Guild Wars 2

All of the NPC’s die during the opening cutscene or shortly thereafter and I keep finding myself having to solo 10 mobs.

What the heck am I supposed to do?

Spec’d 20/0/30/20/0 using scepter/dagger ATM for the best survivability I could find, but even 1-2 mobs in story quests tend to kill me in a matter of seconds. Geared for power/condition damage/vitality. Full carrion gear and accessories.

Kiting is rarely an option, so I’m totally lost as to how I’m supposed to beat the story quests without chain-dying about 20 times and incurring so large of a repair bill that the story quests are making me go broke.

My friends don’t believe how little money I have. When I tell them, they’re like “go do story quests, you get tons of gold!” Then again, most of my friends play Warriors, Guardians, and Hunters. Their unintended taunting is starting to get to me.

I really don’t know what the issue is, and I don’t know if it is the same for other classes, but I know what you’re talking about.

The problem gets worse as the story quest levels increase.

To give a clear example. There is one quest you encounter around level 60-ish (which I did at around level 70, with jack-of-all-trades gear, which balances vitality, toughness and power/condition damage). It involves a dream/future sequence in which you follow the queen of the Pale Tree (I’ll say no more to avoid spoilers). Throughout the quest, groups of 2-3 ghostly swords spawn on top of you. You can’t survive more than 2 or 3 hits from them, AND they move faster than you do, so kiting is essentially impossible. Now, in my own opinion, I’ve gotten reasonably skilled using mobility as a defense. Coupled with my regular heal, the 2 heals you have in water attunement (scepter/dagger), earth attunement’s stun, earth/air blinds, and arcane shield, you are STILL likely to take enough hits to down you, and as an elementalist in downed state, you’re as good as dead. Not to mention that your damage output is near zero while you’re focused on using all these defensive skills which are necessary just to stay alive.

I’ve found that each of these fights (again, these are “trash mobs”, not bosses) is basically neck and neck, which in theory is great excitement, but essentially, I feel I have to use “gamey” tactics just to survive. Taking advantage of mob AI failing to navigate terrain efficiently, or relying on using an earth elemental and then waiting 2 minutes after each fight before moving forward, etc.

I remember another particularly frustrating mission in which you’re attempting to protect an underground Skritt village from a Destroyer Queen (after joining Durmand Priory) by setting off a bomb. However, the dozen or so Destroyers that spawn kill off the friendly NPCs and then swarm you – each one capable of killing you in 2-3 shots by itself. It took me about 30 minutes, and I had to methodically take advantage of strange mechanics which caused mobs to pull one at a time (again, gamey gameplay). I probably died 4 or 5 times, and it just shouldn’t happen considering my gear and the fact that I’m 3-10 levels ahead of the quest level (which still does confer benefits despite being down-levelled – you retain percentages of extra stats and gear, plus traits).

Overall, these quests don’t result in fun gameplay, and having to corpse run 2-3 times each story mission is just frustrating.

welcome to the life of an ele, get used to it

Myndranius.2139:

To give a clear example. There is one quest you encounter around level 60-ish (which I did at around level 70, with jack-of-all-trades gear, which balances vitality, toughness and power/condition damage). It involves a dream/future sequence in which you follow the queen of the Pale Tree (I’ll say no more to avoid spoilers). Throughout the quest, groups of 2-3 ghostly swords spawn on top of you. You can’t survive more than 2 or 3 hits from them, AND they move faster than you do, so kiting is essentially impossible.

I kited them, used a staff IIRC. The problem I had at first was seeing them. Once I was able to identify them before they attacked it was quite easy to kite them. You have to make sure you only aggro 1 maybe 2 at a time.

Your friends should come into your instance to give you a hand. But ya sounds like not working as intended.

Myndranius.2139:

To give a clear example. There is one quest you encounter around level 60-ish (which I did at around level 70, with jack-of-all-trades gear, which balances vitality, toughness and power/condition damage). It involves a dream/future sequence in which you follow the queen of the Pale Tree (I’ll say no more to avoid spoilers). Throughout the quest, groups of 2-3 ghostly swords spawn on top of you. You can’t survive more than 2 or 3 hits from them, AND they move faster than you do, so kiting is essentially impossible. Now, in my own opinion, I’ve gotten reasonably skilled using mobility as a defense. Coupled with my regular heal, the 2 heals you have in water attunement (scepter/dagger), earth attunement’s stun, earth/air blinds, and arcane shield, you are STILL likely to take enough hits to down you, and as an elementalist in downed state, you’re as good as dead. Not to mention that your damage output is near zero while you’re focused on using all these defensive skills which are necessary just to stay alive.

