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last chance for my ele


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on my ele, i made it to lvl 30 to see if there is a difference when i have the 4 attunements. i saw no difference. dodging, blocking, and heal skills do not help against mobs and their groups. i do not know to what to do anymore. i am about to give up the ele. any suggests on how play with an ele and survive lvling?

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It’s PvE, and it’s ele. Theres two options:

  • All out, or
  • Not at all.

All out assumes that you go full-offensive, focusing every ounce of energy into blowing up the enemy before it blows you up. Full offensive gear (power - precision - ferocity) and a 100% offensive rotation/combo utility bar. The only fallback is heal glyph because doing anything else is only just delaying the inevitable.

Not at all. No - you don’t feel like you’re going outlast the enemy. You’re gonna have to take healing power, healing traits and all the things that keep you healthy. Water is your friend. It doesn’t matter that they’re not dying very fast as long as you’re alive.

/s

Sadly, core ele feels really outdated and the only usable weapon imo for levelling is double daggers since the ranged weapons lose their range bonus since so many of their skills only work in melee (where the enemy stops moving). Additionally, there is really no reason to swap out of fire since the other attunements don’t offer as much dmg.

For general leveling tips, I’m a fan of the all-out mentality (possibly because I know the game fairly well). In my experience, ele is easiest levelled up using double daggers in fire attunement since most of the skills deal easy dmg and are highly spammable - swapping to other attunements are a waste of time other than hard cc (but you usually want to kill the enemy faster, not disable them). The 6-0 skills would likely look like Glyph of Elemental Harmony, Arcane Blast, Glyph of Storms, Signet of Fire (for passive, don’t ever activate) and Glyph of Elementals (use to aggro vets and bosses, don’t bother with normal mobs).

The first traitline to unlock in my levelling method is usually the one that makes you flat-out do more dmg. In this case, it’s Fire (wow much surprise), and select the top-top-middle traits (1-1-2). Now your offensive capabilities are boosted by ~30% and things should much die faster than before. The second traitline would probably be Air (3-1-1) and the third Arcane (?-3-3) or Water (?-3-?) but by lv 71, you should probably boost yourself to 80 if possible. At this point, you can read up on the sites suggested by Cyninja and learn the deeper intricacies of ele such as the attunement dance and conjures.

There’s also other universal things a to pay attention to, such as maintaining appropriate levelled gear, dealing with a small number of mobs at a time etc. or else you’ll naturally fail regardless of build or playstyle. Otherwise, ele may not be a class for you, since it doesn’t really get much different at higher levels...

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Lowlevel builds, a topic people talk so little about. Nowadays people just push their characters straight to 80, using tomes, scrolls and level 80 boosts. Once they are 80, they just open meta-battle, copy-paste and try to learn the rotations. I still level my characters the old way. You learn much about the class, but also certain mechanics and how to survive and counter difficult situations.

There is a very easy build for starters, that works quite well. You have good damage output, with OK survivability and mobility. It is basically a powerlevel-build that uses a couple of tricks you normally do not know when you start the game. But it makes the class a lot more powerful.

Elementalist level 30.

Active Skills unlocked:

  • Conjouring Training 1 (once you are level 31 and unlock your elite-skill you need to unlock Conjouring Training 5 = max)
  • Glyph Training 3
  • Cantrip Training 4

Passive Skills unlocked:

  • Fire as far as possible (we use 2-1-2: Conjourer, Pyromancer's Training, Pyromancer's Puissance)

Heal, Utility and Elite-Skill (level 31 unlock):Glyph of Elemental Harmony, Conjoure Flame Axe, Glyph of Lesser Elementals, Armor of Earth, Conjour Firey Greatsword

Gear:In short, everything that gives power. Rarity does not really matter at that level, blue is fine! A Strong Student Set level 30 is perfect. Same goes for weapon, level 30 Strong Scepter & Dagger. Trinkets as you can afford, Carnelian is king but not necessary.

