Guild Wars 2

I’m level 9 right now, but whenever I fight it seems I always have just enough health to survive and feel like I’m just randomly spamming ability’s. Does anyone have advice? I want to know what combos there are and what skills to use. I really like ele and I’d hate to have to reroll.

play and get more experience with the class, all will be revealed. ele is my fave over 700+ hours and rank 34 pvp and i can tell you you will never have to reroll

For lowby encounters D/D is sigh somewhat of a pain you don’t have the stats to back up the build and your swap is so long but your combos still work.

Gear for power(some vitality might help too) and follow this combo Air4 ->5 Fire 3->4 Earth 4->5

Water attunement has the longest range auto attack plus chilled for kiting earth 2 has a snare component air 3 is the best defensive skill you have use it. Fire 1 is your strongest auto attack.

Tip: if your’e not new or have cash to spare you can just level crafts and spare yourself the headache.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Guide-Mastering-the-D-D-ele-11-25-12/page/4#post901532

I think the D/D ele really starts to shine around level 25 when you have enough points to start actually getting some traits.

D/D is perhaps our most powerful weapon set with S/D very closely following. It has a very steep learning curve to play it right, so just keep on trying and learning. When it finally begins to make some sense to you it will be quite the rude awakening when you realize just how much carnage you can wreak with it.

TheGuy.3568:

Tip: if you’re not new or have cash to spare you can just level crafts and spare yourself the headache.

This is what I ended up doing. I tried several times to roll an ele and each time I quit, annoyed by the stance dance. Finally I just leveled one by crafting and now that the attunement cooldown is a more reasonable length I’m actually enjoying the dance. It was just too annoying always trying to switch attunements and finding I needed to wait another 2-3 seconds. The base cooldown is just too long and much of the shortening is gated to mid/higher levels.

until you get your boon synergy, double dagger is indeed incredibly squishy.

until you reach lvl 20 you want to put your traits into water so you get perma-regen in water that over-hangs by about 8 seconds once you swap to another attunement.

once you reach 20, you get zephyr’s boon, which speeds up combat and lets you kite well enough to drop the water points until you can reach lvl 25 again.

once you reach this point, and you get toughness gear “Resilient” off the TP, you should feel more durable.

in the mean time, your dagger skills have enough combinations to either cc->burst damage or burst-sprint away from your opponents. (try mixing air-> fire —-> earth->water) … general rule air before fire, earth after fire, water when needed. The early levels really are about feeling out the combos of the weapons themselves before you’re given the boon synergy. It was very intelligent of ANet to do this, so most elementalists don’t end up crutching themselves on it.

The playstyle is very twitchy from my point of view (and I am a very twitchy person)… I sometimes get whiplash trying to move from updraft into burning speed→flame grab.

get more defensive gear → learn to play with it → get more offensive gear → profit

soldiers amulet + berserkers jewel is a good start imo

D/D elementalist is the most complicated class to play so expect to die alot before mastering it after few hours on lvl 80

D/D is also supposed to be played as bunker or balanced, not glass cannon in full berserker, mainly in pve when mobs are autoaiming.

I recently switched to bunker power/toughtness/healing with some vitality on dagers on lvl 80 and i can take up to 5 mobs in orr, it is slow killing, but very rewarding But the amouth of pressed buttons, switched attunments, created combos… you can achieve more with 3 buttons on warrior:P → if you want easy going class

Dont use DD in PVE

Once you get zephyr’s boon and the earth attunement equivalent, all will be revealed. OH and set the auto attack for air attunement to 3-shocking aura and on water attunement to 4-frost aura. when you switch to these attunements the aura’s will automatically activate and grant you boons with zephyr’s boon.

rhodoc.2381:

Dont use DD in PVE

DD is very good in pve, actually. So long as being in melee is safe*ish* it’s fine. For example I run almost all of Arah with DD, only swapping for Lupi.

LOL @ rhodoc. I use D/D almost exclusively in PvE (occasionally I use S/D for certain dungeon fights that require a bit of range). It has very good survivability, mobility, and decent might stacking capability.

Now, in response to the OP; starting out as a low level Ele can be rough. All I can say is, stick with it, it gets much better with practice (and more trait points, etc… at higher levels). I’d also say, any time you start getting low switch to water and heal yourself up (2 & 5), and try to use Glyph of Elemental Harmony while in water attunement for the regeneration. Put 5 points into water ASAP too, for the passive healing in water attunement, and after that keep putting your points into water/arcane, as these will help you stay alive.