You rly had problem with them? O.o
For me it was more boring than challenging. you just had to spam lots of fire aoe run a bit, dodge, use earthquake or updraft, maybe use mist form or glyph of elementals (in fire atu). You can have Signet of Air if you have problem kitting mobs (active effect is nice also:)). Just focus one and let elemental buy you some time.

Myndranius.2139:

I remember another particularly frustrating mission in which you’re attempting to protect an underground Skritt village from a Destroyer Queen (after joining Durmand Priory) by setting off a bomb. However, the dozen or so Destroyers that spawn kill off the friendly NPCs and then swarm you – each one capable of killing you in 2-3 shots by itself.

About that one, yeah it was pain in the… well, you know where:P. Personally I think it hard because narrow space that makes dodging and running challenging (maybe a little to much^^)

1. Be sure you are at or above suggested level for the story quest
2. kiting is your friend, especially when boosted by air traits and utility skills. Also air attunement and the heal that gives effects will give swiftness as well, just make sure you don’t accidently leash the mob, keep it in the top of your screen basically.
3. Traps are very handy in tight spots remember your elements. Earth has some good cripples and conditions as well as air.
4. Research your traits and adjust to your playstyle
5 If you still have trouble stack toughness and vitality.

Elementalist doesn’t have to be hard to play and we don’t have to be glass cannons I think what people tend to miss is the fact that the game is different and relies on paying attention to everything that is going on and knowing your classes well. This will come with time and practice. I know I have been frustrated many times but I did some research and came up with what worked for me. Good luck and happy gaming

dont do story quests for gold, thats not the way to get it, tell your friends they are wrong.

secondly which story quest are you doing at what level?

1. toughness is more important than vitality for non-staff Eles
2. get better at dodging, kiting, and all around avoiding damage (earth and air attunements are the bomb)
3. several of the story quests are very difficult no matter what profession you are. The battle for Claw Island, for example, is tough to do anything but run from objective to objective fighting as little as possible.
4. even so, glyph of storms in earth attunement is your best friend. Get to know it. buy it lunch. You’ll grow to love each other.
5. Oh, and glyph of elementals in earth is awesome, too

I had my troubles on the storys but then it got better with progress on learning curve and me starting to gear more defensively. I play mostly d/d (or staff) with balanced gear making sure I have high defence in stats and short cd utilities (no cantgrips at all).

In my opinion, whilst leveling toughness seemed to do bigger difference than vitality.

I figured that sometimes in storys you can pull only couple of mobs from a group that looks like they are all linked. That discovery helped a lot. Fight only as many as you have to at a time (positioning! use line of sight too), pull more when your out of combat regen started.

Pinkerton.5643:

1. toughness is more important than vitality for non-staff Eles
2. get better at dodging, kiting, and all around avoiding damage (earth and air attunements are the bomb)
3. several of the story quests are very difficult no matter what profession you are. The battle for Claw Island, for example, is tough to do anything but run from objective to objective fighting as little as possible.
4. even so, glyph of storms in earth attunement is your best friend. Get to know it. buy it lunch. You’ll grow to love each other.
5. Oh, and glyph of elementals in earth is awesome, too

This so much. It amazes me how many Elementalist struggle with PvE content, saying how we are so squishy and such, yet never think to take the skill Glyph of Storms. Quite frankly that skill is OP in PvE. With it any Elementalist can pull a half a dozen mobs, and AOE them down before you take any damage.

The most I’ve been able to pull was Destiny’s Edge, the final encounter in Twilight Arbor (story). Eir who would usually one shot anyone in the group (too close to her), could then be face tanked with the rest of them and burned down, before the Storm lifted up.

I appreciate that everyone has “the answer”, but that’s really not the point here.

I’m sure you’re good at the game, and you can just wave your hand at my own issues and point out all the flaws. But you weren’t there, and you’ll have to take me at my word (as I yours) that I really know what I’m doing overall. I’m not super all-star MMO champion of the 2010 e-lympics, but I’m not an amateur and I have a reasonable list of qualifications to justify feeling the need to comment.

