Help With Low Level Ele
It’s subjective, but my opinion on this is…
…best healing: Glyph of Elemental Harmony
It’s fast (when traited), heals for a bunch and gives a boon.
…best utilities: Glyph of Storms, Glyph of Lesser Elementals, Mist Form, Conjure Frost Bow, Signet of Fire, Arcane Blast.
Glyph of Storms will allow you to take a huge mob at once when used with the Earth Attunement (it blinds everything for the duration) and does some nice damage, Lesser Elementals is a must for soloing some harder parts (you summon the earth elemental to tank stuff for you), Mist Form is for survivability, Frost Bow is usually used with parties because it gives someone else AoE abilities (and they’re strong), Signet of Fire because any passive damage increase when leveling is welcome, and Arcane Blast for a Blast Finisher and instant AoE damage is helpful against mobs.
For traits while leveling, always pick Power > Precision > Vitality until you’re 70~80.
By 70 and onwards you can already pick your final build as 10 points won’t hurt so much and you’ll probably be able to kill stuff if you’ve been gearing up decently.
In the lower levels though, the power/precision from traits is a HUGE increase in damage.
Play with different weapons and see which you like more, they are all equivalent with their pros and cons, and you’ll eventually optimize your skills/combos as you get more experienced with a weapon.
Don’t forget to gear up every few levels!
Every 10 levels in the beginning is nice, you can buy the best gear from the TP for your levels for less than a couple of silvers (just don’t go for the rares and exotics, they’re not worth it when leveling unless you can get them easily/craftables) which will help a lot.
Good luck!
I’m very partial to the five signets, because they each give you a passive effect (as long as they are not on cooldown). I’m giving a quick rundown of these skills here, but please note that this is just my personal preference. MANY MORE utility skills are very useful.
Signet of Earth:
Gives you extra toughness, or use it to immobilize a foe (so you can run away or finish it from a distance).
Signet of Air:
Gives you 25% extra speed, or use it to blind a group of foes. Very useful in jumping puzzles.
Signet of Fire:
Gives you a bonus to Precision, or use it to inflict burning to a foe, for a good amount of damage over time.
Signet of Water:
Removes a condition from you every 10 seconds, or use it to chill a foe (see Signet of Earth).
Signet of Restoration:
Gain a little health every time you use a skill, attack or attunement, or use it for a larger heal (that is not as good as the other healing skills, to be honest).
As I gained more trait points, I invested in traitlines that gave signets more usefulness. For example, with the final Earth Magic trait “Written in Stone”, all signets keep their passive effect even if they are on cooldown. This increases the usefulness of Signet of Restoration tremendously.
A final tip on a different utility skill.
I found Arcane Shield an extremely useful utility skill at lower levels. First, it makes you immune to up to three attacks, and if it ends prematurely, it blasts all adjacent enemies for a good chunk of damage. Especially at lower levels, this damage is significant enough to decide a combat in your favor. And being invulnerable for a short while is not bad either at low levels.
Finally, about traits:
Don’t worry at low levels. Just experiment with traits you think might be interesting. You need to buy a trait book at level 11, level 40 and level 60. With the second and third tier traitbooks, you will receive a full refund of your trait points, so if you don’t like a traitline, you can still change it.
Also, your profession trainer offers you the option to RETRAIN your trait points, basically refunding you all your spent trait points, so you can reassign them. The cost is very affordable (only 5c per trait point you have, for a maximum at 3s50s at level 80).
At lower levels, what you should be looking at most in your traits is the ability scores that a specific traitline increases, because a +100 boost to your power/precision/toughness/vitality at level 20 is BIG. At higher levels, the trait powers themselves become more important, because you can start looking for combos with your weapon and utility skills.
The best heal skill is to not take damage. Especially at lower levels, you are very squishy… use your evades, immobilizes, knockdowns, and snares as much as you can to keep away from the mobs. After that, Signet of Restoration is great; if it’s not on cooldown, start spamming your #1 skill and the heals add up quickly. Glyph of lesser elementals gives you a pet pretty regularly, use fire for dps and earth for a pet that will stay up a bit longer and help tank. Mist form and your teleport skill are great for getting out of dodge.
Good luck!