Guild Wars 2

I am curious as to what I am doing wrong, I am currently using a staff, for the AOE damage, and I cant even take on creatures my own level or one above me. With a mes I could, and often did – with out dying as much.

I switch between fire and earth the most, making sure to do aoe, cripple and slow you down. water for quick healing along with #6 and the skill slots I have unlocked I use a shield that if blocks 3 hits explodes and mist form.

I cant take on vetrens of level 6 with out dying. I cant take on ascalon ghosts (im a char) with out dying. I can’t essentially do anything or I die in three maybe 4 hits.

Ideas? I have like 2 or 3 traits….

I have a level 80 mes so I am not new to the game, just the class.

Having a mesmer main actually is almost like being new to the game. Without so many forgiving mechanics to help you out in the battlefield you’ll feel exposed if you play any other profession, especially elementalist.

I’ve been leveling my elementalist with staff, she’s 27 at the moment. I tend to stay in fire or air for normal mobs. Fire-2 under the mob before aggro, shoot an auto and fire-3 and auto until dead. On tougher mobs I might fire-4 or dodge back once. That’s usually enough to kill a single. With air it’s air-2 on cooldown and alot of auto. 3 and 5 on tougher things but not often.

For vets, it’s a matter of cycling through everything. Don’t overlook Air-2, it’s decent damage and a blind. Air-5 is a decent stun although a long cooldown.

Mist form doesn’t impress me for leveling. If I need to use it I’m probably just delaying the inevitable for a few seconds. I use arcane wave for more decent damage and a blast finisher.

Really the main thing is don’t get hit. Until you have the gear and traits to take a few hits just stay out of range (if you go that route) and dodge dodge dodge. Low level elementalist is probably the least forgiving of all the classes when it comes to allowing mobs to touch you.

Try using defensive gear until you’ve learnt how to be actively defensive (arcane shield / armour of earther / signet of earth are handy – or cleansing fire / signet of water against conditions)

Or just lightning hammer, you are basically invulnerable to anyone you can blind while you are attacking with it (and glyph of storms in earth is another mass aoe reapplying blind)

Will give you lots of survivablity.

If you want my advice it would be to drop the staff and pick up literally any other weapon combination. The staff is TERRIBLY weak in 1v1 as it requires the enemies to stand still for the full effect of the abilities. Its useful in dungeons as a ranged option but tbh the staff is by far the worst weapon set for Elementalist’s atm especially solo Ele’s.

^ what they said.

Staff is the Knock knock of weapons in this game, more so for Ele`.
Opt for Scepter & Focus/Dagger or Dagger/Dagger.

That combined with Ele` getting nerfed all the time, good luck

I know that given your level you won’t have access to some things mentioned below, but hopefully they will still be helpful for you eventually.

One useful thing about Mist form is that you can still swap attunements and use signets while it is up. So while you are getting out of a tight spot you can use a signet to heal or swap to earth (if you aren’t already in it) and summon and earth elemental to soak some damage for you.

I find elementals to be a great utility for staff users. Gives you a moment to focus your channeled aoe on targets.

Another great utility to use is lightning flash, not only for escapes or stun breaks, but setting up your aoe. You see it get mentioned for s/d or d/d churning earth users, but it’s great for staff as well. When starting up your channeled aoe like meteor shower or healing rain you can then lightning flash away during the channel to avoid standing there and taking it in the face. This allows you to use your staff aoe in a couple of ways.

You can drop damage on an area between/on top of a group of enemies charging you and then flash back behind them. They will about face and run back through the aoe and continue to take damage. Your aoe channel won’t be cut short so you get the full effect.

For healing you can place the aoe marker away from you and your attackers, start the channel and then flash to the center or far edge of the healing circle. So you put some space between you and your enemies as well as maintaining the healing without having to deal with constant damage.

The range on the flash is only 900, so going along with what Grundeg said, you want to keep on the move.

I really love staff, and after dropping it a long time for scepter/dagger, I have returned to using it 90% of the time…unless I am doing lots of roaming in wvw.

I mainly stay/start in air. Begin with static field immediately followed by gust to push them into the stun. Swap to earth for unsteady ground followed by eruption and then shockwave. Really trying to limit the mobility as much as possible. And if you target an enemy at the back of the mob with shockwave everything between you gets rooted as well.

The next swap is either to fire for the real damage dealing or to water first for a bit of healing and more mobility impairment. Beyond that its lots of positioning and crippling to keep your targets away from you and in your aoe circles.

For the times that you can’t help but have them on top of you, arcane shield or armor of earth are great in a pinch.

I hope at least some of that helps. If anything was overly obvious, I apologize. Good luck!

Much love for the staff.

contrary to mesmers elementalists are always on the defensive.

