Elementalist - Earth or Fire?

I wanna have a mainly damage based spellcaster (Elementalist/x), but I'd much rather be and earth one than fire. I was wondering whethert it is possible to be a damage & earth mage with out any big problems?

Unlike in some other games, the differences between Elementalist element types in Guild Wars are not primarily cosmetic, but actually serve slightly different roles.

In general, Fire Elementalists pack the most damage with Area of Effects spells, Water Elementalists cast hexes and cause the enemies to be less effective, Air Elementalists do their primary damage to "spike" one single target at a time and also cause conditions, while Earth Elementalists are protective and defensive.

That said, any Elementalist can be a damage dealer to an extent, even if you pick a type that is not the most standard fire "nuker."

Earth Elementalists do have some damage inflicting spells, like Stoning and Sandstorm. If you have good energy management, you should be able to do a great deal, and you can add to that by taking Mesmer as your secondary profession and using skills like Arcane Echo to double your ability to use them (I realize you have a secondary, but eventually you can switch if you are so inclined.)

If you really truly want to be an Earth Elementalist, you can. Just look up some different builds, and read up on what their skills do. You're probably not ever going to rival a fire Elementalist in sheer damage-per-second to multiple targets, so keep reasonable expectations. But there's no reason you flat out can't play this. You'll just have to experiment to find a build you like.

The answer is that earth magic is more of a support attribute than a straight out damage attribute. Knockdowns, wards, weakness+blind, that mostly anti-melee kind of stuff.

Fire would be the better choice.

Earth is okay, and has a few nice elites, like Unsteady Ground, Shockwave and Sandstorm.
But besides the elites, earth is pretty limited on the spells you can take to cause damage.

Personally i prefer to cast spells often, Air has many spells that have a recharge of 8 or less, so they can be "spammed" pretty often.Lightning Hammer/Orb,Enervating Charge and Lightning Strike to mention a few.

Fire also has a few spells with a recharge of 8 or less like Fireball, Immolate and my personal favorite Rodgort's Invocation.

Earth also suffers from a lot of its spell being close range spells.Things like Aftershock,Crystal Wave/Tenai's Crystals (which also has the downside or removing conditions from foes, something you cant control too often)

You only really have Ebon Hawk,Glowstone and Stoning as a "spammable" combo.


You can take earth for damage but I don't like to throw up my big damage spells and then for 25 seconds fill my time with using "average" spells just to wait for the recharge of my big spells.

If you decide go with earth you have to look at the skills better to choose something good, in fire magic the choices are not so hard so making a build tends to be easier.

Not sure if you know that, but in GW you can switch your build and equipment very easily; you don't have to decide if you would rather play an earth or a fire ele.

Fire is the only elemental attribute of the ele that offers nearly no support, so if you choose fire you should be really deal a good deal of damage to make up for not supporting your team. Searing Flames and to a lesser extend Mind Blast+Rodgort's Invocation is the only viable option you have as a fire ele.
Earth doesn't deal as much damage as fire, but offers far better support and is generally more useful. Also, if you combine Eruption and Churning Earth with Assassin's Promise and Ebon Battle Standard of Honor the damage of an earth ele will not be much lower than a compareable fire ele, but will have far more support for your party.

The short answer to the OP is yes, you can run Earth Magic for damage. Damage-wise you will be strictly inferior to an Ele running Fire Magic but you have access to reasonable support options (Wards, good choice in knockdowns, blind...).
As you progress through the game you will realise that the damage an Elementalist can do decreases quite dramatically in the late stages of the game and in Hard Mode and it is there that people appreciate Earth Magic much more. However you need not concern yourself with that yet.

Builds depend where you go and what you do. If you solo PvE.. then you can basically do what suits you the most for your game playing style. But if you wanna join groups of people who does speed clears and does it by following certain flavors of the month, then you'd have to play a certain role that plays the group. Otherwise both and earth and fire are good, just depends on where you use it or how you prefer to set builds.

