Guild Wars 2

I recently got my Asura Guardian to level 80 and I have been trying out some classes (thief, warrior, ele, ranger). I really want to like ele but it feels as though they do not do much damage when compared to other classes. Elementalist seems like a really cool class and mine is only level 8 but it feels like I die so fast and do so little damage. Like I said I really want to like the class but I just can’t get into the feel of it. Should I persevere with ele? Or just play some other class, if so, what? Also please give opinions as to what race and weapons I should use for the ele. Mine is a Norn (cause I thought it would be funny) and I use a staff. I like Asura ele for the T3 Culural Armour. I might give Asura a go but I’m not sure if it is worth playing the class yet.

At lvl 80 PvE Ele has the highest DPS possible in the game.

That depends on what do you want from ele. If you want pve you’ll get your nice damage and it doesn’t really matters what race you’ll choose (take what you like) and you’ll have to learn and switch all your weapons anyway.
If you want to play wvw then you’ll get nice damage and support in zergs with staff, race is irrelevant too.
In small scale wvw and spvp ele plainly sucks. And 15.04 will not change that. Dont listen those who say that it is a “powerful class with high learning curve”, while it IS hard to learn it doesn’t reward in any way.

You said your using a staff. Untraited dagger will always do the most damage and if you trait for staff damage you will have to spam lava font after every cooldown to realize the damage potential of the staff. Many ppl find that boring. And at level 8 you can’tr trait for staff damage yet.

Get a dagger and lead off with Burning Speed then Drakes Breath then Fire Grab. That should kill trash mobs. If its a group of mobs and their not dead switch to earth and use the 3 powerful AOEs in it including the nuke skill Churning Earth.

If you like having a range weapon get a scepter and start off with Dragon’s Tooth then set up the fire field with Ring of Fire before it lands and put a Phoenix in too. Aim the Phoenix slightly behind the target so it hits 3×. Now you have some might on you so your Fire Grab and Churning Earth should do spectacular damage.

I will save you some time and be honest. No play another class. Ele had its time as a strong class but it got tons of nerfs while other classes got tons of buffs. In pvp you now have to play perfectly to beat a bad player. The new patch isn’t gonna add much to the ele and actually offers some more nerfs in the form of the gm traits being awful and other classes getting good gm traits and will be able to use more sigils. Last anet only does one of these big balance patches every 6 months or so. Meaning its gonna take like a year or more before ele is on par with other classes.