Guild Wars 2

I dont understand. Maybe I’m just ALWAYS being targeted in dungeons and dying so quickly because of it. I built my elementalist to take hits and deal damage… but it doesnt seem to be too effective.. What am I doing wrong?

I use Signet of Earth/Water/Fire/Restoration for the Toughness/Cure Con./Crit %/Heals.

My stats are…

Power : 1968
Precision : 1612
Toughness : 2138
Vitality : 1032

Attack : 2963
Critical Chance : 38%
Armor : 3058
Health : 11965

So, what do you guys suggest? I tend to get kicked out of groups for allegedly having low dps even though I’m pumping out TONS of AOE damage but everything targets me so I die quick.

elementalists are squishy by design. although your armor is quite high, this may actually be a detriment because numerous mobs specifically target the player with the highest armor. Instead of completely re-gearing, I would suggest going cantrips instead. Put some points into water to get the regen/vigor when you use cantrip for more dodging. In terms of dps output, you may want to avoid stacking tonnes of aoe at once as the huge damage spike will generate aggro. spread it out a bit to maintain the same overall dps without generating too much aggro. Good luck!

Alright Thanks mucho

You have an extremely low health pool. Mine is like close to 18K.

I would really recommend speccing more towards survivability…dead elementalists do no damage, and groups tend to notice the player that is always dying. Get some Vit gear, and spec in water. My build is D/D 0/10/10/30/20…I can literally have a heavy hitting mob on me the entire fight and be okay. I also do pretty good DPS and pump out enough might to increase the entire group’s DPS as well.

I did really well w/ min. 700 healing, min. 2.9-3k armor, and min 14-15k health. Combine that w/ signet of restoration and it makes you really tough to kill. 11-12k is just plain too low for just about anything, though.

Agreed, you just need a bit more health, and skills are some of the main defensive mechanisms on an ele. Always have at least 1 cantrip on your bar.

Alright, thanks for the help guys

“Vitality : 1032”

you need to focus more on your Vitality atm…

Conditions pretty much Ignore Toughness and go straight for your Vitality.

Try to get your HP as close to 18k(+) Health, you should survive a lot more longer.

Anet fail to comprehend the relationship between toughness and Health, which means Vitality is a zillion times more powerful for Elementalists.

What I did was go for vitality, I stacked toughness etc. and saw little difference since light armor can’t get any better really – that was my thought anyway. For the many spells and abilities we have I don’t mind, I don’t die any more or less than anyone else.

Quick Mouse.7635:

avoid stacking tonnes of aoe at once as the huge damage spike will generate aggro. spread it out a bit to maintain the same overall dps without generating too much aggro. Good luck!

Simply not true.

Personaly i usualy do shockwave, glyph of storms, eruption, lavafont, meteor shower and lavafont again on top of mob groups in dungeons, and have this far never drawn aggro when i´m not first to attack, or closer to them than anyone else.

TimeBomb.3427:

11-12k is just plain too low for just about anything, though.

Really? Cause I have ~12k hp and do just fine. Must be doing smth wrong….

Anyway…@OP… Sounds very close to my build. I would suggest Glyph of Storms instead of one of the signets. Using it in earth helps a lot with surviving. From there on, it’s all about kiting the mobs. All it really takes is practice. Ofc, you will still die sometimes, but not nearly often enough to be a problem. Actually, when you get used to the playstyle, you’ll be one of the toughest players in any party. Until then, take thieves, most of them go down so fast and often, nobody would even notice you getting downed xD

As others have said, having a good blend of Vitality, Healing Power, and Toughness generally helps. Also, I’d drop a lot of those signets for cantrips in your utilities and learn to use them effectively, they are get out of jail free cards.

If you are specced heavy into earth, consider speccing into water instead.

Glyph of storms, 8 seconds of practical invulnerability from mobs.
Arcane shield, 3 hits of invulnerability.
Mistform, 3 seconds of invulnerability.

Throw those on your bar and you´re pretty darn durable if you´re even passable kiter. If even that´s not enough then you will just need to kite better, lot´s of tips floating on these forums on how to do it.

