My ele... guide? i guess. wall of text anyhow

OK thought i'de take a moment here to describe my elementalist build, to hopefully give any aspiring ele among us some tips and tricks aswell as making others better at fighting them. The build is very cookie cutter and well used so its a good thing knowing its weaknesses and strengths. (also feel free to copy it if you wish)



Alright Classic setup Dagger/Dagger 0-10-0-30-30 with lots of toughness and Power, quite a bit of precision and a bit of crit damage and vitality. (I use berserker armor with runes of the dolyak for the toughness mainly, dagger are Soldiers aswell as backpiece and amulet, earrings and rings is Knight) Sigils are +5% crit chance and 30% chance on crit flame aoe.
Foods is sharpening stones for more precision and either mango pies or omnom berry ghost. (mostly mango pies because they're cheaper, but i would Think the omnom berry ghost is slightly better even post nerf.)
Utilities: mist form, Lightning flash, armor of Earth
heal: ether renewal
ulti: doesnt matter much, none of them add much to the build over all. i usually go with elementals though.


aaaand heres the traits:
air 1: auras grant fury and swiftness when applied. great for the DD setup wich is the most aura Heavy setup for the ele with 2 auras. fury is great and this is also needed to get perma swiftness

water 3: cantrips grant you regeneration and vigor. very important trait as i use 3 cantrips for the utility skills, these 2 boons also has great synergy with other traits....

water 9: cantrips recharge 20% faster....

water 11: remove a condition when granting regeneration to yourself or an ally. great because now cantrips also removes conditions.

arcana 5: when attuning to an element you and nearby allies gain a boon (fire: might, water: regen, air: swiftness, Earth: protection) Great trait because everybody gains tons of useful boons. now also attuning to water removes conditions, minimum 1 but more if allies are withing a Close proximity.

arcana 6: gain vigor when delivering a critical hit.

arcana 11: create a spell on the end of a dodgeroll. again great trait as these skills are very good ones. depends on what attunement you have, if you're in water its same as water dagger skill 5: remove condition and heal yourself and allies within 240 range (wich is very Little so the more stacked we are, the more i can hit!) Earth dodgeroll is also great as its a blast finisher that delivers damage and cripples. flame deals aoe damage and air is kinda weak, just a blindness. each attunement has its own cooldown of 9 or 10 sec. wich synergises great with the build as 30 into arcana gives you 9 second attunement recharge, every time after switching attunement this skill is ready. also synergises well with the 2 traits applying vigor.


what makes this build great is the amount of things you can do. it has 20 1-5 skills instead of the normal 10 and also the recharge rate of switching is kind of not even there, so it can fit lots of roles. need to heal your mates? got it. gotta immobilize someone running away? no problem. need crowdcontrol? sure. All the utility, pretty good damage, great survivability (3 stun brakers <3). true jack of all trades, Always useful.

i usually use different skills depending on the situation, but here is the opening i use for charging when we are roaming (wich is almost Always the same unless i get cced Before reaching in, in case i often swap to water right away):
i start out in air and run forward (+10% movement speed while in air) but right Before reaching our enemies i swap to fire, giving us all a stack of might and putting air at a 9 second cooldown. i use fire 3 first, gap closer and aoe damage, then right after fire 4 for more aoe damage and a fire field. right after this (now im standing right in a Group of enemies) switch to Earth giving us all protection and do Earth 4, aoe damage and knockdown, but also blast finisher, giving us all more might. i now sidestep while hitting Earth 2 (aoe damage and cripple). i do this sidestep to be able to land a dodgeroll inside the firefield while attuned to Earth for a second blast finisher Before the field runs out. again aoe damage and cripple and Another 3 stacks of might to everyone Close enough. after this i swap to water, heal everybody right away (minor trait heals everybody when attuning to water) and use nr 2 for both healing and damage, Before swapping out of water i also do a dodgeroll for healing and cond removal, wich i ususally aim into santus or wherever our largest concentration of people are. use water 3-5 only when needed, especially water 5 (wich is same as water dodgeroll) has a 40 seconds cooldown so i am careful with it, the dodgeroll only has 9 seconds cooldown after all.
By now we either usually fall back and do it all again or we won/lost the fight already, if not i can switch to either air or fire by now as they should both be ready.



Heres Another trick i thought i'de type in wich works way to often but is easy to counter if you know how: chruning Earth (Earth 5) is the highest damaging skill the dd has but it takes a while to load and has a long cooldown. (its the skill that forms an aoe circle around the ele while he is standing still, 3 seconds then booom). you can charge up this skill in one spot, let it load a bit and then use Lightning flash (teleport utility skill) to Another location and it'll blow there. (exceptionally funny to do when defending gates, charge it up inside, teleport out through the gate, BAM then Dodge right back in). its however very easy to spot when the skill goes off because theres an Earth ring that starts on the ele and goes outwards, when it reaches the aoe ring it goes off. so remember you're not safe outside the ring, Dodge anyway!
(best counter is simply go up to the ele and just damage him, dont knock him down and cancel it. and just Before its gonna blow you Dodge, its 3 seconds of free damage dealing for you if done right)
If you want me to show it for you just ask me ingame and i will.

OKE super long wall of text, hopefully someone found this somewhat interesting/useful. I have a couple of other tricks but the text is to long now and i Think you cant be bothered Reading it all as it is already xD i might add them later.

Nice job, now we need a guide for a staff user^^

guys why you don't use skill calculators?

btw i use same build on my ele, but i'm going to use runes for boon duration (mix: 2+2+2)

Thnx very nice, i am leveling a elemental myself!!

I don't like calculators cause they miss jewelry.

The best calculator I know is this one:

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/

Calculator for me is visual presentation of traits, I don't understand them in wall of text.

I havnt used one ever thats why i didnt use now. but maybe i should. i like explaining why picking the traits i do though. maybe i could do both ^^