Sigils & Runes:

  • 2 Bloodlust Sigils (one for the scepter, one for the underwater weapon)
  • 2 Sigils of ... for the Dagger (your choice, I use fire for my characters = more area damage)
  • 1 x Minor Rune of the Citadel, 1 x Minor Rune of the Flame Legion, 1 x Minor Rune of the Centaur, 1 x Minor Rune of Strength, 1 x Minor Rune of Vampirism, 2 x Minor Rune of the Hoelbrak, (one for each armor piece + one for the underwater-helmet)

Combat:You can camp the fire-element for combat and switch between Conjour Flame Axe, your main weapons and the Conjour Firey Greatsword (once you have reached level 31) as you please. The two conjour weapons have some mobility skills to get distance or close a gap between you and your target, all three options have good area damage.

If you need to run away or want to pass through a certain area, just switch to Air Element. Skill 4 is a wide leap forward and skill 5 is a dodge, that knocks your opponent back and grants you swiftness - a perfect OH NO! button XD. Earth and Water can be neglected until you can unlock more traits.

How does it work?Even at the beginning you feel like your power has almost tripled. The runes give you a total boost of 60 power, which is a lot at that low level. Each rune is designed to be used twice to unlock the 2nd effect, but if you only use 6x a different one, you only get the + 10 power of each. The fire-traits work with the conjoure weapons, because they are technically also fire-skills. That results in shorter cooldowns and + 10 % more damage with your main weapons and both conjour weapons.

Glyph of Elemental Harmony grants might while you are attuned to fire, so it is a wise choice to use it right BEFORE you enter combat. Don't worry about the cooldown, it will be ready again when you need it. If Pyromancer's Puissance is unlocked every skill that involves fire will grant you extra might, which is quite overpowered at those low levels.

In addition you will have a bloodlust sigil that stacks up power upon slaying enemies. The more trash-mobs you kill, the more powerful you become. On maximum charges (25) you can almost 1-shot trashmobs and easily kill veterans before they get close enough to harm you. The second sigil on your underwater-weapon grants that you will keep the bloodlust-stacks, even if you enter the water. The rune on the underwater-helmet is needed, because when you enter water, the helmet gets replaced by it. If you would not do that, you would lose both the bloodlust-stacks and +10 power everytime you are in water. And when you get out of water, you would need to refill the bloodlust-stacks = tedious. That is stuff you learn way later in the game, some veterans still do not know how the underwater-breather truly works.

The Glyph of Lesser Elementals grants you a pet, in your case a fire-elemental. Not very powerful, but it keeps the mobs away from you and eats some damage.

Armor of Earth is your 2nd OH NO! button. It breaks stuns, grants protection and stability. Try to use it before you face a devastating attack or plenty of enemies. It has almost 0 cast-time and you can continue with your normal game-play while it is active. If the situation is really bad, activate it, switch to Air and escape as described above.

If you are OK with your damage, you can also switch to water-element. This will grant you some extra regeneration skills. The reduced cooldown will still work, as the conjour weapons are technically all fire-skills. You will only lose 10% damage. Which should be no problem at all.

When you are doing story missions, there are always trashmobs around. Take your time and charge up the bloodlust stacks. The mobs will drop like flies.

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I main an elementalist, and I'm actually going to encourage you to drop elementalist for a bit and try maining a different class. If you're struggling with Ele, that's kind of normal. It's a hard class that tends to die easily and that never changes later in the game. Your best defense is usually nuking things so fast they don't have a chance to hit you. If you're frustrated now, it's not going to get better just by sticking in there.

But, if you try out a different easier class for a while, you may get a sense for how it survives encounters, you'll get better at the game - and when you finally come back to Elementalist, it'll probably be easier to play, and you'll have a better basis for comparison.

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@MysticReaper.4318 said:dodging, blockingAnd strafing around all the time :) But with dagger/dagger, you can do more melee, dash in, bomb, disengage, and feel less helpless.My ele is now nearing level 80 thanks to that - my other characters are nowhere close to that level so far.A huge thank-you to @Noodle Ant.1605 and @HnRkLnXqZ.1870 for your in-depth advice.

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As always, everyone says that ele is squishy. Bunker ele is one of the tankiest builds out there, and while it's slow at killing things, it can easily out last them. It also has lots of support abilities which is where most of it's tankiness comes from. This is the build:

Weapons: S/D

Skills: SoR, mist form, armor of earth, any third utility skill, and any elite

Traits: Earth: top, mid, any (I like mid)Water: all topArcane: bottom, mid, top

Learn Water first, then Arcane, then Earth. If you later want to use an elite spec, replace Earth.

