Elementalist and leveling

I have been toying around with all the classes (new to GW2) and right now am enjoying Ele. I have been playing mostly the safe route of staff at long range. I’ve looked over a lot of builds, but most are either endgame or D/D builds (which I will eventually move to at some point I’m sure). The one thing I haven’t found in any guide is the priority of specs. When I reach level 21, which spec should I choose first, or does it not really matter? I was assuming fire since I spend most of my time attuned to that with staff, but with D/D it seems you spend a lot of time in Air spamming whip. Not sure which route to go, and any advice is much appreciated.

It doesn't really matter which ones you go for first while leveling. There are enough hero points scattered throughout tyria that you'll have a surplus of them. Additionally, a majority of the mobs in core can be easily 1 spammed to death.

Your preference of Attunements has very little to do with your Specialization, as counter intuitive as that may sound. Each Specialization offers something a little different, and affects how you approach your skill usage. Air specialization, for example, focuses on burst power damage, featuring traits that prioritize high critical chance and damage. Fire and Earth are focused on prolonged fights, where the former is an all-for-nothing offensive spec, and the latter provides options to improve your survivability. Water, as you may have guessed, provides healing support, but also some damage support for the group via Vulnerability stacking. Finally, Arcane allows you increased utility by reducing the cooldown between Attunement swapping, as well as giving you both offensive, defensive, and group support traits.

While leveling, I preferred specializing in Air first, at least until I got Bolt to the Heart. Besides the increased burst potential I would need to quickly dispatch of my enemies, it has the added bonus of increasing my movement speed while Attuned to Air, thereby allowing me to travel faster between locations. Afterwards, you can start on the Fire trait line for even more damage, or Arcane for more flexibility.

@"SilverArrowsMP.2957" said:I have been toying around with all the classes (new to GW2) and right now am enjoying Ele. I have been playing mostly the safe route of staff at long range. I’ve looked over a lot of builds, but most are either endgame or D/D builds (which I will eventually move to at some point I’m sure). The one thing I haven’t found in any guide is the priority of specs. When I reach level 21, which spec should I choose first, or does it not really matter? I was assuming fire since I spend most of my time attuned to that with staff, but with D/D it seems you spend a lot of time in Air spamming whip. Not sure which route to go, and any advice is much appreciated.

I can only give you advice for sc/f. It's by far my favorite weapon set for the elementalist and it is the more wizard like weapon unlike daggers. I find the sc/f weapon set more fast paced and since you're new, I really recommend you give sc/f or even sc/d a try. It requires a bit of practice because for the most part you'll be trying to start the air auto attack and switch to other attunements, use instant cast utility skills like Arcane Blast and switch back to air before the channel ends. When it comes to choosing specializations, assuming you'll be playing core elementalist, you should choose these:

1. Air

The reason for why you choose Air is because the it is the scepters' best auto attack. The rest of the auto attacks are lackluster and could use a rework to make them somewhat viable. Critting once will reset the air attunement and it's really useful for the increased damage you get. Traits: 3-2-2.

2. Water

Water is necessary because everytime you swap to it, you grant yourself and allies a plentiful amount of health. You also get passive AoE health regeneration which is useful for cleansing conditions. Traits: 1-3-1.

3. Arcane

The boons that you get from Arcane are very important. It synergizes really well with Water because you get regeneration when you attune to water and you cleanse a condition from yourself and allies. The lower attunement cooldown and the health you get when you swap attunements can help you in terms of sustain. Traits: 3-3-2.

Thnak you all for the advice. Seems Air is better to start... sadly, I jumped the gun and blew all my HP in Fire. So I’ll just role this until I get enough points to swap to Air, or just continue as is and use Air at lvl 45. At least now I know if I ever build another Ele in the future (hate that you can’t race change).

@"SilverArrowsMP.2957" said:Thnak you all for the advice. Seems Air is better to start... sadly, I jumped the gun and blew all my HP in Fire. So I’ll just role this until I get enough points to swap to Air, or just continue as is and use Air at lvl 45. At least now I know if I ever build another Ele in the future (hate that you can’t race change)."

Too much tied to the Personal Story to allow a race change.

@Loosmaster.8263 said:Too much tied to the Personal Story to allow a race change.

Completely get that, but it's still is a bummer. I do have 2 level 80 boosts to use, so if I decide to stick with it, I may just boost with a different race instead of leveling another Ele all over again. I only have 6 character slots at the moment, and would like to not take up 2 slots for the same profession until I can purchase more.

@"SilverArrowsMP.2957" said:Thnak you all for the advice. Seems Air is better to start... sadly, I jumped the gun and blew all my HP in Fire. So I’ll just role this until I get enough points to swap to Air, or just continue as is and use Air at lvl 45. At least now I know if I ever build another Ele in the future (hate that you can’t race change).

Eh, air and fire are basically tied as the recommended choice for levelling. They are basically "power" vs "precision" oriented parts of damage, both of which are fine, and they both have solid dagger and staff attack builds. It is nice to have both, for sure, but also, you should have enough points to get both comfortably by the time you really start to want a wider range of powers. :)

It doesn't matter which you pick first, but I'd go with fire simply because it enhances the best dps aspect you have.

For leveling, just go Power, Precision, Ferocity on all your gear. At level 80, they call this the Berserker's stats set. Even at max level, Berserkers isn't bad for most stuff. It gives you a lot of offensive power output and lets you melt enemies fast before they can hurt you much.

Once you get into Heart of Thorns content however, you might find yourself dying a lot to hard-hitting enemies. Elementalist is probably the most squishy class in the game (although I've heard some people use skills in PvP to make Ele's really tough). You might want to consider a set of Knights armor (Power, Toughness, Vitality I think) to make you more durable.

Staff is really high damage output. It's also simple - just camp Fire attunement the whole time and nuke things. But it requires you to stand around for the number 5 skill and doesn't have much mobility. This makes it one of the defensively weaker weapon choices. It's great for world bosses and group content though.

But while leveling up to max level, this really doesn't matter. Staff will get you there just fine. Scepter builds using fire attunement also work once you figure out timing. Dagger builds using primarily air attunement are also great - the basic lightning whip is one of the strongest auto-attacks in the game and it's really fun to run all over the place spamming lightning whips all over the place.

Builds only work at lvl 80, you're gonna have a bad time using them to level

@Klipso.8653 said:Builds only work at lvl 80, you're gonna have a bad time using them to level

This ^

For leveling, invest on damage, movement speed and active defenses.Conjure weapons are great for leveling as well, and fun to use.

Pick Fire first, as it offers most bang for your buck. Then you have two choices - either pick Air or Arcane second. Arcane has better utility and is more flexible generally, Air has better damage in solo scenarios. For your third mastery, pick the one you didn't take. Water and Earth are mostly useless for PvE, unless you want to spec as a healer, but I wouldn't recommend that while levelling, as your rate of progression would be worse than glacial.

Another tip I could give is: unlock Signet of Fire, Glyph of Storms and your arcane skills. They are fun to use and extremely powerful while levelling. Conjures are nice, too, you can pick these next.

I will also like to note that if you put HPs in early, don't feel that it's a waste. Do some challenges and get some more HPs, or keep leveling. You will get enough HPs to max out your core build by leveling naturally. The extra HPs will help give you a jump-start on investing in elite specs should you wish to take one of them.

But I will also lay on that scepter/focus can give you a different option if playing up-close isn't for you. Do experiment.