Guild Wars 2

Hello i just started playing about a week ago and picked elementalist. I am currently looking for a way to make me more survivable. I right now die in one hit and i do not mean down i mean straight from standing to dead it seems like. All the information i have seen so far is how to do as much DPS as possible but at this point surviving is more important to me as if i am dead i do no dps.

I am fire based right now but i could remake to one of the other elements if they are better for surviving.

I guess you fight monsters that are to high in level. Watch the zone you are in. Fire is the best elemet for starting and leveling. Don´t worry. When you learn to move you won´t die to much :-).
Using staff to learn is a good way. I started wit hstaff and changed to scepter focus.
Stay away from the monsters at start of the fight. Use staff 4 if they beat on you.
When you get equipement choose strengh and precision. The third can be anything exept healing is weak.
You start learnign elementalist at level 31 ;-). And then at level 80.
The proces to 80 is like the introduction.

I am level 80 i have not been in any zone above level 30 though. I started to do some dungeons and am getting well crushed by them. I was thinking maybe an earth based one might have more protection.

I was hoping there would be a respec option but i have yet to find one to change from fire to earth. Also i have not really been able to talk to people in game until yesterday or post here about it because i was a free account until yesterday.

If survivability is an issue for you, more than element, try getting gear that adds vitality or toughness…. signet of earth helps a bit too

Moondancer.3874:

Hello i just started playing about a week ago and picked elementalist. I am currently looking for a way to make me more survivable. I right now die in one hit and i do not mean down i mean straight from standing to dead it seems like. All the information i have seen so far is how to do as much DPS as possible but at this point surviving is more important to me as if i am dead i do no dps.

I am fire based right now but i could remake to one of the other elements if they are better for surviving.

The Ele is indeed a very squishy profession, and leveling up can be quite difficult. We’re one of the most technically complex and unforgiving professions to play, and nowhere does this come out more than in the early levels. So take heart that you’re not the first person to run into this problem.

My suggestions:

1. Glyph of Lesser Elementals and Glyph of Elementals are your friends. Mobs will tend to focus your elementals, so these two utility skills can give you room to breathe.

2. You may want to spec for defenses early on. Focus on stacking some combination of Power, Toughness, Vitality, and Healing Power. Eventually you’re going to want to mix in more Precision and Ferocity but for now, a bit of bulk will give you a larger margin for error.

3. For weapons, pretty much anything except Scepter/Focus will work well. S/F lacks any kind of damage and fights will take you forever.

4. I’d prioritize the Water and Arcane traitlines early on. Those will help you survive the best. You can eventually spec Fire and/or Air, but for now, go for survival while you learn the profession.

Yes Elementalist is very squishy. You have to pay close attention to the mechanics of the fight you are going into. Often times you can find a description under the enemy’s name of their attacks. If you know there will be many projectiles, find your reflects and be ready to use them. Dodge out of red circles and watch for big attacks. It gets easier as you get more practice. Staff is a great choice for range and damage. Water trait can be helpful also for the regen, but you have to be ready to switch between your elements as needed.

Thanks for the responses i have a new thread in the players helping players, I got to level 80 but it wasn’t easy. The main reason for coming here is i spent around four hours in a dungeon and we did not finish it. The responses here are well heaped in jargon that i do not understand. For instance in the other thread i just found out i had points i could spend on buying abilities called hero points i think that is correct name for them.

I am missing a basic level of understanding how the game works is what i have figured out ankitten ot sure how to get caught up in knowledge but its a start.

If you are lvl 80 you might consider getting rune set of privateer or ogre. Both give you a pet after hit. In PvE those pets can help you to manage mobs argo while get room for recovering.

Switching attunements and make it for your advantage are the basic of playing elementalist.

You might want to look for ele WvW roaming video to learn from other players.

Well i dont really care about PvP so i dont think those type of videos will be particularly relevant. I will see if there are any PvE elementalist videos to watch though. I just played around with switching stances for the first time last night i did notice a bit of a change in survivability but i now need to learn like 15 new abilities and what they do.