The elementalist (whether it’s the only class or not, I don’t know, as it’s the only class I’ve played beyond level 10) has serious survivability issues in many of its story quests. Whether this is a problem with the elementalist or the quest difficult I’ll leave to the developers to determine, but the issue is there. The fact that this difficulty rarely exists in the open world (during dynamic events, or just random mobs, for example), is reasonable evidence of a problem somewhere.

Furthermore, if your solution is, “you need Glyph of Storms”, then my response is twofold: one, I’ve tried that – I wouldn’t be voicing my opinion if I hadn’t exhausted all the options – and two, if the elementalist requires the use of a singular skill to get through its content, then the class has serious problems. I agree that there is (and should be) obvious bad choices for utility skill sets, but there shouldn’t be one absolutely necessary-in-all-situations skill, either.

I’m not saying the quests are impossible (the fact that I’ve made it past them is evidence enough of that), but I’m saying that the strategies required to get past them often result in gamey, uninteresting gameplay experiences. And overall, there have been far too many corpse runs than someone of my skill level (I’d estimate that I fall within the 60th-80th percentiles on the noob-hardcore scale) should experience, especially because these deaths aren’t an issue of questionable skill level, instead having more to do with common mobs (again, not bosses) that hit extremely hard and manage to cling to you long after your avoidance skills are on cooldown and your endurance bar is empty.

Ultimately, the issue is there and nearly every elementalist I encounter voices some degree of agreement. There are of course, several who claim they have never had difficulty issues at any point, but this strikes me more as deluded one-upmanship than evidence that I and others are actually among a minority of incompetent players.

What personal story quest are you up to? Because the only ones I’ve had trouble with are the ones that strip me off all my weapon skills and give me a stupid sword or whatever. The Glyph of Storms utility isn’t really a must, but it certainly makes it possible for an Ele to pull a ridiculous amount of mobs and kill them all with ease. If it’s just 2 or 3 then I don’t even bother, because the CCs any ele has on their weapon skills is usually enough.

Here is the build I’m currently running at level 70.

My gear is focused more on Power/Toughness/Healing Power (though my toughness is below what I ideally want, due to itemization) and I switch attunements constantly. The high Healing Power, along with my passive heals and the healing weapon skills means that I almost never use the no.6 Heal skill. I’ve gone entire dungeon runs without using it, because of the high sustain my build has. So if you really are having a lot of issues, use my build and if you prefer fire over air traits, then feel free to change that too. Because I literally don’t have any survivability issues, when I have all my skills available.

Play with staff, mass area control. Scepter/X felt awful after playing Staff most game in personal story missions where you get spawned a wave on you.

Staff for area, or D/D if you are good with them. Also, Earth Elemental (Lesser and Elite skills) are tough cookies, and take some aggro. Usually can have a Lesser Earth Ele up for awhile.

I really dont understand what everybody is on about having difficulties on Ele. I havnt had any problems at all lvling my ele to 80. In fact it was easier than lvling my necro to 80!

I’ve done the story quest up until Fort Trinity and I’ve not actually died yet (been downed a few times on some of the larger pulls but instantly rallied), running full mf gear (pirate + sigil of luck + mf jewelry) so my offensive/defensive stats are not the highest. I am still able to deal 90%+ of mob health before they get to me. It’s all down to playstyle/spec. I go 30/10/20/0/10 I think with scepter dagger. It allows me to solo pretty much any skill challenge (ranged elite + 2 adds can be an issue). You have AOE skills, use them, stack them, love them. If you use Arcane Wave you can easily build 12+ stacks of Might to help you in the next fight (almost all the mobs will be dead by the time you build it) without swapping attunement, if you start in air/water you can turn that to 21 (requires sigil with +3 might stacks on weapon swap which I don’t use atm). That gives you a LOT of damage to whatever else might still be alive outside melee range.

Also, dodge. This along with blinds/knockdowns is your primary defense as an elementalist. You NEED to be good at dodging to survive against multiple mobs if they don’t die in the opening burst.

Alright, I’m going to give the OP the post he was looking for, since all of you aren’t really helping him out here just pointing out possible flaws because you think you’re so amazing.

To the OP:

Stack Toughness and healing, and go 30 water 30 arc 10 earth. That is pretty much the only reasonable way to stay alive as an ele. Your damage will suck balls though, but at least you can take hits.

