Guild Wars 2

I suck at playing casters in this game. Seriously… I’m terrible. I’m the guy that goes to areas several levels lower and STILL dies.

I got an engineer up to level 80, which I love and like to think I’m pretty good at playing. I think it has to do with all the action icons being different shapes and colors so I always know where I’m at in my attack chain. I tried the necromancer, but it’s all green and a lot of circles that I can’t differentiate. Mesmer had a similar issue for me, all purple and I can’t tell the phantasms apart. So, I’m kinda stuck with the fragile elementalist who’s different attunements have different colors and icons.

So, here’s my questions:

What’s a good leveling weapon set? I’ve tried a few, but really need to stick with something for a while in order to learn it. Mostly been using the staff.

What’s the best healing skill for leveling? I can’t seem to make any of them work better than just attuning to water and using weapon skills.

What are the best extended skills to use for leveling? I’ve been using signet of air for the movement speed, and arcane shield for some extra defense. I just barely got the elite glyph of elementals too, though I haven’t really used it yet.

Anything else? Seriously. I suck.

Staff is always decent, kite around and pull them through lava fonts. Air for quicker traveling speed (can blast your lightning field for more swiftness, so like earth 2, swap air, drop lightning field on the earth skill and catch a stack of speed). Then you have heals/cleanses in water, and CC stuff in earth/air.

Dagger/Dagger is probably what I’d choose, enough mobility, and I love lightning whips, swap in focus for harder stuff.

For healing, Arcane Brilliance is a blast which has a lot of options (more speed, more heals, more might, yeah stuff). Signet is nice for it’s consistant healing just by using skills. Glyph isn’t bad either for the utility of it, I still swap it in over AB for the swiftness sometimes. And then Ether is nice for it’s condi cleanses…. basically they all have their uses, though personally I stick with Arcane usually.

As for other skills, Ice bow is awesome, you can gather things up drop an Ice Bow #4 and kill them all. Maybe combine that with an Arcane Shield to survive hits. Air is nice for movement if you’re being lazy and not keeping swiftness up (which honestly I think all of us do this sometimes ) Armor of earth can be nice against some content for the stability with the bonus of protection. Cleansing Fire is nice in heavy condi areas. Arcane Wave is a must, we’re Ele’s we focus on combo fields and finishers, taht’s where our true strength lies.

As for tips, learn to might stack, plenty of videos on youtube, it’ll greatly increase your damage output. And learn combo fields in general, using Water Staff 3 or 5 then doing Arcane Brilliance in it will combo it for even more healing. Combo fields are our friends.

I level most of my characters these days in EOTM groups. You pretty much get everything: XP, Karma, Cash, WvW XP, WvW Badges (can be used for throwaway gear later) and Champ Bags (save till 80). Also takes the pressure off of having a weaker character with no traits/utilities/etc because it’s largely a group activity.

If you get into a terrible instance where everyone is constantly PvPing or your group is wiping or whatever simply type /ip and leave/rejoin till you get a different instance. There’s even an EOTM guild you can join to assist finding good instances. Staff works great here.

Then I find it’s generally much easier to go back as a level 80 with full Traits and full gear and properly start learning how to play the character now that you have access to all your tools.

If you’re leveling in open world use either D/D or staff. If you’re on staff just camp air for running around and fire for whenever you’re in combat. I suggest staff personally but you can try both and see what works best for you.

For utilities, go for signet of air/signet of fire and arcane wave/maybe lightning flash. Lots of them are helpful but I don’t think arcane shield or anything with super long cooldowns is a good idea.

For heal you should probably be alternating between glyph, arcane brilliance, and ether renewal. Ether renewal heals the most, but you can blast in your lava fonts or rings of fire with arcane brilliance and heal a lot with multiple targets anyways. Glyph heal is nice for when you cast it in air attunement for swiftness, but if you use signet of air you won’t need to do this.

Some other leveling tips :

I found Glyph of Storms (sandstorm) a very good option when fighting multiple opponents. It’s a 10 second pulsing blind field which effects up to 5 targets.

I also found the earth elemental from glyph of elementals (both the lesser utility and elite) to be extremely valuable whenever I needed a distraction while grabbing a skill point or to tank a difficult mob while I nuked it with fire staff.

