Leveling build for a rookie elementalist

Hello everyone,

I just made an elementalist and im looking for simple up to date open world build with weapon/rotation/utility/traitline choices that will introduce me to this class. I enjoy traditional mages and elementalist is perfect match for me.

Hi and welcome to Tyria.

I've been an ele main player for many years and the best advice I can give you is to try out EVERYTHING! Make sure to get all the weapons and try both melee and ranged.

About Gear:GW2 doesn't have "magical" or "fire" damage. There is only direct and condition damage. Elementalist can deal both, but it's recommended to focus on only one damage type. Hybrid builds generally aren't as strong due to lacking synergies.Direct damage is achieved by using gear that provides Power, Precision and/or Ferocity. If you decide to go for direct damage, you should try to stack these three stats.Condition damage is achieved by using gear that provides Condition damage (surprise) and/or Expertise. Expertise isn't easy to stack while leveling, so I would recommend starting with a direct damage build.

Skills:For leveling I recommend getting the glyph of lesser elementals early. The pet takes aggro away from you and makes it easy to stay at range.The glyph of storms is your best friend for fighting groups of enemies. Cast it while attuned to earth and it produces a pulsing field that makes enemies that stand in it miss you with their attacks.Make sure to use all your attunements. Water is strong at healing and earth is good at defending yourself or preparing combos with other elements. Fire or Air (depending on weapon) will be your primary damage attunement.

Combos:This is something you really should learn as an elementalist. Read your skills to see which ones are combo fields and which one combo finishers. Then try out all possible combinations. The most useful ones:Fire field + Blast finisher = MightWater field + Blast finisher = Healing

What about traitlines? And i will be grateful for little suggestion which weapon is kinda good for leveling.

I want to reinforce the "try out all weapons" advice. My personal experience with ele as my first toon was that around level 40 I got horribly bored with it using staff and went to other classes. Later I returned to try dagger x2 and loved it.

I'm not saying you'll hate staff or love d/d but try all the weapons and see which you like. Weapon sets change all classes substantially and it is worth experimenting to see what you like best.

you can essentially play whatever you want for leveling.The leveling content isn't particularly hard, so you shouldn't have any trouble just by playing what feels best for you.

That being said however....if you want to level efficiently and fast I do have some recommendations.

1) focus on power damage. That means you want to go for power/precision/ferocity gear. It's not that power is particularly better than condition damage....its just that the desired stats for power gear is far, far easier to obtain while leveling. While condition specs need overall less stats (mainly condition damage and expertise), expertise is really hard to come by when leveling and trying to compensate with runes (which can have some good condition duration on them) will get annoying/expensive as you continuously start outleveling your gear.

2) Regarding traits you want to go mostly offensive. Fire and Air are you best choices for raw damage. Arcane is a good mix of offense and defense and overall is a very good multi-purpose traitline.

3) Weapons - as was already said - can be picked by preference. They all have their pros and cons and all of them do fairly good damage. To give you a bit of an overview:Staff - very long range; easy to use; excellent AoE damage, some CC.Daggers - melee oriented, very flexible but a bit more intricate than staff, excellent CC, good cleave.Scepter - a mid-ranged compromise between daggers and Staff; excellent Single target damage, mediocre cleave, very intuitive gameplay.

@jackowskig.3905 said:What about traitlines? And i will be grateful for little suggestion which weapon is kinda good for leveling.

While leveling traitlines don't really matter. Choose the one that suits you best.Fire traitline is mostly used for damage. It synergizes well with staff and the fire attunement.Water and earth traitlines are mostly used for healing and defense. Use these if you have trouble staying alive. Ele is the squishiest profession in the game and end-game builds usually put nothing into defense, which can make the profession really challenging.Air traitline is mostly used for damage. It synergizes well with dagger and the air attunement.Arcane traitline is there to support your general build. It does a bit of everything and some more. I recommend traiting this for leveling and traiting final shielding. It will save your ass in dangerous situations.

I really can't help you with the weapon though. Elementalist is in a situation where all weapons are kinda good. I like playing with staff since that is the most mage-ish option. Also I like the big effects, lasting fields, availability of combo skills and risk-and-reward structure of some skills. It's the weapon with the highest range, however leveling can be difficult with staff because it requires mobs to stay inside your aoe skills. Don't try to level with staff without using the elemental glyphs.

