities you have to use in combat. So first and foremost let’s talk about what options we have for weapons.

WEAPONS
Don’t think that just because elementalists are limited to 1 weapon set in combat means you are limited to 1 weapon set period. You should keep another weapon set in your bags or even all of them for quick swaps when you are out of combat as the situation changes. It’s not as easy in sPvP since players will not forget about you as fast, but you will be surprised how fast combat can drop in PvE or Wv3 giving you a window to swap to a more dps, or more support weapon on the fly. Sometimes backing out of a boss fight for 15 seconds and swapping your weapon is the best thing you can do for your team. Keep an open mind to the different weapons sets and learn to use them all.

What weapon set is the best? There is no “best”. They all have their place. If you are looking for the all around good set then Scepter/dagger is for you. But remember you will not be the best at anything, just good all around. Honestly I would recommend this set as a beginner set for any new elementalist to get your feet wet in the class. But if you really want to start experiencing what the elementalist is capable of, you should step out of the Scepter/dagger comfort zone and play with some of the other sets.

Staff
The Staff is a weapon you cannot go wrong with. Nearly every skill in Staff is an AOE effect weather protecting, CCing or dealing damage. Once you are attacking more than 3 targets the Staff can deal more damage than the high damage Scepter and MH Dagger, though rare. This is especially noticeable in PVE where often enemies will stand in AOE effects for their entire duration. But where the Staff shines is in its field creation. With 8 combo fields of 4 different variety, a well-played staff wielder can bring a lot of support to the team that knows how to communicate and combo together. Because of this it is simply unmatched in team play. The water fields and the combo both from self and allies makes this weapon one of the most survivable weapons in our arsenal. However when solo, PvE or PvP enemies often will not be courteous enough to stand in your AOE effects making this weapon less desirable. Since many of the staff skills have movement interrupting casts kiting isn’t always the best option but is also a necessary evil. This weapon shines in groups and group content but is overshadowed in most other content.

Team PvE            *****
Team PvP            *****
Solo PvE               ***
Solo PvP         	***
DPS:			***
Burst:			**
Survivability:	****

Team PvE 		**
Team PvP 		***
Solo PvE 		*****
Solo PvP 		*****
DPS: 			*****
Burst: 			****
Survivability: 	***

Scepter/Dagger
The Scepter Dagger is the go to combo for most people. While it isn’t the best at much it is simply all around great. The sustained damage for the scepter dagger is not as high as Dagger/Dagger but it’s still very good. Where the scepter Dagger shines is burst in both damage and healing, there simply no other weapon set that will give you more emergency damage or healing than this combo. With high upfront damage rather than conditional and tons of finishers, the scepter can turn the tide of a battle faster than any other weapon set. But what makes it really shine is the 900 range. Giving the wielder close to dagger/dagger values without the limitations of melee making Scepter/dagger the most versatile weapon set we have. With the same amount of combo fields as dagger/dagger Scepter/dagger isn’t a set to set up combos but one rather to finish them with more combo finishers than any other weapon set we have. Your team will set them up and you can take them down.

Team PvE 		***
Team PvP 		****
Solo PvE 		****
Solo PvP 		****
DPS: 			****
Burst: 			*****
Survivability: 	***

Team PvE 		***
Team PvP 		***
Solo PvE 		****
Solo PvP 		****
DPS: 			****
Burst: 			**
Survivability: 	****

Scepter/Focus
Much like the dagger/focus this combo will give you great survivability. The differences are, less sustained damage, more burst, and of course more range therefore more survivability. However it has little less mobility as far as skills go. If you want to give up a little damage to get some room to breathe consider a scepter to pair with your focus rather than a dagger.

Team PvE 		***
Team PvP 		***
Solo PvE 		****
Solo PvP 		****
DPS: 			***
Burst: 			***
Survivability: 	****

SLOT SKILLS
Slot skills are the complementary skills to your main weapon skills. Because of their long cooldowns and the fact that they are only used generally when specific conditions are met. You will be using these skills a lot less that you will be using your weapons skills. However they are still important as they are generally more powerful than your weapon skills. They can bridge the holes in your build and the right Utility skills can make a mediocre build into a great one. The first slot is reserved for one of your healing skills. This heal is going to be more powerful than any heal you will get on your weapons. The 2nd 3rd and 4th slots are reserved for any utility skill you wish to go there, the tier you got the utility at does not matter at all. The last slot is reserved for one of your ultimate skills. These skills are long cooldown but generally very effective skills weather for damage or survivability.

Just like with the weapons there is no “best” setup. There are a lot of utility skills here and as you will see most of them are good or even great in certain condition or parts of gameplay. The best thing you can do for yourself is to swap your utilities when you step into those different situations. What is good in Wv3 may not be useful at all in a dungeon. But just like the weapons section I will recommend a beginners setup.

[Signet of restoration][Arcane wave][Arcane shield][Cleansing fire][Glyph of elementals]

This will give you solid defense, and offense, and is very inexpensive skill-point wise to get. Again like with the Weapons if you really want to start experiencing what the ele is truly capable of, you should step out of this comfort zone and play with some of the more specialized utility.

Healing
We have 3 healing skills. Eather renewal, Glyph of elemental harmony, and signet of restoration. they are all great for different reasons and I highly recommend every elementalist train all 3 and swap them for different content.

Ether renewal is our most healing over a prolonged battle it simply gives the most sustained healing however it comes at the expense of burst heal. And when you are nearly dead 4 seconds can be an eternity. This heal is great for long dynamic events, or PvE boss battles where you are taking constant damage and will need a lot of healing over time, but fails where “Oh Crap” situations come up. PvE group play is where this heal shines. don’t save it, use it often, and keep yourself topped off with this baby.

Glyph of elemental harmony is our best “Oh Crap heal” Providing us with the absolute most on demand healing we have. It is great in situations where spike damage is a danger which means it’s often the go to heal for PvP. There is simply no more burst you can get out of a heal. However this heal also has the lowest heal per second amount compared to the other two. So in situations where a lot of healing over a long period of time is key. Glyph falls short.

