Guild Wars 2

So I was playing ele for almost a year methinks and I got to level 80. So far I had a blast, though pretty much in every story related missions & dungeons I died at least once.

However, when I achieved lvl 80 I realised, that my story (I’m mainly PvE) is killing me more than ever, or it should really. Is there anything I can change to improve my experiance?

My traits:
> Fire: 4 – Conjurer & Burning Fire
> Air: 0
> Earth: 0
> Water: 4 – Arcane abatement & Cleansing Wave
> Arcane: 6 – Arcane Mastery, Final Shielding & Blasting staff

My skills:
>Glyph of Eternal Harmony;
>Arcane Shield; Armor of Earth (but I haven’t tested it yet, before I had Conjure Flame Axe);
>Conjure Frost Bow;
>Elite: Conjure Giant Fiery Sword;

Equipment:
> Commando’s Mask (of Ruby) – lvl. 80
> Commando’s Mantle [of (minor) Balthazar] – lvl. 70
> Dire Seer Coat [of (Superior) Flock] – lvl. 75
> Shaman’s Cabalist Gloves [of the (minor) Centaurs] – lvl.77
> Carrion Seer Pants [of the (Superior) Centaurs] – lvl. 71
> Blessed Steps [(Minor) Grove] – lvl. 70
> Embershire [Superior Sigil of Smoldering & Beryl] – lvl. 80

P.S. I prefer Staff to other weapons, ’cause it was more natural to me.

I’ve started to fill in a character builder for you as best I can based on the info given. If you could fill in the blanks as best as possible on your gear that would be great.
That exercise alone may give you some hints as to why you’re having a tough time.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQFAWhUM6ZW4w6Bf0ADAGxW4RIYA4AUOO0FWDA-T1iAABEYDQBuAgEXBImFCdAA8AAucBhjUJAIVIUcRgfURgylAAA-w

Ditch your gear, buy lv80 rare (gold) quality berserker armors and weapons from the auction house, they are cheap and it’ll improve your stats by quite a lot.

Personally i ran staff on my Elementalist while leveling in PvE up to 80 and even from there, i still prefer staff, for the awesome aoe clear, besides that fire on staff has constant high dps anyways.

What i’ve ran is, anything that works, and because of that, i’ll say that you are facing a l2p problem.
Traits in PvE? Anything is fine.
Utilities in PvE? Whatever you feel comfortable with.

You are already running arcane and water for survivability, but problem is that you just need to learn to avoid getting damage on yourself , kite, use all your CC the staff provides, run around in circles, summon your elite elemntal to take the heat off you, stay behind NPC’s and your group members.

Well, you get the idea.

@Sagramor: Unfortunately… Now i have tough time trying to fill the blanks, because they doesn’t seem to be weak enough equipment to match mine… Defense on Armour pieces is higher in the builder, than mine over 15 points [at least, on some gear over 50 points] and abilities are higher than mine over at least 5 points.

Oh well, maybe its time to get some shopping done…

Though may I ask, should I consider rearanging my skills & traits? I grew used to them (aside for Earth Armour, though I haven’t been using Flame Axe anymore), but I’m willing to change them if it helps me in some way.

Edit: Wow, I really should have refresh the page before replying. I didn’t expect anyone else to answer so quikly. Though, truth be told, more pieces of advice always helps, so I still will wait for more people to share their opinion.

OP try using this.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFEQFAWnMISLD20AWPAdEGgAQCHIyAxlyMq0bA-TRBBABYt/o8DgLAQAPAgKV/5MlgAA-e

There’s many variations of this that exist, but here’s a basic setup that will improve your efficacy in PvE by a lot.

You should learn when to dodge, Some bosses can one-shot (damage spike) even warrior/guardian.

Use Sandstorm – it’s about 10 second of damage immune for group.
Use Lighting hammer – almost permanent blind and very high DPS (auto-attack crits +10k)

@vpchelko: I try to play from distance whenever possible and I think I got somewhat the dodging mechenic (maybe not well enough just yet, but I’m getting better). This is also a reason I prefer Staffes – Burning Retreat can be used as an extra dodge [though I’m a bit more relying on conjured weapon lately, but that was just because I was doing dungeaons lately and I wasn’t raelly needing the 3rd dodge roll].

@ Purple Miku: I think that Arcane Brilliance suits this particular scenario especially well – there are Risen all around, so healling boost would be significant. When it comes to the Glyph of Elementals… it’s not my thing really. This is a reason why I stopped playing Necromancer, I do not really like nor seem to get the hang of the summons. For one thing, they die in the water and for another it is just another thing you have pay attention to, made infinitly worse in case of Elementalist, because the summons seem to me more fragile than Necromancers and they die after set time.

