Guild Wars 2

New to the game within the last few months and ele is my first 80, so please forgive any ignorance on my part. I am having a rough time staying alive with this profession (in dungeons most specifically)! I started out as D/D, but found survivability to be terrible with that combination.

I recently switched to a staff, and I’ve been following DEKeyzToChaos.7381’s advice for a staff ele since then. I went with the well rounded build DEKeyz suggests because I have no interest in being a glass cannon, and I’m wearing mostly Berserker’s gear at the Rare level from tailoring. I’ve tried mixing in pieces with extra toughness but that didn’t seem to help much.

I’m good at staying out of stuff for the most part, but it seems like I’m frequently getting one-shot by certain things in dungeons. Some fights I find myself staying in water attunement so I can soak up as many heals as possible.

Am I missing something? Should I be selecting only defensive skills at this point or is there something I can do with my gear to help? I’d like to stick with the staff if at all possible, because I find it most fun so far. Any help would be amazingly helpful!

As an Ele you are automatically more prone to getting 1-shotted than any other class due to having the lowest base health and base armor.
The only thing you can do is learn fights and master dodging, but even that won’t 100% eliminate those random moments where you’ll get 1-shotted out of nowhere from damage you couldn’t see coming. It’s just how Ele’s are.

That said, it’s not about “soaking” damage as much as it’s about AVOIDING it completely. Warriors, Necromancers and Guardians can soak damage, they can afford to make mistakes and survive, they can afford to be terrible.
But as an Ele you have to master the art of avoiding damage. Grab Renewing Stamina (2 pt Arcana), it should help. As long as you are attacking something you will have almost 100% vigor uptime and shouldn’t have too much trouble staying alive. Just dodge dodge dodge.

Also there’s no point sitting in water attunement when Geyser and Healing Rain are on CD. Switch to Earth, use Magnetic Aura, switch to Air, use Lightning Surge (AoE blind), Static Field, etc. Remember, prioritize avoiding damage instead of trying to out-heal it. Think of your heals as something only for emergencies, to help your group if they get too low, or when you make a mistake.

Stick to that balanced staff build from DeKeyz if that’s what you’re happy with.

I’m personally running a full-zerker staff build because I believe in finishing the fight as fast as possible, that’s my contribution to the group. Also I can provide tons of rally sources for my group with hard-hitting AoE that kills stray mobs very quickly (meteor!)

get exotics as quickly as you can.
the change is huge.

you can easily farm 2 cof and 2 AC aday, and get dungeon gear.
if you play WWW, buying exotics with badges is even cheaper.
you can do both.
i don’t know how much karma you have, you can buy magi/rabid/soldiers pieces for 40K karma.

i use 6/2/0/4/2 and wear some soldier pieces for extra survivability, this is not meta build, but the DPS is more than acceptable in pugs. (water line is vital striking and cleansing wave)

after that, dying in dungeons is knowing the encounter.
edit:
utilities
ether renewal
ice bow
armor of earth
arcane shield
elite:sword
always use fire attunement when using conjured weaps