Signet of restoration is the jack of all trades heal. With a great amount of healing over time and a pretty good burst heal it is the go to heal for many elementalist. It is unmatched in solo PvE play and gives good enough mileage in PvP but it out done in clinch situations by the other two. Its major flaw, that it loses its heal over time when used as a burst heal is offset by the earth trait “Written in stone”. And with this trait, makes this our overall strongest heal, I will note that this is a heavy investment to make this heal slightly better than the other 2, though it can be argued the extra armor and the effect on the heal, is completely worth it.

Arcane
The arcane skills are great go to skills and nearly every build has at least one. Be it for damage, survivability or support you cannot go wrong with any of these skills. They all activate instantly and have great uses.

Arcane blast gives us a medium cooldown, medium damage long range, instant projectile finisher. This means it can be used easily in a combo without having to swap attunements and can give some range to the shorter ranged builds.

Arcane wave like arcane blast is a great instant finisher (blast) that can have a profound effect on the battle. It has absolutely great damage. It deals more damage than arcane blast but has a PbAOE melee range. Making this a great choice for those who like to be up close and personal

Arcane shield has a long cooldown but it gives you one of the best survivability utilities any class has. 5 seconds where up to 3 attacks have no effect on you. This is terribly useful when you just need a breather to get a heal off. Or need to rally an ally and want to avoid being knocked away. But I like it best when denying an enemy their high cooldown, high cast time, or major damage attack.

Arcane power is the least used of the bunch because it relies on heavy hitting powers that can be used consecutively. Elementalist do not have many of those. But if you are running a Scepter build no other utility is going to give you more burst than arcane power. When it needs to die right now, arcane power.

Cantrips
Cantrips are our get out of jail free cards. Every single one of them will remove a stun and all activate instantly. They all also have some really great additional bonuses when you activate them. No build is complete without one. So get yourself a cantrip and learn to love it!

Armor of earth, this one is one of the least used of the bunch. It’s not that it’s bad but rather the effect isn’t good enough to justify the long cooldown. And you can get it used automatically if you put 10 points into the earth tree. But that is not to say the effect isn’t good. An 8 second stability and Protection boon is nothing to sneeze at. So not only will you break a stun but you will be immune to them for a nice long while.

Cleansing fire this one is nice. A go to for many ele’s and why? Because it’s so good that’s why! Seriously though for general use no other cantrip comes close to this one in ability. With a low cooldown, 3 conditions removed and great damage, you simply cannot go wrong with this one. To get the full use out of this one you are going to want to be up close and personal. So short range builds often pick this one up.

Mist form this one is a specialty cantrip. A very long cooldown like Armor of earth, but because of the effect it’s actually pretty good. What you have here is 3 seconds of invulnerability. This doesn’t seem like much at first but when you are making a survivability build every little bit counts. And when you consider that in such a build an ele can obtain 10 full seconds of invulnerability it starts to look very appealing. No other cantrip will get you out of a tough spot like this one can.

Lightning flash this is another specialty cantrip, meaning it’s not generally good in all situations but it is completely awesome in others. It teleports the ele to a TAoE location, where it deals a small amount of damage. This cantrip is primarily used with the D/D Weapon set because of the 2 very good uses it has with the set. The first is catching a target. While it should be rare it can happen that you find yourself chasing a target and this cantrip gives you yet another gap closer. The second use is to surprise AoE, one of our strongest AoEs and very powerful attack is Churning earth. However it suffers from a long cast time and a self root effect. By using this cantrip mid cast, you can move your churning earth to the enemy and avoid the self rooting. It can be very powerful.

Glyphs
Glyphs are some fun skills that often get overlooked for more powerful ones. While it’s true that generally speaking glyphs are not the best utility skills in our arsenal, they have some niche uses that can be quite helpful. It’s hard to say where they can fit in in a build since they are so specialized and you only have 3 slots to work with. The main mechanic in Glyphs is that they are 4 skills in one. Meaning they change what they do based on your attunement.

Glyph of Elemental power this one will give you a buff based on your attunement when you cast it. The buff will give a chance for all your spells to inflict a condition on your enemy. The conditions are burning, Chilled, Weakness, and Crippled. Really where this one shines is for kiting. Casting this one in Water or Earth attunement means you can swap to your high damage fire, and still keep a foe crippled/chilled. Of course it also works the opposite where you can keep burning or weakness on a target while in your more defensive attunements. A fun skill but its long cooldown and proc rate leaves much to be desired.

Glyph of Renewal is a ranged revive skill. Like all revive skills it has a very long cooldown and a hefty cast time. It can be argued that in the time it takes to cast it you could have already run in and revived your target. However this not only keeps you at a safe distance but also gives great side effects based on attunement Fire revives an ally and revives you automatically next time you are down, Water revives an ally and gives them full health, Air revives and teleports them to you, And earth revives up to 3 allies. All of them can be group savers in PvE and very annoying to opponents in sPvP when you are fighting in groups. You will feel the coolown on this one because once you understand how to use it well you will want it up always.

Glyph of storm This one is both weak and powerful at the same time, it creates a TAoE elemental storm based on attunement. The Fire, Water, and Lightning storm are nice enough damage in an ok AOE but they pale in comparison to Earth. Sandstorm does great damage because of bleeding, but also blinds every enemy in the area every 3 seconds! No player is going to stand in this in PvP but PvE is a different story. Mobs are dumb, and dumb mobs standing in this area effect pretty much makes you and anyone in the area invincible. Mobs often have slow, high damage, single target attacks. So if you are ever in a situation in PvE where taking too much damage is a problem for you or your group to get through content. Try dropping a sandstorm and watch miracles happen. The bad part is the cooldown. At 1 minute you will be wishing this one was a bit shorter.

Glyph of Lesser Elementals The Elementals are good but not great. They are all fairly weak defensively with the exception of the earth elemental. And they can die fairly easily, the only one that lives for any good length of time is the earth elemental but he’s pretty weak on the damage. They can help a lot, and if you can keep them alive long enough their duration to cooldown ratio is great. Obviously they are not as good as the elite version. But they are a solid pick as a utility especially if you like pet classes.