Anyway, good luck and stick with it. Believe me, once you get the hang of it it’s an extremely rewarding and fun profession to play. Also, at 80 if you build and gear for it, you will be very survivable, so fear not.

i hit… 45? last night and finally thought “I GET IT!”
whatever u choose to start with, use all worthwhile abilities, immediately swap to diff attunement, dont wait for 2 secs for a cooldown.. SWAP! repeat. i suddenly was HUGELY more effective

it sounds silly
i didnt get it

i get it

I finally am getting the hang of D/D, mainly in this past couple of weeks. It really “clicked” for me now and I really see the power of this build. I play a lot of WvW and I’m finding myself running into battles that I used to run from now. And I’m having success!

rhodoc.2381:

Dont use DD in PVE

I use it almost exclusively in PvE. Currently I’m doing map completion in Orr zones and it works great. Very survivable and great DPS, even with multiple mobs on me.

Dungeons I still use Staff, but mainly that’s out of habit. Once I feel a lot more comfortable with the D/D I’ll probably use it a lot in there too.

Sabre.1384:

TheGuy.3568:

Tip: if you’re not new or have cash to spare you can just level crafts and spare yourself the headache.

This is what I ended up doing. I tried several times to roll an ele and each time I quit, annoyed by the stance dance. Finally I just leveled one by crafting and now that the attunement cooldown is a more reasonable length I’m actually enjoying the dance. It was just too annoying always trying to switch attunements and finding I needed to wait another 2-3 seconds. The base cooldown is just too long and much of the shortening is gated to mid/higher levels.

Its how I level the alts I am going to play. Funny thing is I started an ele long ago got frustrated deleted it. Then started one again said eff it I will just level crafting and never looked back last time I checked I was 285 hours deep on ele. I really do love the class.

MaXi.3642:

get more defensive gear -> learn to play with it -> get more offensive gear -> profit

soldiers amulet + berserkers jewel is a good start imo

Read the OP and read his level and its not an spvp question. I sware no one reads OPs just titles lol.

Yea tough gig leveling. I am trying to stay with D/D to get used to the skills and getting pummeled because leading with my face. Don’t want to switch to range …which would likely get easier. Bit of a catch 22

Ele takes a while to get. the combos are not obvious or terribly easy.
but once i got it I did remarkably better in any build i use whereas before i did horribly in any build i used.
that was spvp.

I still recommend sceptre/dagger for leveling, but that is because I hated dying. Elementalist are the softest class in the game, so being at point blank without great gear, hurts.

I wouldn’t bother practicing with D/D until you are 80 and in at least full yellows with 1500 toughness or more. The game really is different once you have all of your traits and a full suit of yellow or better level 80 gear.

I’ve been running D/D on my Ele, still working on a build. Currently doing 20/20/20/10, and it works nice, designed to work with Aura’s and Glyph’s. I’m just having trouble deciding gear. Currently have Rare Knight’s Armor and Rare Rabid Jewelery.

Should I change my Knight’s gear for something like Valkyrie to get more health and crit damage to go with my precision and almost perma-fury? I don’t wanna lose out on the toughness though because I only got 2600 armor.

And to offer something to the thread besides my questions, Ele’s leveling get Glyph of Storms and use it in Earth Magic, 10 seconds of AoE perma blind. Also get Arcane Shield, these are life saving skills in PvE

KingFarout.1092:

I’m level 9 right now, but whenever I fight it seems I always have just enough health to survive and feel like I’m just randomly spamming ability’s. Does anyone have advice? I want to know what combos there are and what skills to use. I really like ele and I’d hate to have to reroll.

Whenever you initiate a fight, if starting in Fire, do a Burning Speed, Ring of Fire, Earth, Earthquake, Earth# 2(forget name atm), Air, Shocking Aura, Air #2 (makes all non critical hits a glancing blow), Updraft is nice to knockback targets, if need heals switch to Water and use number 2 (unless you need to cleanse a condition first, then use #5).

Pretty much the basics. If in air do same thing except start with Ride the lightning, Updraft, shocking aura combo, then rotate into fire, earth, water.

The Fire > Earth will stack some good might while providing some defense because enemies will be knocked down. Once you learn the basic of how to stack lots of might and do self combo’s, it gets easier.

EDIT: If having a really tough time, start putting your points into Water or Earth. 5 points in water and getting some +Healing Power gear / weapons will help a lot at lower levels as you will regen most damage.

I’m lv 70 and really the only time I used anything other than D/D was unlocking the weapon skills. I just don’t like the flow of combat with the other weapons.