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For me, leveling was a lot more tedious than max level content was. Especially once you have access to the Tempest elite spec, you should see a big bump in your survivability! I took my elementalist through all of HoT and PoF and it was absolutely fine (funnily enough, I had more issues in PoF than in HoT, which seems to be the opposite of most people).

I've tried various different builds over the years, but what I'm enjoying a lot at the moment is a fresh air auramancer tempest with marauder weapons and equipment (more HP!) and berserker trinkets -- you trade a tiny bit of damage for a TONNE of survivability.https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Tempest_-_Fresh_Air_Auramancer is a good starting point for that sort of build. Obviously, feel free to try out other traits and combinations when you get comfortable playing any build!

Sadly, core elementalist feels a tad outdated, so until you get to level 80 and unlock your elite specs you might struggle a bit. I played through core almost entirely on staff because I like the aesthetic, but I'd recommend running either dagger + dagger, or dagger + focus for more defensive options. When facing tough opponents, the glyph of elementals elite skill in earth will summon a durable earth elemental to tank for you; or when cast in water, it will summon a useful healing elemental. I'd also recommend running glyph of storms as a utility skill, which you can cast either in air for a lot of AoE damage or in earth for an AoE blindness field. If you need more defensive options, you can run Arcane Shield and Armor of Earth as well.

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PoF has one really annoying feature: too many ranged enemies. Especially the forged have both snipers and casters, which do good damage while you are still busy fending off the melee troops. There are a few options to increase your survivability, depending on which traitlines you use:

EarthEarth's Embrace. Picking it instead of Serrated Stones will lower your damage output by 5 %. But the protection and stability gained from the Armor of Earth help you to survive the encounter. If combined with Water's Soothing Distruption, the cooldown can be lowered to 60 seconds. If you pick Armor of Earth as Utility, you have one that automatically triggers at 50 % health and one you can use when you feel in need.

Tempest

  • Imbued Melodies activates Magnetic Aura and protection via Sand Squall, which can be also casted with a Warhorn when attuned to Earth. As the Elementalist is always sort of squishy, it is more helpful to get those defensive buffs when your HP is still high. Imbued Melodies triggers at already 90 % HP.
  • Unstable Conduit when overcharging Earth also grants Magnetic Aura. The biggest problem with this spell is to survive the 4 second casting time. It can be really long when you are surrounded by enemies and several mob-types in PoF can use CC attacks.

Other tricks to survive:

  • If you are using Staff, on Earth attunement you also have a Magnetic Aura cast.
  • <a href="https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/"Aftershock!"">Aftershock! on Tempest, does both damage and grants Magnetic Aura.
  • Take Root if you are playing on Sylvari and traveling the area alone, this Elite skill can be an option. The cooldown is really long and you cannot do anything while casting, but it prevents you from taking damage. I use it in PvE sometimes, as it purchases me time when my movement is impaired or I am surrounded by too many enemies. If you do not know what to pick for an Elite skill, this is not the worst of your options.

On the other hand, to be honest, we are talking about the Elementalist here. Your strength is to deal massive damage in short time. You are squishy by design :S. So your survivability is quite limited. Try to avoid larger groups of enemies, always keep an eye out for the ranged ones. When I fight Forged or Awakened in PoF, I often pick a small obstacle nearby. If I get attacked from distance, I just move a little further around the object until the ranged mob becomes a melee mob.

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@"HnRkLnXqZ.1870" said:PoF has one really annoying feature: too many ranged enemies. Especially the forged have both snipers and casters, which do good damage while you are still busy fending off the melee troops. There are a few options to increase your survivability, depending on which traitlines you use:

EarthEarth's Embrace. Picking it instead of Serrated Stones will lower your damage output by 5 %. But the protection and stability gained from the Armor of Earth help you to survive the encounter. If combined with Water's Soothing Distruption, the cooldown can be lowered to 60 seconds. If you pick Armor of Earth as Utility, you have one that automatically triggers at 50 % health and one you can use when you feel in need.

