Guild Wars 2

I run solo in PvE, at the moment, but I seem to be having some difficulties in quite a few encounters lately. I almost always come out barely alive, and sometimes die, a lot. It’s a bit odd since my guardian has no trouble killing pretty much the same types of enemies and he’s the same level as my elementalist. I have been running with scepter and dagger. Is there a decent solo PvE build someone can point me to?

lots of points in water and arcana is a good start until you learn how to dodge. You want the heal on water attune (and condition cleanse) and boon on attune (vigor on crit is always handy too) makes life so much easier.

signet of restoration, signet of air for an extra blind. That gives you 3 blinds, 2 knockdowns and 2 dodges for damage mitigation available at start of fight.
get an 0/20/0/30/20 build for good atunement recharge, good base healing power and some crit chance to enhance your bursts.

This actually helps quite a bit, even if I’m only level 37, but I atleast have an idea have how to deal with the mobs. Thank you.

Two words. D/D.
Or is that one word? Well actually, it’s two letters…and maybe a slash or a hyphen?
Anyway, D/D. It’s fast and highly damaging. The sceptre is too slow.

Having said that, the key to Ele. play is attunement swapping. If you sit in one attunement all the time you simply use up your cooldowns and have to resort to autoattack. It’s a common mistake when learning.
I did it myself – sticking to fire and only going into water when I started to die – Too late! far too late!

Swapping allows you to use all your most powerful skills in rotation as they come off CD so that you almost never use the #1 skill.
At the same time, the most powerful heal you have is the trait on attunement swap and the one on dodge roll.

Generally, it’s start in air (because you travel faster in air anyway) blast off everything, swap to fire ditto, earth ditto then water, dodge roll and back to air. Rinse and repeat.

I spent almost all of my pve leveling time in S/D and it seemed sooo much more potent than D/D, especially vs. groups.

You time your initial attack right with dragons tooth and phoenix so that they hit about the same time. You can often get two hits from phoenix, and hit multiple targets with both of them and the tooth. That there does a ton of damage and they will be mostly dead and you can finish them off however you want….such as fire ring and fire grab, or into earthquake, or arcane wave after fire ring. All of that there takes little time and is aoe damage that will crush most enemies without you taking any, or little damage.

That being said, I did switch to D/D later on (level 60 or so) in order to get used to it. It just doesn’t flow as well for pve IMO and doesn’t do as much aoe damage. It also requires you to be very close which means you’ll be hit more, and CC’d more. D/D will certainly lead you to change attunements more out of necessity and that will better your skills. S/D can really do well with just fire attunement and will probably make you lazy…..but it really shines in pve and aoe and I never had much trouble with taking damage. I actually never even dodged till I was D/D cause I didn’t need it. I seriously forgot it was even possible.

Also, make sure you keep upgrading your armor/weapons as needed. Usually you can do most of this from the karma “heart” vendors as you go. Then every 10-15 levels you may want to buy some cheap upgrades from the AH.

pre-cast Dragons tooth→ move in and cast ring of fire before dragons tooth hits. Then quickly cast both phoenix inside the ring of fire hitting enemies up close and fire grab because the Dragons tooth set them on fire. Then go to earth cast earthquake to knock them down and then magnetic grab+leap for fiery aura so when you get hit while charging churning earth you’ll gain even more might. Next swap to water heal up and keep casting 1 on whichever target is weakest. You can also swap to air for RTL-updraft+lightning combo for a quick burst + swiftness and knocking them back if the kiting gets too close.