Guild Wars 2

So at the moment I am a level 74 elementalist using Staff. My build is setup for healing and DPS and my trait lines are only built for Fire, Air, and Arcane. 20+ in each.

Cleaning Fire and and Arcane Wave are two of the best spells and have mild cool down times. Conjure Fiery Great Sword is great for champs and vets. Most of the time you want to sit back and put a lot of ranged damage on the enemies while keeping your distance using air and water spells healing as necessary.

One ele by itself gets owned pretty quick but if you have someone else next to you playing as an ele, you can take down a champ reasonably fast. Each person needs to gain aggro of the champ before it hits the other person. Air push and static field work well for mitigating damage.

Ele is a glass cannon, but I promise you that if the enemy at your current level starts hitting you and you don’t kite, you will die before they will no matter how far down their health is.

If you are having problems and are complaining about how the elementalist is underpowered or nerfed or whatever, stop soloing everything and grab a buddy, I promise you from my 74 levels of experience that it makes a HUGE difference.

From my time I’ve noticed that Rangers, Eles, Guardians, and Engineers work great with your ele. Warriors, and thieves do ok but thieves have the ability to lose aggro with enemies directing all attention to you. Its never pretty. Mesmers are a good distraction and can help you with kiting style combat but keep in mind that they can mitigate their aggro a little by creating clones which will give them a better fighting chance in combat than you.

Your hardest hitting stuff is going to be fire damage. Extend burning duration as long as possible but also be sure to include a little vitality and toughness otherwise you will be down praying that your burning duration really hangs in there and takes out more of the enemy’s life so you have a chance to rally.

If you notice you are dying more than anyone else in your group, don’t blame them, blame you. What could you be doing differently to keep from getting high repair bills? How are your traits set up? What kind of spells are you using?

Fire = DPS
Water = Healing
Air = Crowd Control
Earth = Condition Stacking

Depending on what you are wanting to do, you need to really stick with that particular attunement.

Everyone wants to fight… remember that. Nothing wrong with fighting but think abou this. Who is buffing allies, who is healing? If no one else is doing either of these things, take the initiative and start healing. You have mild attacks with water and stronger attacks with Air and Earth. You can get your damage in while you heal your team. Two things are going to happen here:

1. You wont die
2. Your team will appreciate you for it.

There are many other ways to play as an ele but this has worked for me and I haven’t complained too much about it. If you still want to cry over how little damage you do, ask your buddy how much they are. About level 45-50 a ranger I was playing with did about 90 dmg per hit, I did about 220 dmg per hit not counting criticals. That is a huge difference granted the Ranger can do about 1 1/2 attacks per my one. thats still 130 dmg per my 220.

At level 75 there is no way for an ele to go head to head with an enemy. You WILL die.. no question about it.

Kiting may not be fair but it is your lifeline with sustaining. It may take you 20 minutes to kill a trash mob, but hey, no repair cost. And saving 5s is completely fine with me.

If you still want to complain about the ele, go for it, but anyone who is a level 70+ ele will tell you the same thing, change how you play.

hint – upgrades help a lot, just be sure not to use your really good stuff unless you have black lion salvaging kits or your gear is level 80.

Feel free to add to this if you have more tips for Staff, S/D, S/F, D/F, or D/D, or corrections to what I’ve said.

No need for thanks, lets keep this clean with just tips so its easier to read through.

I stopped reading when you said “elementalists are glass cannons”. They’re not. They’re only that way if you build it that way, which you are doing, especially if you’re gonna use staff. Nothing against you, but I feel like people assume elementalists are the typical “mage”, when they’re really not.

In GW1 for example, I specialized in obscure build for the elementalists which defeats the common conventions of “glass cannon”. Some of the builds I made include a tanky dps build that face tanks mobs better than warriors, (and still did very high aoe dmg) an assassin-burst build using daggers that can also face tank to a small degree (keep in mind in guild wars 1 daggers are not meant to be for elementalists).

While the transition from GW1 to GW2 has brought eles closer to the conventional mage, there are still MANY great builds that make eles much more than the typical glass cannon class, and I’m pretty sure that’s what Anet wanted considering they advertise elementalists as the versatility class. I play D/D and I easily go toe to toe with all but the most difficult champion mobs. (There are some with lower hp that you can wear down), and unless I’m not paying attention I can take on a few mobs at once.

