Earth ele

I wanna try out a new profession and picked ele.. but relli want to spec in earth as main.... any viable builds that do decent aoe dmg as well as not being to squishy ? and have many questions about it...

1. Is it worth using the bleeds it applies
2. Do i go a toughness vitality build
3. What weapons do i use
4. Is it at all viable for Pve or am i just wasting my time

For exploration there is no problem.Do you have elite-specs ?

You will be disappointed. Fire and air do most ele damage.Earth is low. Beside churning earth, I can't see any good damaging skills.I have used shield conjure in open world with some success (decent damage, great sustain).There is also staff along with lightning rod. Skill 4 can do some damage.

I would choose x/dagger for churning earth and conjure as gap filler.Do know that playing only one element is weaker than anything else since game is balanced around 4 elements.

It is more true for water and earth. Fire and air do enough damage to kill stuff. Although you will still need other skills at time when doing harder content.

so basically you dont stick to one ele.... you need to know all of them...... that brings me to another question.... how do you keybind changing between elements..... i mean reaching for buttons f1, f2 , f3, f4 is a bit of a headeach! any suggestions?

@Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:For exploration there is no problem.Do you have elite-specs ?

i dont yet.... just started today... but can get them in a few hours

In fact f1-f4 are quite easy to reach after a few hours, you'll get used to it in no time. I would recommand to remap 6-0 skills though.About original question, earth is more about enhancing your defenses, you won't get enough dps out of the traitline nor earth skills.

I have remapped all keys.I'm using RDFG for movements and all keys around. Mouse for utility, elite, swap, and target.

@Mr Ocku.6413 said:so basically you dont stick to one ele.... you need to know all of them...... that brings me to another question.... how do you keybind changing between elements..... i mean reaching for buttons f1, f2 , f3, f4 is a bit of a headeach! any suggestions?

Go get a multi-button gaming mouse....

Earth/Fire Condi Dagger Dagger Weaver is viable in pretty much all PvE content not heavily favoring pdps.It does a bit mor burn than bleed, but it's the best "earth" build I can think of.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAoYnUMAlNgFNAG5C0RgFBA7+VHr31BBgQ5BYIGsDKCA-jRRVABtqHAg9HaW534KB7V9HA-e

Have long fingers, no need to buy new keyboard or new mouse :open_mouth:

When I first started playing gw2 I ran a carrion earth bleed Tempest warhorn build that did quite a lot of damage

@Abelisk.4527 said:When I first started playing gw2 I ran a carrion earth bleed Tempest warhorn build that did quite a lot of damage

By using only earth skills? Doubtful!

@Aigleborgne.2981 said:You will be disappointed. Fire and air do most ele damage.Earth is low. Beside churning earth, I can't see any good damaging skills.I have used shield conjure in open world with some success (decent damage, great sustain).There is also staff along with lightning rod. Skill 4 can do some damage.

I would choose x/dagger for churning earth and conjure as gap filler.Do know that playing only one element is weaker than anything else since game is balanced around 4 elements.

It is more true for water and earth. Fire and air do enough damage to kill stuff. Although you will still need other skills at time when doing harder content.

I find Stone Shards, Rock Barrel, and Magnetic Leap to be fun skills and Overload Earth makes me feel like I'm an Earth Bender. Outside of that I really don't use Earth for offensive powers with the possible exceptions of Earthquake and Churning Earth in PvP. So outside of using those fun skills I would agree that you won't be pushing out a lot of damage on just Earth alone.

@Mr Ocku.6413 said:so basically you dont stick to one ele.... you need to know all of them...... that brings me to another question.... how do you keybind changing between elements..... i mean reaching for buttons f1, f2 , f3, f4 is a bit of a headeach! any suggestions?

Go into options and then go into controls (I think it's the second tab) and from there you can change your keybinds. I moved all my F skills to 1-4 when I redid my binds (F5 got put on C so that I could easily go in and out of Photon Forge with a quick thumb press). I've also found a gaming mouse with multiple buttons to be real useful when playing my Elementalist with my frequently used Elements being placed on easy to reach buttons of the mouse. I actually come to love my gaming mouse as I can set up different profiles for different toons and the unique mechanics of each can be swapped around. I.E. for my Engineer profile, I moved Photon Forge Activation to be the first side button on the mouse while Legend swap was moved to the first button on my Revenant profile (F5, or C in my case, and F1 respectively). It's improved my overall performance in PvP. Also helps for some PvE content.

