Guild Wars 2

Ok, so we all have problems playing this class and the ‘elite’ players just keep saying that you need to switch attunments. But I wanted to start a thread on what you may or may not know as an elementalist that might help you play better.

1. Learn your spells, all of them. It takes a while to unlock them, but having all the elements and spells unlocked for all weapons will makes how you approach different areas easier.

2. Learn to “dance”, how much you need to though will be personal preference. but you have 4 elements and related abilites, use them to your advantage. If you want faster access you will need to invest in arcana. 10 points reduced my 15 to 12 seconds and now gives me a boon for a few seconds when I switch to different elements.

3. Turn on “Fast Cast ground-targeting”. This means that when you have a ground target spell, when you use it it will cast at where your mouse is pointing instantly with no indicator. Since a lot of our spells are ground targeting it will free up your mobility to be able to keep running while throwing out a dragon tooth or Phoenix. This in under options/combat.

4. Invest in condition damage, this is probably what will damage your enemies most and make you the most deadly. Since earth and fire have the easiest time putting on conditions, this will help you a LOT.

Good tips. I would like to add a couple tips of my own, and encourage others to do so as well. These forums are so bogged down with negativity and defeatism it’s refreshing to see something positive.

5. Stick with one weaponset until you really master it. The Ele is a machine of versatility, and as a consequence, we have more to learn with our 20 weapon skills than other classes do. I find it much easier to get really skilled with one weaponset rather than trying to learn all of the weapons at once. Yes, it’s worth learning all the weapons, but try learning one at a time. It’ll help in the long run.

6. Arcana is not completely vital to succeed. I can’t stress that one enough. If you feel it’s vital (instead of a nice compliment to the Eles skills), you’re probably swapping attunements too quickly. Think about it. Even though you can swap faster with points in arcana, it doesn’t make your actual weapon skills cool down any faster. Make use of all of your elements rather than spamming your heavy skills. Most of those skills are better used as needed. If you just cycle through and hit your cooldowns as quickly as you can, it means those skills will still be on cooldown when you need them the most.

I don’t like fast targetting, I move with zsqd (azerty) and my right mouse button. It’s handy to see a circle where the cast is going to land and how wide it’s going to be.

Roziel.5720:

4. Invest in condition damage, this is probably what will damage your enemies most and make you the most deadly. Since earth and fire have the easiest time putting on conditions, this will help you a LOT.

I disagree, leave condition damage to engineers and necros.

I’m a relative newb, but would add:

5b. As a build on #5 above. Play how you like. Eles are just that versatile. There’s no one perfect way to play that will work equally well in soloing, DEs, Dungeons, sPvP nor WvWvW. So focus on mastery the Ele around your own playstyle. That will then make it easier to hone in on which weapons, upgrades, traits and skills you’ll prefer.

7. Learn your Combo Fields and Finishers. Elementalists get quite a few that are useful both solo and in groups.

At the same time, I am with Burrid. I prefer needing to click the ground for targeting. I never know where my mouse is gonna be when I spaz out against six targets

@ Eicherjw:

Well that is ok if you don’t like that suggestion. Personally I find bleeds/burns with the scepter to be especially deadly especially in pve, but also in pvp. What do you prefer with your elementalist?

A tip that hasn’t been mentioned yet: rebind the attunement keys.

You need to be able to switch quickly, which isn’t possible using the default binds. They need to be bound someplace you can easily reach. (Mine are shift+1 through shift+4, for example.)

3. Turn on “Fast Cast ground-targeting”.

I’d personally advise against doing this. Having an indicator where the spell will land is great. If you are holding the right mouse button, it will show the indicator where your mouse was when you clicked, and you can just press the spell’s hotkey again to trigger it, since left click doesn’t work when holding right click.

Truga.5897:

3. Turn on “Fast Cast ground-targeting”.

I’d personally advise against doing this. Having an indicator where the spell will land is great. If you are holding the right mouse button, it will show the indicator where your mouse was when you clicked, and you can just press the spell’s hotkey again to trigger it, since left click doesn’t work when holding right click.

That depends on circumstances. In a keep fight I usually like to turn off fast targeting to place aoes on the walls, but in ground fights I feel I’m a lot slower with just a single key press.

Also, don’t discount eles condition damage. If you slot full bleed duration, a single hit with eruption will hit for ~1.3 heavy golems worth of health if it really ticks to the end. Granted, it’s easy to just step out of it, and people will rarely let it tick to the end, but at at ~5s cast time aoe (although blasting staff is bugged for it atm) it does somewhat pressure condition removal, which alone is somewhat valuable.

8. When levelling use both elemental pets at the same time to tank (glyph of lesser elementals and the elite elemental skill) – makes life much easier

9. As for runes etc go for power, vitality & toughness on all weapons armour & jewellery

How about a tip for me in regards to the most optimal gear type to get -

I’m a tailor and can make my own stuff but I’m not sure what I should be using? Carrion, clerics? A mix? I’m aiming for staff: 0/10/0/30/30

Roziel.5720:

@ Eicherjw:

Well that is ok if you don’t like that suggestion. Personally I find bleeds/burns with the scepter to be especially deadly especially in pve, but also in pvp. What do you prefer with your elementalist?

D/D with lots of power/per/crit dmg
I found waiting for S/D 2/3 to hit takes forever in pvp.