I recognize this issue as well… I’ve started five characters and am playing them side-by-side to see which one will become my main. One of those is an elementalist. He’s now level 9 and I’ve sort of given up on him (at least for now). Main reason? A story quest (“rescue what’shisface”). I rescue the dude, and then have to defeat some mobs. Now I admit I’m not a really good player, and the elementalist is a challenging class, but even taking that into account it seems overly difficult. All the supporting NPC’s die. I can kill all the adds, but the main dude remains. I can sometimes res one of the NPC’s, but even then I still get owned. And after a few tries all the NPC’s will be in a place where I can’t res them. The only way I got close to killing the dude was by standing in his face and using water skills which heal me as well and spamming fountain whenever possible… kiting just got me killed in a matter of seconds since he’s using ranged attacks :S

Anyway, I’m now enjoying my warrior, engineer and ranger, not to sure about my thief yet, I’ll give the ele another go in a while, but for now, nah, not for me :P

MasterK.2394:

What personal story quest are you up to? Because the only ones I’ve had trouble with are the ones that strip me off all my weapon skills and give me a stupid sword or whatever. The Glyph of Storms utility isn’t really a must, but it certainly makes it possible for an Ele to pull a ridiculous amount of mobs and kill them all with ease. If it’s just 2 or 3 then I don’t even bother, because the CCs any ele has on their weapon skills is usually enough.

Here is the build I’m currently running at level 70.

My gear is focused more on Power/Toughness/Healing Power (though my toughness is below what I ideally want, due to itemization) and I switch attunements constantly. The high Healing Power, along with my passive heals and the healing weapon skills means that I almost never use the no.6 Heal skill. I’ve gone entire dungeon runs without using it, because of the high sustain my build has. So if you really are having a lot of issues, use my build and if you prefer fire over air traits, then feel free to change that too. Because I literally don’t have any survivability issues, when I have all my skills available.

My build at the moment (currently level 72), though I’ve changed it around several times over the past 20 levels to find something that is survivable without sacrificing too much damage output:

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#MVsMz9MzMRxLMMoxLMG0fVGoVVVm

I find this build, so far, contains a good amount of survivability (lots of important toughness), the 5 points in water plus the 10-point arcane trait give water a good amount of regeneration just for switching to it. I took Elemental Shielding (earth 10-point), because if I’ve switched to water to heal in a dire situation, hitting Frost Aura is a no-brainer, and 3 seconds of protection isn’t a bad bonus. Finally, Final Shielding gives me that extra second of protection when I’m in a situation with more than one two/three-shotting enemies on top of me(otherwise, instant death would follow).

(I also ran http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#MVsMz9MzMmxLMMoxLMfaf0aozVV for a little while around level 50-55, which was a little more offensive, but was a little too squishy and not quite enough control.)

As for gear, it fluctuates as I go and tends to be heavily determined by whatever drops I get (I hate karma armour because it can’t be salvaged, which means any gems/runes you stick on them are lost forever, and spending karma on items that will last you 5-10 levels just is wasteful), but it’s mostly a mix between toughness/vitality/power/condition damage in a roughly equal split.

Finally, for those of you talking about staff: your damage output drops considerably (which means more mobs survive your initial barrage long enough to hit you), and while you tend to have better chances of survival (by trading damage for area control), this comes at the cost of making the harder fights last much longer. Also, because you’re so heavily AoE based, you occasionally tend to pull more mobs off of friendly NPCs than you can handle. Maybe you enjoy the slower pace and constant kiting/control style the staff brings in to play, but I don’t – not for PvE – especially since the extra time spent on each fight outweighs the time spent on corpse runs anyways. Scepter/Dagger is just more fun for my personal playstyle, and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be viable here.

Vayra.3290:

I’ve done the story quest up until Fort Trinity and I’ve not actually died yet

I’d love to see a screenshot of this. Load up your game, type /deaths in chat, open your hero panel to the inventory screen and take a screenshot.

Landriff.3860:

How do I solo 10 mobs?

With a staff?

double dagger,
Ride the lightning, updraft, burning speed, ring of fire, arcane blast, frozen blast, arcane wave, earthquake.

If anything is left alive after that, well, not a lot will be, so just kite.

Abra.5230:

Landriff.3860:

How do I solo 10 mobs?

With a staff?

That’s the hard way.

It is far easier to break out an earth elemental and then dagger-OH-5 the group while he tanks them….then watch them bleed to death before they get anywhere close to you.

