Here’s my first post. This is tl;dr. I’m posting for the purpose of sharing my experience leveling as an elementalist, weighing in on the various issues concerning our class, and providing advice for struggling players. Here goes…
My street cred (otherwise known as why you should consider my thoughts):
1.) I have leveled an ele from 1-80 largely solo with no practice on beta weekends.
2.) This is my first true MMORPG. I played on a MUD as a college student.
3.) I solo explored all of Orr and died sometimes.
4.) I have 16 gold in the bank and have spent much more on good stuff (crafting, yay!) and bad stuff (black lion chest keys, booo!).
5.) I love pve and Wv3.
6.) I am not great at S/Tpvp but have played enough to die less and kill more.
7.) I just run an ele.
From this you can deduce:
1.) I’m a mediocre or better player.
2.) I’ve put in a lot of hours.
Some history:
I agreed to play GW2 after boycotting MMORPGs for years because my friend group agree to play LOL for a while first. I generally have time for several single player games at a time or one multi-player game. Everyone had picked characters and I asked a friend what we needed and he said, “crowd control”. I suggested I play an elementalist and he said, “I hear they’re complex.”. I obtained an n52 controller and a gaming mouse and that was that.
On pve leveling experience:
I ran the char lands to completion level’s 1-70 in d/d. I literally ran down to Orr for the last 10 levels all in staff, with 4 levels obtained in a zerg (massive groups of players farming event chains) I stumbled on in SoD. I never bought my trait books until I had been 80 for some time.
L1-20: I experienced this as hard for two reasons. First, I had never used the keyboard/mouse configuration apparently common to MMORPG’s, so I could not steer. I did my first spvp at level 2 and my friends were dying of laughter on vent. Second, opening your abilities in pve is super important as an elementalist, since everything you do is button combo.
L20-70: Easy. Equip magic find trinkets, eat magic find food, equip D/D. Burn heal for quickness, gather 4 mobs, gather on archer if they have one. Then A4, A5, A2, F3, F4, F5, F2, E4, E5, E2. Insert both arcane damage spells for burst, usually after they’re burning. I know this was not optimal, but it got the job done.
L70-80: There are zergs everywhere in Orr. You could level 65-80 with nearly zero effort, just time. For zone completion or purists, summon 2 elementals and murder your way to every objective, because you do not want to fight 10 people at a time and the undead seem to follow forever. Glyph of Storms is cash money.
I bought new equipment for my character every 10-15 levels from 45 to 80. I always bought from the auction house, always bought green and always bought carrion, because I feel its the best multi-purpose gear for today’s elementalist on the go. I stacked solider runes. I ran magic find trinkets and food, in order to increase the drop of uncommon crafting materials, which allow for better crafting and lots of silver.
In wvw:
In my opinion, this is where the staff elementalist shines. 3-6 elementalists can effective lock a large patch of ground if they are deep into the arcane tree and have 1 or 2 guards. It has a real “the line must be drawn here…no further!!!” feel to it.
Skills that stop a fleeing character in its tracks are abundant. You run fast all the time. You will break even on gold until you find out that you can buy siege equipment and then you will go broke.
In general, my opinions (and none of this is new):
1.) Elementalists are button intensive to play. Without a gaming rig and gaming mouse, I could not be competitive.
2.) Elementalist flavor is great.
3.) Elementalist fashion is great.
4.) Elementalists have a handful of glitched abilities that are a real letdown (I’m looking at you, RtL).
5.) Elementalists lack a well-flavored ranged elite spell, especially for spvp.
6.) Traditionally in gaming theory, higher complexity should equate to more power. This is because more complexity breeds more errors and more errors equate to more failure. The more singular and deadly the confrontation in GW2, the less true this is for the elementalist. Increased flexibility is not necessarily equivalent to more power. I’m not sure if this needs a tweek or is just the story of the class.
If you’re struggling with an ele, pm me and I’ll answer your questions.