Dont forget Earth Armor. Stability can be a live safer. I only say AC explorer and the nice knockdown from certain mobs. No fun lying on the floor and seeing your health drain fast. Lightning flash is also helpful when lying on the floor.

Sometimes, haters are gonna hate. Last night the AC exp troll spawned in that path between the spiders and everything else, so we had to deal with it in case we needed the camp waypoint. I got though a couple iterations of my normal skill rotation, then all of a sudden the troll just decided that it wanted me gone. Even with 2 guardians (one with comparable level equipment to mine) in the party. I mistimed a roll and ended up just inside the blast radius of the AoE downing, and I got pummeled. Then he proceeded to club me while I was trying to recover from being downed. Then he would focus on anyone trying to rez me. It was just one of those fights.

I even have days when everything still “likes” me more than the rest of my small 2 or 3 person map completion party. Some of it I guess is just luck – but I would have to guess that getting too many crits on a creature may bug them, and I’m pretty sure having a high toughness also draws things. Straight damage spikes I don’t think draw as much aggro. I run about 1500/1500 toughness/vitality and have 30 in water for all the heals and condition removal.

Understanding and getting good at dodge rolling is probably your #1 defense tool as an elementalist. Having a good escape tool such as Armor of Earth, Mist Form, or Lightning Flash is good, as well as using your Air and Earth skills to interrupt/blind and Water to slow. Unfortunately, Elementalists really do have to work a lot harder at staying alive than most other classes.

Less toughness more vitality.

Vit>Toughness

Armor = defense + toughness.

light armor users get more bang for their buck for toughness compared to other classes because they have higher defense on their armor.

Not to say you should ignore vitality, because it is your only defense against condition damage, but a little of both can go a long way.

In dungeons/pve you don’t really need either as much as you need endurance and a way to remove conditions. No need for vitality against burning if you can remove it, no need for toughness against burst if you can dodge it.

my ele has good survivability in WvW. I have maxed states on precision, vitality and 10 into arcane. Thanks to runes/sigils and some lucky excellent gold dropped weps I still have the power I want for my primarily-used D/D wep set (which hits hard anyway). But maxing out your vitality, you can run soothing mist when attuned to water (regen) and also get a health boost just by attuning to water. The ele hits hard enough, don’t waste those points on power, use them for survivability, and I find that vitality points seem to keep me alive much longer than toughness does.

Why do you have so much toughness?

I run with about 1200 toughness and a little over 1000 vit, about 11.9k hp @ 80 like the OP.

I don’t have any problems in dungeons, there is a counter to every situation and they can be overcome with proper skills and none of them require traits, weapons or builds to counter. Almost everything can be countered and even made trivial with a fast charging endurance meter and smart dodging. Not everything needs to be dodge, sometimes it’s better to just take a hit and use your glyph or simply move out of the field while the damage is incoming, I only dodge out of a red circle if it is an instant cast ability that causes immediate damage.

Stay at max range with staff, keep your endurance up so you can dodge and dodge when you need to. Fire 4 (free dodge) + Renewing Stamina (with decent crit) + endurance food (the blue one that gives 80% chance on might when you dodge is cheap), your earth elemental and proper skill choice will do more for you in dungeons than any amount of vit and toughness will.

Again, it’s easier to simply remove conditions like burning than to stack vitality, easier to dodge burst than to try and stack toughness. And the only times I’ve found I need more than 1 on demand condition removal every 90 seconds or so is during wvw when you’re getting nailed with like 3-4 conditions at once.

That’s when lots vitality and lots of condition removal shine but dungeons are controlled by AI and not a group of people so most of their damage is predictable and/or completely avoidable or even paltry and not worth taking the trouble to dodge out of.

Use fire for DPS and the other three for snares/escapes/etc. If you are at max range then you can see them coming for you, switch to earth and use 5 and 4 to snare, heal with sigil while you are in either earth (for protection, if you know you’re going to be hit) or water (for regen, if you’re kiting and can get some health back).

The only issue I have with health is burning every now and again and find that slotting cleansing flame and careful use of healing glyph and cleansing flame are enough to counter those instances.