Gabriel.3962:

@vpchelko: I try to play from distance whenever possible and.

This is problem. You have stack with party members whenever possible.

Gabriel.3962:

@ Purple Miku: I think that Arcane Brilliance suits this particular scenario especially well – there are Risen all around, so healling boost would be significant. When it comes to the Glyph of Elementals… it’s not my thing really. This is a reason why I stopped playing Necromancer, I do not really like nor seem to get the hang of the summons. For one thing, they die in the water and for another it is just another thing you have pay attention to, made infinitly worse in case of Elementalist, because the summons seem to me more fragile than Necromancers and they die after set time.

Arcane Brilliance – also blast finisher.
Blast finished in water field, Blast finisher in fire field… etc.

Glyph of Elementals on your own.

At first, you must read sticky topics.

For some obscure reasons, Earth Elemental (elite) holds mobs’ aggro extremely well, so he can take the pressure of you. If you are in such a situation, summon him and forget about it.

Staff ele doesn’t have many projectile hate abilities so make sure to use line of sight to bundle range mobs up and cleave them with your AoE.

At a glance, your gears need an update to your current level 80. They also need to have a consistent stats (berserker being the best in PvE) and a uniform rune set (Flame Legion is the cheapest, Scholar the best). These changes would boost your damage to a more reliable level so you wouldn’t have troubles with a long drawn out fight.

Sorry I wasn’t more clear. While I know the gear you’re using is weaker I should have instructed to pick the weakest piece with the proper stat distribution.

My point wasn’t so much that your gear was too weak for 80 content, but that the stats are all over the place. And I could tell you weren’t aiming for a poor-man’s celestial.

The general advice should be something along the lines of:

• You’ve been playing the game long enough that you should have an idea of what type of Elementalist you’d like to be.
• Look up some guides relevant to your desired play style and/or just start experimenting with the builder.
• Hit up the vendors/TP to outfit yourself accordingly. And scoop up any trait points you might be missing.
• If you change your mind or simply want to try something different experiment away.

@Sagramor – Yeah, it seems that I didn’t really think my strategy through.

At first (up to 20 lvl) my priority was only the Def. that Items gave me, but after some time I started considering other stats. I went with Healing and Power as the primary atributs, but to be honest… it really didn’t metter to me as much as I thought it would. After I’ve read the suggestions I realised, that Toughness would better suit my style – I do not really think I’d be part of groups so often, so aiming for Healing… is not that of the great idea for me. I also think about trying to get more skill points before continuing the story – for some reason I completely overlooked Arcane Brilliance – which will be essential if I even want to think about moving my story, as the game seems happy to through hordes of them at me at this stage.

So just to let you guys know, I already made some changes to my gamestyle and equipment.

> Firstly, I’ve bought the Berserker Seer gear. It is not all quit 80 lvl [the worst is 76th – boots & pants; the rest is higher – 78 lvl. and 80th level accessories], but I had to balance it a bit with my wallet. I still will hold on to Emberspire, though I put Ruby Orb into it in exchange for Beryl Crystal. I don’t want to change my staff just yet, because I kind off went broke on the rest of the gear [I do not even have 1 gold coin now] and the most simillair one in Berserker style costs over 7 coins.

> As for the Traits, I decided to hold on to the ones I have. The main reason – I still have to look for many proposed in this topic, so that will have to wait. However I will try to experiment more with them as soon as I get them.

> The Skills are also a bit problematic. After some testing I’ve returned back to my Arcane Shield instead of Arcane Wave, because I felt that the former gave me more advantages and fell a bit better to my playstyle. I try to avoid taking damage by dodging, but the comforte of knowladge, that when situation starts going downhill I sdtill have something to fall back on. I also tried using Lightning Hammer, but it also didn’t work so well for me. I did swap my Armour of Earth for Glyph of Storm and my Greater Fiery Sword for Glyph of Elementals.While having summon does seem to help me a lot, it still is gonna get some getting used to. The Storms was out a bit better than I remembered when I used it for the first time, though in the Honour of the Waves I swaped it for Glyph of Renewall, ’cause final boss was mowing as like a lawn.

> Final change required me to do some Skill Points Grinding, but it took less than I feared. I got enough to unlock Arcane Brilliance. I managed to test it in the HoW and it gets thing done rather nicely. The healing it provides can turn the tide and is a fun thing to use.

During the HoW I die only when, despite our best effort and team work, was down and one time when I misinterpreted the team’s intentions and got punished for that (my mistake, so it doeasn’t really count as falt at strategy or anything else). So it seems it works for me rather nicely.

Thank you all very much & good game.