Guild Wars 2

I have played MMO since the birth of MMOs waaay back in the days of MUX and EQ. I played WoW, I played Warhammer, even tried Conan. Never in all my years have I found a class so completely unable to stay alive as the Elementalist.

I have watched videos, I have read theories, I have reset to earth/water, or air/water which is what I am now and no matter what I do, if I pull more than one mob I go down like a cheerleader on prom night.

I think I have died more times on this character getting to level 32 than I have died on every character on every game I have ever played combined. I like the game play mechanics of elementalists but they SUCK at survival.

So what am I missing? What is the secret combination of skills/abilities that makes this class worth playing because honestly, I’m thinking of just selling off everything she owns. This is not in any way, a fun class to play. I stopped playing GW2 for months after just getting fed up with this class. I had hoped things would have improved in the months I was gone but we still seem to be paper cannons instead of glass cannons.

10Air/10 Water D/D build.

Elementalist might possibly be the worst class when it comes to leveling.

The main reason is you need traits, mainly 30 in Arcana and 15 in Water, for the Ele to achieve a normal level of survivability.

For now, at level 30ish, put points into Water/Arcana. I’ve heard Scepter is a good way to level.

Go for low hanging fruit. Clear the lowest starting zones. Do your daily. Fight stuff way below your level. Try to find the easiest points to level in.

Basically, until Level 60, you’re in for a rough ride. No, it’s not fair, and no, it’s not good design. But tough it out till then, stressing Water and Arcana, and the moment you can put 30 in Arcane and 15 in Water, you will solidly be able to constantly restore your health by just reattuning to Water.

Keep your gear up to date. Go for Power/Vitality dual stat gear and then Knights gear when you get go 60. Eles have a huge DPS and armor and health disadvantage compared to other classes (read: low in all 3 categories). What’s good about us, however, is our broad array of abilities that allow us to have an answer to anything.

So cheer up. Ele is indeed a ton of pain to level and I do feel ANet needs to do something about it. But my advice is stick to Arcana/Water, both to get used to what Eles do at level 80, as well as because it actually maximizes your survivability.

Hello there

To start off, I- myself am not a pro Ele and i am asking for tips as well. But as of PvE, I think an ele is fairly alright. It can live.

What you can do is , use both ur dodges at first just dodge whenever u feel like it and notice the mobs attacks then dodge later on.

Use the water heal no.5 if you are d/d and your healing skill like below 50% HP.
Try to keep moving ( A MUST as D/D) – Moving can refer to running in circles, back and forth, dodges and even the no.3 Fire, no.4.5 air . no.3 Earth

Like these, Also try to search some more skill rotations
no.3 fire to no.5 but i think it should begin with no.5 air or no.3 earth

Try out all skills you will notice they have skill combo’s = giving boons

Ele is highly fun, even though attunement switching can be a pain but you will get used to it

<— 1 Month Ele experience not throught playing 1- 80 but just experimenting and leveling throught crafting and dungeons.

So that’s my tip, btw i have a 80 thief which i leveled 1-80 i have died more on that then on ele.

So on Ele you shouldnt’ die that badly just learn the mobs move and dodge or use ur moving skills

Hope i help, sorry for the typo’s bad keyboard.

I had my troubles with leveling the class as well. Cant say im much better now than at around lvl30, but i made it to 80 so thats something. As far as i could get the hang of it, i found it is best to keep an elementalist weapon of all types in your inventory. Before getting into a situation, just look and think beforehand: Maybe a meteor shower or some freezing ground will be more effective against a mob of melees, than trying to run circles around the bunch, getting hit by one of them.

Incidently, i changed my utilities and weapon sets outside of combat more times on an ele than on any other class.

Experiment. Sadly eles lack an effective way to switch from long range to close range combat like the other classes’ weapon swapping. You’ll have to find out for yourself when it is best to pick up a staff or a scepter or foci or dagger BEFORE you enter combat.

there was a video I saw a long time ago on youtube that explained ele kitting and just from that I learned how to avoid about 70% more attacks while still killing.

