Guild Wars 2

Hey folks. I’m a returning player and seeing the buffs they gave to the ranger decided to switch things up and possibly main an elementalist come next expansion.

In any case I have a few questions so I can plan my elementalist out and clarify some confusion I might have about them.

1. The Good

What makes you want to play your elementalist? When I ask people in my guild they usually respond with “I haven’t logged into him/her for awhile.” I would think conjures would be the main selling point but what makes you play as an Elementalist?

2. The Bad

What are the worst aspects class I have to accept? I mained a ranger while they were still relatively tame and I made it work. I didn’t mind the lower coefficients on skills and the micro the pet had. Now, what do I have to learn to get good with an ele?

3. The Build

I am thinking of making this character be able to do all content. Is dagger/focus fine for that (with a little staff on the side?) I know I am going to have her use celestial accessories but what of the runes/armor? Is it really fine to go full celestial or is the class more focused on damage to the point that I should mix it with some berserker/soldier? Divinity runes?

Main selling point is that the class is the only true mage class, typical elemental mage archtype which i usually play.

The good – it has 25 skills to use, but you can’t change weapons midst combat.
It has versatility up to some point.
He is one of the best classes in PvE
He is one of the decent classes in PvP, with the D/D Cele meta build being currently a bit stronger than the other builds and overglorified by the community.

The bad – ugh, there are too many to list here.
Its super squishy, requiring you to run almost full tank in sPvP.
You will die a lot~
Its hard to play
Its weak at first
It isn’t nearly as strong as some people will tell you
Has very few viable builds that actually win games, despite its versatility we are still forced to build in very specific ways because of our low innate survivability.
High skill cap, expect to be getting rolled a lot at first in PvP.

Theres probably other things others can add, i just woke up so i can’t really give you any deeper insight.

The good
The variety. I can assume so many play style with a single character. As my play time is not extensive, maxing out one character allows me to enjoy every aspect of the game without investing resources in alts. My favourite play-style is support and the elementalist is definitely well built for this in PvP as well as PvE. I like magic. I like to electrocute my enemies Darth Sidious style. But most importantly I like to feel useful what ever the situation and who ever my teammates. What makes me play the elementalist: the entertainment I get from the complexity of the class.

The bad
The learning curve. It is an active class where every one of your actions makes a difference. You need to think a lot, you need to be focused, and if you want to perform well you need to train. This is “bad” but it also gives me a sense of reward: I feel good when I fully master an encounter. However, I dislike the opinion that other classes’ players have of elementalists. Often we are perceived as facerolling while there is a lot of thought involved. Many of our opponents despise us because they think performing well with the ele is easy – it is not. How to get good with the ele? Read my guides ^^ And practice sensibly: anyone can improve fast with the right mind discipline.

The build
I play high-end PvE and PvP. In PvE, obviously I use the build I invented: D/F. Staff is still my side-weapon, for when I need to be more specialized than I usually am, but this weapon bores me as I used it for leveling and its play-style is not diversified. In PvP, I am quite a fan of D/D, but I also use staff on some maps when I have the right team for it.

_

Final words?
As critical as I am towards Anet, I must admit that playing the elementalist has been my best combat experience of my entire gaming life

THE GOOD
I love my Elementalist because it simply has versatility that other classes don’t have. I have insanely strong AOE that isn’t tied to my utility slots with staff. I have great group support and buffing with most weapons since I am a self comboing machine for boons. There is literally no part in this game where I feel like I can’t fit in and perform well be it ranged combat, melee combat, mid ranged combat, pve, pvp or wvw.

THE BAD
The best way to describe an elementalist is you have two broken legs. Your left leg is broken and named “Low Health” and your right leg is broken and named “Low Armor.” The only way you can get by in most scenarios is relying on your two crutches. Your left crutch is “Water Traits (Healing)” and right crutch is “Arcane Traits (Boons)”. Most cases this means you’re guaranteed to gear Vit/Tough to make up for these deficencies and you’re really pegged into class builds. Most builds are basically small variations of each other with heavy (4+) points into Water/Arcane.