Food and utility buffs are a good and cheap way to gain extra experience from kills. There’s some cheap food and potions out there that can give you +10/15% exp each from kills.

There are plenty of good suggestion here, Elias, but you need also to upgrade your gear step by step as you level up and during this you also have to find out which kind of stats you will need to give you both offensive and defensive support. I have been using myself a combo with mostly Power, Toughness and Vitality as my main stats (Soldier) as for armour and Bersker (Power, Precision, Ferocity) for Rings, Back pack etc which worked well so far.

It hasn’t been easy to stay alive all this time, but it works and after a while you learn how your “profession” work through trail and error; by learning to dodge (skip enemies with help of skills like Ride the Light when needed and sometime it is better to make an attack first to keep control on your foes then they attack you), by making use of attunement swapping as fast as possible and by preparing through reading on GW2:s wiki what is going on for each map you will be going before you will be confronted by a foe, a champ or whatever event that might happen on that map you plan to go.

You could also learn a lot even in a downed state when you are still are able to click your enemies to see which skill/effect they have active (those small symbol popping up beneath the large red health bar). That way you can also learn if some effect will prevent you from using some skill or how many active effect are in use while fighting.

This can also be important to know as it will also effect how easy/hard (look for defence stats on your armour and weapons) it is to be killed or kill something and how much stronger your weapons need to be. Remember that you almost always can go back to the same zone and event and do that on a later time or even recruit help by using chatt [/m] on the map asking of help, if you would want a Magnificent Chest or something you will need for levelling/trait line/skill point.

Next step will be to find out how you can compensate for weakness in armour and weapons or how to improve on what know is already on your stronger side while playing as elementalist.

Try out Scepter/Dagger for more movement and see how it will work for you. Take your time to adjust and get a feeling where your skill are on key bindings and change those as needed to an easier way to reach all those (more about that later). Dagger/Dagger are good for very near combat, but not for all kind of combat. Focus have some more defensive skill support which you might want to try out when you are in small group (as you can provide auras to allies and some other things through putting points in trait line).

Change in Option [F11] your set up for key bindings and mouse as it might be a faster way to change attunement and hit the right skill after cool down at the right time. Do also try to adjust how camera (rotation speed/hight/collision etc work) and other part of settings which might work better for you and how you want play, not to forget how your hardware work. Difference between resolution on display including the distance your mouse pointer need to travel between two points on screen will make movement feel less precise. Try out to change setting in Windows to 7 out of 11 (should give a more precise response from windows to driver for mouse). Change AoE to instant. You will get a faster AoE, but know less how far it will hit. You will learn where to place your pointer and use AoE better this way. When AoE is possible to use there will be a red line in your skill.

Find out how different skills, utility, elite skill and trait line could work together and how adding one set of runes on armour will compensate for what you couldn’t get in the stats for your armour or trinkets/back pack/rings and earrings. You might even consider to have two set of armour: one in your bank and one that you wear to be more flexible. Be careful to not use money on expensive runes for gear that you will want to throw away later or salvage/sell. Some runes (armour) and sigils (weapons) have become very expensive on Black Lion TP, but even “cheap” runes will provide you with better stats then without.

[Food and tools are other option that you should explore, but I will let you learn this by searching on GW2 as this have become a very long wall of text. My own pick at the moment are Chocolate Omnomberry Cream for boon duration (20%) and Magical Find while under boon (40 ) or Loaf of Saffron Bread which will reduce "incoming damage reduced by 20 while stunned, knocked down, or knocked back. -20% condition duration" and give you 10 % exp according to description. You can find these foods and tools at Black Lion TP when you look for “other” in the option for what are being sold.]

There are several option in trait line where you will be able to get an aura in or a protective shielding up (for a very short time at least in seconds) which might extend the time where you still will be able to kill your foes before being downed. In trait line for Earth as Adapt (the first part out of three “level”) you have “Armour of Earth” which will kick in as your health will go low to protect you for a short time. (You will also have Armour of Earth as a skill you will be able to open up with Skill Points which work as Stability. Do also open up

An example of a good investment is Fires first trait where you will get a Lava Font while you are being downed which will deal extra damage as you are defending yourself in a downed state.

Avoid Mist form while your are being a downed state as you will loose access to all of your skills during Mist form and loose precious time to damage your foe in this state. (Only use mist form to escape to safe place, if you have somebody which can rezz you fast back.)