I do remember being a little squishy early on, but it was my lack of understanding on the class. Main items are

1 open in the right element. Air or Fire depending on what you are doing
2 I found rebinding the keys for strafe on the A and D keys to be very helpful, it makes for much easier circling
3 Circling is not only for PvP. Many mobs have a slight delay between when the animation starts and when the attack lands, and many of these do lock the angle in, so you can sidestep the attack without using dodge or breaking off you attack. This is the case on a many of the harder hitting attacks in early zones.
4 when you start getting traits, experiment with different builds. Its pretty cheap to reset the points.
5 try out different utility skills. And find which setup suits your playstyle. If you read around here almost every skill makes it into someone or another’s build.

Well first of all ur lvl 9… lol ofcourse ur going to have a problem thats nothing when u hit 14 thats when u get masterwork items so buy the lvl 14 masterwork set with daggers and the staff for events after 14 it pretty much is a cake walk after that. Just keep up with upgrading ur armor when it can be as in lvl 5 10,14,20,26,32,35,46, and after 46 dont change till 60 if u want to save cash. because anything below that range is terribly expensive atm idk wats going on with TP lately but prices are sky rocketing.

But if ur having problems with the certain combo rotations spend some time in spvp took me about a week to finally get good and a month to never die in spvp anymore unless i get zerged down… which i hate lol

You can’t play D/D without a bunker build and pow/tough/vit gear below 80. You simply need those boon duration increases and the whole toolkit to compensate for your low base health and armor.

Play staff or scepter/dagger until you can run the build linked above. Even then, glass cannon d/d is not viable at all in PvE dungeons. You need to have above 1600 toughness and 16k+ HP to be able to survive in melee.

Just got to level 10 which and couple first levels I though of being bit squishy but opened all weapon for staff and d/d. At 5 went to buy blue power/vit gear from broker and putted vit/power gems in. Things got quite much better. So lesson #1 get power/vit gear for starters and toughness gems if you like.

I like to start air #4, then #3, #2 while mobs are stunned #5 to back out, change to fire. fire ring #4 I think, once mob pile run into ring #3 charge trough them and #5 #2 for fire cone and you should have pile of corpses front of you while still being 90% health..

If not from there you can just kill things with fire or go earth #4 for aoe knockdown, then #2 for another aoe and at this point all should be really dead and back to air…

That sequence works for me at 10…

Zenith.7301:

You can’t play D/D without a bunker build and pow/tough/vit gear below 80. You simply need those boon duration increases and the whole toolkit to compensate for your low base health and armor.

Play staff or scepter/dagger until you can run the build linked above. Even then, glass cannon d/d is not viable at all in PvE dungeons. You need to have above 1600 toughness and 16k+ HP to be able to survive in melee.

Wrong I’ve been glass cannon D/D on lupi in melee range for phase 2/3 without dying.

Lol I just started my ele 2 days ago got to level 12 d/d seems the most fun right now. For me iv noticed get in, nuke the hell outta them, and get the heck out. my best bet is get in with air then fire and earth, then with might stacked( and use arcane blast as a utility), can get 12 stacks of might, cripple with the earth 2 roll away and start again! And if things get bad water is you friend. I cleared 3 quaters of queensdale like this until the level 15 mobs were too strong, btw I killed everything in sight, all I could give were glancing blows

Based on my experience with my ele, its best to use sp/d weapon combo until around level 30. Sp/d gives you that extra range to deal with enemies before they’re right on top of you and from my experience is easiest to deal with multiple enemies with (at least starting in fire attunement due to the nice aoe spike you can do with 2 then 3). As people have mentioned d/d has a bit of a learning curve though one thing that is pretty much a must is dodging (as with most classes). D/D ele has quite a few abilities that are able to close gaps created by dodging easily and constant dodging gives you those extra seconds to get that water attunement off cd. A good trait build I found to run early on was water for the passive regen in water along with the regeneration and vigor on cantrip use along with arcane for the boons whenever attunements are changed. A tip if you’re finding you aren’t able to dodge enough is to use a sigil of energy, best you can afford. I use the superior on my d/d ele and it gives me 50% energy back whenever I switch attunements (with a cd of 9s), which is a lot more dodging and does wonders for you survivability.

Vayra.3290:

Zenith.7301:

You can’t play D/D without a bunker build and pow/tough/vit gear below 80. You simply need those boon duration increases and the whole toolkit to compensate for your low base health and armor.

Play staff or scepter/dagger until you can run the build linked above. Even then, glass cannon d/d is not viable at all in PvE dungeons. You need to have above 1600 toughness and 16k+ HP to be able to survive in melee.

