Guild Wars 2

Morning,

Levelling the Ele currently but have only tried staff in pve and dd in PvP. Are Ele quite annoying to level via hearts etc? Am I better off zerging or crafting? I’m lvl 22 atm and touch wood its been nice so far staff lava font melts mobs quick.

I ditched my Mesmer for now for my ele as I found it more bouncy and fun… Smart move?

Oh also forgot to ask are there any tricks to use on Ele? Like for engineer with the healing turret you drop cast pickup instantly for best effect. Anything like this for Ele?

For leveling ele is very easy and you can do it straight forwar using fire. But at Lvl 22 you barly touch the eles power.
Ele is propably the most adaptable class in building and hard to play in real fights. Eles need to move alot and swap 3-4 elements to get the maximum of their power. If done well its serious. If not theres not much HP buffer to survive. Learning eles start at level 30.
And yes eles are more bouncy like rubber balls …. (I prefer to call them crazy chicken^^).
I don´t regret taking ele as my first character. Did need a month to find a build to fit my playsysle and still thinking how to adap it.

Yeah I’ve noticed that which I quite like. Fire wrecks mobs so you’re saying 30 onwards it gets better still, neat.

I tried to lvl as dd but it wasn’t that exciting. Staff fire just seems to destroy everything with extreme ease. Any tricks to spells I need to know about or is it fairly straight forward? I switch a lot but half the time don’t really understand the point of fire does so well apart from water to heal ofc

Just look how close mobs are. It can be a bit more stress if you hit multiple at once, but usually no problem at all. Staff is good here. you have long range. I just fire 3(burn) and auto fireball. Put lava font (2) on ranged oponents or when they are on you. When they hit you in close combat burn by rolling back. You can test glyph of elemental power and glyph of storms (I just pull the monsters to me and firestorm them). Both can do a lot damage. My favorit is cleansing flame.
I use scepter. Put down a flamewall and fire phönix and dragon toth. Thats a very hard opening strike. But thats not camping an element. I swap after the strike (air or earth). Usually i even need not move. The mob drops at my feet after missing from the blind.
The weapon is a matter of taste. If you like to play WvW keep battle learn staff. I prefer roaming and the scepter/fokus style. Traind eles use daggers, which is great in small group fights.

Adjust.6903:

Yeah I’ve noticed that which I quite like. Fire wrecks mobs so you’re saying 30 onwards it gets better still, neat.

I tried to lvl as dd but it wasn’t that exciting. Staff fire just seems to destroy everything with extreme ease. Any tricks to spells I need to know about or is it fairly straight forward? I switch a lot but half the time don’t really understand the point of fire does so well apart from water to heal ofc

There are 2 things going on that are kind of deceptive to new players.

1. Power scales much better at low levels due to sub-standard mob HP/Defense. At higher levels, they HP and damage scale rapidly to the point where burst damage and evasion are the only ways to effectively fight them.

2. Because each element is built around a core stat it tries to amplify……..

Fire- Power
Water- Healing/Vulnerability
Air- Prec/Crit (lots of crit procs)
Earth – Defense/Condi (bleeds and controls)

Fire being power centric has skills with oddly high damage coefficients for AOE capable attacks. More importantly, it offered heavy Might stack potential with all the fire fields, and all related traits are flat damage bonuses. (*more on this below)

Water attacks are all weak by design, and has their base line supported mostly through vulnerability stacking. Water’s big problem is that Fire’s traits are purely additive, while water’s vulnerability stacks are to compensate.

Air centers mostly on crits and hard CCs. But crit’s biggest problem (unless being used to proc other effects) is that it scales off power and ferocity. Without high base power crit damage is unimpressive. But High base power and low ferocity still results in a major damage increase.

Earth focuses on defense, bleeds and hard CCs (like knockdown and immob). Not many Eles run earth builds because it tries to play to the 3 things eles are weak at…. raw defense, damage over time, and slow attacks. The only reason it was ever used in rotations was for the hard CCs, which were flat effects rather then stat scaled.