I just recently found out that even attacks that are not telegraphed can be dodged which is not something that is intuitive for an MMO. The whole game feels a bit backwards and like someone with ADHD made it.

Just play a heavy class, they can take 3 times the damage and do as much damage as the light classes anyway.

Well camping(using only one element) an element is possible. Especially fire.
Camp fire: works well in PvE
Camp earth: works but you need forever to kill.
Water and air does not work well.

With 20 gold and a bit karma you can build a stable fire nuker.
One tip: When you get the last daily chest select pletiful laurel! You will need them when you know the equipment you want.

Thats how i got my first set: Karma merchants.

I suggest: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Keeper_Jonez_Deadrun
Start with trinkets from botom (backpack, earrings … )Till you run out of karma

I did choose vampire rune because it is cheap.
I would take hoelbrak (or expensive strength) rune in this kind of build but it costs.

The armor/weapons + sigild and runes can be bought at trading post.
Also the gems to put in the trinkets.

This setup is cheap and some kind of full automatic easy to play fire wizard with good defensive stats. You run around in air, fight in fire and use earth if you need to be more defensive. Of course its ood to learn all elements but this one is 90% fire full automatic.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFEQFAWhcMosh9NwtB0RMQAYRBIAsAmdwLIIITyOQJA-TBCBwAHV+pc/hFm/wp+DgLAAlHAQKdATUCSIgyjBA-e

Welcome to the game Moondancer, GW2 is unlike any other mmo on the planet …mostly so there is a bit of a learning curve. Also there is one involved with playing an elementalist. My play style is very different now than when I first started this game.

You will have to learn the “dance with death” which if you have read the Legend of the Seeker series then you understand it’s origins but essentially like others have said, this involves learning to rotate through the attunements to achieve various effects. Can you get by just staying in Fire? Sure you can. Is it as much fun? Depends on what you call fun. I personally fell in love with daggers and those are my main weapons most of the time. They provide high mobility and once you learn the skills and effects, allow you to dance around foes easily.

You may not like to dance though, in which case I would suggest not just adjusting your traits but also equipping armor that uses Power, Vitality and Toughness. You will lose a significant amount of your outgoing damage but gain a bit of tankiness in return.
But remember, you are the squishiest of the squishies and you cant just stand there while foes smack you.
Another thing to note is that the mid level zones are mostly really weird in how you get downleveled and so while you may in fact be a level 80 you tend to have even less health and power than a zone level equivelant character…you just get more utility skills and advantages from maxed rune sets.

well i understand that i have to move but it seems like a really tough balance between standing to cast my spells and then move and cast move and cast. I am currently using a staff and have pretty much my entire way.

Is there a way to lock my target i find myself not targeted mobs in story events and stuff where there is more then one person due to having to drop AoE effects that seem to click off my target probably because i am double clicking when i drop it sometimes or something.

The thing is i never really had to use dodge much until i hit 80 and tried to do a dungeon and found i was woefully unprepared.

For general open world, assuming you only have Core GW2 (no HoT), try this build:
*Fire – top, top top
*Air – top, mid, mid
*Arcana – mid, bottom, top

And use Dagger/Dagger (use Dagger/Focus for dungeons and fractals).

Use Berserker gear for max damage.

Your goal with this build is to cleave enemies with Air 1, Lightning Whip. Swap to other attunements for utility and burst damage, and once you crit, you can go right back to Air Attunement for more Lightning Whip spam.

I do have HoT and i have no idea what your talking about fire top top top that does not mean anything to me. I have not used daggers or focus. You are literally speaking a different language then me. What are fractals? I will see if i can get a couple of daggers and see how it works for me tonight.

What do you mean when you say cleave enemies? What utility would i need to switch stances for? and what would i switch to for burst damage?

Where do i get berserker gear? is it from Crucible of Eternity because my friend said i should do that dungeon to get the gear i would want.

