Guild Wars 2

Okay. So I’ve recently created an Elementalist. It is still a relatively low level, but I’ve come to find that I do not really enjoy the class, nor do I enjoy that I feel to need to swap attunements quite frequently. A friend suggested that perhaps I was overthinking how to play an Elementalist, so I thought would come here and ask some more experienced veterans.

My friend suggested that you choose two attunements that you use much more frequently than the others. The other two, you only use when the moment warrants one of their abilities. Is this true? I realize that we’re supposed to combo attunements for finishers and fields and such, but constantly swapping attunements, am I hindering my gameplay, and even my enjoyment of the class?

For clarification, I don’t pop into an attunement, blow all of my cooldowns, then swap to another. But in most cases, for example, I’ll use one ability in air, swap to fire and use two, continue on to water and use one, then swap to earth and use three. Am I perhaps swapping attunements way too much?

Any thoughts or criticisms would be greatly appreciated. I’m struggling to find a light armor class that I enjoy, and I was somewhat hoping that Ele would be it.

You are absolutely meant to use all attunements.

Understandably, this class isn’t meant for everyone. In order to get the full potential of the class, you’ll need to learn to use all of your abilities, and in what situations you’ll need to use them.

In PvE, i’ll admit the class feels really clunky. Unless you’re playing D/D or a Fresh Air S/D build, you’re going to feel like you prefer one or two attunements that deal the most damage. Especially in dungeons.

In PvP, it all makes much more sense the way they’re arranged and how they’re meant to work. You won’t find a single PvP ele who doesn’t use every attunement. It’s very clear that PvP is where Anet spent most of their time on this class.

If PvP is your thing then stick with it. You’ll learn to love all the abilities you have.

If PvE is your thing… then I would strongly recommend a reroll.

You’ll generally find yourself constantly rotating through your attunements, yes - it’s very hard to survive without using skills from all attunements, with damage primarily coming from Fire and Air and survivability/healing being supplied by Water.

The only builds that I feel can be reasonably successful while camping in one attunement are fire-based ones, with the Persisting Flames or Pyromancer’s Puissance traits depending on weaponset.

It’s probably possible to specialise in two attunements (say, Fire and Earth) and combo skills together from them - but our cooldowns are balanced around regular attunement swapping, and you’d not be making the best use of available weapon skills if staying out of certain attunements for extended periods.

I personally love the attunement dancing and skill-chaining playstyle of the Ele, but if you continue to dislike it I guess the class just may not be for you.

Elementalist is kinda screwed up in PvE without Fresh Air. The reason for this is that the design of PvE emphasizes auto-attacking everything to death for sustained damage. For the Ele, this means you generally just want to camp Lightning Whip on MH Dagger the whole time. At the same time, all your utility and burst is in the other attunements, but it’s difficult to dance around attunements if you don’t have Fresh Air.

Overall, no, it’s not just you. Eles have some of the hardest time leveling and really do rely on trait progression to become a full class.

Neko.9021:

Elementalist is kinda screwed up in PvE without Fresh Air. The reason for this is that the design of PvE emphasizes auto-attacking everything to death for sustained damage. For the Ele, this means you generally just want to camp Lightning Whip on MH Dagger the whole time. At the same time, all your utility and burst is in the other attunements, but it’s difficult to dance around attunements if you don’t have Fresh Air.

Overall, no, it’s not just you. Eles have some of the hardest time leveling and really do rely on trait progression to become a full class.

If Ele is hard to level, then a Thief is legendary difficulty mode. Seriously, I died so much while leveling my Thief. I find Ele to be pretty fun and easy, but yet again, I know all the combo fields and burst rotations for D/D having played it in PvP long before caring to level it in PvE/WvW.

Once you get used to attunement swapping with the Ele, you’ll really like the class. It will feel second nature to swap to another attunement to keep a combo going or use a CD from another attunement. So much so, you’ll start to miss it when playing another class. I’ve found that swapping to just a second weapon set is now really boring, haha. Why have two sets when you can have 4?!