@Mr Ocku.6413 said:I wanna try out a new profession and picked ele.. but relli want to spec in earth as main.... any viable builds that do decent aoe dmg as well as not being to squishy ? and have many questions about it...

1. Is it worth using the bleeds it applies
2. Do i go a toughness vitality build
3. What weapons do i use
4. Is it at all viable for Pve or am i just wasting my time

If you're not attunement dancing, you'll never be good on elementalist.

The entire bread and butter of the class is to use the various elemental attunements in concert to deal damage and bolster yourself and others. You can have a favorite but you can't pick a favorite.

You can reflect your favorite in headgear/story choice or even in trait choices, but never mechanically. You will always need to use all of the elements or you're just crippling yourself.

thanks to every1 who commented! relly helped! ive realized ele is one of the hardest classes to master and should take a few months or years to do it.again great community! cheers

It's not hard but it's a lot of effort to fight meta. Lots and lots of rotations vs just weapon swapping and hitting a few buttons. You have no insta gibb and outside of spvp people will just refuse to stand in your telegraphic spikes followed by soft condition 2-3s of condi POBAOE.

@"Abelisk.4527" said:When I first started playing gw2 I ran a carrion earth bleed Tempest warhorn build that did quite a lot of damage

Me too,Warhorn 5 + Earth Signet + Dagger 3 can kill a veteran easily. Obs: The enemy will be blind.My build was focused in Toughness and Condi.The trait in Earth and the rune, can convert Toughness into Condi.I played with Dagger/Warhorn.

This build > http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJBIhdSxA0gJ23A40AQHBWeAM3J7ldzKEAWAPghLQIYFA-jxxCQBASPBAegAbU53xORACZ/BPp+zKVCCA-e

For open world content you can play anything you want really.In fact, I'd even say to not run raid meta builds (or at least staff variants) for solo (!) open world content, since they really dont do too well on their own without any support.

If you wanna run an "earth-centric" build, I'd suggest to go the condition-route.With that said however, let me tell you straight away, that going "all-in" on a single attunement for an ele builds doesn't really work out too often.So for a conditions-build earth and fire are good complements to each other. Water is mostly for healing and air wont really do much for you.

Since the rune update (from about a month ago), builds that focus on a smaller range of conditions (like burning+bleeding mostly) have a lot more gearing options, since you can get really high amount of condition duration just from runes and traits alone ==> flame legion runes and the burning precision trait alone give you 70% burning duration already, regardless of elite specialization.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAoYAlNIIAIRgCHmY7KC-jxRAQBS7EAcWlfA4BAAm9HYrSwuq+zU1DAA-eA setup like this for instance, already gives you tons of condition damage and duration, while still giving your power skills a decent punch.

Unfortunately builds like these arent available to you while leveling, since you'd lose the rune / sigil boni whenever you get a gear upgrade and those stat combinations aren't available in core tyria.So, for leveling at least, I'd suggest to stick to a power focused spec.

I started to level an earth ele this week end, from level 1 to 25.Utility: earth shield, signet of earth, sandstorm or signet of fire (cantrip not unlocked yet for armor of earth).Attributes focus on toughness and condi damage. It was more condi than toughness at this point. I will use dire gear later on.

Weapon: dagger when possible, staff otherwise (story rewards and level 15 green one).

Earth was my main element but of course, I used all of them.I camped earth shield a lot.

Damage was clearly low but my sustain was impressive.I was able to kill champion effigy at level 15 mostly with earth shield, staying toe to toe with him, thanks to that low cooldown magnetic aura and using shield 5 to block his meteor.

Then, I face lornar, more difficult because he is melee and his attack are too strong for my toughness. I wasn't strong enough to solo him at level 19, but I was able to survive, getting his attention the whole fight while 2 others did most of the damage.

I really enjoyed this earth shield. Using churning earth, earthquake, and impale in between.Be able to outlive some nasty stuff that would have killed any other ele.

Finally, I joined a fight vs legendary moa at level 25. He was able to downed me consistently with Nova Screech. I was not insta down however, I survived about 2 seconds, giving time to react, but not enough healing power or condi cleanse at this point.

