Guild Wars 2

Dear all,

It is the first time that Iam playing an mmo, I love the experience so far but I
have some queries that you wanna might help

1. Iam an Elementalist with a staff, Iam playing also the fire attunment always.
I would love to tell give me some tips and a couple of builds that I should try.

2. Which are the “must” stats for my type? Power and Condition?

3. Any other help would be appreciated, thank you all!

Best,

Lara

1. tip – don’t play one attunement all the time. You will suffer greatly. Instead, always switch attunements and utilize all your available skills. Staff has some good crowd control and defensive abilites in water, earth and air, but fire not so much, so by playing always in fire you not only lower your available damage a lot, you expose yourself too much as well, and elementalists are too squishy to just stand there and take the beating.

Power increases your base damage across the board, so it’s always a must. Personally I go for either toughness or vitality for my secondary stat (first one decreases the amount of damage you take, second on increases your health) so I can actually take a few punches before keeling over, and you get a utility skill and traits for increasing critical strike chance anyway.
Condition is ok for staff builds since you get some nice burns and bleeds with it… personally I prefer a power build for straight up damage, but that’s because I switch weapons according to the situation, so it might work differently if you only plan to stick with the staff.

Thank you for your reply Gaudrath.
But if I have maxed the Fire traits I suppose I have to play mostly with fire, right?
I change some times to air for the “running” buff, but thats all, I dont even know what earths’s, air and water skills do :p
Any build that you have to suggest for Fire attunement and pure dps spec?

Start out slow. Since this is your first mmo there’s going to be a lot to learn.

Your 1 is your standard auto attack in fire. 2 is a ground target aoe. If you have troubles aiming it, when you attack a monster, drop it at your feet. That way when they get to you they’ll take damage. Then use #4 to back away or use evade. Meteor shower is best for groups, but you could do the same thing by dropping it over your character. Just be careful because it has a long cast time.

After you get used to the game a little bit, you’re going to want to learn how your other attuments work and get used to switching between them. Water is your heals and slows. Earth is your dot damage, cripples, reflect shield, and root. Air is your movement and aoe stun field. So you will rotate between them based on the needs of the fight.

Honestly for a first timer, I would suggest vitality and power. Vitality will give you health which will enable you to stay alive a bit longer. Power and condition damage are both good, but it’ll be a lot easier for you to die. Just my opinion though.

Make friends with the trading post. Save up your coin and you can buy things cheap off the trading post. What you do is search for items you want. Then select to bid on them. Not buy straight up unless the price is cheap enough already. The trading post allows you to upgrade your equipment easily if you need it, but dont worry -too- much about it. I’d say at least upgrade everything once every 10 levels.

Salvage white armors / weapons with a salvage kit. Sell green / blue weapons / armor to a merchant (unless you can use them of course). Later on when you get yellows / exotics hang onto those. You can try selling some of the greens on the trading post, but most of them are put up for merchant value so it’s generally not worth it.

You can buy gear from the “hearts” you do on the maps. This is an easy way to get free gear that only costs “karma” which is gotten from doing dynamic events. So after you complete a heart quest make sure you talk to the heart person and check the list of items they offer.

You’re welcome to put me on your friends list, just add my tag Kuthos.9623 and ask questions later if you want.

I don’t mind helping new players, or you can always use /map chat

This allows you to talk to the other players in your area, in my experience most people are usually willing to answer questions about gameplay

Couple basic tips. In the top right corner of your inventory “deposit all collectibles” is your friend. This will send all your crafting stuff to your bank. And also the combine bags or whatever its called. This will make it so you have one giant bag instead of seperate ones. I would invest in some bags fairly early, 8 slots will last you quite a while. Someone can make them or you can probably get them off the trading post for about 3 silver.

Thank you Kuthos for your reply, it was very helpful!

Well.. I am already 80lvl and obssesed to Fire.., lol, I suppose I have to learn my other attunements also sometime!

Well.. I am already 80lvl and obssesed to Fire.., lol, I suppose I have to learn my other attunements also sometime!Do you have any build that I should try? Staff & Fire as I said

Ah I thought you were like…level 1 and just starting out.

If you’re just wandering around maps and killing stuff then I would say most people go with power, precision, and crit damage or beserker damage. However this leaves you very squishy and you can easily die. If you want more survivability throw in some vitality and toughness.

As for builds, I’m not really an expert on staff builds. I mostly stick with dagger / dagger 98% of the time. Fire traits are kind of lackluster atm and don’t seem to be quite as useful as the others, however it still gives you +power which is good for dps. Going into water will increase your survivability by a lot. There’s also some good traits in arcane such as the one that gives you boons each time you switch elements. But if you’re not switching very much that one wont get much use.

The good news is, it’s pretty cheap (3 silver I think?) to go back to a trainer and change your traits so I would just experiement with some different things and see what you like. You can switch the traits around in each line whenever you want, you just have to pay to move your “points” around.

Even if you go 0 into fire, that doesn’t mean you can’t use that attument you just wont get the added +power and perks of that particular trait line.

Hmm, I suppose I will go to 30 Fire, 20 Earth and 20 Water then

Eh, for a staff build you really want to invest in Arcane… blasting staff trait and all (increases the radius of your staff AoE fields).

Then 30 Fire, 20 Earth and 20 Arcane??

Yeah, try that. Or water for added healing/regeneration stuff. And always remember you can switch your major traits around all the time, so see what works for you. I even change those around based on what I expect to tackle.

But ultimately, elementalist is designed with flexibility in mind… if you want to bring the most out of your character, getting around to switching attunements constantly, as well as getting to very solid grounds with all your weapon options is a must. Try it once you get bored of torching stuff all the time.

Thanks guys, I ll do!