What to do in lvl 80 ?
1.) Yes. Map completion won´t come from doing other stuff, but you can get the hero points from WvW rewards. I would suggest to do Hot Hero points in verdant brink and auric basin to get you elite spec.
2.) You should play around with the build generator and buy exotic gear for the build you want to play. I am in EU and if on at the same time i can help you. There is a threat with names here for serching IG help.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Ele-Official-Ele-Forum-Guild
Do you have any other characters? Or did you just pop the level booster on your only one?
Most people advise against using the Level booster for your first couple of characters, because you NEED time to acclimate to how the game operates, build/trait concepts, and understand class dynamics in general. The lvl 80 boost is best used to create an Alt for other game modes that you don’t plan on playing often, or only need to do one thing in the short term.
As for the gear you get from the lvl 80 boost (Soldiers stats), its actually the least useful stat combination to stack, unless you’re doing WvW as a front line support build. The demo build you’re given by default is basically a hybrid set up with a heavy skew toward defense; and is used to give new players enough durability to not die in 2 hits. Secondly, the sub-par damage purposely prolongs the fights during your demo period in Silverwaste, and is meant to force you to explore all your skills in 1v1 battles.
HOWEVER….. in typical game play, there is a much stronger leaning toward offensive stats, as Dodges are extremely powerful as a defense. You can take less hits in total, but you kill things in half the time, and avoid ALL the damage if you manage your dodges well. This is why your first character should always be leveled normally….. because combat in this game breaks the tank and spank convention that all WoW-like games rely heavily on. The resulting confusion of having to learn a whole new type of combat, and then throw players into the deep end of the game’s Buildcraft, with no clue to how any of it works, frustrates a LOT of players that were expecting GW2 to follow the typical WoW formula.
This is exacerbated further with new players using Elementalist and Mesmers, as they’re subversions of the Mage/Warlock archetypes. Their defense is heavily reliant on their mobility options, and their offense comes from an understanding of mechanical force multipliers. Soldiers becomes kind of a disservice in PvE, as it doesn’t play to either class’s real strengths for Offense or Support, and most of the defense strengths are disconnected from their gear stats.
The problem here is that in hitting Lvl 80, your first order of business should be gearing up for build cohesion. But since you didn’t level normally, and didn’t experimented with trait combinations, you have no clear idea on where to start or how to make that work. Thats really bad, since all content above lv 65 is scaled on much higher difficulty coefficient, because most classes at that point have enough traits to nearly double their combat efficiency. Even if you were to copy a Meta build, and parrot the rotations, you wouldn’t understand how it works or how to adapt the rotations/traits to meet different situations. Thats all things you would normally learn while leveling and fighting otherwise trivially inept mobs.
Another problem is you’re lack of understanding of how the game’s progression works. That’s not really your fault, and is common misunderstanding from players that come out of WoW-esqe types of games. Lvl 80 is the max level cap…. period. The game itself instead works on the idea of Lateral/Diagonal progression. Exotic tiered items represent the game’s base line for a stat cap. From this there are only 2 vertical, single step, paths that represents the entirely to the game’s power creep. Ascended gear, and Elite Specializations.
Ascended gear primarily exists as a Gating mechanism for Fractal Dungeons, and only offers a total of 5% stat gain for 2 whole orders of magnitude increase in cost. Its the only gear which supports Infusion Slots, and houses the Agony resistance needed for higher areas of Fractals. Its about as traditional a gear check as this game gets, and is unnecessary for all other areas of the game. Legendary gear is just an extension of this same system, has the exact same stat cap, and whose only added utility is the ability to change Stats on demand, as well as unlocking unique Cosmetic skins.
Elite Specializations is where most of the power creep in this game comes from. Core Tyria (F2P/base game) gives players the Core Specializations of each class, and is gained over the course of the leveling process. Elite Specializations, which are released along side the expansions, significantly change the mechanical dynamics of a Class, and usually result in a significant power increase against Enemies introduced in that expansion. For Heart of Thorns, a huge emphasis was put on CC skills, Group support, and Group Combat; so each Elite spec gives a net increase in one of these 3 areas. For the next expansion, the power creep will move laterally by having a different build focus, and new spin on each class’s unique mechanics. Since ESpecs have to be loaded in exclusion to each other, vertical progression essentially stops once you have access to at least 1 ESpec for your class.
Mastery points are a completely different animal; and unlock requisite abilities that are needed for the maps under the expansion. Almost all of these are mobility options uniquely suited to traversing the new areas…. though, they ported Gliding into Core Tyria due to sharp increase of fall related deaths. And then later adapted Gliding into some world boss events to make them more interesting.