The exception to this is you will read about high end PvE encounter builds where by having a strong knowledge of the content, you can avoid most boss mechanics and thus avoid taking damage. By doing this you can go full offense mode with as much damage as you can kick out because you’re avoiding damage through strong knowledge of the game content. However this is not feasible for much of the game where you are guaranteed to take damage, such as in WvW or PvP.

THE BUILD
As stated previously, you got two main builds. 4 Arcane, 4 Water is the standard base of most builds. I use it and put the other 6 in Air for Fresh Air and Lightning Rod and swap my traits around as needed.

I do this for a very specific reason. Gearing. I don’t like swapping gear much. By going this route, I can easily build my gear around my trait stat bonuses. I know by going 6 in Air I am going to get maximum Precision/Ferocity meaning I can slack on those two stats on my gear and gear more for Vit/Tough with Soldier gear and still have a really good Crit rating. Most cases it’s just a matter of playing around with the skill/stat builder at GW2 Skills.net once you’ve settled on a build and going with that.

Generally speaking I recommend going more tanky to start, and ease into more offense as you get comfortable with the class. That can be expensive however so not many people go for that route. However with SPvP reward tracts, dungeon runs, wvw badges and much more I’ve never had a problem with getting tons of gear.

Personally I run PVT (Soldier) armor, with Berserker Jewelry/Weapons on a 06044 spec. I also carry a backup set of Emerald (Knight) Jewelry with Charged Quartz (Celestial) gems socketed in them for WvW zerg play when I need more tank.

In PVE, you want to be full zerk for the most part. When levelling, I levelled solo as d/d, which has alot more mobility and more forgiving when soloing. However, in group events, i switch to staff and bomb from the back.

In terms of spvp, i play both d/d and staff (cele on both). Both have the identical building other than swapping out blasting staff trait when using staff. My staff build is extremely tanky, and i can bunker points pretty well. d/d build is a harasser, pushing, etc. really depends on the team, but since they use identical builds, you can swap quickly at the beginning depending on the team makeup.

As for WvW, when i’m roaming or catching up to the zerg, i go d/d (better 1v1 potential). When i get to the group (or just being lazy), i go staff and provide dps/cc’s from the back line.

the bad:
boring after awhile. Staff in spvp is very fun, but with a, lets say, headless chicken type team,, it can be frustrating.

good:
weapons fit in any mode, and you can adapt quickly to what you need. As long as you are good with kiting/positioning, they are a strong class.

One thing though: people above are saying to use soldier runes. Not sure where thats coming from (i don’t do dungeons much anymore, mainly pvp/wvw). But you’ll hit/heal like a wet noodle with pvt runes. I’d go zerk in pve and learn not to get hit… pvp/wvw its cele all the way (for good balance between dmg and healing stats)..
Regardless of the mode, positioning is key. keep an eye out for thieves in pvp/wvw, if you see them coming you can usually handle them, but if they get their little pre-load cdc+steal+backtab, you are gonna be put on the defensive quick.

The Good:

Versatile. You can pretty much do it all and all of it fairly.

The play style also is pretty intense and there is a lot of synergy between the skills. There is a large number of combinations you can apply to create different outcomes.

The Bad:

Versatile. This is probably the biggest con you will face is that the game mechanics, particularly in PVE, simply negates the need for most of what you can bring to a group.

Outside of PvP and WvW, you can watch the majority of your attunements and skills get flushed down the toilet in favor of camping fire and icebow.

The Build

This entirely depends on what you want to spend your time doing.

Keep in mind that I do exclusively PvP
The good:
The versatility (which is a recurring point from everyone I think)
The fact that I can solo might stack to a solid 20 and keep it
I can 3v1 without dying and still have enough skill to flee if it gets too tight
I can fill a lot of role, from roamer to point keeper (versatility again)
Cele dish out fairly good damage while having incredible survivability
The fact that I need to do acrobatics with my fingers is really rewarding in itself

The bad
There’s no “burst” in itself, Ele is focused on sustain damage (D/D) and I find fresh air subpar compared to other burst build (but THAT is my opinion)
Relies way too heavily on arcane and water to be decent
Good at everything, great at nothing
It’s just not as satisfying to play as my memser or necro

The Build
If you want a good-at-everything build > celestial D/D is really great
A burst build that does really decent damage, but is highly predictable > Fresh air
I also like to run D/F fresh air when I feel witty
Staff/conjure is a sure token in dungeon.