Wrong I’ve been glass cannon D/D on lupi in melee range for phase 2/3 without dying.

Why not in phase 1? You could also try D/F once. Focus gives so much defense there it’s unbelievable people still use staff.

haviz.1340:

Vayra.3290:

Zenith.7301:

You can’t play D/D without a bunker build and pow/tough/vit gear below 80. You simply need those boon duration increases and the whole toolkit to compensate for your low base health and armor.

Play staff or scepter/dagger until you can run the build linked above. Even then, glass cannon d/d is not viable at all in PvE dungeons. You need to have above 1600 toughness and 16k+ HP to be able to survive in melee.

Wrong I’ve been glass cannon D/D on lupi in melee range for phase 2/3 without dying.

Why not in phase 1? You could also try D/F once. Focus gives so much defense there it’s unbelievable people still use staff.

To avoid grubs spawning in melee range. So I was just nuking the grubs in p1.

Vayra.3290:

haviz.1340:

Vayra.3290:

Zenith.7301:

You can’t play D/D without a bunker build and pow/tough/vit gear below 80. You simply need those boon duration increases and the whole toolkit to compensate for your low base health and armor.

Play staff or scepter/dagger until you can run the build linked above. Even then, glass cannon d/d is not viable at all in PvE dungeons. You need to have above 1600 toughness and 16k+ HP to be able to survive in melee.

Wrong I’ve been glass cannon D/D on lupi in melee range for phase 2/3 without dying.

Why not in phase 1? You could also try D/F once. Focus gives so much defense there it’s unbelievable people still use staff.

To avoid grubs spawning in melee range. So I was just nuking the grubs in p1.

Why not use your dodge button?

haviz.1340:

Vayra.3290:

haviz.1340:

Vayra.3290:

Zenith.7301:

You can’t play D/D without a bunker build and pow/tough/vit gear below 80. You simply need those boon duration increases and the whole toolkit to compensate for your low base health and armor.

Play staff or scepter/dagger until you can run the build linked above. Even then, glass cannon d/d is not viable at all in PvE dungeons. You need to have above 1600 toughness and 16k+ HP to be able to survive in melee.

Wrong I’ve been glass cannon D/D on lupi in melee range for phase 2/3 without dying.

Why not in phase 1? You could also try D/F once. Focus gives so much defense there it’s unbelievable people still use staff.

To avoid grubs spawning in melee range. So I was just nuking the grubs in p1.

Why not use your dodge button?

Didn’t actually know you could dodge them. Might try this then (if I ever set foot back in there now that I have my Gift of Zhaitan).

consider running a s/d build until you can start getting some trait points and learning how to use auras/element swaps/and blast finishers to really stack those boons and buff yourself and teammates… ele becomes amazing after about lvl 50 or 60 for the sake of your trait lines.

Until then, give yourself extra traits towards healing and toughness for survivability and just grind it out for a while. Ele was hard for me between about lvl’s 10 and 30, after that I started to figure it out… and now it’s just plain nasty if played right. Also, the longer you play, you can start inching out of the toughness and vitality trait lines and going for more power as you get better. I run a 10/10/10/10/30 build for dungeons and basically have perma swiftness and fury, and during fights can easily maintain 8 or so boons during entire fights, including maintaining between 15 and 25 stacks of might on myself and the whole team. Focus on boons and buffs and your ele will shine. If you ever get in a dungeon group with another ele who knows how to stack boons too, the rest of your group will be surprised at how easy it was this go around… you and the other ele will just smile quietly to yourselves and know that those rangers and warriors have no idea how much better we make the game for everyone else.

Also, consider investing in a good gaming mouse, I use a Razer Naga, although it’s a little overkill, I do use 9 of the 12 thumb buttons for attunement swaps and my 5 – 10 skills.

Tough these first couple levels out, I promise it’ll be worth it!!! ele requires a lot more thought than the standard “just smash A” playstyle of my warrior or ranger, but once you figure it out you won’t go back.

Don’t let these guys fool you. D/D is easy. The only problem is that it is squishy because it doesn’t offer much in the way of defensive skills and since you have the lowest base armor in the game you will have to compensate for that either with gear or skill/traits or both.

Hey buddy, In the same boat as you..or maybe I was. Level 18 elementalist here(this will be my 5th toon to 80, and so far most complex). Ive been switching between S/D and D/D…

My findings are:
S/D has more in your face up front AOE damage via the amount of combos you can do in fire. But everything is on a fairly large CD and your mobility lacks. Plus, it makes more sense to start off fights in Air, making attunement swapping a b)tch if you dont like to swap a lot, or not good at it yet.