PvXwiki usually has good builds. If your buildign a team with melee characters in the setup I find this bar to be pretty good;

http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build%3AE/..._Splinter_Hero

Other than that, its as other relevant posts have stated in this thread. The roles of each attribute are pretty diverse;

Fire is for general Nuking damage, Earth is for damage reduction, Water is for slowing down targets making it easier for your AoE over time skills to be usefull and air is for single target high damage skills. There are of course exceptions to every skill line which overlap a bit, but thats the general gist of them.

As you are probably playing in NM the ele skills will still deal a lot of damage. As soon as you get to HM you will find that all damage skills will be drastically less effective and you might want to change to support rather than all out damage.

Earth ele's can still be used as nukers, but instead of damage they sometimes have special effects with their skills.
For example churning earth will KD any foe moving too fast, and unsteady ground any foe attacking, and this can keep foes in AoE longer or KDd which helps mitigate party damage

You're gonna love using churning earth and unsteady ground in HM while 2 packs of minions swarm on a KD group of foes

Earth,with its wards and KDs while outputing a bit less dmg then the other 3 elements, will permit you to pack less heal and more dmg on your team.

fire = big aoe damage, no real utility
earth = mediocre damage, lots of utility
water = decent single-target damage and snare
air = lots of single-target damage and blind

that's just how it is, make your choice and hit up the wiki.

In normal mode, a Fire build using Assassin's Promise (AP) will probably be your most devastating. A Savannah Heat build (with echo) can also dish out some serious damage but I don't like waiting for the recharge.

I found that things are quite different in hard mode. I switched to an Earth build and used that to get Legendary Vanquisher using only heros/hench. (All except Rotscale which I did with a pug.)

Typical AP fire build will use AOE spells such as meteor shower, searing heat, breath of fire. (Assuming 15 attribute points) Meteor Shower will hit for 112 every 3 seconds (and cause KD). Searing Heat will hit for 40 every second (which would be 120 over 3 seconds but not last as long as Meteor Shower.)

Typical Earth AOE damage-over-time spells will have a damage model similar to Searing Heat: 10..34..40 damage every second for 5 seconds, nearby range. However, Earth AOE spells come with extra goodies that help a lot in hard mode.

Unsteady Ground will knock down any attacking foe.

Churning Earth will knock down any foe that is moving faster than normal. In hard mode, that would be everybody by default which makes this considerably more useful than in normal mode.

Eruption will cause blindness for 10 seconds.

So if they attack they get knocked down. If the run they get knocked down. And the get blinded in any case.

Try this Earth build (E/Me) for Hard Mode:

Arcane Echo
Unsteady Ground (Elite)
Churning Earth
Eruption
<ward spell of choice>
<PvE skills of choice>
Earth Attunement

For wards I used Ebon Battle Standard of Honor for extra damage in all those AOE packets. Ward of Stability in certain zones made all the difference in party survival.

For PvE skills I like Mindbender for faster casting. Pain Inverter for the usual reasons.

Use a 20/20 wand and offhand.

Typically I flag back my party and cast Mind Bender + Echo. Have a monk hero put Spell Breaker on me. Then get aggro. I have plenty of time to cast Unsteady Ground and Churning Earth on their back line. Any melees running toward me would get Eruption by the time they reached me as well as the echoed Unsteady Ground. Somewhere in there would be Ebon Standard of Honor for increased damage.

Then I would unflag my party. The fight's not over yet but it's mostly mop up at that point. The changes to Spell Breaker weaken this strategy a bit but it still works pretty well.

Please keep to the topic. OP is asking about Fire/Earth damage/builds/viability for an Elementalist/x, not to be told to play other classes. Any post suggesting or telling op to play another class WILL be deleted.

The Earth ele does have the ability to deal damage. However, it is normally focused on one target. The Fire ele is the most offensive class and has the ability to deal damage to targets in a specific radius. The Earth ele has utility which the fire ele does not, it can create wards, inflict blindness, weakness, etc. Your choice should also be influenced by what discipline you wish to play in (PvP or PvE) and the level of that (high-end or low-end). See what is currently being played and try and build your build around that.