That earth elemental can take a hit. He is quite hearty and holds aggro like a champ. He also instantly takes all aggro on spawn.

Myndranius.2139:

Vayra.3290:

I’ve done the story quest up until Fort Trinity and I’ve not actually died yet

I’d love to see a screenshot of this. Load up your game, type /deaths in chat, open your hero panel to the inventory screen and take a screenshot.

I’ve not died in story quests yet. I’ve died plenty in WvW and when trying to solo champions.

I did all of the story quests solo as a staff ele. Yes i died on occasion and got frustrated a lot(claw island anyone?).

For your specific story quest and the sword/shields spawning on you i used the following set up.
First the utility skills. Arcane wave, arcane shield, and the asura racial Pain inverter(player based aoe that damages and adds confusion), and the elemental elite skill.
Basically, run around that area in water attun. and when spawns pop, drop your slow and your ice spike(4 and 2 respectively on staff). You now have slowed mobs with 6 stacks of vulnerability on. Switch to earth and use unsteady ground(another slow) and then use eruption, now you have crippled mobs with vuln. and 6 stacks of bleeds. Switch air and drop static field to stun them and then go fire and use lava font, the number 3 burning ability and then while standing in your lava font use arcane wave and pain inverter(or other aoe if not an asura), then use burning retreat and let the mobs walk through your fire trail. They should be pretty much dead after that and you should have taken minimal damage but if you need to just repeat. Arcane shield is your oh crap button and the AoE it does when it breaks does substantial damage.

Thats for ele, now if you bring a warrior buddy to help just stand there while he charges then uses 100 blades and continue on your way.

To the OP:
Yes, the Elementalist has survivability problems.
Those of us who have embraced the problem spend a lot of time running in circles, dodging and rolling. The particular fight you are talking about took me a while to complete. I personally went with a staff and let the NPC’s do a lot of the work. Using Earth and Water to both weaken and slow the mobs was key to me surviving.

With all of the above said, it wasn’t a particularly fun fight, but given the level of challenge, it was rewarding to complete the encounter.

It is my guess that Elementalists will see some balancing in the near future, but what you are describing is very true and very real.

I am a 80 Elementalist, hope this helps.

Glass Cannon Kite build

30 fire 20 air 20 arcane, you’ll have to learn to attunement swapping,

30 fire: 10 point trait(Internal Fire), 20 point(Pyromancer’s Alacrity(15%) CDR), 30 point(either, Pyromancer’s Puissance or Persisting Flames depends both decent, Persisting Flames are prob better for Aoe?)

20 Air: 10 point(Quick Glyphs), 20 point(Boil to the Heart(more for dungeon boss fights))

20 Arcane: 10 point(Elemental Attunement this can be swapped if you take arcane skills, (shield, blast, wave) 20% arcane skill CDR is useful in that case), 20 point (Blasting Staff)

Skills I take, Glyph of Elemental Power, Glyph of lesser elemental, Mist form or (arcane shield) I like Mist form better personally. and elite is Glyph of Elementals.
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

So you can actually run around with Air attunement pull a bunch of melee mobs (this doesn’t work very well with ranged but doable)

Switch to water and use skill 4(Frozen Ground) aim it in front of the mob, it’s instant so you don’t have to time the cast. you can also use skill 2 real quick if you like.

Switch to fire drop your skill 5 meteor and 3 (aoe dot) and 2(lava) make sure you aim the ground aoes properly, not on the mobs since they are moving towards you, aim it ahead of their path.

Switch to Earth for skill 5 first, it roots mobs. it’s a line skill, so same concept as Earth Shaker’s fissure in dota. Then put skill 4(slow) in front of the mob, again skill 2 if you have time.

Switch to air for speed bonus from elemental attunement and Skill 4 if you want, then back to water to put skill 4(Frozen Ground) down again and heal your self if needed.

What you want to do is run in a circle and pivot the group of mobs in the Aoe range of your meteor, using slow root and swiftness.

if you do get hit you can mist form and heal. Against rangd mobs you can always pop earth skill 3 (ranged reflect) only 5 secs tho. and pop your Ele glyphs.

Always make sure you utilize your slows, with Glyph of Elemental powers you can chill mobs with any water skills, and use Frozen ground and Unsteady Ground and Shockwave on cool down to keep a good distance.

kite. the same thing you do in almost every other game.

Nenthil.4312:

About that one, yeah it was pain in the… well, you know where:P.