I’ve played both high-end PvE and WvW raids, currently in training for tPvP. These are my opinions about the elementalists.

1. The Good:
- Incomparable DPS and access to both single target damage and AoE. Elementalists have the highest amount of damage modifiers in the game. If they really spec for it, the DPS is real. A skilled staff ele with self-buffed 25 stacks of Might can reach 12-18k DPS (comparable to DPS of an unorganized group) by himself for a duration of about 10 seconds, which is sufficient to insta-gib most of the minor bosses in dungeons. The other classes just feel like potatoes.

- Versatility: elementalist can be in either extremes of the tankiness – glassiness scale and everything in between. In sPvP, you can be a bunker with a cleric staff build and can hold points for very very long, or become a bruiser with cele build – very popular in the current meta – to temporary hold points, contest or even decap. On the offensive side, you can play glassy with Fresh Air to spike targets down during team fights, or use some of the indie signet/condi builds to quickly win a 1v1 or a small plus 1 fight. See how an elementalist is able fill any roles? In WvW, elementalists works great in both zerg and roaming thanks to their decent mobility. In PvE, they are highly sought out for their ability to provide might/fury team wide, plus their insanely high damage conjured weapons/ good tank pet/ good projectile-hate abilities/ amazing CC (Deep Freeze) and damage mitigation (Sand Storm).

2. The Bad:
- Very high skill ceiling: An elementalist has 20 weapon skills to use but not all are equally usable. Some are extremely subpar while some good ones have high cool downs and/or niche uses. It takes time to master all the cool down/timing/combo to make the most advantage of your numerous skills.
- There are a lot of misunderstanding about “Attunement Dancing”. Some would advise that “if you don’t know about attunement dancing, you’re doing it wrong”. No, it’s not! If you don’t know what you are swapping attunements for and still blindly do it, you play the class wrong. A certain build like cele bruiser spec’d heavily in Arcana is able to swap attunement more often thanks to the 60% attunement swapping reduction in cool down. As their role suggest, they need to survive on point, use CC to deny enemies and deal somewhat damage. However, if the build is spec’d for DPS, you wouldn’t want to swap out of your respected damage dealing attunement (fire/air/earth) unnecessarily. (As for Fresh Air, keep in mind it has internal CD and it’s a different talk about how to make the best use of this trait).
- Rotation: no other classes have a real need for a proper rotation than the elementalist. Ele rotations are often more lengthy and complex (full might stacking); sometimes requires precise execution (bursting) or improvisation (peeling, defending or team support). On the other hand, a static rotation will get outplayed easily in a competitive sPvP scene.

3. The Builds
- DPS builds are centered around a few important traits: Persisting Flame, Fresh Air, Ember’s Might, Blinding Ash, Lightning Rod, Written In Stone, Diamond Skin, Elemental Surge, Tempest Defense, Blasting Staff.
- Defensive Variations are centered around Evasive Arcana, Elemental Attunement, Cleansing Water, Renewing Stamina, Elemental Shielding.
- The success of a build does not depend on its ease of play or how the Abjured wins their tournaments with it. A build is good when it fulfills its role (either offensive or defensive), it is enjoyable within your ability and expectation, and it is optimizable for more challenging contents. There is not a single Ultimate build but there should be at least one you enjoy playing with.

Juken.5391:

Hey folks. I’m a returning player and seeing the buffs they gave to the ranger decided to switch things up and possibly main an elementalist come next expansion.

In any case I have a few questions so I can plan my elementalist out and clarify some confusion I might have about them.

1. The Good

What makes you want to play your elementalist? When I ask people in my guild they usually respond with “I haven’t logged into him/her for awhile.” I would think conjures would be the main selling point but what makes you play as an Elementalist?

2. The Bad

What are the worst aspects class I have to accept? I mained a ranger while they were still relatively tame and I made it work. I didn’t mind the lower coefficients on skills and the micro the pet had. Now, what do I have to learn to get good with an ele?