I think staying in Earth and Fire the most is hurting you. Water and Air both also have some awesome crowd control skills, in fact 4 more in addition to the 1 in Earth (Unsteady Ground). Water has Frozen groud and also has the heals of course. Healing Rain will root you during the cast though and needs to be used when you have gotton some distance on the mobs, which is usually possible and best of all give you a regen buff in addition to the big heal. Air has a swiftness buff (they can’t hit what they cant catch) and a knockback, Gust, in addition to Static Field.

I have to agree Staff is hard for a lower level Ele to play imo because you pretty much have to use most all the skills in all the attunements. You have not had enough time to become familiar with them. You don’t have the attunement cooldown traits so can’t use the best skills more frequently but that is true of all the weapons. If you find yourself in auto attack because you can’t switch, chances are you could have used some more of the skills in the attunements that are still on cooldown. Try to stay out of autoattack as much as possible.

In a bind, just simply run. Cast either Static Field, Unsteady Ground, or Frozen Ground in front of you and run thru it. The mobs will get stuck. You gain distance and can turn and fire or continue to run give yourself a chance to heal up. Staff is not a weapon designed for melee range. Keep away from the mobs, damage from a distance, and kite mobs through the aoe. In other words, the staff requirs kiting if the mob isn’t dead.

Staff is a wonderful weapon to use for group support imo. I often pull it out for dungeons. The combo fields are wonderful for the group as well as the aoe crowd control and heals. I hope you don’t become discouraged by your experience and stop using it.

Get your Elemental skill asap. The earth elemental is tough and good at gaining and holding agro. The water elemental is tough too and will heal you. The air elemental will stun your enemies and die quickly. The fire elemental will put out some damage but die quickly too.

These are some basics.

Ele is my main and I haven’t played anything but staff with him after learning all the weapon skills. The main thing with playing staff is dodging and making sure not to get hit at low levels. Also if you get a tough mob make sure you are cycling through the attunements and using the crowd control right before a dodge to allow you some extra damage on the mob. I played in fire most of the time using water and earth on the tougher ones.

I think a died a little bit more then I did on my ranger, but not a lot. It just takes a little time and practice on learning how to use the different skills and when to dodge with the skills.

You should check the following:

- Is your staff within a few levels of your actual level? A level 9 staff on a level 14 character will hardly deal any damage.

- Is your armor within a few levels of your actual level and better than white quality? Inferior armor is one of the major causes of getting hit so hard.

- Staff is not very forgiving for low-level elementalists. I would advise you to try scepter/dagger. Scepter deals decent damage to single targets at range (at least at lower levels), and dagger off-hand deals a lot of damage to enemies who are close by. (Scepter becomes a sub-par choice around level 50-60 or so, when you have enough survivability to switch either to dagger/dagger or staff.)
Also, note that the staff is the most support-oriented weapon the elementalist can choose from. Therefore, it is most suitable for party play, when you have allies who can prevent the monsters from closing you. At level 14 solo, you rarely have that ability.

- Having said that, I recommend the utility skill Glyph of Lesser Elementals. This will summon an elemental to fight by your side. The earth elemental is the sturdiest, although the ice elemental can be a decent replacement.

- I recommend Signet of Fire as a utility skill. Against low-level enemies, conditions hit really hard, and burning is the hardest-hitting one of them all. Plus, it passively boosts your precision when you don’t use it.

- Finally, when you fight, don’t just stand there spamming attacks while getting hit. That is the “classic” way of playing a wizard-type character in most fantasy RPGs, but it is NOT a viable way to play in Guild Wars 2 for any profession. Every character has access to a dodge-bar for a reason. When you see a monster charging an attack skill, make sure you’re not standing where the blow will land.

Dagger/Dagger, and run like hell!

Jornophelanthas.1475:

You should check the following:

- Is your staff within a few levels of your actual level? A level 9 staff on a level 14 character will hardly deal any damage.

- Is your armor within a few levels of your actual level and better than white quality? Inferior armor is one of the major causes of getting hit so hard.

- Staff is not very forgiving for low-level elementalists. I would advise you to try scepter/dagger. Scepter deals decent damage to single targets at range (at least at lower levels), and dagger off-hand deals a lot of damage to enemies who are close by. (Scepter becomes a sub-par choice around level 50-60 or so, when you have enough survivability to switch either to dagger/dagger or staff.)
Also, note that the staff is the most support-oriented weapon the elementalist can choose from. Therefore, it is most suitable for party play, when you have allies who can prevent the monsters from closing you. At level 14 solo, you rarely have that ability.

- Having said that, I recommend the utility skill Glyph of Lesser Elementals. This will summon an elemental to fight by your side. The earth elemental is the sturdiest, although the ice elemental can be a decent replacement.