I believe when I leveled my ele I used dagger most of the time. The range is kinda short, but you have great mobility (especially if you use another dagger offhand) and some good control skills to prevent enemies from dealing damage. I never liked scepter or focus much, I only tried the skills for some time and dropped the weapon quickly.

First thing to unlock are glyphs, almost nothing compares to them for leveling.Trait lines Air gives you glyph cool down reduction and some more damage so it's a good trait line to get first.Staff can be quite useful for leveling as you can run circles around enemies while putting AoE down, Dagger is also good but more melee based.

Big tip, the elite glyph of elementals if you cast in water the flip over skill heals for a lot, in earth it creates a really tanky earth elemental that is hard to kill, fire gives good damage.Glyph of storms in earth creates a pulsing blind AoE which essentially makes you immune to mobs in the AoE. In other elements it does decent damage.Heal glyph gives you boons, extra with the trait and gives a good heal for cool down.

Second trait line I'd recommend getting is either fire for more damage in fire or arcane because it's got some nice utility and vigor uptime. Vigor = more dodges and with evasive arcana gives a lot for combos.

READ THIS IT IS IMPORTANThttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo

Know your fields, finishers at least roughly enough to use them and leveling is a breeze and a lot of fun.

Edit here's a decent quick build to get you started and you can experiment with things when you've unlocked more and morehttp://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQFAWhUMophFNwnB0RI8AYVVYK8EkAwCoFC-jxgFgA0K/MV/BQJIZAoGCA-e

For gear, prioritise power, then precision and you can maybe add some vitality afterwards but it shouldn't be needed once you unlock arcane shield.

@jackowskig.3905 said:Hello everyone,

I just made an elementalist and im looking for simple up to date open world build with weapon/rotation/utility/traitline choices that will introduce me to this class. I enjoy traditional mages and elementalist is perfect match for me.

If you're just starting and not boosting to 80, you won't have access to everything so it really won't matter what you run to level up. For weapons I'd say stick to scepter for safety until you're more comfortable with combat.

It's a nice balance of speed and range, though staff will hit a lot harder (and be a bit slower) and is a more favorable weapon in group play. If you think you have the ebb and flow of combat down, you might try out dagger which is a lot of fun. Quick and bursty, but risky.

You might also play around with your elemental weapon summons. You can use a lightning hammer, a frost bow, and even a flaming great sword later. A lot of people use lightning hammer in open world to good effect.

Welcome to the game! As you level up and open more options for yourself check back in.

I see that staff has access to wide choice of combo, that i even didn't know that exists. I will experiment with that and eventually learn them. I had some issues with choosing a class, but i see that elementalist will be tons of fun. Thank you guys for advices. When i will have more questions, i will ask. It's nice to have such a support from all of you.

@jackowskig.3905 said:I see that staff has access to wide choice of combo, that i even didn't know that exists. I will experiment with that and eventually learn them. I had some issues with choosing a class, but i see that elementalist will be tons of fun. Thank you guys for advices. When i will have more questions, i will ask. It's nice to have such a support from all of you.

It will surely be loads of fun. :smile: I can't say much about leveling, but when I created mine with release, I almost immediately switched to D/D. I can only recommend to give it a try, it is a nice new touch on a mage class!

@jackowskig.3905 said:I see that staff has access to wide choice of combo, that i even didn't know that exists. I will experiment with that and eventually learn them. I had some issues with choosing a class, but i see that elementalist will be tons of fun. Thank you guys for advices. When i will have more questions, i will ask. It's nice to have such a support from all of you.

By all means try staff but if you get tired of it, try a different weapon set before abandoning ele. You might find staff doesn't match your play style. Myself, staff bored me leveling and still bores me. I like all the other weapon sets better, and found d/d fun for leveling.

Staff is horrible for levelling especially since the Lava Font nerf making 70% of your damage literally spamming fireballs in fire attunement.Dagger/Dagger or Scepter/Dagger's gameplay is a lot more interactive since it has a more even spread of burst, sustained damage and comboes across attunements.