Stuck on first time farming.

I extremely dislike mods that decrease recharge for farms like these
they fuggup ma rotationzz! Trolololol, 12 chars.

On the other hand, if you run as Ele/Mesmer you can have some additional shits to protect yourself, ie geomancer insignia. Helps if you're just learning it, dropping stoneflesh won't mean death in 0.5 seconds. However, I also recommend you buy some golden eggs and/or candy corn and do the first couple of runs with them until you get the feel, then without.

And never do that farm in NM, it's not worth it at all. No enemies at all. Learn where the spawns are, which side you prefer first, what route you are going to take for each spawn.

It's a delicate matter that farm. Let me tell you exactly how I do that. I'll do two explanations: what you should aspire to do if you want 3 minute runs, which are good and what you should do to learn the farm. I'm using the domination build in the two screens.

1) The learning build/farm.

So, you're in the latter situation, I'll start with that. The build you will use is specced around earth magic: you will need 16 for the purpose of maintaining Obsidian Flesh (OF), which makes you untargetable by spells (basically, whenever they try casting on you it will not allow them to, so they don't do it). OF will cost 25 energy and give -2 energy regen. You will not be able to attack. The second skill is Stoneflesh Aura (SA or SFA). It makes you immune to critical hits and most importantly reduces all damage done to you by a fixed ammount, so all vaettirs should be doing significantly less damage. Now, you want to farm vaettirs. So you want to kill them a lot, hence you shouldn't die. If you want to not die, you will need Glyph of Swiftness (GoS) on OF and SFA, or else they will not be up permanently. Now you can be Rambo. But you can also be better than Rambo, because your energy will run out (like Rambo's bullets). What people researched in the farm and found out is that those little buggers use earth wands. This is lucky, because you have a mesmer skill that reduces earth damage and fuels your energy: Mantra of Earth. If you like doing the damage Rambo does without dying, please use geomancer insignias (you can craft cheap armor, slap the insignias on it and be happy). You will also find a 20% enchanting earth staff that will give you copious amounts of energy. At some point that is. This is the core of your build. You can tank a theoretically infinite ammount of vaettirs with it. But you also want to kill them.

What you should have noticed is that they have INSANE armor against earth damage. And that is not cool when you are specced in earth. But you still have (8-SF-OF-GoS-Mantra=4) skills left. There are several schools of vaettir farming: those who use sliver armor and crystal wave + teinai's crystals. If you chose to use that, you can slap a PvE skill in there. I would be looking at Elemental Lord, that powers up your other spells. There is another build. You are already E/Me. Why not spec some more mesmer skills? What makes shitloads of armor ignoring damage and can be spammed like there's no tomorrow? That's correct, Wastrel's Worry and Wastrel's Demise are the skills you want. Cycle through your opponents with the tab key and cast them on everyone, vaettir-b-gone spray, that's what I call those two skills. As soon as they recharge, press tab, cast them on someone else, again and again. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Now I'll tell you exactly how you can start learning the build and master it.

Run there, HM. Take the blessing. Stand real close to the vaettirs. Cast GoS, OF and SFA (remember, SFA after OF), then Mantra of Earth whilst SFA is casting (it's a game mechanic that is bugged, if you cast Mantra after SFA you will take -1s and -2s even though you really shouldn't). Okay. As soon as they are all up, you will aggro the group closest to you and pray they come quick. They will. You'll notice your energy will build up again when they start whacking you. You'll need that. Now you have your enchantments and an energy battery up and running, aggro everything on the right side (more groups, good for learning). As you'll see in my screen, I've balled them like baby kittens so they all get the AoE damage. After you recast SFA and mantra and OF (OF has a longer recharge than SFA, don't let that trick you, you should try maintaining the enchantments for a while even after they are balled), use all the damage skills as much as you can. If you're using my build, keep hitting tab to change targets! Now run to the other side and kill 24 more of those idiots.

2) Farming the shit out of vaettirs

Okay, your runs will start becoming 4-5 minutes, you won't die anymore (or not that much). You need two things: to be congratulated that you can now farm them and get better at farming them. It's just a matter of time. The difference between this and before is that you will know when and what is about to expire. So you know that you should be moving as much as you can. Basically once you have 1 group of vaettirs attacking you, you will have your energy. This is good. You'll also notice they only start attacking after 2-3 seconds, sometimes more. USE THAT! If they are not attacking you, they won't melee and come to bodyblock you. However, they are aggroed already so you can move through the many spectral swans and just go aggro another group. Once you've aggroed everything, run back a bit to the other side so you can kill them closer to where the others are. It is effective to kill them as OF runs out, you will need about one cast of SFA to kill all of them without a problem. Keep pushing tab and pawning them. If you get hexed, don't worry. You won't usually die, unless they put every hex on you. Then you are dead meat unless you have pcons, which are good to have (apple, red candy cane, cupcake). But don't use them too much, they are just a precaution. And vice versa, with the second pull, run closer to the gate with vaettirs on you so you take less time to zone. Now at this stage you'll probably notice you have no inventory space. Buy a max identification kit. Buy a max expert salvage kit (both 100 uses). And buy 6 normal salvage kits (25 uses). Get everything you haven't equipped away from your character. You will salvage everything. Everything. If you get a mod you want on the golds you'll identify, salvage it and if the weapon isn't destroyed salvage the weapon as well. Put your measure for measures on ruby mauls and golds that give you iron and are worth more than 300g. You will make buttloads of money. It's pretty cool to also try levelling survivor there, because you just get a lot of money and a title. I attached two screens: How the first ball should look and where it should be and what shouldn't happen to you, that is why you need to keep moving.

If you still want to farm them after you got survivor, which will net you a lot of money, you should consider investing into a 40/40 domination set to which you will switch when doing your damage spells. Until then, don't bother with it, it's insanely hard to use it effectively if you're still learning.

Happy hunting. Good luck.