3. The Build

I am thinking of making this character be able to do all content. Is dagger/focus fine for that (with a little staff on the side?) I know I am going to have her use celestial accessories but what of the runes/armor? Is it really fine to go full celestial or is the class more focused on damage to the point that I should mix it with some berserker/soldier? Divinity runes?

1. The Good

Ele’s are very versatile and can do good in any content and we’re needed and wanted in anything. The gameplay is very active, you need to actively play the class to get the most out of it instead of just spamming your 1 key. It takes skill to play well, but once you master it, it’s very rewarding.

Conjure isn’t exactly a sell point imo. I like ice bow in dungeons and WvW as fast bomb, but that’s it.

2. The Bad

Accept that ele’s have the lowest HP pool in the game, and together with light armor it makes us the squishiest class. HOWEVER, a Dagger/Dagger ele running celestial in PvP is very good at staying alive. When it comes to Staff elementalist it gets to be a story about knowing how to position. I’ve learned that it doesn’t really matter if you go soldier or zerker as long you know how to move and position yourself in a big battle you’ll stay alive. Again, Ele is not the easiest class to play but once you master the ele it’s very rewarding. Most ele’s (me included) play exclusively elementalist, might be a reason for it

3. The build.

Dagger/Focus is viable, but not ideal in my opinion. It’s situational though, focus has amazing survivability skills especially against ranged classes. But it’s mostly a duel weapon choice.

Dagger/dagger is very fun and more a team fighter build with more burst ability. In PvP, running celestial is almost a must. With healing signet and the healing power you got really good sustain with massive healing and condition cleansing and still enough damage to matter in team fights. Your mobility is top notch and best class to get away from danger. The ability to close in on ranged is very good as well. D/D ele celestial in WvW roaming is also viable. With D/D ele, learn might stacking.

Staff elementalist with celestial works in PvP, but not recommended unless you master staff very well. It’s very situational and it can destroy if you get the room for it. If your team in PvP sucks, i can assure you, there won’t be much room to play a staff ele.

In WvW zerg play (15-xx people) it’s a very fun and strong weapon. Staff ele’s are a must in an organized zerg to supply water fields. We also have other skills that matter like static, ice field, unsteady ground, shockwave, lightning surge, gust etc. Fire 4 is one of your best friends. A mix of soldier armor(pack/strength rune) with zerker trinkets is advised. Or go full zerker if you know how to play well.

1. The Good

What makes you want to play your elementalist? When I ask people in my guild they usually respond with “I haven’t logged into him/her for awhile.” I would think conjures would be the main selling point but what makes you play as an Elementalist?

No other profession give you the sheer versatility of an ele. None. You are always relevant/useful. Always.

2. The Bad

What are the worst aspects class I have to accept? I mained a ranger while they were still relatively tame and I made it work. I didn’t mind the lower coefficients on skills and the micro the pet had. Now, what do I have to learn to get good with an ele?

I hope you don’t mind dying while learning because if not don’t play that profession. I died over 10k times to get where I am… having the lowest life pool and armor makes you prone to hit the ground a lot at first (Ok, I solo roam with zerker gear and a staff 99% of the time so…). The moto “no pain, no gain” apply specially well here but the reward is sweet when you achieve a certain level of mastery…

3. The Build

I am thinking of making this character be able to do all content. Is dagger/focus fine for that (with a little staff on the side?) I know I am going to have her use celestial accessories but what of the runes/armor? Is it really fine to go full celestial or is the class more focused on damage to the point that I should mix it with some berserker/soldier? Divinity runes?

Staff is the best weapon to do all content for me (spvp, tpvp, wvw, pve). When I play d/d, for example, in wvw I feel half as useful as when I use my staff and I do jut a well in tpvp. Dueling with d/d is a lot easier though even for me who is far stronger with staff than I am with d/d… The exception being pewpew rangers that I find far easier with staff. Thieves OTOH…

Right now Celestial is the flavor of the moment. That being said, I came to my current build by starting with all zerker and then tweaking with my traits and skill until it felt at least playable for me. I sugget you experiment and find your own comfort zone rather than lazily go to metabattle. Chances are you will yourself end-up using a build very close to their’s anyway down the line… But the process will be worth it.

