Anti-stealth
Thieves can be particularly annoying when they can just stealth and run away. The best way to counter a sneaky thief or any stealthing class ability in general is to use CC’s and AoE.
The first thing to do is predict when the thief will stealth. Most thieves will back out when there aware that they are losing a battle, or are taking way too much damage from the enemy player.
General scenarios:
I predict when the enemy will stealth. I cast earth 3 as he is casting stealth, and it connects while he is in stealth. Therefore I know that the thief is immobilized for 2 seconds at that location while stealth, and I will follow that up with earth 2, and then earth 4 once the immobilize ends. Follow thereafter, I cast Air 5 and knock him backwards, follow by the typical fire3+fire5 combo. Finish it off with a fire4 field, and randomly spread fire2 thereafter. Usually this will kill all the bad thieves, but good thieves will get away because they will break your immobilize , stun and dodge / port away before you know it.
Weaving
Weaving is an advanced tactic used against primarily ranged opponents (i.e. rangers). Fire1 and Earth1 are both incredibly strong auto attack abilities that weaving is great for. Basically what you do is run around your enemy and “weave” into their avatar constantly such that they never get a clean shot of you with their targeting abilities. You can then couple that with PbAoE abilities as well, such as earth 2, as this will hit regardless of where your facing. Earth 1 also does not require you to face your enemies as well, so this spell is great for weaving. Having swiftness up + crippling/ chilling your enemies makes weaving very effective.
Air dodging
I learned this awhile back from some random person in WvWvW, and I had originally thought it was useless. It is basically where you move+jump, immediately followed by a VERY quick dodge click. The animation looks as if your dodge rolling in mid air.
It’s a fairly hard technique to master. The timing must be PERFECT for this to work right, and of course you need enough energy to dodge. I don’t even get this down most of the time when I want too, it only works half the time I intend it too.
Now for its uses:
Air dodging is the most effective method of jumping from one location to another, as it gives you the furthest possible distance achievable. The reason why is as follows: Why do people dodge on the ground to get around places? It is because it is one of the most effective ways to travel, as dodging is basically an effective temporary speed buff. Technically ride the lightning is much more effective at doing this (you can jump cliff chasms with it), but this skill is specific only to d/d elementalists, and you will not always have it handy. Plus no other profession has access to anything remotely like ride the lightning.
Locations:
Any area that requires you to jump (i.e. low walls, hopping from island to island, far distance jumps, etc) benefit from air dodging. One particular location is worth mentioning. This is on Raid of the Capricorn, on the sPvP map at the “Docks” capture location area. There is a highrise “sniping” location at the “Docks” capture point that one team generally has access too from their starting location. You cannot physically get to that “sniping” location without wasting time running around the corners. You can’t to my knowledge teleport up there either using the elementalist’s lightning flash or the Mesmer teleport skill.
However, you can actually climb that “sniping” location by simply jumping on a box on the corner in the “docks” capture zone area, and jump up there. Normal jumping only works if your out of combat. However when in combat, normal jumping does not get you far enough to reach the “sniping” platform. Air dodging does get you far enough though.
Other locations that this air dodge is useful is jumping from cliff to cliff.
One very useful location is in the EB Jumping puzzle where enemies will attack you and therefore give you a “in combat” movement speed debuff, making it difficult for regular jumps to work. Air dodges ignore movement speed debuffs.
The Almighty Level Up technique
Yes leveling up is a method of fighting too, albeit not something you would ever think of when fighting. There is a % chance that all enemies will be pushed back away from you, and you can use this to your advantage. Near the end of my 2nd video,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzBn32Fqm9w
I actually used this ability without realizing it. Everyone just flies away from you at such incredible speeds that its actually OP in its own right. Do your daily reward and accept it when you need it, if your EXP bar is almost there. Also you can use it to revive yourself too and fully heal yourself.
The only downside is this isn’t exactly reliable
Downed techniques
Since elementalist can use vapor form while downed, this actually brings in a whole new level of tactics in your arsenal. You can purposely die as a legit form of strategy, when you know you will die because your HP is too low and all your CD’s are on cooldown. This was done in my 5th video, I got moa’d with really low HP leftover and I knew I was going die. I used it to my advantage and found a nearby firefly.
You can also use a suicidal tactic as well. If you know that you have no chance of rallying yourself and are near a highrise, simply jump off the cliff using vapor form and you can make your silly enemies kill themselves.
Another tactic is to jump into a body of water using vapor form, and revive yourself that way out of combat. If an enemy decides to chase you down there, you can constantly surface and hold them off longer
Air casting
Air casting is very similar to air dodging, except instead of jumping + immediately dodging, you jump + immediately cast. The uses of this applies primarily to channeling /long cast type abilities (i.e. churning earth) and defending keeps with the staff weapon. I don’t use it too often since its rather hard to pull off in most cases when being pressured by many enemies at once, but I’m sure there are players that can utilize these strategies.