D/D has more mobility, about the same damage, and more survivability. Ill explain as I just annihilated about 20 mobs and a few vets in one pull.

Start in Fire
Burning Speed > Ring of Fire
Switch to Earth
Magnetic Grasp(gives a protection aura, which is needed in a second)
Earthquake (combo field from fire gives you 3 stacks of might)
Crumbling Earth (even though this wont go off before the combo field is gone, you still get the stacks for starting the animation when the combo field is still active). The aura you gave yourself from Magnetic grasp shields you from attacks for a few seconds so you can use Crumbling earth. Once crumbling earth goes off, with your stacks of might, most things should be dead bodies. Im sure this will get more difficult later, but so far this is how Im playing it.

I have Arcane Wave(a blast finisher) and Arcane Shield(a shield)…the blast finish I’ll use in the Ring of Fire combo field for another 3 stacks of might, but honestly if you follow the above rotation, you can save it. The shield is probably useful before you use Blazing Speed.

I just did all of this without using Arcane Wave, and annihilated all of these mobs in seconds. No HP lost, or very little. I was amazed.

Ive been stacking some more toughness…power/toughness is your friend right now.

So in terms of number mashing it would be:

Start in fire:
3,4
F4
3,4,5

Not too difficult, its like playing the piano!

cesmode.4257:

Start in Fire
Burning Speed > Ring of Fire
Switch to Earth
Magnetic Grasp(gives a protection aura, which is needed in a second)
Earthquake (combo field from fire gives you 3 stacks of might)
Crumbling Earth

Churning Earth xD
btw, why waste a combo field? (burning speed then ring of fire? nah)
you say later in your post that you have Arcane Wave, then use it wisely:
ring of fire – arcane wave – burning speed – THEN another finisher, which depends from the case, I would avoid using scripted patterns, they quickly show their limits when the scenario is different from the one you are used to.
Obviously this goes until you unlock all the traits, then your comboing will become way more complex and results will be juggernautish

(and here I didn’t even use the last finisher from EA in Earth)

Grevender.9235:

cesmode.4257:

Start in Fire
Burning Speed > Ring of Fire
Switch to Earth
Magnetic Grasp(gives a protection aura, which is needed in a second)
Earthquake (combo field from fire gives you 3 stacks of might)
Crumbling Earth

Churning Earth xD
btw, why waste a combo field? (burning speed then ring of fire? nah)
you say later in your post that you have Arcane Wave, then use it wisely:
ring of fire – arcane wave – burning speed – THEN another finisher, which depends from the case, I would avoid using scripted patterns, they quickly show their limits when the scenario is different from the one you are used to.
Obviously this goes until you unlock all the traits, then your comboing will become way more complex and results will be juggernautish

(and here I didn’t even use the last finisher from EA in Earth)

I “waste” a combo field because It isnt necessarily needed when everything will be dead in a few seconds. Not to mention, I would have to reposition myself inside the blazing speed combo field to get a blast off, in the midst of multiple mobs. I use it as a gap closer and mobility. The fact that it provides a combo field, is just a benefit IMO.

I save Arcane wave if I do end up re-casting Ring of Fire, this blast wont be on cooldown.

Edit:
Unless the mob pack is going to be living with a decent amount of HP after all is said and done, I find it overkill to use every blast finish and acquire every aura. As it is right now, it seems the elementalist needs to work twice or three times as hard compared to most classes to achieve the same result. Not saying that I hate this aspect, but again why mash several more buttons to get that blast finish and aura when it really isnt needed. If the mobs are still alive after one or two blast finishers and one or two auras..I still have some abilities not on cooldown to use.

I havent been playing the elementalist a long time, but I can see many elementalists doing this(churning out all combo fields/blasts/auras) and left with most everything on cooldown. Overkill IMO.

“Overkill” is exactly what must describe us, and Power is never enough, when it is in our hands.
By the time you hit 80, and providing you will dedicate enough time to learn the class/profession, everything will be more clear.
Unless it’s a minor skirmish with just five or six mobs, then keeping up all our asset is perfect to reduce offending numbers (just to say: Arcane Wave used into a fire field with 14 stacks of might running, can obliterate everything inside…). Also, it’s not “repositioning”, it’s mobility: when you unlock Evasive Arcana, you get out of the crowd with burning speed after casting ring of fire and using Arcane Wave, and also dodge roll back unleashing both Churning Earth AND a very nice blast finisher scratchless…