If you find that you don’t enjoy attunement dancing then there is a very real possibility that ele as a class isn’t meant for you. Attunement dancing is a core mechanic and it’s nearly impossible to do well on ele without it, outside of those pve minmax DPS-type builds. There’ll definitely be attunements that you will prioritize over others depending on your build and role, but you cannot avoid using all 4 no matter what you are playing.

The devs haven’t made this at all clear since before launch, so you can’t be expected to know. In some patches it seems like they are perfectly okay with constant swapping and a forced 2-6 points in to arcane for every build. In some patches it seems like they want us to be able to specialize in certain attunements ad linger in them longer.

To be honest I suspect the developers still don’t know what they want attunement swapping to be, hence the elementalist professions constant stream of problems and eternal lack of builds.

You do not need points in arcana for attunement swapping …
It does not matter what the devs want also. What matters is performance. You will need to use all attunements to perform well

I honestly don’t feel like ele was hard to level but I guess that’s because from 17-80, probably 95% of that was from EotM spam.

I’m relatively new (been playing a week now) but I find that even though builds may differ, once you get in the habit of switching attunements, it really does become second nature.

What I would suggest would be to find a rotation that works for you. I think if you sort of randomly swap around, you’ll run into rough patches and cool downs. I sometimes make a mistake when I want to (staff) earth 2 → fire 2 for might or E2 → W3/4/5 etc so it does take a bit of thinking ahead sometimes but it really isn’t hard. As others have said, it might not be for you.

Also note though that some situations won’t require a lot of “work” as in switching attunements a lot. Sometimes I can get away with using mostly just fire/water but if I’m playing “run away from the zerg”, I have to blow and rotate through all of my skills. For example, if a zerg is trying to kill me and I’m cc’d, I have to mist form out, swap to earth for earth 4 and earth 3, air for speed boost and air 5 for stun, water for 3/5 heal and 4 slow, fire to drop some damage and an extra evade while using my 6 (arcane brilliance) at some point to heal and blowing lightning flash or w.e its name is to gain more distance and so on (not in that order necessarily).

So to end this rather lengthy post, so far I feel like ele has a wide range on skill cap in regards to how often you switch attunements, how you utilize the aforementioned, and properly managing CDs while still being effective in whatever role you’re filling.

Just remember that air is the stationary attunement if you just want to fire off some autos between burst. You know, unless you’re a glassy staff ele, which you’d want to be in fire using 1 and 2 as much as possible.

Anomaly.7612:

Neko.9021:

Elementalist is kinda screwed up in PvE without Fresh Air. The reason for this is that the design of PvE emphasizes auto-attacking everything to death for sustained damage. For the Ele, this means you generally just want to camp Lightning Whip on MH Dagger the whole time. At the same time, all your utility and burst is in the other attunements, but it’s difficult to dance around attunements if you don’t have Fresh Air.

Overall, no, it’s not just you. Eles have some of the hardest time leveling and really do rely on trait progression to become a full class.

If Ele is hard to level, then a Thief is legendary difficulty mode. Seriously, I died so much while leveling my Thief. I find Ele to be pretty fun and easy, but yet again, I know all the combo fields and burst rotations for D/D having played it in PvP long before caring to level it in PvE/WvW.

Once you get used to attunement swapping with the Ele, you’ll really like the class. It will feel second nature to swap to another attunement to keep a combo going or use a CD from another attunement. So much so, you’ll start to miss it when playing another class. I’ve found that swapping to just a second weapon set is now really boring, haha. Why have two sets when you can have 4?!

0.0 Leveling my thief is the next easiest thing outside of leveling my guardian (I haven’t leveled a warrior yet, and I don’t plan to until they make the class sufficiently engaging to bother with), outside of the sheer boredom that is trying to level to 80 after you do it the first couple of times. I haven’t really had any trouble surviving or dealing damage, when AI pretty much just AFKs when I pop stealth, and the extra armor helps more than you would think.