Another option for an aura on a signet skill (like your Restoration/Health skill) would be in the trait line of fire: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fire%27s_Embrace

Learn about attunement swapping in the Arcane trait line as this is the strongest way to make use of swapping of “weapon” as changing between Fire, Air, Earth and Water count as Weapons here. You will also gain from looking into which Sigils that might be added/upgraded onto your weapons (Staff have two place holders; Dagger, Focus, Scepter have each one which make it a total of two sigils that you could use – when you salvage Weapons and Armour you will get some Runes an Sigils; try them out to see if there is something you like better then the other before you start buying at TP).

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil

I would recommend you to read all option for which part of trait line could be useful for how you play and when to open up those traits. It is possible to buy traits from vendors (in Lion’s Arch or use WvW [b] and go to one of your home worlds vendors which are selling traits – those traits will be put into your inventory and have to be consumed [double click] to become active in your hero panel. You will need silver and skill point to pay for those and for grand master trait you will need gold.

Here a list of vendors: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Trait_Guide_%28elementalist%29
I would recommend you to salvage (buy salvage kits by vendors around in the world – if you don’t know where to find them, use GW2 wiki). Sell salvage material or loot on TP (“junk” can be sold to NPC where you repair your armour). In general it is only some event items (from collecting something during event) you will have to destroy it to keep you inventory free from wasted space.

How to survive

Try out Scepter/Dagger as you will have some skills where you can throw your self and knock down enemies (in Air) and then get some distance with Updraft. In Earth you will get both access to knock down, protection and damage. Earth work well for getting birds and Harpies down on ground and then switch to Fire or Air when they get back in the air. I think you will find that S/D have many medium ranged capabilities which work both for AoE and in single encounter. Use icebow (IB) in Utilities as AoE when you have two or more foes in one place and to freeze the more dangerous one (skill 1) like when they are moving to fast (but you need to be rather near to hit with this skill and have targeting on that foe).

Cantrips like Armour of Earth or even the teleporting (Lightning Flash) could save you from being corned. Play around with LF to learn how to use it in both to get where you want to be and how to control it. You can change cooldown and even get might if you trait cantrips (both utilities belong to this category), so it might be useful to look there for how you will get the most out of these.

Always have one cantrip in your utility will help you to stay alive together with Armour of Earth in trait lines which kick in as a life saver. It is one of the first trait worth to open up and it belong to the Adept which make it possible to use in most cases. Lava Font (trait; have same name as the skill for Staff) is another option if you might want to use the Fire trait line more in more offensive manner while you are being in a downed state to get back up on your feet. This trait will work like Staffs Lava Font when you are downed and provide damage to foe while you are healing. Don’t use Mist Form from downed skill as this will take away precious time to use any skill to provide damage against foes (only use it when you have a party/allies with you which will be able to resurrect/heal you faster from downed).

If you open up the Arcane line all the way up to Grand Master, then you will be able to use Evasive Arcane which will give you small healing ability through dodging to both you and your party. It is a very powerful tool to stay alive as you can now heal by dodging and still use normal healing skill in water. It will also work as a very efficient way to get damage on foes when you swap over in fire or earth. Air will blind so you will have less direct hits on you after dodging. To use dodging this way you might want to have some weapon with sigils that use weapon swap to activate which will provide you will more endurance/stamina or energy for faster regeneration of it. For elementalist each change of attunement count as weapon swap. With EA there is a need to change attunement rather often to use EA; look in Black Lion’s TP for Superior Sigils or those sigils which will fit with your level). I would recommend you to at least look into the Arcane Trait line as there is plenty of supportive traits for a party (these traits are depending on boon duration, so you would want to make boon duration as long as possible by giving as many point for that in trait line). In a larger fight you will notice there will be names from which one that provided you with that boon, so boon is a supportive trait for any kind of event with many player at the same

Healing

Healing skills are in this case a combination of things like use of cantrips, water attunement (trait) and sometimes protection boons (like in earth attunement) it depends what your needs will be. There are cantrips which will grant you a small amount of damage to nearby enemies and at same time give cleaning from conditions. The most expensive healing skill in Skill Point will be Antitoxin Spray which cost 25 SP.