I’m talking about the trait lines.

Where do i find trait lines? You all have a ton of knowledge about mechanics and the game that you take for granted. I do not have a functional base knowledge of the game and how it works and am trying to acquire.

The learning cliff for this game seems almost as big as EVE online. Its enormous.

Wait, you don’t have Trait lines equipped? No wonder you’re dying!

Open your Hero Panel (press H), click “Build”, and under “Specializations”, select some specializations (I forgot they’re called specializations now, but still, what I said should still hold).

Pick three trait lines. Fire and Air are damage, Earth is defense, Water is healing, Arcana is utility.

OMG! Okay firstly…you might wanna go read up a bit more about how to play the game. I’m not trying to be mean or anything…but you clearly are missing out on some aspects of the game mechanics…basic aspects. Press “h” on your keyboard and explore the menu a bit.

Builds involve using certain Traits that you select in the hero panel. To be more effective and have more survivability…you need to select these.

If the learning curve seems insurmountable, rest assured it is not. However, it is not Diablo. Part of the fun is exploring new builds that you haven’t tried before.

Unfortunately that is sometimes very expensive in game…especially if it uses costly runes or gear sets.

There doesn’t seem to be a good source of reliable up to date information if you are coming from a more traditional MMO. Its sort of worse then trying to learn something from scratch for this game you have to like unlearn what you already know and then try and start from scratch.

The GW2 Wiki is VERY reliable: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Main_Page

Unfortunately this should have been addressed in game but most of the tutorial tends to get skipped through even by new players and the “New Player Experience” has made things worse. Because it no longer allows you at starting levels to interact with the world in a way similar to how you do at higher levels

I was going to link you to the online manual….but clearly it has NOT been updated in a ~very~ long time.

The wiki looks like it has a ton of information but you sort of need to have specific questions to answer and like guild wars itself there is a huge amount of information overload going on that site. Every sub page references another page which goes to another its hard to find the root mechanics to build on.

Like i think if i understand right i found out in my other thread that dodging will negate an attack regardless of if you are still in range which is not something anyone coming from any other game would expect.

You might take a look at metabattle.com.

I prefer to read the combat section on official wiki before trying build for a specific class.

I’m gonna link this anyway…as I think it might be useful for you https://www.guildwars2.com/en/manual/

Reddit has a whole page dedicated for new players. Some of it might be outdated but most of it is still relevant. Just ease your way through all the links.

Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/wiki/newplayers#sidebar2

Last but not least enjoy the experience of discovering all the things Guild Wars 2 has to offer. It is a lovely game!

I’ll try to give you quick overview on what you might want to look at.

1. Your gear. Check what kind of items are you using. There are several different tiers – white, blue, green, rare (yellow), exotic (orange), ascended (pink), legendary (purple). The higher tier the better stats, except for ascended=legendary stats (just better looks for legendarys in most cases + you can change stats at any time). Since you are new to the game you should aim for at least rare (yellow), but preferably exotic (orange) type of equipment.

2. The stats – these are points like power, precision, toughness, vitality and so on. When you press H and then choose 1st option on the list you will see panel with your character, on left and bottom right you have your gear, on top right are your stats. Take a while to see what is what there. Optimally if you are having problems you might want to balance it out and not go full berserker like many guides state, but to add some toughness, vitality, maybe healing power too (depending on the build).

3. Hero points and utility skills (also trait unlocks). When you level up, explore and gather Hero Point from the map you gain these “Hero Points” – it’s the points that are used to unlock utility skills and traits for your character. Press H and then select 3rd tab on character screen to see how many points you have and what you can unlock. I think at lvl 80 you should be able to unlock most if not all of the stuff there.
Utility skills are the skills on right side of your HP bad (big red thingy in the middle). There you have Heal skill (most often 6 on keyboard), 3x utility skills – these are most often longer cooldown skills that you use in certain situation, for example Lighting Flash when you want to teleport to some place or get out quickly from dangerous spot. Last on the right is your Elite skill – most often very long cooldown, but usually strong skill depending on class, not gonna go into details here. As elementalist you might want to unlock utility skills groups such as Cantrips, Conjures, Signets. Glyphs and Arcane are more situational and not such useful in most situations imo, but as you gain experience you will figure out what you need and when. The rest of your hero points you can use to unlock Trait lines (more below).