As a conclusion, it was a different experience from my other glass canon ele. I was like a walking tank beeing able to harvest a node without fear of beeing downed by 2 monsters attacking me (seems odd but my other eles usually can't or need arcane armor).

I've been playing dagger/dagger ele from level 10 to 80 (currently exploring Maguma Heart in this setup, haven't yet switched to Elite specs). It's been total joy, and I haven't met much difficulties leveling solo in Open World, even though I often was going to maps of the same, or slightly higher intended level. I died a lot, true, but it was because I wasn't keen enough about using my skills, or fast enough, or was tired etc - resting or reconsidering your tactics was enough to kill anything I met.

I use all elements, constantly rotating through them, but specialize in Earth and Air (currently also added Water to Elite spec slot, it gives you a lot of sustain too through passive regen and better healing, and everybody around you benefits from this passive regen as well). Churning Earth is my most loved one :) It's immensely satisfying to jump right into the crowd with Earth dagger attack 3, drop everything around you with Earthquake (4), and then shred them with Churning Earth, dodge out, and finish them with Signet of Fire (and note that Earth spec makes your signets to recharge faster, and give you its bonuses while they are on cooldown; Signet of Fire puts out fearsome damage through burning (if you invest in condi damage ofc), and recharges very fast, it's an invaluable damage source, which also gives d/d ele so needed range).

Just note that both the Signet of Fire and Churning Earth make most of its damage with condi effects, so you shouldn't only max power and precision, for maximum effect, invest in condi damage as well. And don't be satisfied with drops you get while leveling, you usually can get MUCH better stuff for quite a trifle price from market. If you feel like you lack sustain at some point, odds are you just need to get a fresh armor as leveling happen too fast in this game, it's hard to keep up with it sometimes. I also started to include a bit Vitality and Toughness into my build, but not too much of it, and with more emphasis on the former. When combined with smart dodge using (consider installing a signet restoring your Vigor, or using food doing the same), d/d mobility skills and a bit of reason to know when you can jump into a crowd to do some bashing, and when it's better to stay at range with Signet of Fire and Bow (or just use the FGS when you'll get it), it gives me enough sustain already.

I also tried the Shield as well, and it was quite effective too, but, imo, somewhat clunky/badly designed. Like, the fact you can't easily cancel the block skill on 2 and have to wait till it will finish channeling. Or that strange combo attack on 1 which combines range attack and dash attack. I like the Ice Bow more, goes well with daggers, giving you more range and control when you need it. Never ever I used staff, as I find it extremely boring to use, nothing can compare with mobility dagger/dagger gives you, you can roam the field like a boss, engaging and disengaging at will.

@"Mr Ocku.6413" said:so basically you dont stick to one ele.... you need to know all of them...... that brings me to another question.... how do you keybind changing between elements..... i mean reaching for buttons f1, f2 , f3, f4 is a bit of a headeach! any suggestions?

My answer was this little friendo:Redragon M901 Gaming Mouse Wired

For its price, it gives you TONS of utility. Those side buttons are a bit small (so think twice if you have big/fat fingers) and hard to get used to, but after a month it's already got pretty intuitive. I moved all my basic weapon attacks and utility skills to its side buttons, and to switch attunements I use that little red button to the left of LMB. Works like this:

1. Just hitting this button - Fire
2. Shift + hitting this button - Water
3. Ctrl + the button - Air
4. Alt + the button - Earth

It may not seem so, but it's very easy to switch through them. I can reach Shift/Ctrl with my left hand little finger, and Alt with the thumb.

You can also consider other gaming mouses instead, but usually those come at much higher cost, while still lacking quality at the same time (check reviews for Razor Naga, for example, it costs times more, and its users report that it breaks in a 2-3 years, usually, anyway)

The build I'm currently using relies on Earth for bleeds and fire for burning with water duals used with both. Air is a dark place and I never go there. It's a toughness, vitality, condition build. I'm relatively new and this is the first build I can come close to running the rotation on while having enough health to not die on those occasions when I don't dodge fast enough. I doubt it would be considered "competative" but since I'm just doing open world and some PVE, I really don't care. I'm having fun making mobs just bleed out as they try to hit me.