Tempest

  • Imbued Melodies activates Magnetic Aura and protection via Sand Squall, which can be also casted with a Warhorn when attuned to Earth. As the Elementalist is always sort of squishy, it is more helpful to get those defensive buffs when your HP is still high. Imbued Melodies triggers at already 90 % HP.
  • Unstable Conduit when overcharging Earth also grants Magnetic Aura. The biggest problem with this spell is to survive the 4 second casting time. It can be really long when you are surrounded by enemies and several mob-types in PoF can use CC attacks.

Other tricks to survive:

  • If you are using Staff, on Earth attunement you also have a Magnetic Aura cast.
  • <a href="https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/"Aftershock!"">Aftershock! on Tempest, does both damage and grants Magnetic Aura.
  • Take Root if you are playing on Sylvari and traveling the area alone, this Elite skill can be an option. The cooldown is really long and you cannot do anything while casting, but it prevents you from taking damage. I use it in PvE sometimes, as it purchases me time when my movement is impaired or I am surrounded by too many enemies. If you do not know what to pick for an Elite skill, this is not the worst of your options.

On the other hand, to be honest, we are talking about the Elementalist here. Your strength is to deal massive damage in short time. You are squishy by design :S. So your survivability is quite limited. Try to avoid larger groups of enemies, always keep an eye out for the ranged ones. When I fight Forged or Awakened in PoF, I often pick a small obstacle nearby. If I get attacked from distance, I just move a little further around the object until the ranged mob becomes a melee mob.

the class philosophy is earth is a hard stone that defends against evil, fire is a fury that damages evil, air is a storm that inhibits evil, water is a spring that cleanses and heals the good., and the arcane causes chaotic damage to evil. right?

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Oh, btw, this is the Ele build I currently play:

Armor: Berserker (Scholar)Weapons (Sword/Dagger): 1 Assassins (Bloodlust) + 1 Berserker (Strength)Trinkets: Amulet+Rings+1 Accessory: Marauder, 1 Accessory: Berserker, Backpack: Berserker+Valkyre, 18 x +5 Power infusions

Build: Fire 1-1-1, Earth 3-2-3, Weaver 3-2-1.

It is tanky while still dealing lots of damage. It beats playing Tempest, in my opinion. I am posting this for later reference, once you have reached Lvl 80. :)

In the meantime, you could replace Weaver with Arcane and add traits as you level up.

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@"Ashantara.8731" said:The 2 main rules to survive:

  1. Don't draw huge numbers of enemies at once.
  2. Dodge. Evade. Block. Movement first and foremost is the key to this game's combat in general (watching out for AoE fields etc).
  1. I'd advice quite the opposite actually. Ele is not a class where you want to kill enemies bit by a bit because it has high cooldowns on strong skills. It has a lot of pulsing aoes (storm glyph, conjured weapons, staff) and downed lava font in fire spec which can all do high damage in short amount of time, making grouping a lot of mobs together a better choice. Considering that a lot of those fields last long it's also fairly easy to rally which makes it one of the best "defenses" on ele.
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@steki.1478 said:

@"Ashantara.8731" said:The 2 main rules to survive:
  1. Don't draw huge numbers of enemies at once.
  2. Dodge. Evade. Block.
    Movement first and foremost is the key to this game's combat in general (watching out for AoE fields etc).
  1. I'd advice quite the opposite actually. Ele is not a class where you want to kill enemies bit by a bit because it has high cooldowns on strong skills. It has a lot of pulsing aoes (storm glyph, conjured weapons, staff) and downed lava font in fire spec which can all do high damage in short amount of time, making grouping a lot of mobs together a better choice. Considering that a lot of those fields last long it's also fairly easy to rally which makes it one of the best "defenses" on ele.

I didn't say "bit by bit", I was merely advising to refrain from drawing several mobs at once (there is a difference between "many" and "huge numbers") as you will be in downstate long before you have had the chance to burst out all your wonderful damage.