Conjures
These skills will conjure 2 environmental weapons one in your hand and one on the ground where you specify. These weapons are fairly good when you consider they give you 5 more skills. But fairly bad when you consider you are trading 20 skills for 5. However they can give you a leg up on whatever your build lacks like range, defense or damage. Important tips to remember with conjured weapons, #1 You can still change your attunements for buffs, #2 TURN YOUR AUTO ATTACK OFF! These weapons expire based around both a timer (1 min) and a charge counter (15) and most of them have a lot better skills than auto attack. You want to be precise with your 15 charges and don’t want half of them going poof thanks to the stupid auto attack. Turn it off keep it off and profit. #3 the last thing you can do to improve your Conjured skills is go pick up the second weapon you made once the first expires. With short cooldowns you can nearly always have the option of using one. Also teach your allies how to use the weapons. We use them all the time so we know what to do with them and how, other classes might not. And nothing is more frustrating than watching an ally pick up your fiery great sword then whirl off a cliff taking half of your ultimate with him.

Frost Bow Holy control! Every skill but the first has a great conditional effect many that are AOE effects with this bow. You are not going to be dealing a lot of damage with this one but with confusion, vulnerability, chilled, and a stun all at 900 range you are going to find you can control the battlefield nicely with this one. the first attack has a nice heal component but nothing that’s going to outperform your normal heals Take out this bow for some control and mayhem then drop it and mop up with your normal skills.

Lava Axe First off this is a ranged weapon. I know right? Axe? Ranged? What? It’s a throwing axe and all it is, is pure raw damage. From the moment you summon it, it is tearing kittens up. Because the summoning of this weapon actually deals damage to enemies. It’s 900 range, self combos with 2 fields and a leap finisher which places a burning effect that puts all our other burning effects to shame with its duration. Dagger/Dagger Ele’s love this little guy because it puts some much needed range into the build and adds yet another leap

Lightning Hammer is somewhere between the frost bow and the Lava axe. Not quite as much damage, and not quite as much control, but it has a little of both. Its melee but has a leap to get you into melee in case your opponent gets away. A short stun a launch and a blind all single target are the conditions you can get out of it and they are all nice especially when you realize you can self combo a blast and a leap finisher in a lightning field. (Which gives you access to a single target daze) this one is middle of the road when you want some more control in your build but without sacrificing much damage. Watch it though you have to get up close and personal on this one.

Earth shield is a strange one. On one hand it has another on demand invulnerability skill, used with bunker builds, fortify and Obsidian flesh can make you the most hated ele on your server. But on the other hand it has some great other utility a fairly short duration but also short cooldown daze and cripple and a pull for those pesky enemies on the walls in Wv3. This is an alright conjure but its insanely specialized, and seems to be useful in very particular instances only.

Signets
Signets are skills with 2 effects. They have a passive effect that goes away while they are on cooldown from using their active effect. A lot of the signets get even less love than the glyphs because the passives are not that great and a lot of the actives simply do things we can already do but better. So why use them? Well the passives are just that, Passive. Extra bonuses that you just get … The actives all apply a condition that we can already apply true, but all those conditions stack in duration. This means that with proper use your signet can further increase your effects sometimes long enough for you to reapply them a 3rd or 4th time, and with a 1,200 range on all of them. So they definitely have their uses but they are by no means go to skills.

Signet of Air The black sheep of the family Signet of air does have the worst active and most underused passive. Because elementalist can easily have permanent swiftness or a permanent 25% speed bonus that 10% movement speed on it doesn’t get a lot of use. The Active is a blind for 5 seconds. The problem with blind is that duration means little on it because it’s generally gone in seconds. This signet can save your butt in a pinch because it is an instant ability unlike the other signets but pretty much any other defensive utility will just be better in the slot.

Signet of Earth The toughness bonus on this is painfully low and you are going to wish it was more. At a paltry 90 at 80 it will be nice for toughness builds but near useless for everyone else. However the 3 second immobilize is great for setting up burst skills, getting away from trouble or catching up to cause some trouble. A solid choice in signets.

Signet of fire This one will give your burning condition a punch that no one will want to feel. Adding 9 seconds of burning to your effect for only a 20 second cooldown. This signet can substantially increase your DPS. The Passive gives 90 precision which while the same number as earths toughness it goes a lot further and gives almost a full 10% crit from a passive signet. If you are building to bring the pain this signet can definitely help.

Signet of Water The passive cures a single condition every 10 seconds. It’s not horrible but it’s not terribly useful either. The active is very good. A 4 second Chill is amazing. Chill is a great effect. Not only slowing movement but also increasing your enemy’s cooldown time. 4 seconds of that can be quite effective the cooldown isn’t short though. And there are definitely better utilities to use.

Elites
This are the skills that go in the last slot on your slot skill bar. They all have long cooldowns and are not going to be up every battle. However I would caution you not not constantly save these skills else you will find yourself never using them. Just be sure that they will be useful in the situations you use them in so you are not wasting them.

Fiery Greatsword Man this weapon is fun. First off it’s a very short ranged weapon and man oh man does it deal some serious damage. #1 flame wave deals incredible damage in an AOE (straight line) so much so that this is the one conjured weapon that it’s ok to leave the auto attack on and with good positioning you will destroy in the DPS category. The greatsword also has one of the 2 whirling finishers we have. It takes some getting used to, to use effectively but it is a solid DPS ultimate. The best part of this one is that you can use it twice or at least let a friend pick one up. A great DPS elite that is fun to use.

Glyph of Elementals This is the go to elite for most ele’s why? Because it’s just generally good, and like all Glyphs it is 4 skills in 1. It has all of the bonuses of the lesser elemental but none of the weaknesses. The elementals are stronger, can take a hit, and some have added effects that are just great. If there is one elite you are going to spend your points on get this one. It’s easy to use for beginners and great for veterans. The fire Elemental is one bad lady, she whoops some serious butt and her attack is a blast finisher. The Ice fella heals you himself and allies, and so he has great survivability. The Lightning orb stuns and deals great damage and is the only ranged of the 4, and the Rock fella has some serious defenses. They are great distractions and a great boost to your damage.

Tornado You will constantly knock foes out of your range while you lose access to your skills and do nowhere near the damage a conjured weapon would do. It’s also our most expensive ultimate to unlock. However it is our only other whirling finisher, and because of its Long stability buff it can be used just for that. Though still most feel and I agree that it is our weakest elite.

