Guild Wars 2

“If you don’t get it now, you will never” type of class??

I seem to be dying a lot with my ele.

You need to bind your utilities/heal/elites for fastener casting for start. Pve or pvp?

Your post is lacking any information which could be used to help.

What level is your elementalist? How long have you been playing (is it your first GW2 character?)? What build and gear are you using? What are you dying to? What are your keybindings (easy to swap attunements?)?

Elementalist was my first character, I died a LOT. I’m sort of a game masochist or something though, I took each death as a challenge and generally went back for more. For a first character just learning the game mechanics (when to dodge, when to heal, when to run, what downed state is about, how to use combo fields and what they do, etc.) try a warrior or guardian, they are a lot more forgiving at first.

Ele is really bad early on until you get into the traits that make it come together.

Also it’s not super hard to play or anything but there’s some learning curve. I wouldn’t sweat it.

Sorry for the lack of info.

What i’m having trouble with is changing between fire,water,light and earth.

Which should I be using the most? Which keys should i bind them to?

Which level are your Elementalist ? Which Elements have you traited into ? Which weapons are you using the most ?
Say you have traited Fire and Air, alot of damage but zip on defensive moves.
If you have alot of offensive moves on your weapons, try go for some defensive utilities.
Armor of Earth, Arcane Shield and Mist Form for example are good panic buttons.

Combining Scepter with a Focus and going for earth will give you some good survivability, upping your toughness on #2, AoE blind on #3, giving you a shield that deflects projectiles and removes conditions on #4 and last but not least…Invulnerability on #5.

Just an example.

Bind them to something close to your movement keys. If you have or can get a gaming mouse that really helps, if not, try re-binding your movement keys so you have more keyboard available around your finger reach.

Something like:
E=forward
D=back
S=left strafe
F=right strafe

then you can put attunements on Z,X,C,V
I put dodge and heal on W and R for easy access
other useful keys, pickup, elite, utilities, auto-run, look-back, camera-reverse, etc can all be bound to nearby keys there also

Every attunement has it’s use, that’s where the learning curve is. Since each has a cooldown, and the skills also have their cooldowns, remembering what’s available and when takes practice.

Fire= Direct damage with minor condition damage. Can stack might (power/cond dmg) with fire fields + blast finishers, and add burning damage to projectile attacks. Fire is where the big nukes (mostly) live and you’ll want to use it a lot to burn (hehe) things down fast, but hanging out in fire is rarely the best option since it has basically no survival skills.

Water= Heals and crowd control skills with minor damage, buffs and debuffs. Water fields on staff provide party healing with blast finishers, other weapons don’t have fields but have other healing options and more debuffs/CC.

Air= Direct damage, mobility and crowd control. Synergizes well with a high crit build. Great for initiating or escaping from combat. Blinds, knockdowns, stuns. Most of the dps in air is the auto-attack, and one or 2 other skills depending on weapon.

Earth= Condition damage and crowd control with some big nukes and a few unique skills. This element is the best at everything, um, sometimes. Churning earth is one of the hardest hitting skills in the game, but it’s longish cooldown and long channel time can make it tricky to use. Nearly every skill in earth is like that in a way, super-useful but takes practice to get the desired effect.

My keybinds:

WASD movement
1-5 I left alone for 1-5 on weapons.
E R T for utilities
G for elite
Q for heal
ZXCV for attunement swap
Side button on mouse for dodge.

Chris.6497:

“If you don’t get it now, you will never” type of class??

I seem to be dying a lot with my ele.

Every single class in this game needs to be learned in order to win.

/Thread

Minion of Vey.4398:

Ele is really bad early on until you get into the traits that make it come together.

Also it’s not super hard to play or anything but there’s some learning curve. I wouldn’t sweat it.

This more than anything. Once you reach level 11, pour points into arcane and get elemental attunement. The protection and regeneration provided will make a big difference.