Guild Wars 2

Alright. I’m currently playing a level 35 elementalist, and it’s been nothing short of a rocky road. My traits are all over the place, I still can’t settle on a weapon set to fight with, and I die a lot. A whole lot. I feel like 1/3 of my levels are actually from crafting, rather than from exploring or doing events. Because this character isn’t my main, I’ve still been enjoying the game, it’s just that it’s taken two months to get him where my first character took a few weeks, and it hasn’t really been all that fun getting here!

I know the easiest route would be to delete my character and start fresh with a profession I haven’t tried yet, because the elementalist isn’t for me, but I’ve gotten attached to the character himself, just not playing as him- and I really don’t want to get rid of 350+ levels in cooking. So, I pose the question once again: how do I make the elementalist work for me?

I almost entirely play solo PvE. WvWvW and PvP aren’t really my thing, and I feel like if I can’t handle playing PvE well at all with an elementalist, it’s completely pointless to even try the other two. Solo is because A) I am not a very social person, especially not in MMOs, and I feel like trying to make friends or form parties is very pushy of me and overreaching, because I play at very odd hours for a player on a US server, and C) because I am in a very small guild made up of people I know from outside Guild Wars, who never play the game when I do.

Other than this elementalist, I play a ranger, a mesmer, a warrior, and a necromancer. The latter three are all in their low teens in terms of level, so I’m still feeling them out, but I just this past week hit level 80 on the ranger, my main, and have played extensively on him. With said ranger, I’ve had fun with almost every weapon and combination of weapons, but I tend to go with greatsword/shortbow as my weapons of choice. I also like sword/dagger with him, but I am not as adept with them. His traits are almost entirely geared towards power/beastmastery, and I tend to stick to pets that apply bleeds. With the warrior, I still haven’t tried every weapon, but I enjoy greatswords and hammers a lot so far. With the mesmer I am in much the same boat, but I recently stumbled onto using sceptre/torch and switching between that and a greatsword to great effect.

I’ve tried fighting with daggers/dagger, dagger/focus, scepter/dagger, scepter/focus, and staff. The first three combinations were where I had the most success, but they just felt “off”. I’m also not very well-versed in keeping mobile while fighting/switching up elements on the fly. My crappy laptop with no external mouse doesn’t exactly work wonders for anything like kiting, and I think I’m just not very good at playing the game like that.

Anybody got any advice?

I might suggest sticking to one or two weapon sets to start with and really learning them well. That’s a key for an Ele because we have so many skills and ways to use them together, so you need to master the ones you’ll use. There are weapons I never touch like MH Dagger and OH Focus so you don’t need to learn it all if there are things you’ll never use. Personally I used Scepter/Dagger for solo leveling and doing hearts and things and had Staff for group events, dungeons, and WvW. At 80 I use Staff nearly 100% of the time now with the things I’m doing and practice really makes the difference.

Also decide what you’re going to do with your trait build and stick with that as well, don’t go all over. I might reccomend starting with 20 points in Arcane and after that decide if you want more damage or survivability. I went for a bit of both and did points in both Water and Fire, but my overall build is focused on the survivability and support aspect with just enough damage to be decent.

As for the kiting, moving a lot, and switching attunements, that’s a key part of being an Ele so just practice that a bit. But you will need to buy an external mouse although you can get one for cheap that’ll work fine – you can’t play an MMO like this properly with a default laptop finger mouse because it is much more action oriented than some games.

Also don’t ever say you’re not good at the game or can’t do something. Anyone can play well with practice and a bit of research on their class. I see a lot of people with comments like that (in other games as well) and the truth is everyone was a newbie at one point, they just don’t talk about it – they focus on improving.

Good advice Leioni.

No build will make the Elementalist an easy class to play, but sticking with a weaponset and a build will give you the practice you need to master him.

Learning all your 20 skills is very important. I would suggest you chose one set of weapons for now and stick to them.

Change attunements fast. The strenght of the Ele is to have 20 skills available, not to have 5 and change them accordanly to other 5.

To make the above mentioned easier, maybe place a second macro for attunements. being able to switch attunements swiftly and easily is what makes this class be any good. The combination of macro I have been using and works for me so far has been; Alt + 1, Alt + 2, ect…

My tip is: Lvl with dagger/dagger for a while. Nothing will teach you how to combo, switch attunements and how to kite as DD(Plus, the amount of destruction you can unleash using daggers is amazing). As i’m still lvling, I am mostly playing solo pve as well and there are a couple things you gotta learn/accept before you play the ele.

1st: You’re going to die. Dying is okay. You can leave the mobs around in a word of so much hurt however, that you should be able to get back up pretty fast.
2nd: You need to switch atunements. While is perfectly fine to keep up fire and auto-atacking when fighting a single mob, once you start facing 3+ in a single fight, you are going to need all your skills to fight them. There are plenty ways to daze/slow/chill/bleed and burn them down, so be sure to use them.
3rd: If you’re not having fun, but like the idea/skills of elementalist go play some other class and come back later. I rolled a guardian shortly after I got my ele to lvl 30 and started playing. Since that is a class that can aford to get hit a bit more, I was able to learn exactly when to block/evade atacks, and that helped me a lot when I went back to the elementalist

Kthr.2781:

1st: You’re going to die. Dying is okay. You can leave the mobs around in a word of so much hurt however, that you should be able to get back up pretty fast.