TRAITS AND SPEC

I’m not going to go over every single trait we can get. Rather I’m going to talk about the lines and what they will give you when your points are place in them remember just like your utilities and your weapon, you can swap traits whenever you are out of combat and as long as you have unlocked their tier of traits. I’ll rank each one as a beginner intermediate and advanced level trait line, meaning that putting 30 points into it would require said skill level to be successful with it. This does not mean these lines are only for beginners or advanced. Just at which level you can use them and be fairly successful.

Fire Damage, damage, damage and more damage is what you are going to get out of this trait line. 10 power and 1% condition duration per point spent here will not only unlock traits that make you a damage powerhouse but increase your DPS just for putting points into fire. Literally every trait is going to increase your damage or deal damage to your enemy when conditions are met. No glass cannon spec is complete without some points in this line. However the lack of anything to keep you alive in this line makes it an intermediate trait line.

Air this is the midground line, you won’t get damage like you would out of fire. But you still get some pretty good damage. With 10 Precision and 1% crit damage bonus per point you will not be hurting for damage in this tree at all. Also the traits are not all focused on getting you more damage. There are escape tools, healing increase, non damage conditions and boons you can give yourself from this trait line. A great line to pair with any other when looking for some extra damage and a little bit more. Still you will find yourself more vulnerable than the beginner lines so learn to dodge escape and get back into the fray with this intermediate trait line.

Earth is all about survivability right? Wrong! While earth does have great survivability traits it also comes with quite a few DPS ones as well. and when you realize that it gives not only 10 toughness but also 10 condition damage per point you can see why this is a very nice line to go down. Increasing defense and damage and some great auto use traits that can save your life makes this one a great beginner trait line

Water is a pure defensive trait line. With only 1 major and 1 minor trait to increase damage you don’t go down this line to get DPS. You do it for survivability. At 10 Vitality and 10 healing this line is the absolute best you can plink points into to get a little more passive survivability. You party members will love all the passive AOE healing you give out and you will find it takes more to bring you down, Watch out though it will take you a lot longer to bring enemies down as well with this beginner trait line.

Arcana at first glance looks less than promising, it’s full of traits that read “ABC happens, when doing XYZ” It gives no bonus to damage, survivability or control at all and yet it is our most powerful tree. It gives 1% increase to boon duration and 2% increase to attunement recharge rate. Meaning you can swap in and out of attunement more often and all boons you apply last longer. This trait line requires knowledge of how our skills combo, quick reflexes and constant efficient attunement swapping to be successful. It is by far our most useful trait line and the most powerful you can spec into, but be ready to learn your combos, cooldowns, and some timing sensitive techniques if you want to use this advanced trait line.

I cannot give a perfect build because everyone’s playstyle is so different what works for one person may not be as good for another. Earth and water are the easiest to drop points into and go, without much fear of not being able to complete content. They are also the most useful for those that want to be able to stay in one attunement for prolonged amounts of time (I do not recommend doing this.) But once you start to branch out from staying in only the beginner lines you will find yourself able to push the ele to do some great things.

Attunements
The Attunements are easy enough to figure out because they work just like their trait lines. Which attunement does what is irrelevant to your spec, just because you spec into air/earth does not mean you cannot use fire or water. in fact you would be doing yourself a disservice if you didn’t use them. It is also worth noting that changing attunements is an instant ability. Getting to know your attunements and getting comfortable with using all 4 is key to being an effective elementalist.

While in fire attunement you will do the most sustained damage possible no matter your weapon or spec. Keeping up burning as often as possible is key to this and you should be using your burning skills nearly on cooldown. There is little more to gain out of this attunement so if the situation doesn’t call for damage being in fire will not be terribly helpful.

Water is our healing attunement, while most weapons also have some damaging attacks in water, generally you only want to be in this attunement to heal, buff or apply a condition on your enemy. The main conditions are vulnerability and chilled. Both are great to start off a fight with but beware starting combat in water, having water on cooldown when you need that extra heal can mean death.

Air will give you great damage and a lot of control this is what you want to swap to when you need to get away or to an enemy. Every weapon has tricky little skills to use while in air to trip up your foes. From launches, blinds, pushes, knockdowns, to stuns you won’t deal fire level damage but you will still deal great damage while being one of the most annoying kittens ever.

Earth is our combo finishing attunement, there are no earth combo fields instead earth has most of our finishers. Earth also boasts some good damage itself and more than a few survivability skills. Earth may be your most swapped to attunement since its combo finishers have low cooldowns and will combo off of fields you place in any of the other 3 attunements.

Attunement swapping
I see this brought up in game and on the forums all the time and I want to amend what a lot of elementalists are saying. Attunement swapping is only good if you are swapping to do something. So often I see elementalist swapping to swap because you are supposed to swap and this makes me sad. If you can kill your opponents in a Drake breath ->ring of fire -> Fire Grab -> drake breath then there is no reason for you to swap in that battle. It was short and all you needed was high damage for it. Yes there are plenty of times where swapping attunements is not only not necessary but would actually be detrimental to what you are doing. Swapping to water or earth would serve to only make that fight longer for no reason.

This is very important because once you learn that, you can start using swapping in a positive way. Using your attunement swapping for something will improve your ability as your elementalist. It helps to stop thinking of your attunements as separate bars, but rather as 1 because you will need to learn your skills in every attunement, where they are and their cooldowns. Instead of only using your blind while you are already in air, learn that on your staff your blind is F3->2 no matter what attunement you are in if you need a blind that will do it. Once you get this down you will not be just swapping attunements but rather you will be using all your skills to their fullest capability.

Start not only thinking about combos but also rotations of skills from various Attunements that will give you advantage. as an example as a D/D, starting a fight in fire attunement and pushing 2-> 5-> 4-> F4-> 4-> F3-> 5-> 4-> 2-> will not only give you a great damage combo but will also CC your target twice, give you 3 stacks of might, and weaken your target. This rotation goes through 3 attunements, but it’s not about the attunements. It’s about the great damage, the CC, the combo, and the conditions. So thinking like this your fingers will be learning the keystroke combinations of your skills, and swapping attunements becomes a byproduct of using your skills when and where they are needed rather than just swapping for the sake of swapping. Now there are builds that gain boons for swapping attunements. So understand that getting that boon can be a reason to swap to an attunement. But once again makes sure you are swapping for a reason. If your only reason for swapping is because you used all the skills in the attunement you were in or because someone told you that you should then you need to look back on your skills and rethink your strategy.

