Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone! I recently picked GW2 back up after a few months off and decided to try to pick up where I left off with my level 40 ele. I’ve been trying to follow daphoenix’s D/D guide, but getting frustrated due to my seemingly slow kill speed. Guardians, thiefs, and warriors seem to just slice through hordes of enemies while I have to carefully dance around and jump in and out of attunements to kill anything. Discouraged by this, I jumped on my S/D ranger (also level 40) and was having moderate success; nothing like the aforementioned professions were doing, but I was having a much easier time dispatching large groups of enemies with relative ease.

I played an elementalist in guild wars 1 and I really enjoy the theme of the class. I did, however, prefer choosing one element and locking into it, but I think I could get used to switching around. My question to all you knowledgeable elementalists— does this get better at 80? I know rangers have a bad reputation in dungeons, something about a lack of sufficient damage. This makes me wonder if it’s something I’m doing wrong with my ele, currently my ranger is capable of doing far greater damage than my elementalist. I feel much more confident wading into a group of 5-6 enemies with my ranger, ready to throw down a flame trap and healing spring and start swinging my sword than I do with my elementalist, always trying to stay just out of range so I don’t get overrun.

I guess what I’m looking for is reassurance that it does get better and I will be able to out dps my ranger at level 80 when I become more skilled, right now it seems futile.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

I really prefer Scepter/Dagger. D/D has a lot of mobility and defense but S/D has a better overall toolkit, at least for PvE. It’s easier to kite with the extra range, plus you get better damage (Dragon’s Tooth + triple-hitting Pheonix + Fire Grab = win) and better damage mitigation (Earth 2 and 3, Air 3, Water 3). I still use the basic 0/10/0/30/20 + 10 somewhere, but I slot Glyph of Lesser Elementals in addition to the Glyph of Elementals elite skill and then stagger them to give myself a frontline to hide behind and limit the kiting I have to do.

It does get better, but open-world PvE isn’t really the Ele’s forte. We’re much better in other game modes, not so much for our DPS (which is only ok, by and large) but for the wide variety of options available to us at all times. Every profession can DPS, support, and control, but the Ele excels at doing all three all the time regardless of which weapon set or which utilities we’re using.

That said, Rangers are also really fun. If you have the time, I would suggest making one of those as well. They involve a lot of pet micromanagement but with the right trait setup, you can end up having your pet tank (and murder) pretty much everything for you while you ping away at range. My ranger runs cats and a 0/30/10/0/30 setup with pretty much all pet-related traits (Carnivorous Appetite being the notable star of the build since it essentially makes cats harder to kill than bears). It is absolutely hilarious how hard my Stalker hits.

Blaine Tog.8304:

I really prefer Scepter/Dagger. D/D has a lot of mobility and defense but S/D has a better overall toolkit, at least for PvE. It’s easier to kite with the extra range, plus you get better damage (Dragon’s Tooth + triple-hitting Pheonix + Fire Grab = win) and better damage mitigation (Earth 2 and 3, Air 3, Water 3). I still use the basic 0/10/0/30/20 + 10 somewhere, but I slot Glyph of Lesser Elementals in addition to the Glyph of Elementals elite skill and then stagger them to give myself a frontline to hide behind and limit the kiting I have to do.

It does get better, but open-world PvE isn’t really the Ele’s forte. We’re much better in other game modes, not so much for our DPS (which is only ok, by and large) but for the wide variety of options available to us at all times. Every profession can DPS, support, and control, but the Ele excels at doing all three all the time regardless of which weapon set or which utilities we’re using.

That said, Rangers are also really fun. If you have the time, I would suggest making one of those as well. They involve a lot of pet micromanagement but with the right trait setup, you can end up having your pet tank (and murder) pretty much everything for you while you ping away at range. My ranger runs cats and a 0/30/10/0/30 setup with pretty much all pet-related traits (Carnivorous Appetite being the notable star of the build since it essentially makes cats harder to kill than bears). It is absolutely hilarious how hard my Stalker hits.

Awesome, thank you very much for the advice. I’ll try my hand at scepter and see what happens, I’ll also keep toying around with the ranger. Once again, thank you!