You can go either Dagger/Dagger or Scepter/Dagger, either way will be tough until you hit around level 60 so you can get a lot of the traits to buff your survivability. If you go Scepter Dagger I would suggest mastering the following combo to take down a group of mobs:

Ride the Lightning -> Updraft -> Dragons Tooth -> Ring of Fire (Move forward to the mobs to cast this) -> Phoenix -> Earthquake -> Churning Earth

The Churning Earth is tricky though and should depend on what you are fighting as well as how much health you have.

A dual dagger combo would be:

Ride the Lightning -> Updraft -> Burning Speed -> Ring of Fire -> Drakes Breath -> Firegrab -> Earthquake -> Churning Earth

I would use Frozen Burst and Frost Aura to kite enemies and Shocking Aura to stun melee enemies. Learn to use Updraft as a knockdown AND an evade. Use Lightning Flash and Arcane Shield to kite or tank damage to kill stuff. Also, I would recommend while kiting to use Cone of Cold to do some damage and heal yourself a little. Also , Vapor Blade is your longest rage attack on Dual Daggers, but your best auto attack would be Lightning Whip. Also, Ring of Earth and Impale can be used to hit enemies behind walls and obstacles where they can’t hit you.

The biggest thing is to learn to use the combo fields that the elementalist has. The combos above if you can aim things well inside the Ring of Fire you will stack might. I would HIGHLY suggest to spec into Arcana first, at least the 10 points to get the Arcane Elemental Attunement trait and 10 in the Water line to get either Cleansing Wave or Soothing Disruption if you use cantrips. This will help give you good sources of regeneration and vigor to help you dodge more and heal yourself a bit more. As far as a heal I would recommend Glyph of Elemental Healing in Water to get the regeneration and heal your self a lot. With the vigor and the Lightning Flash you can hop around and dodge a lot.

Hope this helps.

Just get your lightning hammer, and spam your blinds on autoattack. But stay away from dredge XD

I don’t get it.

I found Ele. to be perfectly fine when levelling. I don’t know if there’s some sort of secret I maybe stumbled upon.
Ele has great mobility and a variety of attack modes from ranged to pure melee.

Perhaps if you explain how you attack a specific foe and what goes wrong so that you die, it might help.

Scepter/Dagger got so much AoE, you can burst down up to 5 mobs (maybe even more) instantly from level 2 on. You just have to learn some burst combos and you can literally stay in fire attunement for leveling.

A couple have mentioned scepter/dagger above – I leveled up with that. A nice bit of range and you can get the slow hitters off to initiate (looking at you d tooth). I found Glyph of Elementals useful too as popping that can take a bit of heat off you.

Good suggestions above – in/out of water, combos. I learned about combos/finishers with s/d and then moved to d/d. I am not a fan of ground targeting, I am a bit slow with it, so tend to stick d/d now but do go to staff in larger groups (e.g. WvW). That said, I always have a scepter and a focus in my inventory as well… just in case…

And evade – look out for that red ring around you and evade like mad.

I’m still learning it at lvl 80… be ready review your traits end of this month though… trait changes in coming… no telling what will open up for us/do to us (depending on your viewpoint…). Good luck

For me, the key to staying alive as an ele is constant movement. PvE mob attacks are usually slow and can be avoided just by kiting or circle strafing. At level 80, I usually play s/d but I actually leveled with d/d because of its high mobility. For contrast, I’m leveling a warrior atm which requires a lot of standing in place to get attacks off and I actually die a lot more than I did when leveling my ele. :P

Most of our survivability does come from traits in the water and arcana lines, so definitely invest in those asap. And don’t just swap to water for the heck of it; use it when you need the heal and swap out of it asap so you’ll be able to re-enter it sooner.

Oh, by the way
This guide is probably the definitive text – slightly old now but still good

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Guide-Mastering-the-D-D-ele-5-12-12/page/15