I know you’re trying to help, but don’t advertise a narrow perspective. People need to have their eyes opened to the other possibilities.

mildocjr.4037:

Kiting may not be fair but it is your lifeline with sustaining. It may take you 20 minutes to kill a trash mob, but hey, no repair cost. And saving 5s is completely fine with me.

No that is not okay, no class should have to struggle to kill 1 trash mob.

mildocjr.4037:

If you still want to complain about the ele, go for it, but anyone who is a level 70+ ele will tell you the same thing, change how you play.

The problem with this forum isn’t just the whinning, its the answers too. Everything is just a L2P issue right?

Being the best Elementalist isn’t gonna make your damage on par with other classes hit per hit.
Being the best Elementalist isn’t gonna make your skill animate faster.
Being the best Elementalist isn’t gonna make your traits sync better with the class.
Being the best Elementalist isn’t gonna make your elites more worth wild

Veenix.5248:

mildocjr.4037:

Kiting may not be fair but it is your lifeline with sustaining. It may take you 20 minutes to kill a trash mob, but hey, no repair cost. And saving 5s is completely fine with me.

No that is not okay, no class should have to struggle to kill 1 trash mob.

mildocjr.4037:

If you still want to complain about the ele, go for it, but anyone who is a level 70+ ele will tell you the same thing, change how you play.

The problem with this forum isn’t just the whinning, its the answers too. Everything is just a L2P issue right?

Being the best Elementalist isn’t gonna make your damage on par with other classes hit per hit.
Being the best Elementalist isn’t gonna make your skill animate faster.
Being the best Elementalist isn’t gonna make your traits sync better with the class.
Being the best Elementalist isn’t gonna make your elites more worth wild

As unfortunate it may be, it’s hard to dispute your statements, though the OP is trying to help, but advising CHANGE, not “L2P”.

There are small exceptions to your statements though. The D/D auramancer build deals a lot of damage, maybe not in one single skill but in consistent damage. Spikes of 3-4k is common for one firegrab. (one w/o crit and one w/ crit) It doesn’t rely much on the element specific traits, and is effective enough that an elite isnt mandatory for success. (not that it makes our elites worthy of being lackluster) For the time being, eles just have to choose from a few select premium builds to do well.

Shadowflare.2759:

As unfortunate it may be, it’s hard to dispute your statements, though the OP is trying to help, but advising CHANGE, not “L2P”.

There are small exceptions to your statements though. The D/D auramancer build deals a lot of damage, maybe not in one single skill but in consistent damage. Spikes of 3-4k is common for one firegrab. (one w/o crit and one w/ crit) It doesn’t rely much on the element specific traits, and is effective enough that an elite isnt mandatory for success. (not that it makes our elites worthy of being lackluster) For the time being, eles just have to choose from a few select premium builds to do well.

But now your delving into nothing I mentioned, Condition damage is fine, since its a constant. not per hit which hit per hit, we aren’t on par with alot of other classes, Condition and frontal AoE cones are fine cause you don’t have to rely on a slow animation to deal the damage. (cones are instant and as long as you keep it on target your fine and if you don’t you atleast deal damage for the time you did). I never meant that one should rely on elites for success.

Am just summing up some of the biggest complaints in the forum that cant be solved by just simply playing better. “Change the way you play” is just a nicer way to say “L2P”, since in both cases your doing something wrong. All in all cases what I touched on isn’t gonna solve itself simply by playing better or different.

*webpage bugged and can’t quote;
We don’t HAVE TO match others hit per hit. If we did we would be OP considering how many more skills we have. More importantly I do just as much if not more than other classes in a fight, and taking less damage, even if I do have to use more skills. Having to combo is our class design, there’s not much we can do to change that.

Those issues are present and can only be fixed by reworks from Anet, but as of now there are ways to get around it. So the “change” isn’t just “learn to play”, but rather to find those exceptions and make use of them.

As an aside, it is also true that many elementalists don’t make the best use of their profession. I’ve seen plenty of them in pvp.

The exception to work around our slow animations is to not use them ?
Our burst damage isn’t on par so our work around is to deal damage in condition damage.

These aren’t exceptions, this is ignoring the problem. I never mentioned once that the class doesn’t rely on combos nor should we not have too. I never said the class should be more streamlined nor it has too many buttons to press.

And yes those are present and ONLY anet can fix it. That’s my point.