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@Ashantara.8731 said:

@Ashantara.8731 said:The 2 main rules to survive:
  1. Don't draw huge numbers of enemies at once.
  2. Dodge. Evade. Block.
    Movement first and foremost is the key to this game's combat in general (watching out for AoE fields etc).
  1. I'd advice quite the opposite actually. Ele is not a class where you want to kill enemies bit by a bit because it has high cooldowns on strong skills. It has a lot of pulsing aoes (storm glyph, conjured weapons, staff) and downed lava font in fire spec which can all do high damage in short amount of time, making grouping a lot of mobs together a better choice. Considering that a lot of those fields last long it's also fairly easy to rally which makes it one of the best "defenses" on ele.

I didn't say "bit by bit", I was merely advising to refrain from drawing several mobs at once (there is a difference between "many" and "huge numbers") as you will be in downstate long before you have had the chance to burst out all your wonderful damage.

I know, but in case you encounter a lot of enemies, ele would be the best class to clear all of them because it has huge aoe damage. In case there's just a several mobs, but they arent on same place, you definitely dont want to kill them 1 by 1 (even though it depends on build and map later on, core Tyria has pretty squishy and forgiving mobs) because it's easier to group them and cleave them at once.

If staff is good at something in pve it's massive aoe CC+damage against trash mobs so you actually do want to aggro as much as possible because that CC (as well as blinds) are giving you enough time to cast your main damage and after that all you need to do is stand in it and make sure that mobs get hit. There's no need to play one weapon set everywhere when you can just adapt to the situation and choose accordingly.

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@MysticReaper.4318 said:on my ele, i made it to lvl 30 to see if there is a difference when i have the 4 attunements. i saw no difference. dodging, blocking, and heal skills do not help against mobs and their groups. i do not know to what to do anymore. i am about to give up the ele. any suggests on how play with an ele and survive lvling?

Stick to mostly to fire attunment. Use dagger MH and OH. Use gear with mix of power, condi, precision and ferocity. Add some HP but not too much.

I would use, Glyph of Elemental Harmony Glyph of Elemental Power and mostly Signets otherwise.

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with the double daggers, i am frying the bastards to death. 3 days and counting, i died twice. because i went into overleveled areas. i was careless. you are all right. i have to play smarter. i can't let my rage on them interfere with my progress. you can't blame me after months of trying and torment, i finally getting the last laugh.

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@otto.5684 said:Stick to mostly to fire attunment.

Attunments are like weapon slots, they are ment to be swapped often. There are several posts on these forums of people complaining about ele underperforming compared to other classes, and most of those people don't stay in fire attunment. If you want to reach ele's full potential, you need to learn when and how to best manage your attunments.

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@"MysticReaper.4318" said:with the double daggers, i am frying the bastards to death. 3 days and counting, i died twice. because i went into overleveled areas. i was careless. you are all right. i have to play smarter. i can't let my rage on them interfere with my progress. i can't blame me after months of trying and torment, i finally getting the last laugh.

I prefer this build (modification are mentioned in my post in the Comments section under the Build Ratings or in this thread in my previous post):https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Weaver_-_Sword/x_Fresh_Air

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@Uden Reavstone.3426 said:

@otto.5684 said:Stick to mostly to fire attunment.

Attunments are like weapon slots, they are ment to be swapped often. There are several posts on these forums of people complaining about ele underperforming compared to other classes, and most of those people don't stay in fire attunment. If you want to reach ele's full potential, you need to learn when and how to best manage your attunments.

But that’s not what the OP is trying to do. He is trying to get the basics and mentioned he had difficulty getting a hang of the class.

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Elementalist is meant to swap between all attunements to get 1 result-- the class lacks real function though. It lacks reward- the bar is set too high on ele but the way the class functions it cant even get close to the bar.

Use Ether Feast as a heal, run signent of fire, mist and w/e else you want and use Staff 1,1,1 and an occasional lava font to kill and kite your enemies. Everything else takes too long to cast, another ele flaw. Valk or berserker stats & soldier mix- you should be good. But the idea is to not sit in 1 attunement... Although, the way the class functions currently, you totally can. Air is only useful for speed buff #4 staff. Water is no damage, not a great heal which is why you have ether feast. You can use Water 4/ chill ground and switch to fire to dps down. Earth is pretty much useless on staff unless you tend to use magnetic aura #3 for reflects and protection. You can also immob with staff 5 and stun with staff 4/ place infront of enemy.

Use staff to get a hang of things then move onto other weapons. It's a class that is a jack of all trades and master of none.

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