Combos
What are combos? Well a combo is a 2 skill “combo” that involves a field and a combo finisher. By using a combo finisher in while in a combo field you will create the combo. This is an important mechanic for elementalist since we have more fields and finishers than any other profession. You should be using your combos often as they will only increase your ability.
Blast finishers give group boons/effects based on the field they are used in (Might, Frost armor, Swiftness, Healing).
Leap finishers give self boons/effects based on which field they are used in (Fire Armor, Frost armor, Dazing strike, Healing).
Projectile finishers place a condition on the enemy you hit based on the field you are in with the exception of water (Burning, Chilled, Vulnerability, Regeneration).
Whirling finishers place conditions on multiple enemies you hit based on the field you are in with the exception of water which heals allies (Burning, Chilled, Vulnerability, Healing bolts).

Our combo fields are…
Burning Retreat (Fire)
Burning Speed (Fire)
Flame wall (Fire)
Lava Font (Fire)
Ring of Fire (Fire)
Frozen Ground (Ice)
Static Field (Lightning)
Geyser (Water)
Healing Rain (Water)

And our combo finishers are…
Fiery Whirl (whirl)
Tornado (whirl)
Flame Leap (leap)
Lightning Leap (leap)
Magnetic Grasp (leap)
Arcane Blast (projectile)
Frost Volley (Projectile)
Hurl (projectile)
Shockwave (projectile
Stone Shards (projectile)
Stoning (projectile)
Arcane Wave (blast)
Churning Earth (blast)
Comet (blast)
Dragon’s Tooth (blast)
Earthquake (blast)
Eruption (blast)
Fire elemental (blast)
Magnetic Wave (blast)
Phoenix (blast)
Thunderclap (blast)

Use these combos often and use them well. When you party is dying and is in desperate need of healing Just dropping geyser and healing rain will help. But if you combo by dropping churning earth, then Healing rain and geyser on top of it and popping off your arcane blast you will provide even more healing with only slightly more effort.

Combo Tips
Ill post all the skill rotations that create combos or create great utility or damage for us here. If you have a great skill combo you don’t see on here please let me know I’ll add it.

S
In water
4>F4>1>5>4 this will put 6 seconds of chill, 2 second of immobilize and 2 seconds of cripple on your target.when you or an ally needs to get away in combat this one can save you.

D/D
In Fire
4>F4>4>5 the bread and butter might building combo use it as often as possible.

Starting in air.
5>4 simple but effective. Interrupt opponent then get back into melee with good damage.

S/D
In Fire
4>2>F4>4>5 the bread and butter might building combo use it as often as possible. With great timing and aiming Phoenix can be added.

D/F

S/F

ARMOR WEAPONS AND TRINKETS
An important part of your build is of course the attributes on your armor and weapons. I’ll try to give a basic rundown on them all here and how they apply to Elementalist.

Primary attributes
These attributes will increase as you level. At level 80 you will have 916 in each.

Power
Power increases our attack stat by 1 per point. It is incredibly useful for burst builds and a key component in high damage builds. It is 2nd in sustained damage to condition damage though not by much. Almost every set of gear you will get will have power on it however. it is easy to not pay too much attention to this one and still get a good build. If you intend to use more direct attacks for damage be sure to get your power up, which mean its a greatstat for Scepter builds.

Precision
Precision gives you crit chance not to be confused with crit damage. At 80 it requires roughly 21 Precision Per 1% crit chance. and seems to have no hard cap. A crit gives you 150% damage when a skill crits so rough math says that 1% crit gives roughly 0.5% increase in DPS. Precision is only going to be very effective in high burst builds with alot of direct damage. with high enough Precision and Fury buffs. an Ele can easily breach 45% crit chance. and crit on average every second attack. Like Power this stat is more useful with Scepter builds that rely on direct damage rather than conditional.

Toughness
Toughness is by far our most useful defensive stat. In most cases more toughness (armor) is better than vitality or healing when it comes to our survivability because we have the ability to self heal better than most other classes. It will increase your armor by 1 per point and reduce all incoming direct damage by a percentage. The down fall is conditional damage bypasses armor. If you are investing here make sure you have some condition removal in your build as well.

Do not ignore this stat if you want any sort of survivability. You are wasting your time otherwise.

Vitality
vitality increases your maximum health by 10 per point. It will simply give you a buffer to withstand a little more punishment before you die.It is our best defensive attribute in the pre 40 (PvE) levels If you are finding yourself in trouble in those levels try more vitality.

Do not ignore this one completely in the higher levels. You want to be at ~15,000 HP at 80 but you don’t need to go crazy with it. In most cases it is worse for you than Toughness. Even the most tough bunker builds don’t need much more than 18,000 HP.

Secondary attributes
these attributes do not increase with your level.

Boon Duration
Boon duration can be very very good. Its not an easy stat to get outside of traits. If you are looking for some the monk 2/6 and Water 2/6 runes can give you 30% bonus when used together.

Condition Damage
Condition damage is great sustained damage especially with main hand dagger. For glass cannons stock up on both this and power. for d/d Bunkers I would recommend more condition damage. For Staff bunkers more power.

Condition Duration
This one is hard to get outside of trait lines. It looks good on paper but we simply don’t need it and it takes up the place of good stats.

Critical Damage
Much like condition duration crit damage isn’t nearly as good for us as our flat DPS increasing attributes. Power and condition damage will nearly always be better. For burst scepter builds using precision and power crit damage is good, but still worse than precision or power. Glass cannonsdon’t focus too hard on this one.

Healing Power
the second best defensive stat we have. Mixing healing power with toughness can make an elementalist an unkillable machine. Do not skimp on this one if you are looking to be a bunker or have any survivability. Around 500 is a good place to be for a bunker with any extra being bonus. You cannot go wrong in any build using this stat but glass cannons may not find it as useful.

Prefixes

For Glass cannons.
Berserker’s (Power, Precision, Crit damage) gemstone: Ruby
Carrion (Condition damage, Power, Vitality) gemstone: Chrysocola
Soldier’s (Power, Toughness, vitality) gemstone: Emerald pendant, Wv3 token jewelry
Mixing these 3 sets together can give you both a nice HP buffer and great damage.