Builds come in a variety. You can get close to 3k power with might and stacks, 22+k HP, 3k armour with 60% crit 200%crit damage and waste most enemies.

My advice is not to follow the meta. The meta works for pvp but for wvw you can easily do better.

Mix it up, dont be afraid to die and make sure your mouse comes with atleast 5 buttons

Fuzzion.2504:

Builds come in a variety. You can get close to 3k power with might and stacks, 22+k HP, 3k armour with 60% crit 200%crit damage and waste most enemies.

My advice is not to follow the meta. The meta works for pvp but for wvw you can easily do better.

Mix it up, dont be afraid to die and make sure your mouse comes with atleast 5 buttons

But not all the of the above at once, you get those numbers by pushing to the extreme 2-3 particular stats.

You can’t have that HP and armor if you want to have high crit and ferocity.
You can’t have high crit and ferocity if you want to have that high HP and Armor.

Well, you get the point, you have to sacrifice everything in a few particular stats, to get the others high enough.
With 22k HP 2600 Armor, 2000 power, you will have like 5% crit and 150% ferocity.

And vice versa, with 70% crit and 210% ferocity, you’ll end up having like 13k hp and 1700 armor.

Or you can mix everything and have a balanced medium.
Like 33% crit, 180% ferocity, 18k hp and 2300 power, with 2300 armor.

The good: Eles are currently one of the strongest professions in every aspect of play. One of the highest damage in PvE (with good AoE) Ele+Ele combos (LH+Staff) for might stacking, perma fire fields, able to burst 25vuln by itself. Meteor, Lightning Storm, Icebow having some insane burst. Sandstorm providing one of the better blinds (since it isn’t smoke it doesn’t conflict fields)

Cele D/D and Staff are really strong in SPvP and found often in tourny play.

In WvW Staff Eles are the premier backline controller. (Even Lava Font+Meteor control bodies)

Playstyle: PvE Staff is very easy to learn (Start Earth/Air for Earth2 or Glyph of Storms and then stay Fire for your whole life – some exceptions apply) and Cele PvP builds often have similar goals: control, pressure, sustain and similar traits.

Redundancy+Attunements: You’ll see a lot of similar abilities in your attunements, this means that you can have a variety of options that generally don’t always get locked out by attunement swapping. (Some exceptions)

The Bad: There’s really not much. While PvE Thieves often consider themselves squishy, they’re one of the better PvE survivalists with their huge amount of endurance gains. PvE Staff doesn’t have much survivability outside of what it provides to the entire group. D/F is often for defensive/utility. D/D Cele is kitable to a degree and Staff PvP is absolutely dependent on area control. These are weaknesses that can’t be shored by weapon swapping like other professions have. This is the biggest disadvantage to the profession as a whole. By contrast, even Engis get to ‘pick their attunements’ so the lacking-weapon-swap disadvantage of very unique to Eles.

Playstyle: Yes, part of the good. Unlike stuff like PvEGuard-MedGuards, the PvE-PvP playstyle doesn’t have much transferable skills. (Though, being solid WvW/SPvP Staff Ele often means you have some ability to break Fire Attunement without being completely useless). You’ll have to accept that your playstyle and role will drastically change throughout formats.

Redundancy+Attunements: Yes, it was also part of the good, it’s also part of the bad. If you’re the type that doesn’t like redundancy, Ele probably isn’t for you.

Both PvP/WvW D/D+Staff playstyles tend to aim toward similiar things.

The Build: The single most versatile weapon is the staff. Notably god in PvE, notably god in ZvZ/GvG, God mapper, shouldn’t kill anyone roaming but you can mass CC for roaming parties. D/x is also strong.

SPvP/WvW builds try going 00266 with both D/D and Staff to learn. The way you attunement swap and (ab)use Evasive Arcana is the difference between bad Eles and god Eles.

PvE: 6 Fire always. 66200 or 66002 Fresh Air if Dagger while Staff has a large amount of variations to the core build(66002, 64xx2, 62222).

