Elementalist Profession Guide

 

Ok, what's so cool about this profession?

Fire, Water, Air and Earth.... these are the elements that the Elementalist wields to great effect.  The game declares Elementalists as the master of Area of Effect (AOE) spells, but the profession is much more than that.  Capable of great destruction but equally adept at life-saving healing, the real hallmark of the profession is its versatility during combat.  Only the elementalist is able to switch between damage-dealing, crowd control, healing, condition-applying and tanking roles in a single battle.

Fine, you got me reading.  How does the class work?

Elementalists have a unique action bar.  Many other classes can swap between weapon sets- elementalists swap between "attunements" instead.  At any time you may only be attuned to a single element: fire, water, air or earth.  Each attunement has a completely separate set of five weapon skills that you can use.  Here's what the attunement bar looks like:

When you swap attunements,  you can't swap to any attunement for at least two seconds and your previous attunement cannot be swapped back to for 15 seconds (by default, lowerable by traits).  This is what the bar looks like after you swap from fire to air.  Notice how fire has a 14.5 second cooldown and your other, unused attunements have 1.5 seconds left.  (The timers round a bit so fire still says "15", but you can see that it's not fully blacked out)  You should also notice that you have a whole different set of weapon (but not utility) skills.

What about weapon switching?

As I mentioned earlier, you cannot swap weapons during combat.  You can change your weapons outside of combat, and just like other classes, your weapons give you totally different skills.  For example, the first image below are the Fire skills for scepter/mace, and the second image is Fire skills when wielding a  staff:

Elementalists can wield scepters in their main hand, focuses in their off hand, daggers in either hand, or a staff as a two handed weapon.  Here are all the possible weapon combinations:

• Dagger/Dagger
• Dagger/Focus
• Scepter/Dagger
• Scepter/Focus
• Staff

Additionally, the Elementalists have only one aquatic weapon, the trident.  They still maintain all 4 possible attunements underwater and have completely different weapon skills with the trident than their land-based weapons.

What are the weapons like?

Scepter (main hand only)

• Balanced mixture of single target and AOE abilities
• Many time-delayed spells
• Balanced offense and defensive skills

Dagger, main hand

• Focuses on close combat
• Can stun enemies that are close
• Deals high damage in cones
• Can leap to enemies.
• Offensive focused

Dagger, off hand

• Versatile skill selection that has many situational skills
• Skills, when used in the right situations, are brutally effective (Fire Grab is the highest single target DPS skill, Updraft can disable a whole group of enemies, Cleansing Wave can save a group from death, and Churning Earth can wipe out an accidentally pulled group of trash monsters)

Focus (off hand only)

• Strongly defensive focused
• Provides excellent individual survivability but isn't as strong at group support
• Has an Earth skill that gives 4 seconds of invulnerability which is useful outside of combat as well (certain jumping puzzle segments for example)

Staff

• Completely AOE focused
• Many time-delayed and channeled skills
• Phenomenal at group support (removing conditions, huge AOE heal, best AOE damage over time)
• Very few defensive abilities, has a strong theme of "slow them down and hope your allies kill them before they kill you"

Tell me more about the attunements.  How are they different?

Each attunement has a particular "theme" of its skills.  Here are some general similarities:

Fire

Strong burst and burning damage combined with a few evasion skills.

• Best burst damage
• Many spells inflict burning
• Almost all skills splash
• Possible to "one shot" normal monsters with a single rotation
• Contains some "evasion" type skills that either give Vigor or can be used in place of a dodge
• Highest damage overall (before applying gear or traits)

Water

A mixture of healing and damage spells, with a focus on wearing down opponents over time with vulnerability and chilled.

• Only attunement that has healing spells
• Healing is all area of effect with long cooldowns and of low intensity unless specialized for
• Can apply either Vulnerability or Chilled
• Almost all skills splash
• Second-lowest damage

Air

The "fastest" attunment with many speed-increasing skills.  Also the main "crowd control" attunement.  Lowest damage.

• Provides many "speed" type skills that either provide swiftness or perform a "dash"
• Can apply Blindness, Weakness or Stun
• Fewest AOE skills compared to the other attunements
• Always has at least one AOE "disable" skill
• Lowest damage

Earth

The "tankiest" attunement, also dishes out great damage through bleeds and applies many conditions that wreck your opponent's mobility.  Bleeding also inflicts 

• Mediocre burst damage but good bleed damage
• Many skills protect you in different ways (damage reduction, invulnerability, projectile reflect)
• Best at long-term damage per second (DPS) against bosses when traited correctly due to bleed stacking intensity (vs. burn stacking duration)
• Applies a variety of movement-preventing conditions: knockdown, cripple, immobilize
• Second-highest damage

That's all nice and good, but what's it like to actually play the class?

The beauty and incredible depth of the Elementalist profession is switching between attunements.  For example, let's say you fight a veteran mother and father bear as well as two bear cubs.  You open in Fire attunement and lay down some strong AOE spells, killing both cubs instantly and doing good damage to the veterans and burning them.  You immediately change into Lightning attunement to put down a stun and applying blindness to both, buying you time to finish off the mother.  While only the father remains, you're low on health so you swap into Water and heal yourself, applying vulnerability to the last bear in the process.  Nearly full on health now, you change to Earth and dish out bleed damage and cripple him, kiting him around before he finally croaks.

And that's what it's like just playing by yourself.  Imagine the complexity once you get into groups.

What's my role in a group running a five-man dungeon?

Your main role is AOE damage.  You're better at it than any other class, and you better do it well.  You dish out great damage with a huge radius and can even pin monsters to a spot, allowing your time-delayed spells (we'll get to that in a bit) a chance to land.  However, don't focus solely on damage and think about defense as well.  You need to be able to survive through a "rotation" of spells that can actually wipe out the enemies.  Dying with ten monsters at 20% health is still dying.

After your AOE is dished out, you have tremendous flexibility.  Your Air attunement has fantastic crowd control, which you can use to stun groups of veteran monsters while your team pounds on them (note that this is much less effective against bosses due to Stability).   Earth can be used to cripple/immobilize strong melee monsters while also dealing out great damage, and is definitely a viable choice for straight DPS on a boss due to bleed stacks.  Water can put in some clutch healing that keeps people (or yourself) going just a bit longer.  Fire is great for finishing off a target quickly with strong burst damage or applying more AOE damage.  It can also be a lifesaver if you need one more dodge to stay alive.

Your trait specializations and gear will determine which attunement you stay in the most.  With proper specialization and gear you can dish out fantastic healing or great bleed damage, but remember that you always have the option of switching to a different attunement even if you are specialized elsewhere.

Summarize the pros and cons of the profession.

Pros:

• Strong AOE damage
• Very versatile: can fill very different roles in a single fight
• Has a wide variety of conditions that can be applied
• Decent AOE healing
• Can be quite fast without sacrificing any firepower
• Many abilities create Combo Fields

Cons:

• No group boons other than swiftness
• Can struggle to kill single high health targets
• Difficult to kite enemies in a closed space when not attuned to Earth, and even then it's not that easy
• Many time-delayed spells that are much harder to use in chaotic situations
• Very squishy and can struggle to finish a "rotation" if defensive traits and skills aren't in effect
• Can draw excessive (all the mobs target you) or unintentional (neutral mob nearby gets hit by AOE) aggro.  Problem is compounded by poor kiting ability (see above)
• Specialization of attunements means that being locked out of a critical one due to cooldown can be fatal.  For example, unable to finish off a monster while attuned to Air, or being low on health when Water is on cooldown.