Guild Wars 2

Hi all, I’m not new to GW2 (over 2500hrs) but am new to elementalist. I half-leveled my ele to 40 with tomes, but want to go the rest of the way by mapping and learning to play the profession. Can anyone tell me how is the best way to play? Do you all stick with one or two attunements? I mean, I was trying to buy sigils for weapons and was wondering how you even do that considering one weapon gives you 4 different types of attacks, or with water you’re more of a healer, etc. I’m a bit confused how to go about this. Do I just stick with fire or air? Staff over D/D? Is scepter any good? Of course I have no traits yet (well, just 3 but none of the unlock ones, so all pretty useless). What’s the best armor/rune setup considering eles are pretty squishy but can also be high power? I need help

Looking for PvE help? Check my signature (newest guide at the bottom)

I have no guide for the actual process of levelling though, but you did the right thing by not popping straight to 80: use the rest of the levels to take your time and learn the mechanics, and most importantly learn how to dodge. Good luck!

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Looking for PvE help? Check my signature (newest guide at the bottom)

Seriously, take a look at his guide and his d/f rotation video. These two guides will help you so much. I hated focus for a long time, never got the hang of it until I found his youtube video. Now it’s my favorite weapon set!

Elementalist is a very fluid profession, meaning how we rotate our skills is based off what is happening that moment. It’s one that you have to be open to changes and not be set in a ‘Press 1, press 4, press 5, press 3’ rise and repeat sort of cycle. You have a lot of skills to remember and some will be more useful to save during a certain part of an encounter. Some skills will do damage but will also reflect, so spamming those off cooldown won’t be a smart use of skills, and neither will just going from F1-F4. You have to know what the skills do and know when to properly use them. There is optimal usage of skills, just look at Zelyhn’s video, but don’t get stuck in only knowing that routine. Learn it but also keep in mind that you will have to change it up and don’t get stuck because of it.

Find a might stacking video as well, or you can PM me in game. I have taught many of my guild members/people I find struggling while standing in LA how to properly might stack with anything from a scepter/focus to d/d. It’s simple once you know the rotation, but it’s something vital to know before you go taking your ele off to a dungeon or fractal or whatever really.

When it comes to level 80 gear, zerk is the most efficient but you will die, and a lot. Good news is, your party expects it, so don’t feel bad when it happens. You will get the hang of being super squishy. As for runes, most either go Scholar or Strength runes…for obvious reasons. The Flame Legion ones will work as well, if you don’t have the gold for the more expensive ones.

Just take your ele out and play it. You’ll get the hang of it and you will die a bit. It’s part of being an ele

While leveling you have 4 choices: Dagger, Scepter, Staff or Conjures. All of them work and each have their advantages/disadvantages.

Dagger: You’re going to spend most of your time in Air.
Scepter: You’re going to spend most of your time in Fire/Air.
Staff: You’re going to spend most of your time in Fire.
Conjures: It matters/doesn’t matter. I spent most of my time in Water.

Instead of viewing each attunement as one thing or another (IE: Water = Healing) it’s better to look at each tree individually and be mindful of what it offers for that weapon. For example if you find yourself in a situation, you should be familiar with your weapon skills and how best to use them. If you’re kiting around as staff and need a breather you have Chill in Water, Immob and Line in Earth, Knockback and Stun in Air and an Evading Retreat in Fire. The key is analyzing the situation and using the tool that is most appropriate for that situation. If you’re burning through things so fast there’s no reason to not just face tank things in your own Lava Fonts cause losing 25% of your HP is meaningless when it instantly heals up a few seconds later.

Biggest thing while leveling is you’re going to find most things die pretty fast so you’re not going to be able to do full combos. For example using Scepter you can kill just about any pack of 5 mobs without switching out of Fire cause it’s so bursty. Veterans and Elites however will give you chances to practice full multi-attunement combos. However in your average mob scenario to be honest just running around with Dagger in Air and spamming 1 gets the job done in so many cases.

Conjures (Lightning Hammer specifically) are incredible while leveling but suffer from the problem that random people will run along and pick them up and use them and more importantly if you gotta move to a new area you gotta go back and pick up your second weapon. They are great for solo story, however.

At your level you’re still in the two stat phase for gear. I prefer Power/Vitality during that part of the game but it’s not always available. Power/Precision or Power/Ferocity is available but I find you never really get enough Precision or Ferocity at this stage to really make one or the other worth it.

Around 65 you start getting triple stat gear and up to you at this point where you go with gear. A lot of us early on learned how to play the Elementalist in the days when it was fashionable to go full tank spec (0xx66) and full tanky gear (soldiers/valkyrie/etc) regardless of game mode. Over time we’ve swapped in more and more offensive gear and spec’s as our proficiency with the class and game raised. You can skip all that and go full tilt offense from the get go but as rabidsmiles mentioned you’re going to die a lot. Personally I hate dying and never will get used to it.

Biggest thing to learn about the Ele is what you have access to and knowing when to take advantage of it. If you do that you’ll be in good shape for 80.

Option 1: Focus on one attunement (most likely fire, as it has the highest DPS) and swap to others as needed for defense/utility purpose. Remember your other attunements – they will save your life and your groups – but your goal is always to use the skills you need then get back into your primary.

Option 2: Be a true attunement hopper, cycling between all 4 and burning every high damage cooldown you have. The goal is to make full use of all 20 of your weapon skills at all times.

Option 1 is generally easier to play, reliable, and plays the most like other classes. There’s nothing at all wrong with it, in fact staff-fire eles are quite strong.