This I disagree with. An Ele doesn’t have to die and you should focus on playing well enough that you don’t. If one weapon set/build/playstyle isn’t working out for you, try something else.

So if you leveled to 35 with 1/3 from crafting you have actually played ele for about 20 levels, or the equivilent of about the starter area plus one? That is way too early to be proficient in more than one weapon set, let alone five. Cut the profession some slack. You’re just getting started.

Wow, I am super-pleased with the feedback I’m getting from you guys! I can’t say any one answer is conclusively the solution to my problem until I try to put this advice into action, but basically everyone has put in some very helpful data for my perusal.

@Leiloni: I really appreciate your comment here. You don’t tend to hear a lot of encouragement in this vein when playing games, especially not MMOs. I’m definitely going to respec with more focus in Arcana once I hit level 40, and I’m going to try to stick with dagger/dagger like Kthr recommended. As for the mouse, I can’t really go out and buy one right now, but I will see if the mouse that came with my tablet is anywhere and isn’t as buggy as when I tried to play Mass Effect with it on my old computer. Anything’s better than nothing!

@Kthr: As luck has it, I was planning on going with D/D for the next few levels or so. Now I’m thinking I’ll keep the set on me longer, so I can really get the hang of things. And on the note of testing out other classes, I actually am trying now to play more on my mesmer character, since the traits of the class seem better suited to feeling out playing a squishy character while still holding on to aspects I’m more familiar with on my ranger.

@Baladir: I’ll try to take it more easy. Sometimes I forget I’m still supposed to be getting the hang of things.

Elementalist is my main, lvl 80 now, played PvE mostly solo with staff, my approach was to play all 5 starter areas first in order not to get too frustrated, then I made rounds of 15-25 maps and so on. Personally, I found Norn maps to be easiest and human maps hardest, not sure why, possibly because human areas have many melee/ranged attackers (centaurs were always my doom, even in personal story), and Norn areas layout allows for some breathing/strolling between fights.
Try to practice dodge – maybe bind it to separate key instead of using double tap, check which one works better for you, also practice the skills that allow you to gain distance from the target or push target away from you.

@Srebrna: You know, you might be on to something about the respective difficulties of areas. My elementalist is a human, and getting through the human areas with him has been slow going (especially with centaurs!), but when I went over to the norn, charr, and sylvari starting areas, I had a much more reasonable time. I think I’ll take a break on human zones while I level and finish more of the starting areas.

Changing elements quickly is key. I have a Razer Nostromo with the F1 – F4 keys programmed to the directional pad for the easiest, fastest changes I can think of. If you have the extra money, I’d recommend you give it a shot if you are having trouble with attunement swapping.

Leiloni.7951:

Kthr.2781:

1st: You’re going to die. Dying is okay. You can leave the mobs around in a word of so much hurt however, that you should be able to get back up pretty fast.

This I disagree with. An Ele doesn’t have to die and you should focus on playing well enough that you don’t. If one weapon set/build/playstyle isn’t working out for you, try something else.

I meant it as more of a general advice while learning the game. You are right of course, and while I died a lot while I was getting the hang of it, now I only do it when I’m fooling around, or get too confident during the earth dagger 5 skill only to get a stun in the face and a bunch of damage from everyone around.

@Diabolicus: I do not have the money. I reeeeeeally do not have the money.

Go to the mists.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/b/b7/Hero_panel_pvp.jpg/250px-Hero_panel_pvp.jpg

this is such a useful tool to learn this class.
play around with the different traits/weapons/bonus’s. use the target dummies, try to beat the npc classes.

Dagger off hand adds so much spice to the class.

@ Ansemaru

A 5 button mouse is good enough. Logitech MX518 is the one I use. For my 4 Attunes it’s Mouse 3,4,z,r. But for the most part, playing as a Human as Ele, I found it also extremely slow leveling in their starting area. But as pretty much what everyone else said, pick a set and stick with it until you know it hands down. I chose Staff and D/D.

Mainly our profession uses Scepter/Dagger, Dagger/Dagger and Staff as our choices. I can tell you first hand as a D/D Ele, that it’s a bit harder than Staff or S/D in terms of leveling because pre 80, you’re pretty much lacking the key traits and stats to really have that survivability. I pretty much hit AC up until around 65-70 before I started venturing out to other dungeons.

Lastly, learn you combo’s and your Attunement swapping rotations (yes, rotations, plural). It’s absolutely key that you learn those 2 things as it is pretty much required to play the class to it’s fullest.

Stick with it, it gets easier down the line and is very rewarding when you pull off fantastic strings.

You could try out this build from from L40 onwards. It revolves around Conjure Lightning Hammer + Water Attunement. It massively improved my survivability for solo PVE and allowed me to take on several mobs at the same time. One downside is that it’s less interesting that learning the various Ele rotations and combos, because you lose the skill bar from your regular weapons.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/65884-the-ultimate-40-elementalist-levelingfarming-build-cantriphammer-build-highest-dps-innate-survivability/