The 2 methods to use this technique
It is highly suggested you use arcane abatement (Water 8 trait, fall damage 50% reduction) when doing method 1 and 2.
Method 1 –
This method is for the D/D’s churning earth spell (earth 5)
The enemy is right below you, on a drop off at a cliff. Move and jump forward off the ledge and cast churning earth immediately. Your spell should channel in midair, and finish by the time you reach the ground. Chain the arcane abatement in earth attunement to also knockdown your foe while the churning earth goes off.
The best way to execute this spell is to be on auto run, jump off a cliff and immediately press churning earth.
Method 2-
This method is primarily for the staff’s meteor shower (fire5)
The enemy zerg army is assaulting your keep, and you don’t have line of sight with your staff to deal AoE damage while standing on the keep’s walls. Your fear is that once you have a clear AoE target to channel spells on the enemy mob, an enemy will drag you down to their army using skills such as the mesmer’s temporal curtain, thieves scorpion wire, guardian’s GS pull, etc.
The solution is to have a clear line of sight between you and the enemy army, and to jump into a no line of sight area. While jumping, cast the spell that you intend to using air casting. This can be done with spells that require you to stand still, such as meteor shower, so you don’t have to waste a lightning flash / magnetic aura to be on the safe side.
The best way to execute this spell is to use auto run, and have your AoE target marker ready before jumping.
Advanced Weapon Swapping
Weapon swapping before a battle starts is an extremely useful tactic that I use all the time. It requires the use of all weapon types – scepter, dagger, focus, and staff. The reason this works is because there is no cooldown when you swap weapons, and you are free to cast whatever abilities you want as each weapon has its own CDs associated with it. It is very commonly done with the warrior class to get a speed buff using the warhorn.
Essentially what you are doing is combining spells from all weapon types an elementalist has. The only downside of these techniques is that you can get caught while swapping weapons , i.e. namely with only 1 weapon in your hand. They’re also very micro intensive.
There are two types of weapon swap combos, support or offensive
I will use a different naming convention b/c it will get confusing when describing spells of different attunements and weapon types.
Z = Staff
S= Scepter/Focus
D = Dagger/Dagger
Earth 1 = e1 , Earth5 = e5, Fire 3 = f3, water4 =w4, etc. air 2= a2
Scepter Fire skill number 3 = Sf3
Support weapon swaps
This is the more useful of the two. There are several uses for this method such as gaining longer swiftness buffs, pre-might stacks, +300 armor, etc before a battle starts.
Swiftness Stacking
There’s 3 types. Type 1 takes less time to do but doesn’t give as many benefits as type 3.
Type 1:
Ze5+Za4+Za5 (onto Ze5)+Swap to D/D
Type 2:
Ze5+Za4+Za5 (onto Ze5)+Sf3 (onto Za5) +Swap to D/D
Type 3: (this is using zephyr’s boon trait, MS + Fury buff upon aura cast)
Ze3+Ze5+Za4+Za5(onto Ze5)+Da3+Sf3(onto Za5)+Sf5 +Swap to D/D
Armor buffing
Se2+Swap to D/D
Might stacking
Sf4+Sf3(onto Sf4) + Se4 +Swap to D/D
The combined total buffing (using zephyr’s boon trait)
Ze3+Ze5+Za4+Za5(onto Ze5)+Da3+Df5+wait until Za5 gone+Sf4+Sf3(onto Sf4)+Se4+Se2+Swap to D/D
This grants you lots of swiftness and fury, 7 stacks of might, +300 armor before a battle begins. You can chain it further by using scepter air skills 3-5 to attack your enemy before swapping to D/D, then use RtL to initiate
Offensive Weapon Swapping
Nobody will probably utilize these because the timing and weapon swapping needs to be perfect.
Sa3+Sa5+Sf2+Sf3+Df3+Df5
Blind, knock down your enemy, and follow up with a dragons tooth scepter combo and a dagger burst combo
Ze2+Ze3+Df3 initiation
Mid-range initiation blast finisher with a magnetic aura protection
Se5+De5+Lightning flash
The traditional churning earth+ lightning flash with invulnerability during casting
Zw5+Sf3+Se4+Se5+De4+De5+Lightning flash
Quad blast water healing to team + Invulnerability initiation. Only useful when you arrive and your team needs healing / ready to re-engage.
There’s more combinations than these listed here, this just gives you a general idea.
daphoenix's Elementalist Guide 