4. The traits – these are kind of additional ‘abilities’ that your character have in GW2. To see your traits you press H and go to 2nd tab on the left. There you see a grey’ish field on the right if you have nothing selected. You can pick 3 trait lines, in each line you can choose 3 major traits that you think will be useful the most in your gameplay style/content. Some of them are passive like dmg modifiers, some of them affect your skills for example Fire trait line can reduce cooldowns on your Fire skills or make the fire fields last longer and so on. Take some time to read the tooltips and you will have an idea of what might be useful for you. Also you can check some guides, but these most often recommend the most squishy damage oriented setups that might be a little too hard for new players resulting in often deaths.
My personal advice would be to go with Air or Fire, Water, Arcane trait lines for start. When you see ppl telling you top, top, mid or 3 2 3 it means the choice of traits in the each line. For example Fire 3 2 3 would mean you pick Fire line and choose the bottom trait in first part, mid in 2nd part, bottom in 3rd part.

Hope it helps, a bit wall of text, but I tried to explain the most important things. Some general tips:
As an elementalist who uses staff you should pay attention to position yourself well, most often you will be kiting (trying to keep distance between you and enemy while keep doing dmg on him).
This game has boon (buffs) and condition (debuffs) system. Boons are yellow icons near your HP/utility skill bar and they boost your character abilities. Conditions are red icons that display in the same area as boons, these are negative effects that are supposed to give you troubles. With time you will see which ones have what effects.

Xillllix.3485:

Just play a heavy class, they can take 3 times the damage and do as much damage as the light classes anyway.

They are not as sexy tho… #eleForever

Gear. That is all.

I think if you create another character (any) and realy pay atention on the game tutorial as you level you will understand every mechanic and aspect you are not understanding now.

This in the only reason that you are having so much trouble and thinking the learning cliff is so high, it is not… can`t be compared with EVE online.

Elementarist can be said to have the hardest gameplay of all GW2 (even more for a new player), so maybe if you create another more simples class, and pay close atention to tutorials and explanations while you are leveling, when you go back to your ele you will love it.

best regards o/

Moondancer.3874:

well i understand that i have to move but it seems like a really tough balance between standing to cast my spells and then move and cast move and cast. I am currently using a staff and have pretty much my entire way.

almost every spell allows you to move while casting
meteor shower is pretty much the only one you have to stand still to cast

Moondancer lets be honest elementalist is a complex profession it can not be learned overnight, the people who play elementalist spent alot of time learning how to play and yes death is part of it. You have gotten alot of great advice here. Also checkout woodenpotatoes on youtube, guy is a elementalist who knows his stuff. One last thing if you find yourself getting frustrated its ok to step back and try another class. Playing other classes can sometimes give you insight. Good Luck

Yes. Needed about four month to play ele to a level where i have no problems with monstes (e.g. needed about a dozend runs in arbor to say i can do the dungen well) and am competative in playerfight, and after half a year i am still far from the high level PvP players i only win through tactic and build against them not pure “Skill”. What gives me a chance is that i focus on one character, constatly try to adapt my build and learn to play it. Would be lost in space trying to learn 8 classes and then not being able to battle other players well.

Ok, most people here will tell you, put a gear that has more toughness/vitality in it.

But a word of warning to you, because of the crappy aggro mechanics in this game, if you put too much toughness in your gear and none of the other players around you are berserkers and no toughness in gear, all the mobs around you will think you are tank and start shooting you and if you have no healing in your gear, you will just struggle to survive.