In the kitten, right?

There is with out a doubt a clear problem with the ele personal story either npc’s wont attack or they die off too quickly for me its they don’t attack or you get mobbed to death. Just this last time i got mobbed by 5 or so orians after one fireball bs. One fireball should not attract that many. Frankly i don’t feel the need to switch attunements unless i’m doing a group kill or dungeon in which case i might throw a heal out or something. I have already complained in the bug section about npc’s behavior but arena net really needs to fix elementalist story modes.

issacTheMarker.8530:

Frankly i don’t feel the need to switch attunements unless i’m doing a group kill or dungeon in which case i might throw a heal out or something.

I think that says it all.

issacTheMarker.8530:

There is with out a doubt a clear problem with the ele personal story either npc’s wont attack or they die off too quickly for me its they don’t attack or you get mobbed to death. Just this last time i got mobbed by 5 or so orians after one fireball bs. One fireball should not attract that many. Frankly i don’t feel the need to switch attunements unless i’m doing a group kill or dungeon in which case i might throw a heal out or something. I have already complained in the bug section about npc’s behavior but arena net really needs to fix elementalist story modes.

Not switching attunements is your problem. How can you expect to do well when you purposefully ignore 75% if your weapon skills? It’d be like another class going in and spamming only 1 and 2 on their primary weapon and expect to do well (granted a warrior might actually do just fine with that), it’s just ridiculous. If you want to do well you need to use ALL your skills, if that is too complicated (which I suspect it is for a large amount of players), elementalist might not be the best class for you.

I use Lightning Hammer. It has huge AoE in its swings, and it applies blindness during the third hit. So as long as you lay down blindness quickly enough, you should usually get out of multi-aggro fights with relatively few scratches because enemies keep missing you.

If the enemies attack really fast though (blindness only applies to their next attack), you’re kind of boned when using this method. Keep an Arcane Shield handy just in case.

i think I recall this quest… or at least one thats similar. I actually found it to be easy to avoid the weapons on the ground, as they turned out to be pretty easy to spot. So while Trehearne was working on being a completely useless mix of useless and use imparied, I just avoied those areas where the 2-3 weapons were and everything worked out

I’ve had no issues so far with a full glass cannon build all power and crit duel daggers and all of my gear is mostly scrub green / blue drops with + find magic gems socketed and no matching sigils, basically a no effort build, oh on top of that I’ve not reached the 2 gold mark yet so I don’t even have full traits unlocked yet..

I stopped doing story quests at around level 15 and restarted them when I reached around 65, at the moment I am level 80 with my story on 72 so as for the comment on not being higher level then the quest I don’t think it factors in much.

A tip of sorts for harder missions that I have learned to exploit, if you know that the mobs are going to put the hurt on your then do your best to get at least one mob to low health then switch targets and try not to kill it, if then you do end up getting knocked down just kill it and get back up.

My problem is that I’m playing staff ele, and in story quests where I have a tough NPC ally (Trahearne, for example) and am expected to fight 10 or 12 mobs, what happens is I lay down a single AoE and every single mob breaks from the NPC and comes straight for me, ignoring the ally completely. Which is a problem, because, you know, elementalist. And the NPCs don’t contribute enough damage to actually help me out.

I know how to swap attunements, and I do it – 30 points in arcane – but when all my CC is on cooldown there’s not much left to do.

sometimes you arent forec to kill some mobs, those pale tree swords…i jsut skipped them but ohkitteni had a good time with the eye

rickets.1386:

For your specific story quest and the sword/shields spawning on you i used the following set up.
[Wall of text]
Thats for ele, now if you bring a warrior buddy to help just stand there while he charges then uses 100 blades and continue on your way.

That made my evening. Thank you.

szthesquid.9576:

My problem is that I’m playing staff ele, and in story quests where I have a tough NPC ally (Trahearne, for example) and am expected to fight 10 or 12 mobs, what happens is I lay down a single AoE and every single mob breaks from the NPC and comes straight for me, ignoring the ally completely. Which is a problem, because, you know, elementalist. And the NPCs don’t contribute enough damage to actually help me out.

I know how to swap attunements, and I do it – 30 points in arcane – but when all my CC is on cooldown there’s not much left to do.

A good tip if your ever doing any quest with a ncp (or one of your summons) is to tell them attack first they do rubbish damage but usally last long enough for a few aoes with out having the group arrgo towards you.