Guild Wars 2

I’m starting to get really frustrated with the class. If I have to fight more than 1 mob, the odds are I am going to die. My gear is pretty much up to date or within a level or so. I’ve tried d/d, s/d and staff. I dodge and kite and what not as much as I can. So is this normal or am I playing the class wrong?

Any help or advice would be fantastic.
Thanks in advance

How many of your 4 attunements do you use?
How often do you use skills other than the auto-attack skill?
Which utility skills do you equip? Do you use them?
Did you spend your first 4 trait points? If so, on what?
In which area are you playing, and what types of enemies give you trouble?

I tend to use fire and water the most, but I do mix in air and earth depending on what is needed. Like earthquake to knock stuff down and fire to finish or damage them.

I use as many skills as I can during a fight, not just auto.

For utility skills I’m currently using Glyph of Storms and Arcane Wave.

My first 4 trait points, 2 are in fire and 2 in Arcana.

Area I’m playing in is Metrica Province. Its hard to say what mobs give me trouble. 1v1 nothing really gives me too much trouble, its when there is more than 1 that things start to get really hairy.

What really helped me was putting my first 10 points into Arcana, and getting Elemental Attunement. Its the quickest way for you to have easy access to regen and protection, and from there you can go into Water for even more regen.

My level 25 ele still has a hard time against multiple mobs though. I can take on 2, maybe 3 mobs my level but i’ll be almost dead, and have to switch to earth for protection and water for regen and a heal. Right now we just don’t have the healing, or toughness to stay alive. Literally withing 3 hits your health is going to be around half. Dodge all you can, and kite around but the enemy still hits you. I’m hoping it gets better around 30

I leveled by starting in air for the aura, then fire 3 to get in close, spin around and fire 2, fire 4 for the ring followed by arcane blast (utility) then earth 4 for knockdown, arcane shield and earth 5. Most things are dead by now if not air for aura then finish off with air/fire.

Fire 4 followed by the wave and/or earth 4/5 is a blast finisher for area might.

@Brullyra:
You should mention that you are wielding dagger/dagger.

I am leveling my elementalist right now as well and I’m at 33 or 34. I use predominantly d/d and yeah, attunement switching is very important. I usually run around and initiate with air attunement. Quickly switch to fire and do a bit of burst. Then I switch to earth for the nice knockdown and quick 2. And then I go into water to slow them down and heal myself (while still doing damage) with 2 (and the 5 heal if I need it). And then repeat the cycle. I don’t have any problem with survivability unless I am being heavily CC’d.
EDIT: forgot to mention that I am using the healing signet because at the speed that you use spells you get a lot of heals from it.

Remember you run faster when you run forward, so if you need to escape from a bad situation, don’t strafe.

Had the same problem frost. I highly recomend putting ALL your points in water, then arcane. It helps with survivability immensely. Consider scepter/dagger at first as you can kite and keep distance easier than d/d if you need to.

Try this combo:

air- 4, 3, 2 (less than one second for all 3)
fire- 2, 4, 3
earth – 4 (stuff should be dead here)
water- 3, 5 (healing and kiting)

Hope this helps! At around level 30 the class gets much better.

Honestly, its very normal for any profession, and especially a light armored, lowest health pool Ele to be dying a lot at the lower levels. Dont worry about it to much and just try to level up, once you get around the 50+ level range and get some actual traits along with decent damage mitigation and vitality armor, you will be better off. The beginning levels are good practice for learning how to dodge, because you can be wiped out pretty easily.

at lower levels i found Scepter/Dagger more fruitful, as u can kite and still have some mobility to get out. Earth Armour and Mist Form are two vey handy utilities.

My advice is as followed:

1. Most important point, since you can only access to equipments that have only 1 stat and later 2 stat. Go for Toughness/Vitality equipment, when you have access to only 1 stat, mix your equipment equally between Toughness and Vitality.

Later when you can get Toughness/Vitality equipment, go for full set. You deal mediocre damage but you survive.

2. For my style, I mostly start in Air, I normally start the attack with Air 2 (Vulnerability reduce their defense by 50%), Air 4 then Air 3 to stun and finally Air 5, all happens in a second, switch to Fire then Fire 3, Fire 5 then Fire 4, switch to Earth then Earth 4 to gain Might and Interrupt the mobs, Earth 3 then Earth 5 if the mobs are not dead. Switch to water to heal if needed. If there is still surviving mobs, Water 3 then Water 4 to chill and slow the mobs while healing.

Air mainly stun and weaken the mobs, Fire main DPS skills and Earth to gain might plus your strong AOE skills and Water is for heal and slowing of mobs.

3. Trait points wise go Air 10 points first for Fury/Swiftness then Arcana 10 points finally Water 15 points in the beginning. Study through daphoenix’s guide, his guide is an inspiration for ele

4. Finally enjoy being ele, though it’s tough in the beginning but really fun to play.

The question on whether you dying a lot is normal is subjective, and can be debatable. It really depends on your play style. In my opinion, the elementalist is a class that can become a challenge to master.

The elementalist is also considered a low armor type class. There are other numerous factors that can take part in your frequent dying. Such as the following:

- Low vitality
- Not enough knowledge of class
- Infrequent dodging or improperly timed

Leveling 1-40 I did it entirely with S/D.

The two primary attunements you should be using is Air and Earth. This is to rotate their multiple cool downs but specifically their Blinds and Knock Downs. You always have Fire as a backup if you need mega damage in short order. Fire is very handy against ranged mobs since you can Ring of Fire -> Dragon’s Tooth -> Phoenix -> Fire Grab and pretty much gib anything not Veteran. Water is pretty weak and I only usually swap to it mid heal so I get extra Regen on Glyph heal, pop aura, pop area heal then swap to a different attunement.

General game play is basically you kite the ever living hell out of everything. If something is going to get up to you, use your evade. If evades are down, use your Blind. If you need to disrupt then use Ride the Lightning then the Knock Up then immediately switch to Earth so you have your next Blind and Knockdown ready. Ranged mobs are definitely the toughest and melee should be no sweat kiting with Signet of Air equipped.

Past 40 the character becomes a breeze if you use a Cantrip Conjure build with 20/0/0/10/0 focusing on Cantrips and extra Conjures using Lightning Hammer. Lightning Hammer has an AOE blind component built into it and basically you can keep everything permanently blinded. This doesn’t work on the Dredge so default back to S/D for them as needed. Otherwise it was probably the easiest character I ever leveled post 40 beacuse nothing could ever hit me. Even if it did hit me, the Soothing Mist regen, numerous sources of Regen and Vigor and Greater Water Elemental basically made the game easy mode as all hell straight through Orr.

However prior to discovering this I died a lot 1-20. Was trying everything and really the only thing that worked was S/D kiting for me. Tried just about everything and was having a lot of trouble in the 15-20 zones. I really didn’t want to just over level content either.