- I recommend Signet of Fire as a utility skill. Against low-level enemies, conditions hit really hard, and burning is the hardest-hitting one of them all. Plus, it passively boosts your precision when you don’t use it.

- Finally, when you fight, don’t just stand there spamming attacks while getting hit. That is the “classic” way of playing a wizard-type character in most fantasy RPGs, but it is NOT a viable way to play in Guild Wars 2 for any profession. Every character has access to a dodge-bar for a reason. When you see a monster charging an attack skill, make sure you’re not standing where the blow will land.

agreed, and worth repeating for emphasis. Dodging and moving are the top two defensive techniques for any player in gw2. The devs designed the game this way.

The agro mechanic is not based on dps and that is why the game can get away from dedicated healers and tanks, etc. The agro mechanic is different under different circumstances and different mobs. One agro mechanic that appears certain sooner or later is to focus on the player who is not moving. On the other hand, if a player is moving he is less likely to get agro and more likely to lose it.

Dodging simply is the single best way to avoid damage. It is also the fastest way to move from one point to another, faster than running.

Baladir.2736:

One agro mechanic that appears certain sooner or later is to focus on the player who is not moving. On the other hand, if a player is moving he is less likely to get agro and more likely to lose it.

I’m curious, is this something you have learned from experience or has it been stated by the devs somewhere? Also, do you know if it is actually based on movement or on the distance the player is from the mob?

I play D/D and I move around a lot, so I’m just curious how that helps aggro.

ElenaDragon.8401:

Baladir.2736:

One agro mechanic that appears certain sooner or later is to focus on the player who is not moving. On the other hand, if a player is moving he is less likely to get agro and more likely to lose it.

I’m curious, is this something you have learned from experience or has it been stated by the devs somewhere? Also, do you know if it is actually based on movement or on the distance the player is from the mob?

I play D/D and I move around a lot, so I’m just curious how that helps aggro.

The devs have stated the agro mechanic chanages from boss to boss, mob to mob, and can even change during the same enounter. The devs also designed the game to be fluid.

From observation, moving and dodging absolutely affects gaining and losing agro which fits right in line with their design intent. There are times a mob has chased me and will not stop to the point we are all laughing because I can not shake the s.o.b. Other times a mob will bounce back and forth between players doing little damage. One minute I can be kiting a mob, the next I can swivel and fire, and the next minute he bounces back at me. Move and if the mobs can’t catch you, sometimes they switch agro and sometimes they don’t. If we circle a boss so he has to face his target, we can see how often they do change and get an idea why they change, especially if they do ranged attacks.

What I can guarantee is that if we have agro and aren’t moving, a mob will hit us till we die lol.

@Baladir Thanks for the response!

I solo’d veterans with staff and I didn’t have much trouble. In fact, I kept dying more with scepter/dagger than with staff! I guess it depends on taste really. Though I noticed you sticked with two elements. No matter the weapon, you need to learn to switch between all the elements and time your dodges! Also keep your gear up with your level, I went with p/t/v gear.
I also recommend getting that summon glyph ASAP, really saved my hide at times XD

Seeing as your lvl 14, that means you can get a full set of mastercraft gear, which would help quite a bit until you can grasp the class.
As far as I remember, my low level ele days were basically just a ton of kiting and ranged attacks :p

Trading post new weapons and Armour every 5-10 levels. Just cheap blues or even greens if they arnt much more.

I leveled my ele with d/d. that was fun … not. Brought new weaps every now and then and it was a blast. If you are doing crafting then you can level your craft and character together to get some cheaper gear.

It may come down to a matter of playstyle. I use almost the exact same setup as the OP and barring some situations where I foolishly overaggroed more than I could handle, there’s very few enemies I can’t defeat as an Ele. I start out in Earth and throw Eruption (skill 2) on the enemy (this doesn’t damage them immediately, so it’s a great starter attack), then switch to Fire and cast Flame Burst (skill 3) to open. By now the Eruption should have exploded, inflicting a nice stack of Bleeding on the enemy, plus Burning. Back up a bit while tossing Fireballs, then drop Lava Font at your feet when the enemy closes in. At this point I use Arcane Wave for more damage + stacks of Might, then use Burning Retreat (skill 4) to dodge backwards and force the enemy to run through more fire to get to me. By this point they’re usually dead, but on the off-chance they’re still alive, I drop another Lava Font at my feet and throw Arcane Bolt at them. This almost certainly drops them.

For Veterans, I recommend summoning an Elemental (or two, if you also have Glyph of Elementals) to help draw attention away from you, then just using Flame Burst and Eruption to whittle them down with condition damage. Switch to Water and use Geyser and Healing Rain to keep your elementals healthy from time to time.