Guild Wars 2

So I got my Ele to around level 20 and got bored and went back to my 80 Necro. I’m shelfing my Necro now till we get some decent fixes and the ele was my second favourite since BWE1, after Necro.

I’m just wondering what’s a good setup for levelling PvE. I’ve tried it all – daggers, sceptre and staff, and I like them all but not quite sure which is best suited for it.

I’m also unsure about how to trait and stat. Is condition damage useful for Ele’s? As a Necro we have a weapon dedicated to condition damage, while it seems all of the Ele’s weapons do raw damage with a bit of burn and bleed thrown in.

I’ve been reading about how good bunker builds are in sPvP – is that a good way to go about building my ele in PvE, or would it be better to just stack as much power/precision/vit as possible?

Thanks guys, I really want to get into this class again but just need a bit of a starting point

When i leveled my ele i went D/D for PvE and staff for dungeons. Stat wise i mostly focused on power across armor and weapons and defensive stats (tough/vitality) on jewelry to keep damage high with abit survivability. Since D/D already has alot of CC and a few ways to keep yourself alive it’s alright to focus onto damage more than defensive stats.

As for traits, arcane and water were my most focused upon trait lines, water traits being for cantrips and arcane for attunement swap bonuses and attunement swap cooldown reduction. Used cantrip utilities as my get out of jail free card skills. Not 100% sure if this is THE best way to level but it helped me level at a decent pace without much dying.

I would always recommend keeping a staff on you for times you may need ranged attacks.

It really depends on how you want to level. If you’re going with the exploration route where you just solo your way through renown hearts, skill challenges, etc. then you’ll want decent killing speed and lots of swiftness to move across the zone quickly from point to point. The best traits to support daggers are auras to boost your movement/killing speed and cantrips to make up for the fct that daggers are inherently more dangerous.

If you level through speed clearing dungeons (AC is best for this), then obviously a good dungeon build is important. I’d recommend daggers, but at low levels with low quality gear and few trait points, daggers are hard to pull off successfully. So I’d sat staff is your best bet here, and condition damage through fire 3 and earth 2 is a decent way to go which really only requires +condition damage gear, meaning you can gear more defensively for the dungeon.

Most of my Alts once they reach about level 50 are leveling up in WvW, not participating in the battle, but speed killing mobs in the area for the huge bonus XP they give. Fights here will be a little longer than fighting your own level, and thus more dangerous, so that should be accounted for in your build. I’d recommend using a lightning hammer oriented build here as the attack chain is incredibly powerful and has built in defense through AoE blind. This allows you to build more for damage to kill the mobs quickly, since the majority of their attacks will be missing you.

If you’re going staff, then you might wanna avoid condition damage. We can do some condition damage, but not enough to make it useful.

For staff, I’d go with Power/Toughness/Vitality gear. It’ll do well enough for you.

I’m still levelling and find sceptre/dagger to be awesome for PVE and then shift to staff for WvW. I’ve got 10 points in earth for the earth shield, the rest in water and arcane, starting with 10 in water, 10 in arcane then 20 in water, 20 in arcane etc. I go for power, vitality and toughness as the key traits that keep me alive and let me kite nicely. I use both elementals (fire for the lesser and fire or water for the main one) and switch between the other traits. I like the signet of earth – a3s stun can be a life saver, but the arcane wave and blast are useful too. I"m far from a pro player and doubtless this will be ripped to shreds, but it works for me…

S