So by putting toughness, actually you are making your life harder with ele because with light armor with toughness is no where near the same thing a heavy armor, like Guardian, toughness…

Now comes the better part, you may think, ok I should not have any toughness in my gear but there are some dungeons in the game aggros the player with lowest health pool, guess what stereotype is that

I found it is better to run around with zerker gear but know what to dodge, when you are new in the game forget about your rotation, your skills, just watch mob/boss for their animation and learn to dodge, otherwise life will be quite painful for you.

Well after a week of taking what you guys have been saying and trying to apply it. i have found i almost never switch to Earth element while playing . I currently and have basically always used a staff i tend to start in Fire element do lava burst, AoE fire, Switch to lightning do some lightning stuff then drop ice bow and add that. If its a boss i usually draw aggro and get killed but sometimes if my ice bow has run out i can escape with the fire retreat thing.

Sorry i do not know exact names of abilities. As someone mentioned above i did not realize i could cast spells while moving its not very intuitive of MMO’s and they don’t really tell you about it just expect you to figure it out. I am wearing full Berserker’s mostly because its what is expected i wear so i figured I should get used to it.

Now days i just keep my mouth shut about being new because its so much harder to find a group if you are new. I find another squishy class and try and follow them around. I got lucky and got a ring of death and a 4 stated berserker ring from fractal chests.

The game takes a huge jump in difficulty for basically no reason when you move into group content. It makes sense why its so hard to find a group for dungeons now. I tend to just die a lot right now and hope that i learn something from it,and do enough damage that i wasn’t completely worthless.

Moondancer.3874:

Well after a week of taking what you guys have been saying and trying to apply it. i have found i almost never switch to Earth element while playing . I currently and have basically always used a staff i tend to start in Fire element do lava burst, AoE fire, Switch to lightning do some lightning stuff then drop ice bow and add that. If its a boss i usually draw aggro and get killed but sometimes if my ice bow has run out i can escape with the fire retreat thing.

Sorry i do not know exact names of abilities. As someone mentioned above i did not realize i could cast spells while moving its not very intuitive of MMO’s and they don’t really tell you about it just expect you to figure it out. I am wearing full Berserker’s mostly because its what is expected i wear so i figured I should get used to it.

Now days i just keep my mouth shut about being new because its so much harder to find a group if you are new. I find another squishy class and try and follow them around. I got lucky and got a ring of death and a 4 stated berserker ring from fractal chests.

The game takes a huge jump in difficulty for basically no reason when you move into group content. It makes sense why its so hard to find a group for dungeons now. I tend to just die a lot right now and hope that i learn something from it,and do enough damage that i wasn’t completely worthless.

Ok, I don’t mean to put this too bluntly, but I think you need to focus on improving your own play rather than inventing reasons for why the game has supposedly set you up to fail. The Ele is absolutely harder to learn than most professions and, like all MMOs, GW2 is quite complicated when you’re just starting out, but it isn’t anywhere near as difficult as you’re making it out to be. Millions upon millions of people have been able to figure it out without too much hand-holding, so I would recommend trying a little bit harder to figure it out if you want to continue to play.

And don’t use the Frost Bow like that. You’re supposed to pop 4 and 5 maybe once and then drop it and go back to your regular skills. You’re not supposed to keep autoattacking until you run out of charges. I realize that that’s what the number of charges implies, but that’s a really, really sub-optimal way of using it.

Just use fire with a staff and learn to move and dodge. The rest comes piece by piece.
I suggested a build type that woul work well for that and not die in one shot.
After you learned to use fire try to use earth more, then water healing fields.
Classic staff is run around in air, use static field on start, go fire, nuke them till dead (of couse dont stand still!). If you need group healing use water, if you need defence use earth.

I must say Ele is one of the most unforgiving classes to start with, anyway i’ve leveled one to 80 and i’m glad i did.
I’m liking tempest a lot and i’m dying a lot less now using D/F with shouts, sometimes i switch to staff (which i’m still learning to use) because playing melee isn’t really an option for some champions in HoT.