The scepter only has more blast finishers than mainhand dagger. In every other way d/d is superior in PvE.

D/D has better sustained damage (scepter auto sucks), it has much more cleaving while scepter only has good cleave abilities on fire attunement, and dagger mainhand just has better, higher damage skills that affect multiple mobs and better cc via aoe chill and more access to fury with zephyr’s boon on shocking aura.

People just think scepter has more damage because they see phoenix+DT burst, but in pve sustained damage is king.

Zenith.7301:

The scepter only has more blast finishers than mainhand dagger. In every other way d/d is superior in PvE.

D/D has better sustained damage (scepter auto sucks), it has much more cleaving while scepter only has good cleave abilities on fire attunement, and dagger mainhand just has better, higher damage skills that affect multiple mobs and better cc via aoe chill and more access to fury with zephyr’s boon on shocking aura.

People just think scepter has more damage because they see phoenix+DT burst, but in pve sustained damage is king.

I’m not knocking D/D, I just personally prefer S/D and recommended he try it because D/D was giving him trouble.

to OP – why not both?

My biggest suggestion with people who are having trouble with D/D is vigor on crit trait from arcana and get used to your dodges.

Also, many people I’ve seen playing dagger in the usual melee range when outside fire and earth attunement the air and water attunement autoattacks let you sustained damage from a larger ranger that’s usually safe.

Eles are more on par with rangers at lvl 80. But at the lower lvls the ranger is definately superior. But no worries, they’re gonna nerf ranger pets soon so…

Elementalists aren’t as quick single-target killers as any of the classes you listed, but they do get MUCH better at grouping up lots of targets and taking them down in about the same time. When you have to 1v1, it gets more bearable when you stack might using sigil of battle and blasting your fire-fields early in the fight, but it will still take a while (longer than just 100-Blades stomping mobs). When you can group some mobs together, it doesn’t feel as long and is definitely fun.

The problem with Ranger vs. ele is really if you want to be a do-it-all or if you want to have to rely on a stupid pet-AI to get some of your things handled. Both can be very good and fun, its just about what kind of style you prefer.

Also, staff eles can own in dungeons when you know how to play. I was in a dungeon the other day and the entire run went differently when I switched to staff and started blasting water fields for low-health allies and using some control to slow the pace of enemy damage output. You really do feel powerful, even when you are just laying out fields and doing bits of damage, you have a ton to offer to a 5-man team. This might not apply to pro dungeon runners, but if you are casual with other non-pros the staff can make you the most valuable player to your party.

After playing around with it a bit more, I think I do prefer D/D to S/D. The comments I’ve seen here really have helped give me confidence though that things will improve at 80, I keep hearing eles talk about how important it is to have 30 points in the Arcana line, but I currently am not high enough level to do that. I think I’ll stick it out a bit longer and hopefully things will start to look up soon. Thank you all very much for your helpful responses!

Arcana 30 is only important for pvp.

For pve 20 arcane and 10-20 water is enough. You can spend the rest wherever you want.

crits at lower lvls are very very powerful.
Try equiping signet of fire and put all up to 25 into air traits.

Like someone else said, try both out, it`s the only way you`ll know which you prefer.
Whilst I prefer my Ele` (D/D) to anything, you do have to spam a lot more keys to get half the results at times.

I`ve a ranger at 80 too & am amazed how easy life is with it (GS/Shortbow) I can out dps/heal & tank more then my ele` with ease, with the added bonus of weapon swap & two pets to do the extras.

Fishbait.6723:

Like someone else said, try both out, it`s the only way you`ll know which you prefer.
Whilst I prefer my Ele` (D/D) to anything, you do have to spam a lot more keys to get half the results at times.

I`ve a ranger at 80 too & am amazed how easy life is with it (GS/Shortbow) I can out dps/heal & tank more then my ele` with ease, with the added bonus of weapon swap & two pets to do the extras.

That’s only for open world pve where the pet can tank. Go into dungeons and it’s a different story, with the pet dead a considerable amount of time unless you bring drakes and Guard shout to give them 10s prot.

Elementalist master class. Plus, we are praised, rather than hated, in WvW.