AS is very useful for Tequatle or enemies which use conditions of any kind. It will also work in AoE for 5 other persons around you, so it is a very powerful healing in the right situation. GoH will give you boons depending on attunement and are useful both to learn swapping attunement (in most cases water will provide you with regeneration/healing, earth with protection, air with swiftness/movement and fire with might/offensive support).

Be careful in your use of those healing skill which need to be channelled to be completed. Those healing skill can be interrupted and you will not get all the healing you might need. Always check how much healing each option will give when you change map/zone due to down scaling, so will not suddenly go from a very large pool of healing to a very small one.

Signet of Restoration are useful when you can use many skill very fast (remember that cool down reduce this) as each “spell” will provide a small amount of passive healing for you, but in the end it might be too little healing when you need to make use of SoR healing directly with a large incoming damage. (In these kind of situation Evasive Arcane [water trait line have also a passive regeneration when swapping attunement] could compensate with a dodge and give a little more healing while in Water.)

It is necessary to learn how to time your healing with what ever option for shields/aura and other protective means you have at your disposal, which might take some time both to control and learn to combine. Most healing skill are also possible to cut down in cooldown time by using trait line (signet/glyph etc). As for Restoration (signet) you will also be able to get an aura while using all signets in general (including Signet of Restoration), when you trait for it in Fire, so I would believe that you just have to keep up with your ele and sooner or later you will get a feeling that it isn’t that bad at all. If you would use Glyph of Elementals in Water and summon your elemental as your elite skill you will have some healing from your elemental and the same goes from summoning Druid (also elite skill). The last one have a very long cool down, so I would not use it in regular play.

General Advice

I saw that you mention in another post that you are older and therefore also feel that you aren’t that fast to change attunement or skill. First thing you could do are to play around with setting in Option [F11]>Control for key bindings and mouse control. I am not that young myself and have found that I have to move around a lot of settings to get a more efficient way to hit the right key at right time. Maybe reverse the number keys from 1-5 for your main weapon skill, if you use left hand for the most common ones? Hitting 5 with index finger feel more natural then using 1 for the same skill for me. Took some time to learn where each skill are this way, but it works better now. Make TAB your healing skill as you want to be able to hit it fast when needed and change targeting to manual to avoid auto targeting (place targeting keys where can access those without moving from your main skills or when you move; most important for my part are the nearest target which I always use). This is important if you would want to use Ride the Lightning to skip enemies or FGS to get in the direction you intended.

Try to use autorun (make a key bind so you can use number keys for fights and move your mouse for camera direction instead; stop by pressing both mouse button) instead of pressing W for forward.

I would recommend to use Fire Great Sword as your main elite skill instead of GoE as this weapon has both AoE (Firestorm) and some very good skill for fast movement. There are at least two of these I can use to get both towards a foe or away (remember to check that you are not targeting something else). Glyph of Elementals are good for making distraction and to give support (at least in Water), so it is a choice and a learning curve on how to use each for different situation. Considering the long cool down time I would say FGS are the better one because it is possible to use until charge (15; with trait in fire for Conjure 25) have ended to have an extra option for movement and defence. It is possible to reduce CD by putting points in trait for Air on Glyphs, but GoE will still take more with 180s as the baseline.

Here are a list for all option as an elementalist have to use: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_elementalist_skills

This is my very first character which I have been playing with in GW2 for four month. I would say that ele are a very demanding profession to learn to master, but also a very powerful one. You will need to actually put some learning effort in how to play this kind of scholars, but then you suddenly realise that they offer an extreme set of flexibility in how you could play and with some changes in weapon combo like dagger/dagger, scepter/dagger, scepter/focus, dagger/focus or staff (and/or [cheap] sigils), replacing some back pack/rings/amulets, make some adjustment in attunement trait and add food with tools to top it of and you will be ready for your next adventure.

So what kind of ele do you want to be: condition based and/or boon based, meele or ranged, supportive or a more solo adventurer? All these options are there for you and I am pretty sure you don’t suck at being an elementalist: it only take some time to get into it all; after all we are talking about a “profession” which in this case means that you will have to learn how to adopt your character as the environment and foes change.

Sorry for the extreme long text!

My purpose here was to provide you with the knowledge I have gained from playing as en elementalist during 4 month, which have been a long learning curve by trail and error.

I hope you will have more fun now and maybe find out new ways in how you might get better survivability out of your elementalist as a profession while you are levelling up.