The Elementalist is considerably harder to play than most professions considering the player must experiment with a complicated and intricate system of traits. The Elementalist can be used in almost every situation but cannot change that build in a short amount of time. Elementalist are considerably hard to kill when facing a seasoned player.
List of Elementalist Weapon Skills are found here.
Playing the Elementalist
In the case of Guild Wars 2, the Elementalist profession seems to be one of the more complicated (professions being Guild Wars 2's name for classes). Like the other seven professions, the Elementalist gains new abilities by equipping a weapon. At first each Elementalist weapon only has one ability (corresponding to the 1 key), but as kills are made more skills are unlocked for keys 2-5. Two-handed weapons come with five skills, while one-handed weapons have three skills, and can be matched with an off-hand item for another two skills. The 6 key is dedicated to a character's healing ability, the 7-9 keys are for utility skills purchased with points earned through leveling, and the 0 key is used for Elite abilities that unlock after level 30.
That's already a lot to take in, and made more complex considering the various weapons an Elementalist can wield. Even with all the powers unlocked on a two-handed staff, they'll still need to unlock others by using daggers, wands and off-hand items called focuses.
Even still that's only the beginning for a burgeoning Elementalist. You see, the Elementalist can alter their powers by changing their attunement, switching between fire, water, air and earth. Changing the Elementalist's attunement completely changes the skill bar without changing the equipped weapon, meaning you need to unlock skills for every weapon and attunement combination.
The Elementalist requires a lot of work early on, but once you have all his powers unlocked for their various attunements they become rich and versatile characters. One second they can be blasting away at their opponents with fire spells, the next they can change to their water attunement and heal themselves and their party. All of their attunements have a damage dealing auto-attack, but they also have a general focus. Fire tends to be aimed at dealing heavy amounts of damage; water has healing spells; wind spells often harm an enemy's resistance to damage; earth spells often do damage and also cause bleeding to an opponent.
Attunements can be rapidly cycled (though there is a short cool down on each to prevent you from going back and forth between only two), so a good Elementalist can easily use their entire arsenal of powers. You might open up with a wind spell to lower their damage resistance, then blast them with an earth spell to get them bleeding. Then, after pummeling an enemy with an exploding phoenix or a gigantic flaming dragon's tooth from the fire spell set, they can switch to water to blast out an area of effect heal to keep everyone in the fight. Elementalists can also combo attacks with other professions like theRanger. For instance they can cast a ring of fire, allowing the ranger to shoot through it to set their arrows alight.
And those are just the Elementalist's weapon-based powers. Once they start unlocking utility skills and Elite powers they can be even more adaptive. For instance they can take a signet that summons a small elemental creature based on their currently equipped attunement – a great power for dealing with a small group of enemies. Or they could just equip a spell like Arcane Blast, which gives an Elementalist yet another spell they can cast to do an extra bit of damage. Then, if a little extra oomph is needed, an Elementalist can call on a number of Elite spells. These are where the Elementalist really shows their might, summoning giant avatars that represent their equipped attunement, or even transforming into a gigantic tornado that can toss enemies around.
Elite Specializations
- Tempest - released in Heart of Thorns (23 October 2015)
- Weaver - released in Path of Fire (22 September 2017)