It boils down to this: If you enjoy the redundancy and overlaps in playstyle mentality, you’ll enjoy the powerhouse Ele, if you don’t – then find something else while you’re ahead. Play to your strengths or you’ll be weak.

all of this is great info. Ele since beta, and have spent probably 80% of my time with it, except I run mesmer a lot in pvp, for some reason?!

The Good: Every class has a viable “best meta dps output” build AND every class has a “most tanky/healing build” (I think we all played the “holy trinity” for so long in other mmo’s, it’s hard to get out of that mindset even in a game that goes out of its way to avoid the tank/healer/dps trinity). What I have found with ele that I haven’t found elsewhere is that you can build a very viable mixture of dps output and survivability as well as group utility with aura’s and might/fury stacking and sharing. Every class has something they do best it seems, and ele is best at buffing dps output of your team.

The Bad: hardest class to learn in the game. I considered myself very proficient with my ele long before I ever rolled a warrior… which I just can’t bring myself to level. I feel like I could bang my head on the keyboard with a warrior and be only slightly less successful than I am if I actually pay attention to what I’m doing (ok, exaggeration, I know, but still, sooooooo boring).
Another “bad” with ele, imho is that once you become proficient, you will find yourself waiting for things to come off cooldown. We may have 20 skills at our disposal, so you may think, “how can this be?” But you will occasionally find yourself autoattacking because that’s all you’ve got left for a few seconds, especially in s/d or d/d builds. In pve, especially meta dps dungeon builds, you’re autoattacking with your hammer at 6k per hit, so that’s fine, but just regular pve stuff like silverwastes, that’s not really a viable play style). Although with the addition of grandmaster trait Fresh Air, for my basic pve stuff, it’s really taken that problem out of the equation (but obviously only if you trait that way). Staff is a little different since meteor shower is such a key part of dps output and it has a long cast time that eats up cooldown time.

I will also 2nd/3rd/4th what has been said before, while it’s my second favorite weapon to play with, staff is probably the most versatile weapon in the game for a lot of reasons. Mapping? Perma swift easy. Zerg rush? duh, staff. Learning how the class works? … umm, staff. It’s just the most useful for almost every occasion… it’s downside (and this is purely an imho statement here), it’s incredibly boring once you have it figured out.

The Build: Ele was a vastly misunderstood class for the first 3 or 4 months of the game, and then daPhoenix came along with his auramancer build and it all started clicking for everyone. I’d recommend looking up his stuff for any new ele, while a lot of the game has progressed beyond the tanky d/d auramancer, it’s still probably the best way to really learn the mechanics of the class and the reason you want to (as mentioned above this is right on) dance attunements for purpose, not just to dance. Plus aura’s and aura share as well as might stacking, as mentioned above, are the two things we can bring to the table that no one else can.

Ele plays very different from any other class, especially with scepter or dagger. Staff is a more traditional caster feel, but dagger feels more like you’d expect a thief/assassin type class to play. One thing I’d add to this, when learning the mechanics of the class, split your time running dagger mainhand and staff. Once you are proficient with dagger mainhand, swap to scepter.

As far as my build go, I’m a s/d ele 90% of the time. The only time I change that up primarily is zerg rush in wvw. Scepter doesn’t get discussed much in the forums, and I believe it is still a misunderstood weapon. It remains what I feel to be the most bursty weapon if played correctly, especially in basic pve and dungeons and with the change over to a fresh air build whenever that patch occured way back, it’s outstanding. For dungeons that want meta dps output, a s/d lightning hammer build is fantastic, with exceptional might stacking (25 perma easy on your whole party as well as perma fury). The max dps build I’ve found thus far for s/d looks like this (dungeon build)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJArYnMISLD2zAGQAdEIYAQCHYQhR1EeaTp3A

My build for basic pve stuff, like silverwastes

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJArYnMISnDWyA+MAdEIgAwCFAGNDEXCyAxwithvAA

Scepter is also my first choice for wvw roaming, although it has less survivability than d/d, it’s burst dps output makes up for it. The first complaint about the weapon is that dragon’s tooth doesn’t really work against other players, to which I say, you’re using it at the wrong time.

I’ve recently come back to the game, I’ve been playing my Ele. I just wanted to pop in and say that this has been a great thread that I’ve found very useful. Thanks everyone for the in depth posts.