For Bunkers/Support
Soldier’s (Power, Toughness, vitality) gemstone: Emerald pendant, Wv3 token jewelry
Shaman’s (vitality, condition damage, healing power) gemstone: Sapphire pendant
Cleric’s (Healing Power, Power, toughness) gemstone: Sapphire
Mixing these 3 sets will give you high HP, great toughness, and good healing.

FAQ, TIPS AND TRICKS

What is the significance of instant abilities?
Instant abilities can be used instantly of course, but also at any time. Literally! If you are casting another skill, knocked down, launched through the air, stunned, falling, or using an environmental weapon. In fact the only situation I know of where you cannot use an instant ability is when thanks to a transformation skill or event, you no longer have the skill on your bar. This comes in handy especially with us elementalist because our attunement swapping is considered instant. This means you can start a cast in one atunement and swap to the next attunement you know you are going to use.

Tornado sucks, LOL?

It’s our best point control elite. Granted it takes a high toughness build so you don’t instantly die while in in, but with such a build it simply reads: Noone will be contesting this point while you are in tornado form.

Also you can always insta-cancel it to simply get ~20 seconds of stability.

Thanks Aether McLoud, I’ll add that to the guide. And any other skill uses I missed.

Every single ele I’ve ever seen in tourneys, both personally and on streams, uses elemental – regardless of build. I’ve literally never seen anybody use tornado. I don’t use it either.

Primarily, if you pop it while bunkering a point you pretty much just become a free kill even with toughness builds because real damage mitigation in this game doesn’t really come from toughness. You get a decent HP boost but you don’t gain anything else of real consequence. You just begin to move incredibly slow and will get burned down by anybody decent. Not to mention that randomly knocking people around can be a bad thing if you’re in the middle of a team fight on top of a node.

You get stability, but that’s where the other problem comes in. The stability doesn’t do anything for you cause you’ll just be kited around the point. You’re cut off from all of your other abilities, so you can’t do anything worthwhile with that stability. Yeah, you can cancel, but all in all it’s still weaker than a ice elemental who can at least full heal you occasionally.

Good job. Vote for sticky.

Nice writeup. I recommend posting this on a site too, just in case it doesn’t get stickied.

I don’t know if this is guide-worthy, because it’s pretty situational, but one thing I do is have both Lesser Elemental and the elite Elemental pet up. I generally PvE and will always drop into a DE when available. Having both pets has been both a lifesaver as well making for interesting combos.

Have lots of meleer’s against a Champ? Air for stun and Water for heals
Have lots of ranged against a few Veterans? Fire and Fire.
Soloing and get in over your head? Earth and Fire or Air.

I can’t really say this is the best thing ever, since I rarely dungeon and have yet to PvP. But I’ve found it very fun and a natural additional to my attunement rotations.

I laughed really hard when I saw the part where “Ether renewal is our most healing over a prolonged battle it simply gives the most sustained healing however it comes at the expense of burst heal.”

Sorry, have you EVER done the calculations on Glyph of Elemental Harmony over Ether Renewal?

At 0 healing power and lvl 80,

GoEH has 6194 healing over 21.25 seconds
Ether Renewal has 5016 healing over 19 seconds

That’s 291.48 hps for the former, and 264 hps for the latter. Not to mention, you are “stunned” for 4 seconds instead of 1.25 seconds for the former.

Seems presumptuous you would write a guide without having a firm understanding of the basic math of skills.

@Pikafan: You forgot that you need to invest trait points to get GoEH to 20 seconds cooldown. Without traits it has 25 seconds cooldown giving it less HPS.

I don’t know about all the negativity with s/d …if you are running with a couple rangers (my semi-static groups make-up) staff is going to be subpar as they dont have many blast finishers to trigger the massive aoe heal in my water fields. However with scepter/dagger (not including the soon to be nerfed evasive arcana) I have all the blast finishers we need to trigger the heal splashes in the ranger water fields. I don’t really think it is accurate to depict any of the weapons as ‘this strategy is best for this scenerio’ type of thing. As it is highly subjective to what a person is best at playing as well as what they are surrounded by as far as classes and playstyles.

Pikafan.3792:

I laughed really hard when I saw the part where “Ether renewal is our most healing over a prolonged battle it simply gives the most sustained healing however it comes at the expense of burst heal.”

Sorry, have you EVER done the calculations on Glyph of Elemental Harmony over Ether Renewal?

At 0 healing power and lvl 80,

GoEH has 6194 healing over 21.25 seconds
Ether Renewal has 5016 healing over 19 seconds

That’s 291.48 hps for the former, and 264 hps for the latter. Not to mention, you are “stunned” for 4 seconds instead of 1.25 seconds for the former.

Seems presumptuous you would write a guide without having a firm understanding of the basic math of skills.

Nice job stacking the odds in favour of one skill.

If you aren’t in Water when you cast GoEH, and don’t have it traited, it actually looks more like this:
ER - 5016 over 19s – 264hp/s
GoEH - 4894 over 25s – 195hp/s
— In Water only – 6194 over 26s – 238hp/s
— Traited only – 4894 over 21s – 233hp/s
—— Traited and in Water – 6194 over 21s – 294hp/s

You’re not always going to use it in Water attunement.
You’re not always going to have it traited with quick glyphs.
That a flat heal is going to be better than a smaller heal plus huge condition removal is debateable based on context.

Additionally, from a PvP perspective, learn to LoS while you’re healing, and learn that Ele is (at the minute anyway) a sustained dps class, so losing 4s of damage isn’t really that big a deal. You’re waiting on cooldowns some of that time, and the whole point is that you wear your opponent down over a long period of time, until, after a couple of burst rotations, he suddenly doesn’t have the skill that will save him available when he needs it.

The condition removal alone makes Ether Renewal the best (PvP) skill we have.

Aether McLoud.1975:

@Pikafan: You forgot that you need to invest trait points to get GoEH to 20 seconds cooldown. Without traits it has 25 seconds cooldown giving it less HPS.

Uh, you would use GoEH without the easy-to-get 10 point air trait? And no, I didn’t forget, it’s a given that people are expected to trait appropriately for the maximum efficiency.

It’s not a given when discussion skills. Don’t try to weasel yourself out of this. You tried to insult the OP by saying he doesn’t even know game basics when you yourself made such an error.

