Guild Wars 2

I’m new to GW2 (played a little last year but never dived in past the first few levels) and I’ve decided to level an elementalist.

I’m curious what weapon combo I should be using while leveling? A staff?

I also seem to be dying a lot…I’m familiar with the concept of caster classes being squishy, but it doesn’t seem like I’m putting out the damage for how weak I am.

I’m level 18 at the moment. I’ve leveled a couple of characters up to about this level and the Elementalist has been fun but frustrating at this point.

The best advice is to keep staff now and learn how eles work. This starts over level 30 ;-).
Then look at the character builder and try to find the weapon you think fits you best and train that. GW2 requires training with your build. I found one that fits me and is exotic because i like that and now train it.

What you’re experiencing is perfectly normal. The Elementalist is one of the hardest professions to level since we’re unusually dependent on our traits. That said, it’s totally possible to level an Ele to 80 without just using Crafting XP. Here are a few tricks:

1. The Glyph of Lesser Elementals Utility skill and eventually the Elite skill Glyph of Elementals are lifesavers. These guys are basically on-demand meat shields and using them can make the game 10 times easier. I suggest summoning the Earth elementals most of the time since they can take one heck of a beating. You won’t need these once you hit level 80 and know what you’re doing, but they can help when you’re still light on traits and learning the ropes. Pro tip: most of your healing skills outside your 6-slot heal in an AoE, so be sure to splash some healing onto your elemental from time to time to keep it healthy.

2. You’re gonna want to get the Water and Arcana trait lines filled out first. These trait lines are basically mandatory for every viable Elementalist build right now (there may be some exceptions, but they are few and far between). Water lets you deal with your squishiness by making it possible to spike heal back from almost anything and Arcana makes attunement swapping much stronger.

3. Speaking of which, switch attunements often! The Elementalist isn’t intended to sit in Fire and spam its autoattack. Any time you’re not emptying cooldowns, you’re underplaying your potential.

4. Dagger/Dagger is our strongest weapon set in most game modes. That said, Dagger/Focus, Scepter/Dagger, and Staff all have their proponents as well. Personally, I prefer Scepter/Dagger for leveling up. It has pretty strong burst, CC, and healing potential, some mobility for when things get rough, and allows you to keep your distance when the mobs are beating on your summoned elementals. The Staff is really strong as well, though you’re more vulnerable in melee. Really, you can pick which weapon set you like (other than Scepter/Focus. Too little damage. Killing mobs will take f-o-r-e-v-e-r).

5. Early on, you probably want to prioritize gear with Vitality. Eles have the smallest base health pool in the game and a bit more Vitality will give you a few extra seconds to switch to Water and start healing yourself. We make great use of every stat, though, so don’t be afraid to mix and match pieces you find along the way. The current meta for Eles is actually Celestial gear (which gives every stat) but that’s a long ways off for you right now. Power/Toughness/Vitality is a pretty decent learner stat spread for Eles. Later on, you can tweak it if you like.

6. For Utility skills, Cantrips are your friend. Seriously, these suckers are hella strong. They’re all great depending on the circumstance, and they all will go a long way towards keeping you alive.

Blaine Tog.8304:

What you’re experiencing is perfectly normal. The Elementalist is one of the hardest professions to level since we’re unusually dependent on our traits. That said, it’s totally possible to level an Ele to 80 without just using Crafting XP. Here are a few tricks:

1. The Glyph of Lesser Elementals Utility skill and eventually the Elite skill Glyph of Elementals are lifesavers. These guys are basically on-demand meat shields and using them can make the game 10 times easier. I suggest summoning the Earth elementals most of the time since they can take one heck of a beating. You won’t need these once you hit level 80 and know what you’re doing, but they can help when you’re still light on traits and learning the ropes. Pro tip: most of your healing skills outside your 6-slot heal in an AoE, so be sure to splash some healing onto your elemental from time to time to keep it healthy.

2. You’re gonna want to get the Water and Arcana trait lines filled out first. These trait lines are basically mandatory for every viable Elementalist build right now (there may be some exceptions, but they are few and far between). Water lets you deal with your squishiness by making it possible to spike heal back from almost anything and Arcana makes attunement swapping much stronger.

3. Speaking of which, switch attunements often! The Elementalist isn’t intended to sit in Fire and spam its autoattack. Any time you’re not emptying cooldowns, you’re underplaying your potential.

4. Dagger/Dagger is our strongest weapon set in most game modes. That said, Dagger/Focus, Scepter/Dagger, and Staff all have their proponents as well. Personally, I prefer Scepter/Dagger for leveling up. It has pretty strong burst, CC, and healing potential, some mobility for when things get rough, and allows you to keep your distance when the mobs are beating on your summoned elementals. The Staff is really strong as well, though you’re more vulnerable in melee. Really, you can pick which weapon set you like (other than Scepter/Focus. Too little damage. Killing mobs will take f-o-r-e-v-e-r).

5. Early on, you probably want to prioritize gear with Vitality. Eles have the smallest base health pool in the game and a bit more Vitality will give you a few extra seconds to switch to Water and start healing yourself. We make great use of every stat, though, so don’t be afraid to mix and match pieces you find along the way. The current meta for Eles is actually Celestial gear (which gives every stat) but that’s a long ways off for you right now. Power/Toughness/Vitality is a pretty decent learner stat spread for Eles. Later on, you can tweak it if you like.

6. For Utility skills, Cantrips are your friend. Seriously, these suckers are hella strong. They’re all great depending on the circumstance, and they all will go a long way towards keeping you alive.

Thanks, that was helpful. Is there any sort of typical rotation I should be using? Like starting in fire and then going to…?

Luvok.5697:

Thanks, that was helpful. Is there any sort of typical rotation I should be using? Like starting in fire and then going to…?

There are a few bread-and-butter rotations for each weapon set, but a lot of it is situational. D/D has a lot of common rotations, though since I don’t run it very often I’m probably not the best source for those. S/D has one burst rotation in particular which I’m a fan of:

Start in Air. Ride the Lightning into your opponent, press 2 and 3, then switch to Fire. Now, very quickly: Fire 2, Fire 4, Fire 3 (aim right behind them so they get hit three times), Fire 5, switch to Earth, Earth 4, [then dodge roll if you took Evasive Arcana, but stay in the Ring of Fire,] and Earth 5, popping Armor of Earth/Arcane Shield if they have interrupts, and if they move out of the area during the channel time, use Lightning Flash at the last moment to stay on top of them.

You do that right and you’ll have unloaded an obscene amount of damage and CC onto your foes, not to mention picking up 4-5 Might stacks along the way by blasting your fire field. Other than that, I don’t really have all that many set rotations. You generally want to make sure your opponents are on fire before using Flame Grab, of course, and it’s always fun to cancel an Updraft (Air 5) with RtL (Air 4) before continuing to go to town on them. Fresh Air builds have a lot more combos, mostly centering around mixing as many swaps into Air as possible (to cheese out Electric Discharge), but those get pretty intricate and I don’t honestly have those down. I don’t run Fresh Air all that much since; I prefer more flexibility.