Guild Wars 2

Only just got level 80 on my first character. I am proud to say its an ele. I have leveled mainly through wvw and exploration but now would like to try out dungeons and fractals. I am almost geared in exotic zerker and have recently switched to staff from d&d, as I read it was better.

I have NO idea how to play an ele well. With d&d I pretty much just run round switching between fire and air waiting for my cooldowns, using my earth and water for the utility every so often. With staff I usually stay in fire and burn people unless I need the utility of the other attunements.

Not rly sure about how food works, I guess I’ll just read which is best for dungeons and buy some. I heard someone talk about dungeon potions or something?

Combo fields are another thing I’m not rly sure about.. I know that people do burning stuff related to my staff fire 2 skill etc but yeh..

Pretty much what I am looking for is an experienced player to just come and rant about all the things new players are bad at and what they should know. I can then read this and not be that bad new player. I don’t want to jump in and be a deadweight.

I would also be interested in links to good info..

Thanks a lot for your time.

TLDR
New Player looking for advice for dungeons and fractals related to
- Role of Staff Ele (and d&d)
- Build (zerker is best? should I use a staff?)
- Food etc
- Anything I probably don’t know
- Links to info

Best PvE advice for you: read the guides at stickied at the top of this forum
Read DEKeyz’ guide first, then if you want some philosophical insight on D/F you can read my guide, but avoid the thread called “The Ele Meta” at all costs!

Hey thanks for the reply. I actually just found the guide you mentioned and I have been loving it. It’s great. I probably should have checked in here before asking, I had just spent a few hours sifting through the crap/outdated stuff from google etc and was getting frustrated. I tried my first dungeon today (AC story and p1) was heaps of fun. Had some guy who kept dying but at least it wasnt me that everyone got annoyed with

looks like you are on the euro servers, i’m a staff elem and just transferred there
i can probably help out with some casual dungeon paths that don’t really require an overly specific build.. sent game mail about this
i’m really liking the disposition of the dungeon portion of this game on these servers, so that’s a plus.. oh, and bravo for not exploiting dungeon xp to level

For dungeons and fractals I would recommend a Scepter/Dagger or Scepter/Focus build (with a staff for AoE backup if needed).

The stickied guide explains it better than I ever could but basically the idea is to stack Might using combo fields and then conjure Lightning Hammer to do some serious DPS up close. It’s a very tough build to master and at first you will go down a lot but it soon becomes second nature and easy to play.

The general idea is you use Dragons tooth on a guy, then just before it drops use ring of fire (using S/D as an example here), then use pheonix, arcane brill, earth 4, etc etc (basically all your Combo ‘blast’ finishers inside the ring of fire. This stacks a huge amount of Might (even more if you can use Arcane Wave as a utility skill although this isn’t always viable). Then at the end of your combo conjure LH and auto-attack until the thing is dead or your hammer expires.

I’ve tried alot of builds in dungeons and I honestly can’t recommend this one enough (like I said, read the stickied guide for a better explaination than what I gave…).

D/D is a great class for PvP/WvW but the mobility and evasiveness isn’t really need in a dungeon where most of the time you’ll probably be stacking.

Staff is fine but it only really excels past S/D in AoE situations and there’s only a few worthwhile ones where it makes sense to use it (CoF P2 comes to mind while protecting Magg).

Just try out some builds and use what you like. A lot of other classes still don’t understand ele’s so you won’t get kicked if someone see’s you using a staff.

Edit: Oh I also don’t like that I can’t really stack Might very well with a staff. To see all your party member’s on 15+ Might stacks mainly because of your combo’s is a great feeling and really improves the DPS of your whole party which you can only really do with S/D or S/F.