It’s not an “easy-to-get 10 point trait” when you have for example 30 in arcane and water. Then you probably want another trait.

Arc.9374:

Nice job stacking the odds in favour of one skill.

You’re not always going to use it in Water attunement.

You should. If you going for SUSTAINED healing, which is the argument here, in case you are too full of yourself to see(read what I quoted), you should always use it in Water Attunement.

Arc.9374:

You’re not always going to have it traited with quick glyphs.

10 points in air, which is what many eles will get at the very least, and is one of the best, if not THE best, trait options amongst the tier 1 air traits.

Arc.9374:

That a flat heal is going to be better than a smaller heal plus huge condition removal is debateable based on context.

Which part of my post are you addressing now? An invisible one?

Arc.9374:

Additionally, from a PvP perspective, learn to LoS while you’re healing,

Hence I assumed the user was stunned for 4 seconds. If you had basic inferential skills, I wouldn’t mention the 4 second stun if I didn’t think it was easy to get the entire cast off.

Arc.9374:

and learn that Ele is (at the minute anyway) a sustained dps class, so losing 4s of damage isn’t really that big a deal. You’re waiting on cooldowns some of that time, and the whole point is that you wear your opponent down over a long period of time, until, after a couple of burst rotations, he suddenly doesn’t have the skill that will save him available when he needs it.

Losing 4 seconds of damage hurts a sustained dps class moreso than a burst dps class. Too bad you obviously can’t get that bit right.

Imagine a class that does 100 damage per second over a period of 10 seconds, and a class that does 500 damage per second for 2 seconds over a period of 10 seconds, which would a 4 second stun hurt more. Naturally, the former.

Arc.9374:

The condition removal alone makes Ether Renewal the best (PvP) skill we have.

Refer to the first part of my reply. Then refer back to exactly what I quoted and was addressing in my previous reply. Finally, tell me which exact part of my post you are trying to address. And no, a non-existent one doesn’t count.

Hint: I never said anything about condition removals.

Aether McLoud.1975:

It’s not a given when discussion skills. Don’t try to weasel yourself out of this. You tried to insult the OP by saying he doesn’t even know game basics when you yourself made such an error.

It’s not an “easy-to-get 10 point trait” when you have for example 30 in arcane and water. Then you probably want another trait.

30 Arcane, 30 Water, 10 Air. Still easy to get.

I don’t need to weasel out of anything, nor did I make any error, because nobody in the right mind uses GoEH without the 10 point trait. Hence, it was only right to assume that in the calculations, since it’s so easy to get, and so indispensable when using glyphs.

Pikafan.3792:

Aether McLoud.1975:

@Pikafan: You forgot that you need to invest trait points to get GoEH to 20 seconds cooldown. Without traits it has 25 seconds cooldown giving it less HPS.

Uh, you would use GoEH without the easy-to-get 10 point air trait? And no, I didn’t forget, it’s a given that people are expected to trait appropriately for the maximum efficiency.

Spending 10 trait points just to get an extra 30hp/s out of one heal skill vs another doesn’t sound like traiting appropriately for maximum efficiency at all.

edit: And if you’re D/D, your 10point Air trait is going to be Zephyrs Boon.

If we follow your logic you’ll have to compare the glyph to a fully traited Ether Renewal, meaning it will give toughness and endurance regen, ie more sustained effective healing.

Stop arguing you were simply wrong.

It was not right to assume you math was simply wrong and the OP was right. Get over yourself.

Also stop using ad hominem as some kind of argument.

Arc.9374:

Pikafan.3792:

Aether McLoud.1975:

@Pikafan: You forgot that you need to invest trait points to get GoEH to 20 seconds cooldown. Without traits it has 25 seconds cooldown giving it less HPS.

Uh, you would use GoEH without the easy-to-get 10 point air trait? And no, I didn’t forget, it’s a given that people are expected to trait appropriately for the maximum efficiency.

Spending 10 trait points just to get an extra 30hp/s out of one heal skill vs another doesn’t sound like traiting appropriately for maximum efficiency at all.

Not when most sPvP eles worth a kitten spec for Glyph of Elementals as their elite.

Yeah. Shaving 24s of a 2minute cd sure seems worth it.

Especially since it’s such a game-changer.

:rolleyes:

@Aether McLoud

If you followed any sort of logic, you would never even touch the part where a traited Ether Renewal gives toughness and endurance regen, because I was addressing “Ether renewal is our most healing over a prolonged battle it simply gives the most sustained healing however it comes at the expense of burst heal.”, not “Ether Renewal is our best utility heal …….. bla bla bla”

Sorry Pikafan Ether Renewal is the best sustained when not including a particular trait. Perhaps I should have given Glyph the same treatment I gave Signet. in saying that there is a particular trait you could get that makes it better.

Now that the site is back up. I’d like to add that I’m hoping for people to point out uses that I haven’t so I can add them in. You know… community guide and all that.

Uh look, more ad hominem from Pikafan. So all you need to do is invoke Godwins Law now. You tried to insult another poster but made an error yourself. Now you are too butthurt to realize that and try to insult everyone who points that out.

Your argumentation method is flawless. /sarcarm.

Also you might want to look up what strawman argumentation, ad hominem and effective healing means. But of course you won’t do that because you are inside the Dunning Kruger Effect. Might want to look that up too while you’re at it.

Forum ate my last post :|

In any case, this is purely a pedantic argument. Is GoEH bad? No. Of course not. Neither is Ether Renewal. Both have different places in different builds. ER frees up a utility slot for something that isn’t Cleansing Fire, in addition to being the strongest heal we have that isn’t contingent on certain factors being present (water attunement/trait benefits). GoEH is more versatile in that it can provide protection/swiftness if you’re short of other means of getting the boons (s/d I guess would have the most trouble with consistent swiftness/protection uptime, before traits are factored in).

So yes. Nobody is saying GoEH is useless. The point I was making was that you jumped in and basically said OMGYUORSOWRONGWTFISWRONGWITHYOU ISNT IT OBVIOUS?! Leaping in with some patronizing statement, where you’ve stacked the odds in favour of your argument is obviously going to generate a counter-response from someone.

