Guild Wars 2

I’ve got a level 8 norn ele that I hope to bring up, but what I’m wondering is… how do I get the best out of him?

I played an engineer to 80 before, and it was a smooth, easy ride. But so far, I’m having trouble with the ele. I use two daggers, and am finding that fire specc annihilates things really well, but you are a wet tissue, and if you don’t go fire spec, you can’t kill anything.

Any strategies, utilities and weapons I ought to look out for?

I’m leveling mine with a staff, it’s not as fast, but you can fairly easily pull groups and survive if you juggle attunements well. It’s absurdly strong for group pve as well

Dual dagger is not really meant for early level PvE. You need a bit of defense in your skills, traits or gear to make that work.

It doesn’t have enough CC and you can’t kite with them all too well. In a1v1 situation, it is manageable, but anything more than that will be trouble.

If you want to level without a hitch, I would recommend staff or scepter/dagger. If you really want to do dual daggers, then you need skills like Arcane Shield, Mist Form and Arcane Wave to make fights as short and safe as possible.

Staff, heal glyph, arcane shield, arcane wave and whatever else

Killing 1-2 mobs takes a little longer than S/D or D/D

Having the ability to run with perma speed, and down groups of 3-4 mobs by blowing all your utilities is very nice

This is what I found really effective build up to lvl70.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#Mcbc9czMvmlMMvmlMG0GaGcomRVVR

You can swap the 10 from water into earth if you want more damage, but then you cut down on survivability.
Just start with Earths 2, immediately after the cast e-5, swap to fire, f-2, f-3 and autoattack to death. (Get condition dmg gear when you get a chance to make it much easier)

On the topic of conditions.

Is it possible to go for a power build as an elementalist?

I greatly prefer power to conditions builds for many reasons.

You can, just don’t get hit, and work those evasions like an FPS game

I also agree with Dynamite above: Scepter/Dagger for solo leveling provides a nice well rounded set of medium-range skills. It has a nice +Might combo in there (Ring of Fire + Phoenix + Dragon’s Tooth), and what survivability you need you can get from the other Utility slots.

But keep your Staff as close to level appropriate as possible though for DEs that have swarms (like Centaurs or Bandits) because Staff is the king of combos and AOE.

I like Dagger/Dagger for those occasions when I just to beat something down. But the range is too close, as you have found out

Tip 1. DON’T !

Tip 2. DON’T !

Tip 3. DON’T !

Darkeh.4539:

Tip 1. DON’T !

Tip 2. DON’T !

Tip 3. DON’T !

Ignore this guy. Elementalist are very powerful when played right. They are probably the highest level of difficulty with the most options and because of this, many people gave up and went Thief.

All of the weapons are great for leveling, just go with what you feel works best. For me, I liked Sceptre and Dagger for leveling with the Sigil for 25 stacks of extra condition damage. I spent most of my time in Earth attunement stacking mobs with dots and then aoeing them down. I was always a fan of condition damage though. Other Elementalist prefer the burst damage.

Leveling in this game is really easy though. I don’t think any build will speed it up or slow you down much, unless you die a lot. Most your experience comes from events, unless you decide to craft to 80 by buying gold.

Huh you use Earth for DoT stacks? I need to try that. So far I’ve been almost exclusively Fire, only trying on the other ones in DEs/groups and then generally just with Staff.

I did use Earth for DoT stacks. I am not saying it is the most efficient means to level, but it worked for me and I had fun doing it. I could also safely rush into events and pull agro, which it seems Elementalist do without doing a ton of damage, without worrying about getting killed in 2 seconds.

Gear for Vit/Power, and upgrade for toughness. It makes a truly monstrous amount of difference. Ele has plenty of damage to go around, no need to emphasize the glass part of your cannon.

Also, kite and evade like a boss. Even with tanky gear, you’re no tank. It just gives you breathing room to control the battlefield.

I played around with S/D and D/D while I was leveling, but I found myself using the staff for everything later in the game. With just Arcane Shield as a fall back I find that you can drop most enemies with an Eruption opener, followed by another Eruption and a Lava Font over it. This give you the lovely might stacks and if you bring Arcane Wave (I usually bring dual elementals with the Signet of Water) you get even more might and guaranteed critical damage.

I specced into earth early to get access to the toughness and condition damage, then went for the arcane points (the atunement swapping buffs are amazing) and only then did I go into fire (fire traits don’t really get me too excited). Earth Trait III is a major life saver and I would spring for it early on.

I tried to focus on Cdamage when leveling but really… I just threw on whatever they gave me. Also, as has been said before…don’t get smashed in the face…It doesn’t usually end up in your favor.

Pro tip

Glyph of storms earth attuned
With this you can kill any amount of mobs that you can ball up on a lavafonts aoe.

Also you don´t need to think about build when levelling, i just dumped all i had into fire and water lines and still haven´t bothered to respec after having cleared orr.