Guild Wars 2

Looking for some assistance here, mainly because I hear mixed things from people (mainly leading towards the negative), on the farming capcity of Elementalists, and I’m trying to decide if this is the right Alt for me.

This is purely a PvE question.

I currently have a War/Guard/Thief and I enjoy those. But I need a caster to round out my classes here and I enjoy what the Ele can bring to the table in terms of group benefits.

But I like to farm, I love to pass time beating the same type of mobs senseless for materials for crafts or to help out my guildies or to just take a break from heart / event grinding and to still get some experience.

I keep hearing (in game that is), how bad an Elementalist is at handling multiple mobs. (Which really, once you get to Orr you are basically always fighting multiple mobs).

How much truth is in that? Also, obviously if it is true people are overcoming it, what are some strategies that you’d use to combat groups of mobs?

theres a lot of truth to that right now. Right now I am using my ele water spec (staff ) and im farming a lot of the events in Orr… but I am reduce to basically just karma farming and occasionally getting enough damage on something to trigger loot.

I really dont like being punished for healing… but thats the long and skinny of it right now… even if i group with someone their progress on a quest doesnt usually count as my own, and its rare (maybe i just miss it) that i get loot off something they kill)

it happens, but farming Karma is always fun..lol. I will be working on my dual axe warrior this weekend, to try and get here into that area (got about 40 levels to go… woo)

Ele not being able to take on multiple enemies is total bullkitten.

Every weapon set and most of the skills are aoes, and some rather big ones at that. This means that not matter how many enemies there are, we can take them down simultaneously, IF we can keep alive. Keeping yourself alivepart or rather people failing at it is what makes them say stupid stuff like ele not being able to handle itself in pve.

Now i know people love to claim that you need full defense gear, traits and skills to survive a single grub in cursed shores. They are wrong thoug.
I personaly love staves,arguably the worst weapon to farm with. And i´ve been rolling in full berserkers gear (not exotics, just random green stuff i got from drops) my whole playing time. Also i´m currently using the same traits i´ve had since when i was levelling, which is 30 fire, water and 10 air. And do i have any trouble at cursed shores? NO, i do not.
Now i´m not saying this because i think i´m awesome and rest should l2p (frankly i´m quite average player). I´m saying this to show that average player, with enough time to learn to handle the class, can farm cursed shores without any trouble, even with gear/traits that are far from ideal.

For advise part, i can only touch on staff combat, since it´s all i´ve played since release (like i said, i just love it).
Beforeyou start casting anything other than autoattacks, gather the mobs in to one big ball. Easily done with melee mobs, and if it´s not in the middle of large field full of mobs it can be donewith ranged too by skirting around the casting range. If there´s only few ranged mobsand lot´s of melee, try gathering melee first and then moving on top of the ranged mobs. To make gathering easier, use cc and dodges, don´t waste your shields/blinds. If your health drops below 90% go and practice it on lower levels, it´s possible without taking any damage if ranged mobs are absent, and with little damage if there´s few of them.
After you have your ball of mobs move in t actual combat phase. Now that you have your mobs, you will start nuking them down with aoes, use cc to keep them in place. Once they reach you blow your shield skills and blinds to gain bit more time for nuking and start dodging and ccing. What ever you do, try to keep mobs balled up and in your aoes as much as possible, even if this means taking hits from them. What´s helpful is to dodge through the mobs and back, this way you limit your movements to smaller area and mobs stay in your aoes longer.
All in all ~5 seconds to gather mobs and 20~ to kill them is usualy what i need.
In short, gather mobs, shield, set aoes and keep the mobs in those aoes.

Few awesome things for staff:
Glyph of storms, earth – 8 seconds of near invulnerability, us this and you can just stand still and nuke any number of mobs.
Arcane shield – 3 hits doesn´t sound like much, but it is, and damage isn´t that bad either.
Arcane wave – blast finisher and big damage, noms.
Signet of restoration – awesome healing skill…just make sure you never use the active.
Evasive arcana – lot´sand lot´s of blast finishers, with some damage and heal
Fire traits 30% longer fields + 20% cd reduction = near permanent lavafont = dead mobs
Bolt to the heart – awesome damage increase against event bosses/champions, that actualy spend lot of time under 25%hp
Vital striking – even more damage when in big events.
Note on above 2, never refrain from swapping major traits for events.
Water 15p minor is awesome heal and condition removal is traited.
Magnetic shield – is totaly awesome against ranged mobs, real life saver. Your oh, kitten button for ranged mobs.
Frozen ground – Your oh, kitten button for melee mobs.

My usual rotations after gathering mobs:
Start in earth, e5, glyph of storms, e2, swap to fire, f2, arcane wave, f3, move forward and then f4(so that it actualy hits mobs and still keeps them inside lavafont), f2 when off cd, f3.
If not dead after all that just kite a bit, maybe use aracane shield, and keep casting f2,3 and 4.
If it´s veteran, i started in fire instead of earth or something went wrong doing above and i start taking considerable damage, swap to earth, e4, e5, e2, swap to water, w3, w4 gain a bit of distance, w5, if arcane wave is off cd, use it in water field.

<edit> Oh, and if you ever need to farm lower tied crafting mats, ele is deffinately your weapon of choice. You could propably near instantly take down all the mob in whole kitten map if you could gather them in one place.

my D/D ele has literally no problem taking on groups of foes. At all.
Hell I tag better than most guildies besides the engineer with the AOE’s I drop. And ive got like 4 times as much healing potential.

I use D/D for solo (carrion gear, cleric accessories — so more balanced stats) and have no problems taking on groups of mobs in Orr — you just have to move well.

Underwater is a totally different story, it sends me crying home to mommy.