TeamRaveGreen.6917:

I’m a tailor and can make my own stuff but I’m not sure what I should be using? Carrion, clerics? A mix? I’m aiming for staff: 0/10/0/30/30

You’ll want a lot of toughness to survive spikes (we have very low base health), after that add in your offensive stats of choice. Cleric’s is good for me, but Knights and Soldiers are both solid. Whatever you get, gem to fill in the gaps. (Tough/Power/Prec gear? Gem for Vit/Power/x)

Re #1. Inside and out. ie. Phoenix gives 100% endurance regeneration which roughly equals twice as many dodges. I don’t think there is a better go-to defensive move than dodge. The devil is in the details of all these skills. Little things matter, alot.

The idea is to kill them before you need to dodge.

Stacking condition damage is pointless, 12 stacks of bleed is still just one condition and can be easily removed.

And giving up the extra crit damage isnt anywhere close to being worth it.

As an Elementalist if you plan on killing anyone with reasonable success you have to use burst damage, and stacking condition to make 55 damage bleeds turn into 75 damage bleeds isnt going to do as much for you vs turning a 2.5k hit into a 3.5k hit.

But honestly with burns not stacking, and bleeds being all removed with a single condition removal AND the damage increase from heavy stacking being so poor….

Condition = not worth it, as you are better off killing someone in the same time it takes you to otherwise get them down to 70% life.

3. Turn on “Fast Cast ground-targeting”.

as some have said, I don’t like doing this too much either. I prefer to see my target reticle, mostly to see if i’m trying to cast something out of range. In addition, simply double tapping the spell key will set it off where your cursor is. This is nearly as fast as “fast ground targeting” but lets the reticle flash real quick before the spell executes.

Stacking condition damage is pointless, 12 stacks of bleed is still just one condition and can be easily removed.

And giving up the extra crit damage isnt anywhere close to being worth it.

As an Elementalist if you plan on killing anyone with reasonable success you have to use burst damage, and stacking condition to make 55 damage bleeds turn into 75 damage bleeds isnt going to do as much for you vs turning a 2.5k hit into a 3.5k hit.

I kinda find the opposite, given that one doesn’t stack condition damage in excess. PvP-wise, I have found it nearly impossible to stack enough power and crit to burn someone down before they have a chance to react. And by stacking all the “burst” stats, you make yourself ridiculously squishy and an easy target.

That being said, I don’t really “stack” a ton of condition damage either (it’s a poor stat really, you only get a small percent for bleeding, a bit more for burning). But I DO stack vitality, toughness, and a bit of crit chance (mostly to set off my “on crit” sigil). Other classes only have so much condition removal and once that’s on cooldown bleeds/burns start adding up. They are far from worthless. As D/D in PvP, I find that putting up bleeds/burns combined with moderate/low burst while remaining ridiculously tanky and hard to hit myself (I run 3 cantrips) is pretty effective.

To each his own though, which proves that this class is rather versatile.

I reccommend rebinding the Attunements also.

I use the Nostromos and the Naga and binding them to ALT + 1-4 made changing between elements the easiest. I actually re-bound these keys the moment i got my second attunement at like level 3-4.

I prefere a staff. I’ve always preferred caster classes in MMOs, and i’ve tried playing with other weapon sets, but I always end up back at the staff.

I definitely use the double pets for tanking (but sometimes aren’t that helpful).

It also definitely helps to cycle thorugh the attunements. I usually try to go through all four in order during an event/champion fight (since i have the time). Usually by the time I get back to the first attunement, the skill are off cooldown and ready to use again.

It was hard to get used to swapping attunements. In the beginning, I didn’t see why I should have to unless i want to play the different styles, but now i’ve seen that it helps keep the dmg output up when you can cast other spells from other attunements while some or recharging.

Tip for PvP S/D Ele’s:

When fighting against Melee: don’t feel compelled to start every engagement with RTL and UD. Air 1 & 2 do decent dmg from range and force them to make the first move. When they do it will be obvious and gives you a chance to blind them (air 3) and in most cases blow an important skill CD. Then UD at short range so they can’t avoid. When they’re down and stationary is when RTL is least likely to bug out and will put you back in range to drop your Fire combos and Earth knock down while they’re still getting back up.

When fighting against Ranged: don’t stand back and take the pewpew. Get right on top of them. Getting in their face and putting immediate pressure on them is a sure fire way to force them into blowing CDs before they’ll want to and tilting the fight in your favor.

Investing 20 points into arcana is totally worth it if you are playing a staff ele (for the larger aoe, fury and boons on attunement). I also really like the air master trait Inscription. Use the glyph of elemental storms and the elemental summons. So many boons. Also pay careful attention to the damage delay on a lot of the skills. Damage is calculated at the point it is applied, so swapping attunements just before they hit for the fury bonus is huge. In general with staff I use the following combination: earth→2, 4 => water→2,4 => fire→2 then I use arcane wave for the fire combo field. If you time it properly, all your damage will hit at approximately the same time, at which point you will have at least 4 stacks of might + fury (you can get up to 8 stacks of might with this build, 9 if they ever fix Glyph of Elementals (elite)). Who says eles dont have burst damage lol?

As a mostly WvW Elementalist with staf i have to say don’t use the fast ground targeting as it can screw up some of the difficult corners for hitting siege equipments just right.

I play a Fire 30/Water 0/Air 30/Earth 10/Arcane 0/ build focussing on crit and spell duration (moventspeed). Get the vulnability stack on crit sigil on the staf.
The way i play it is i want to have my aoe spells last as long as i can. As then i can keep people of places i don’t want them to be at. If then someone is stupid enough to stay on the place of my aoe you can nuke him down with Fire 5/ Fire 2/ Fire 3 / Arcaneblast / Autoattack(s). This works way better then people expect.

As Elementalist we are very social beings in WvW. We like to have our people around and using a Teleport/ Air 5 / Air 3 to stun/knock a enemy into your group is very effective.

Keep mobile, keep social and keep active.