Guild Wars 2

So, I tried to play elementalist after playing guardian. With guardian everything was easy – even with bad armour to which I didn’t pay many attention I had good damage and survivability. With ele, however, it’s much more difficult. I’m new to the game, and not very good with dodging yet, which seems to be more important for ele survival than it was for guardian.
So my question is: what armour should I wear to have decent damage, but not die from a few hits from mob?
PS. I’m playing mostly solo pve and want to do dungeons and fractals later. Using this build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhEmUbwx4gjDAkHnYiLiCVUeMzO2A

Stop using a staff solo. Its a great weapon for grouping but solo it doesn’t offer much defense or burst damage, which is what you need to kill things quickly before they take you down.

Use D/D and lighting whip, for good sustained damage.

or S/D with the ring of fire, dragons tooth, pheonix, fire grab combo. That should kill most things pretty fast solo. Grab arcane blast instead of the lesser glyph, its good damage and an extra blast finisher.

Maybe spec a bit more dps for solo pve. The full bunker build is again more of a pve and group thing.

I’d definitely second the motion to not use staff while soloing and trying to learn the class. Staff is absolutely great for synergizing with other players while leveling, but it can be very difficult to manage mobs with while solo — particularly if you’re coming from something like guardian.

While learning the class, a lot of us went with Power Toughness Vitality armor and kept our health up with small heals. I personally found that dagger/dagger worked a lot better for soloing and managing groups, particularly when I got used to the combo rotations (burning speed → ring of fire → arcane blast → earthquake → churning earth → swap to water midcast → frost aura for when the churning earth finishes up is a popular one both for might stacking and massive damage.) That said, playing dagger/dagger is more risky/ballsy, but you can definitely kill things much faster than on staff. The only auto-attacks on d/d I usually bother with are lightning whip and sometimes dragon’s claw — in general, autoattacks do such pitiful damage for eles that they’re only worth bothering with when everything else is on cooldown or when you just need to finish up a mob.

There aren’t really any power builds on elementalist for leveling; make sure to keep your weapons up to date. You’ve got a lot of good condition removal here, but it might be worth it to go 10 in earth to get either Earth’s Embrace (which will also give you regen, vigor and stunbreak if you have cantrip traits) or Elemental Shielding, which gives you protection any time you put on your frost aura, shocking aura, or use your magnetic grasp through a fire field.

The glyph of lesser and later glyph of elementals can be very helpful just to have an off-tank. I recommend sticking only to earth or ice elementals though, since their toughness scales inversely to their damage — i.e., air is the squishiest but outputs aoe, fire elemental does burning and good damage, ice elemental drops ice fields (that if you arcane blast, earthquake, or churning earth in will grant you a frost aura) and the earth elemental just lives forever.

I would not recommend using a leveling build for dungeons and fractals though.

Like the guy above said, you start with PVT gear. Also dnd is your best friend. But its the hardest to master.

The dnd ele is one of the hardest classes to master in gw2 but is also the most versatile providing damage,tankage,healing and buffs

I actually think Berserkers would work just fine (it’s what I always suggest for PvE), but it’s true. Stay away from staff, and go Dagger/X all the way for leveling.

Not sure when you get access to these slot skills or even remember what they are called sry:

1. Signet with the lightening symbol on it which gives speed buff but more importantly blinds they enemies around you. Blind blocks their next outgoing attack.

2. The slot skill which blocks the next few incoming attacks. Looks like an orange bubble around you when activated.

3. The slot skill which turns your next five attacks into critical hits.

In my opinion.

Example: You are using dagger/dagger and are in fire. You gather up a bunch of mobs and cause them to gather around you. You cast the ring of fire combo field then switch to earth. You then cast the knock down stomp which will combo off the fire ring and give you might. Right away cast earth number 5 that earth shatter thing. While it is getting ready to go off you use the slot skill that grants critical hits. Use your blocking bubble especially if the mobs can knock you down. Boom!

Something like that.

Oh ya. The weapon upgrade sigil which each time you kill something gives you a damage bonus up to 25 stacks.

Slither Shade.4782:

In my opinion.

Example: You are using dagger/dagger and are in fire. You gather up a bunch of mobs and cause them to gather around you. You cast the ring of fire combo field then switch to earth. You then cast the knock down stomp which will combo off the fire ring and give you might. Right away cast earth number 5 that earth shatter thing. While it is getting ready to go off you use the slot skill that grants critical hits. Use your blocking bubble especially if the mobs can knock you down. Boom!

Something like that.

SOmething like that

start A3 for fury, switch to fire, stack 10 mobs on you, f3 into them , then f4, f5, quickly hit e4, spam e2 if you can or just e5, hit w 4 , LF into the mobs again timed with e5, w3, back to air, hit a4 and a5. Done.