A good Ele will rotate all 4 elements simply because (even untraited) Fire offers Area denial, Water offers condi cleansing, and Air and Earth offer both hard and soft CCs. A great ele will use a build that lets them spike huge amounts of damage at one or more points in their rotation.

• As for the future…. you might be sad to discover that Staff loses its raw hitting power as levels increase (its designed as support tool, and is incredibly slow), and Dagger and Scepter gain huge amounts of offensive power once you can start rotating attunements. Most Staff eles that tend to run it, only do so to setup (might blast mainly) and clean up, but get most of their damage from Conjures instead.

Pure damage Eles tend to run Scepter/Dagger because of the portable might stacking and opening damage from fire, the huge burst damage and control from Air and Earth, and the burst healing from water.

Before the big nerf, Dagger/Dagger was actually the gold standard for a stand alone Ele, as you could trait for high sustain damage, or run a support build that gave constant buffs on allies, and constant soft CCs on enemy groups. The support version was tough to kill, despite being utterly squishy if hit. But gone are the gold age of D/D builds.

All that said…. All Ele builds have one thing in common. They are ALL built around the concept of rotations. Even fire centric builds will rotate out of it periodically to land CCs, or switch to a Conjure to take advantage of the damage bonus traits.

Man I too could use some advice with leveling. I remembered from GW1 we recieved gifts per character on their B-day, so I created several characters when the game first launched. Played it up to round lvl 20. Came back to game after a long break and thought I would try playing it again. It’s very different from my main which was Guardian. Part of my problem is that all of my points were dumped into Earth and I have no spare points to work with.

Here is what I have unlocked:
Full Earth Trait line

Healing Utilities: Healing seed Glyph of Ele Harmony, Sig of Restor, Arcane Brillance

Utilities: Arcane Wave, Arcane Shield, Arcane Power, Arcane Blast, Glyph of Storms, Glyph of Lesser Ele, Sig of Fire, Sig of Air.

Any advice on gear stats, weapons, and utility combos is greatly appreciated.

Adjust,

I would not level with staff in most cases. The damage is lackluster, especially if enemies are moving around, and the lack of mobility slows things down a great deal. I would definitely run dagger/dagger or dagger/focus. All that mobility will save you a crazy amount of time just walking around, and the damage against single enemies or small groups is much better.

Tyber,

Well, I guess you should stack condition damage. Look for Carrion gear mostly. In areas where you feel safe, run both air and fire signets to speed up your clears. In areas that are challenging, run things that don’t suck instead.

Consider grabbing a couple of conjures. Signet of Air, Signet of Fire, and Magnetic Shield or Flame Axe is a super inflexible build with very few ways to cope with surprises or escape from bad situations, but mobs are predictable enough that you can usually get away with it and you will do a lot of damage. If you don’t like conjures, go straight to unlocking cantrips, because they’re great.

You unlock your second spec slots at 41, and you’ll want to be either Earth/Arcane or Earth/Fire. If you can find the points to learn fire before then, then switch into it. I think solo fire is probably better for leveling than solo earth. I would not use solo arcane.

TeuthidPurveyor.1970:

Adjust,

I would not level with staff in most cases. The damage is lackluster, especially if enemies are moving around, and the lack of mobility slows things down a great deal. I would definitely run dagger/dagger or dagger/focus. All that mobility will save you a crazy amount of time just walking around, and the damage against single enemies or small groups is much better.

Tyber,

Well, I guess you should stack condition damage. Look for Carrion gear mostly. In areas where you feel safe, run both air and fire signets to speed up your clears. In areas that are challenging, run things that don’t suck instead.

Consider grabbing a couple of conjures. Signet of Air, Signet of Fire, and Magnetic Shield or Flame Axe is a super inflexible build with very few ways to cope with surprises or escape from bad situations, but mobs are predictable enough that you can usually get away with it and you will do a lot of damage. If you don’t like conjures, go straight to unlocking cantrips, because they’re great.

You unlock your second spec slots at 41, and you’ll want to be either Earth/Arcane or Earth/Fire. If you can find the points to learn fire before then, then switch into it. I think solo fire is probably better for leveling than solo earth. I would not use solo arcane.

Thanks for the advice. I really don’t like this new system. I want the freedom to respec.