Option 2 has a fantastically high skill cap and a correspondingly high power potential. Not because the DPS is higher (it’s not), but because you can weave many defenses/utilities/heals/cc into the cycle without losing dps. A good attune-hopping ele has high DPS, high CC, and high defense all at once. What you lose is the ability to relax and autoattack things to death. If you use this build, you HAVE to constantly be attunement swapping or you lose all your dps. You may develop carpal tunnel :P

For the record I currently use option 1, although I used to 2. Unfortunately, the various attunement-hopping skills and combo field synergy Ele’s used to have has been nerfed over time, and IMO the benefits are not worth the massive increase in effort required. Except in PVP, where Option 2 is basically required.

PvE Ele isn’t hard despite what people might tell you, really. I’ll add to what others have said here. Here, I’ve written a new guide for each good weapon combo:

-Mainhand Dagger (imo best to level with because of quick and easy damage)
1. Attune to Air
2. Spam Air 1

-Staff (best damage as long as enemies sit in Lava Font, which they often do in PvE)
1. Attune to Fire
2. Spam Fire 2 and Fire 1

-Scepter
1. Slot in Lightning Hammer (take Conjurerer in Fire Magic if you can)
2. Spam Lightning Hammer 1

And that’s how to do high damage with each weapon combo easy!

Fire Staff if you want to die of boredom. You can do 99% of pve by literally using fire staff #1 and #2

If you’re looking for fun I’d advise you to go zerker D/D with an offensive trait setup. Talent into water for cleanses if you need them (if that is still possible with the new trait system).
Useful skills: healing signet, air signet or windborne dagger (adept arcana), conjure GS/bow/hammer, most of the cantrips, the elite elemental for distracting mobs
Your damage comes from Air #1 and Fire cooldowns. Start in fire and use the cooldowns, then switch into either water or earth and blast the fire fields, then go to air. On the next cycle go into fire and then earth or water to blast the fire fields – whichever attunement you didn’t use the first time. This is the very basic principle of D/D imo.

your swap sigils proc during attunement.

Rotation is an art with a little science.

But the general rule is, swap out of water asap, fire gives you good damage, air has knockbacks and good dps, earth cc,bleeds and protection including massive 7k to 12k damage on churning earth.

the best way to learn ele is to watch a video on the basics (i saw them around not sure where they are now) and then spend alot of hours mastering it

Thanks a bunch! Fuzzion I had no idea about sigil procs on attunement swap. Thanks for that. I was wondering how those sigils might work on ele. OK, so I see that traits will be a big part of the profession.

ozmaniandevil.6805:

Thanks a bunch! Fuzzion I had no idea about sigil procs on attunement swap. Thanks for that. I was wondering how those sigils might work on ele. OK, so I see that traits will be a big part of the profession.

Something that haven’t been mention is that when you put points in for trait in fire you will also have this effect on every other utility which use fire (like Cleansing Fire [cantrip in utility]) depending on which trait you use. The same goes for FGS and Axe which both belong to the same attunement. You are able to see those changes in tool tip for each skill/utility as it is coloured blue.

For sigil you want to make sure that you have the same stacking sigil on both your land and water weapons as there are reports about ppl loosing stacks while they cross water and for a very short moment switches weapon set as they are walking over a place where water are deeper.

Sigil which procs on swap will work on attunement swapping. You might want to look up wiki as there might be more then 10s attunement CD for those sigils. Some sigils have an internal cool down.

Geomancy (applies bleeding in AoE) work at least very well and Ice (chills) also on swapping, so I can recommend you to try those as they are rather cheap on TP.

EDIT: Conjuring weapon will also trigger those on swap sigil and a couple other thing might also trigger those effect like jumping from a hight.

Thanks ShadowCatz. I can tell that playing ele is going to be different than all other professions. I had started with sigils of air and fire thinking seeing that a few skills/traits gave increased/guaranteed critical hits. Now I can look more into the on swap sigils as I go along.

Sigil of Fire isn’t bad at all and after the nerf may be comparable in terms of damage increase you get compared to Sigil of Battle (2 might stacks on swap). Fire can proc almost twice in the Battle cool down. Also depends on play style as if you aren’t rapid attunement swapping (at least once every 9s) you don’t get much mileage out of Battle where as Fire is always just straight up damage.

For PvE though I always like Bloodlust. 25 stacks is just a great boost once you get it rolling. Other than that it’s hard to go wrong with Energy, Air, Fire, Battle, Force, etc.

If we’re talking about PvE sigils, you can’t beat a sigil of force and a sigil of energy for keeping you alive. The Bloodlust, while nice, is too easily lost on an Ele (we drop faster than the stock market sometimes) so those built up stacks are gone quick. The crit proc sigils are nice and all, but they won’t save you if you need an extra dodge quick and a flat 5% damage boost over the whole fight vs a crit proc is usually better. As an Ele you will get more mileage out of having an Energy Sigil than some of the other professions, you can easily rely on being able to swap to it if you need the extra dodge.

Even then while leveling, Bloodlust is still extremely solid regardless of class as you shouldn’t be dying that much. If you are you need to either need to focus on a more defensive spec and/or more defensive gear cause you aren’t ready for full glass yet.

While getting downed and/or dying certainly happens I feel it’s faulty to make plans around it. Might just be me, but I see dying or getting downed as failing and/or losing in this game and I avoid it at all costs. If you’re dying a lot, it isn’t necessarily that you’re doing something wrong it’s that you could be doing something that isn’t right for you.

Well it will be a learning curve from playing necro and warrior, which both have very high health pools, but I’m quite good at timing dodges too, so I don’t expect I’d die as much as a completely new player. I just find that losing stacks on map change or log out is rather disconcerting, though I usually do use sigils of bloodlust on most mapping characters anyway, I think mostly out of habit.

Yea for sure. Takes a bit to map a character and you’re not zipping around map to map when you are mapping and honestly lower level content is so easy shouldn’t be going down much if at all.