Elementalist Guide

Guild Wars 2 Elementalist concept art

The Elementalist or “Ele” in GW2 features an unusual mechanic. Instead of swapping weapon sets, you swap between four different “attunements.” (Fire, Water, Air, and Earth.) These attunements offer different attacks for each weapon you equip. As you might imagine, it can be difficult to keep track.

From a practical standpoint, this means that a basic Elementalist attack rotation will involve juggling attunements and cooldowns. Frankly, it often seems like it’s not worth the hassle.

Best Ele Builds

One notable feature of Elementalist is that it offers the best healing skills in the game from the early character levels. Water attunement offers a wide selection of heals, based on the weapon chosen. Druid is arguably better at healing, but as a an Elite Specialization of the Ranger class, it is only available for max-level characters of players who have the expansion packs.

It used to be that the Elementalist Lava Font and Meteor Attack were two of the strongest attacks in the game. These have been nerfed, bringing Elementalist more in line with other classes when it comes to damage.

For ideas on how best to play Elementalist, we recommend the Snow Crows and MetaBattle builds, as these are carefully-tested and kept up to date with the current meta.

Farming Mobs With Elementalist

Although Elementalist is overall a complicated class to play well, there is a notable exception: Metabattle’s Tempest Farmer build. This build is great for kicking back in a big group of players and tagging mobs. Highly recommended for farming the Halloween Labyrinth.

Elementalist Weapons

Most players choose Staff for the Elementalist, although Dagger/Focus is also good for condition (“condi”) damage.

Elite Specializations

Tempest: The ability to overload attunements for a burst attack is a big improvement for this class.

Weaver: Stock Elementalist not complicated enough for you? Unlock Weaver, and dual-wield attunements. Probably the most complicated class to play in the entire game.

2 Replies to “Elementalist Guide”

  1. FYI, the Mirage Greatsword Farmer build you linked to is a Mesmer build, not Elementalist.

    1. Great catch, thank you! I have updated the article with the Tempest Farmer link.

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