Guild Wars 2

Everyone has their way of playing games. That is just a fact, not my opinion.
That being said, I can start to this issue.
I’ve pretty actively followed the Gw2 forums, especially the elementalist forums, since I have played it as a main since the first BWE.
My opinion of elementalists is that they are mediocre at the most, yet the most skill based class of this game. It doesnt reward the player as much as other class might, even if you have to put ALOT more effort to succeed at it. But hey, thats just my opinion.
Almost in every topic here, someone is either whining of elementalists being UP, which follows up with tons of “pro”-players saying “You are obviously doing something wrong, noob”).
So why dont you “pro”-players, or any players just point out how you have succeeded in one or more of these following:

• PvE?
• WvW?
• sPvP?
• Dungeons?

What build works best in one of the elements of this game?

Thanks for reading.

I don’t play elementalist my self but, let me point out. If there is only 1 build that works for each of those places alone. And if they are all different, it’s broken. That or pay for a respec every time you want to do something different in the game. True?

There are other builds which works on same aspect, but some are just better at one thing as others.
“What build works best..”

Scepter/Dagger
Dagger/Dagger
Staff

Those are the three weapon sets I am comfortable with. The focus has been more difficult for me to grasp, but I feel like I can get a lot out of it if I try to play with it more, but but I’ve tried it out for less than 2 hours and my ele has 125 hours of being logged in on.

Builds are only part of the game. A build will only compensate for bad gameplay to some extent. The elementalist is the most unforgiving class to bad play out the the three I’ve spent significant time on. Those three being the ele, mesmer, and guardian. The guardian is definitely the most forgiving out of those three.

I’ll speak some to PvE and Dungeons. I’m not a “pro-player” but I don’t have a tough time dealing damage or staying alive through 74 levels. In general PvE the only challenging enemies for me are Champions (enemies with Gold trim in the UI). Anything with a silver trim or lower is not difficult for me. In dungeons, story mode is a cinch. Gold trimmed and taking on too many silver trimmed enemies both can be a challenge occasionally when messing up positioning. Explorable mode is challenging when it hasn’t been experienced previously. After everyone knows how to succeed in each area it’s pretty much rinse and repeat.

What makes me successful PvE and Dungeons? Starting with the obvious, there’s reducing power barriers by upgrading my gear every 5 levels. I am fairly good at dodging, and fairly good at positioning myself in general. These couple of things alone make me effective regardless of profression, because I’m alive and able to res people and deal damage (even though I may not be dealing a significant amount of damage potential on profs I’m not very familiar with) as opposed to being dead on the ground. Again those things are useful for any class in the game.

What makes me succeed as an elementalist? Attunement swapping, knowing what the 60 elementalist weapon skills are and how their mechanics behave, using slot skills that suit my situaiton, utilizing traits that synergize well with how I am playing and knowing what skills are useful to chain together.

I’m talking about a bunch of high level stuff and haven’t really said much that will actually be beneficial to anyone, so I’ll get into some details.

In general I have 2 attunements always on cooldown, and it’s not odd for me have all three that I’m not attuned to on recharge. I hardly utilize my skill 1, except with scepter earth because of bleed stacking. I try to keep all of my damage skills on cool down and will choose which control’s to apply based on situation while keeping 1 in reserve as a just in case.

I’d rather not explain things any more granularly because it will require too much time and more walls of text, but if you’d like to see the elementalist played well look for streams or youtube videos.

I will redirect you to this thread I recently created outlining some of my varied success with this…peculiar class.