Guild Wars 2

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

I was strictly referring to PvE, dynamic events to be specific. I have no experience with an Elementalist in PvP.

I made a video to show the problems I’m having.

I’m not saying I did those encounters perfectly, because I know I didn’t. However, when I was leveling my other classes, I went through the above encounters without much issue. I have to put in 5x the effort with my Elementalist just to achieve results similar to my other classes.

From my perspective, it just feels like the risk/reward for the Elementalist class could be a bit better.

I see a few areas you may consider focusing on.

1) Dodges – you blow several useless dodges, and don’t dodge the incredibly telegraphed knockdown by the husk, opening yourself up for quite a bit of damage.
2) You auto-attack a lot… – Ele damage, utility, etc, all come from using our other skills frequently. Additionally, you’re using staff air AA, if you want to AA, do it in fire at least.
3) You don’t blast finish fields – you could heal yourself for much more, chill, apply might, etc… all useful tools to us. Learn your fields and blast finishers in and out – we rely on these in many specs.
4) You also seem to focus on Vets – kill the easy targets first, like all the regular adds you aggro.
5) Review your spec possibly. 30/30/10/0/0 or 30/30/0/0/10 is a nice easy setup for staff.

I am not sure what you are running trait-wise, but consider using a different heal as well. Staff attacks are slow, the signet relies on quick casts for heals. If you have the points for it, the arcane blast finisher is a great heal, especially for staff, as you can drop a water field, and hit your heal to get a blast finisher-heal out of it as well.

I don’t want this to come off the wrong way, and my points above are meant to possibly help you play ele a bit better, but if you are not enjoying it – then perhaps focus on something more in-line with your enjoyment and effort level. Ele is fun for me, precisely because it is slightly more complex. I enjoy having to stance-dance, and pull off combos.

GW2 overall though is an incredibly simple MMO – most classes don’t even have many options beyond auto-attack with the occasional other ability every once in a while, and for many classes AA is simply the best damage option… Which means GW2 gameplay is overly simple – this may lead you to conclude ele is out of place in this situation. Which is true, but thankfully it is, otherwise I’d be bored to tears! I guess, tldr: if you don’t enjoy the complexity, re-focus on a different class.