Personally, I prefer ER with my d/d build and having a spare utility slot. Some people will prefer GoEH and using that utility slot for Cleansing Fire. I don’t think it’s as efficient to use our limited skill slots and trait points in such a way, but there are going to be benefits and drawbacks to both options, so it’s build and playstyle dependant.

edit:

But moving past your strawmen arguments, you seem to have conveniently stepped past the point I was trying to make – Ether Renewal is certainly not the best “sustained healing skill eles have” when GoEH is still in existence.

Except GoEH is only the best sustained heal we have when you trait for it, and when you’re able to cast it in water attunement (which is going to be most of the time, to be fair).

Excluding external factors (traits/attunement benefits), GoEH is supbar compared to ER, if you base it simply on the skill itself.

I’d like to start off by saying great job on making a guide like this, it totally deserves to be stickied This should help out a lot of people who are new to elementalists.

It would be worth mentioning that signet of air can is instant activation and doesn’t interrupt what you’re doing. It’s practically scepter air skill 3 with a bit of damage, so it can be useful once in a while, like when you’re trying to get churning earth off. That being said, I still wouldn’t use it over the others :p

I’m going to repeat what Navzar said… This is a well done guide. People will pinprick everything you say and anything that is wrong will be called out but don’t take it to heart. I didn’t learn much from this guide but it is nice to have some of my thoughts repeated by someone else. Well done! Now keep it updated

I’d include some info such as:

• Insta-cast skills not breaking channels
• Ability to swap to a second attunement (especially nice if Elemental Attunement is traited) while mid-cast on a skill from the first attunement
• Ability to swap attunements when CC’d /feared (goes with above)

All of those are small things but since eles have a lot of insta-cast skills and a lot of effects we can tie to our attunements, using them well can make a big performance difference.

Nice guide!

Fiery Whirl isn’t our only whirl finisher, Tornado is also a whirl finisher, for its full duration. Drop your healing rain and Tornado into it to send heals to everyone

Has someone actualy had success with healing rain+torando thing?
I´ve tried it and it seemd a bit lackluster, given that water elemental can do pretty darn effective heal without having to commit yourselfto tornadoing next 20 seconds.

Also, could i request you move the attunement swapping part above the attunements part…logicaly it doesn´t make sense, but might actualy reinforce the message?

Thank you very much for this awesome guide. I have always wanted to play elementalist and got to level 35 basically doing random things… but this write up actually gives me tools to work with since it explains what the tools do… and how they inter-relate. So glad you took the time to put this together.

Efacia

(not including the soon to be nerfed evasive arcana)

Why do you think it will be nerfed?

Also, doesn’t Signet of Fire add +4% crit chance rather than +10%?

Probably because the blast finisher doesn’t have a cooldown.

Aether McLoud.1975:

Probably because the blast finisher doesn’t have a cooldown.

Hmm…so that’d be a bug fix rather than a nerf. But now that you mention it, I did notice that sometimes it ‘blasted’ when it shouldn’t…but not always.

By the way, about the Glyph of Lesser Elements…I disagree that the elementals are useless. The earth elemental is particularly useful while levelling (since it can tank well, at least until you got the elite version) but the others do have a few tricks of their own (like the ice elemental’s snare aoe). They’re kinda like a swiss-army knife and can be quite useful, even if they’re relatively weak, they do have a great uptime.

Oh, and could you please change ’’Ultimate’’ to ’’Elite’’? That would avoid some confusion among the beginners that you’re aiming to reach with this article. Otherwise, good job.

It´s both bug fix and a nerf, call it what you want, and will most propably happen in the near(ish?) future…or if world goes totaly bonkers they actualy just update the description….

Thanks guys for the additions. I was going to start listing each one of you but man that list would get long fast. And I don’t have that much reserved space. Big thanks to ThiBash I totally forgot they were called elites. got that fixed.

Hiya,

I disagree with the disparagement of Glyph of Lesser Elementals. I find the pets last a long time in most scenarios, and indeed sometimes win fights that they conduct entirely on their own. So the tank/damage combination is powerful. That’s without ascribing much value to their additional capabilities, which I indeed do not, although if I’m running without fighting I’ll take a chance on the Air one in hopes of some Swiftness.

Glyph of Elementals, however, is inferior to Glyph of Lesser Elementals if you’re just looking at the Fire or Air options. Why? Because the elementals aren’t that much better, and the cooldowns are much less favorable. On the other hand, the Water Elemental is indeed a strong healer along with its other virtues.

Since I carry GoEH, GoLE, and GoE alike, it’s an easy choice to slot Quick Glyphs, which is only a Tier 1 trait.

Also, a high fraction of the time one can use GoEH in Water. If you need a heal, swap to Water, getting that heal and other benefits. Those could include Regeneration, direct healing and/or a condition/clear, some of them AoE, depending on how you’re traited). They also can include access to further healing and so on from weapon skills.

Then go quickly to another attunement, except in special cases where it actually makes sense to fight in Water for a while.

Maybe I missed it, but even an elementary guide should put more stress on self-comboing with blast finishers.

In particular, there are three different ways to do that with staff Water fields:

• Arcane Wave in a utility slot.
• The trait Evasive Arcana (which makes every dodge roll into a blast finisher).
• The Earth still Eruption (check whether you typed the name correctly above).

Also, self-comboing in a fire field for Might is central to scepter-based builds, and important in other weapon sets as well. Whatever your offhand, put down your #4 Fire skill before Dragon’s tooth, and you get 3 long-lasting stacks of Might, which is like a 3-5% boost to overall DPS (including condition damage). Several other options add to that fun — Arcane Wave for sure, Phoenix in some cases, Earth skills with dagger offhand if you force the issue. With other ways of boosting Might, it’s common to have 8-10 stacks or more, and I’ve had 18 stacks when soloing multiple times within the past day.

I’ll go back over the phrasing of Glyph of Lesser Elemental because I definitely think its a good skill, but something about the way I wrote that part many people are getting the feeling that its not very good.

But speaking of Glyph of lesser does anyone have some numbers on this?

Glyph of Elementals, however, is inferior to Glyph of Lesser Elementals if you’re just looking at the Fire or Air options. Why? Because the elementals aren’t that much better, and the cooldowns are much less favorable.

I know the Greater ones have more HP and deal more damage but I’m curious to see how much more and if its not very substantial adding this note in there. At work now so I cant run the tests, might do it when I get home.