elementalist questions, how to make it good

i have just started a ele/mesmer and want it to be a pvp, and i was just wondering what are the different pros/cons for each element - fire,air,water

i have heard peole say fire is good for monsters but useless in pvp, while air is effective in pvp on single targets. I was thinkin is it possible to make a successful fire/air ele with enuf points for illusion amgic and energy storage.

are their any suggestions on what are good ele/mes builds? i am jsut planning to focus on one type of magic for mesmer.

any of u pro ele or ele/mes can answer my questions? ty

what i was planning was to have maxed out air and fire stats and put some on illusion and energy storage. I would hold a fire artifact and an air wand, both wespons givin me energy to make up with the decreased energy storage points...less on illusion since mesmer isnt my priamry class. Its a pvp char.

Fire is the area of effect damage dealing, and the damage can be quite large. The two main points that make it 'useless' in pvp are:
1) everyone runs away
2) fire is the most protected against element.
Of course, 1) should not be a problem, if your going to nuke people you should have effective snares to slow the enemy and stop them running. 2) is tough to do anything about. The Drakescale armour set for the ranger has 115AL against fire, which means attacks are reduced to 32% of what it says on the box. Which is nasty. AOE spells still have their place as a viable tactic, in my book.

Earth is a mix of purposes. Mainly stopping you from dying and helping those around you not die, by either enchantments, wards, or hexes. The three wards are often seen used by the Koreans, and are to be feared. Ward againts melee/foes are the best two, and if your an earth ele seriously consider using these spells. The Earth line does have a few aoe damaging spells as well, but they arent as good as the fire ones.

Air is not area of effect, but on single targets. Whatsmore, they are armour piercing, so if you want to take down a single target at a time, use air. They can deal large damage, but regretably for large energy. Exhaustion is also a factor with many of the spells. Also, air can cause blindness, which is probably the single best shut down for any character that relies on attacking with a weapon (apart from IW-eer).

Finally, water is for snaring and slowing the enemy, as well as interrupting them. It could be useful to use air to slow your enemies before nuking them with fire, but i havent actually tried this. They are also good against casters, with Maelstrom interrupting them every second for 10 seconds and doing resonable damage.

Basically, fire and air for damage, earth and water for 'utility'. Fire and air is therefore quite offensive, but a good team will be needed to put the fire nukes into effect.

Energy Storage will be a must therefore, youll need a lot of energy for those two lines together, so maybe youll want the inspiration line from mesmer to give energy.

Im ascended el/me and i use fire, energy storage, and inspiration, and it kicks ass. In pvp i have a lot of trouble keeping people in the aoe, but by casting over melees between warriors and so on you can usually get in a reasonable amount of damage before they all belt it. And pve is great.

yur reply is rly helpful thx alot
btw, i am quite mixed up with mesmer and hte different spells, perhaps if u dun mind tell me the different pros/cons for that? ty

so rly, u dun suggest a fire/air ele right

You can do a fire air, its just possibly better to mix one line more focused on damage with one focused on support, or to use mesmer to support yourself.

Erm

Domination: Anti spell caster - e.g. backfire... stops casters from being able to work their magic. Illusion is the same except for melee characters like wariors. Inspiration is the support line, and focuses on either protecting yourself, or draining energy for yourlsef by stealing it from enemies. It also has a load of stances, of which a few arent so useful -.-, but some can be used to supplement your offense very well. Mesmers have some of the odder skills, so the best way to learn how to use em is to use them. To be honest, do what you want. Some people are convinced that you can make a good build out of any combination, although im not so sure...

hmmm so sounds like a damage ele would benefit from inspiration....ya ill try it out thx alot

First of all : if you max out air and fire you don't really have points left.
Maxed air, a bit less fire and some energy storage could do the damage dealer job.

As some people already pointed out, the fire aoe spells aren't that useful in pvp. But the spells that set on fire are great, since burning isn't affected by armor.
Immolate and incendary bounds are both pretty nice spells. Both have relatively short cast and recharge time and don't cost too much energy. Rodgorts invocation is has a huge aoe and sets foes on fire but it is slow as hell. Just get enough points in fire for 3 seconds of burning.

Maxing air gives you very high direct damage. Enervating charge has the nice bonus of causing weakness, too. The bad thing about air is that some of the best spells cause exhaustion. Since those spells will have a relatively fast refresh rate you must be careful there. For some odd reason using glyph of energy seems to prevent exhaustion though.

Illusion Magic has some interesting spells, too. If you combine conjured phantasm and immolate you have quite a nice single target health deregeneration, and phantom pain can be used to lower targets max hp.

Domination Magic: the interrupts work decently with only a few points in that, but i'd better leave that for a character focussed in interrupts. The rest of the spells are mostly max it or leave it. The have long recharge times so you might want the max benefit for each spell.

Inspiration can be used to gain some your energy back and for defense.

Water Magic has some interesting hexes, but damage output is quite low.

Earth Magic is great for defense and knockdown, damage will be low on high armor targets though. Unless your use obsidian flame or crystal wave, which both have real drawbacks. Spamming obsidian flame will get you completely exhausted in no time and crystal wave purges condtions.

Rodgorts doesnt actually have that big a radius. Its the same as a fireball, which can just about hit a small melee of 3-4 people. Whatsmore, setting people on fire isnt that hot, since most of the time it only lasts 3 seconds ish. Thats 14 dps for 3 seconds.... not worth it. Your probably better off poisoning them.
In fact, unless your planning on maxing out someones health degen (a cracking 20dps --.-) then theres not much point. The main point of degen is to make the target think something like;
"OMFGWTFI GOT ARROWS HEAL MONK FOOL"
thus wasting valuable resources. Or to do sever artery or similar on that monk whos trying to run away, and you just need that last 20 damage, but you cant dam hit the .... yeah you know what i mean.

Yeah as i said, rodgorts is too slow and too costly. The radius is much better than incendary bonds though.
With incendary bonds, immolate, conjure phantasm and phantom pain you can keep the health deregeneration up for quite some time. That pretty annoying IMO
Additionally rodgorts mark could be used in combination with a normal fire staff.
I like these fire spells most since they're not affected by armor. High armor targets simply don't take enough damage by the other fire spells.

Poison is nice too since it lasts quite some time. But it's a lot weaker and E/Me doesn't have it anyway
There's also a another good thing about the fire lasting that short but dealing better damage : nobody will remove the condition or is fast enough do do so most of the time
You can use it with fragility, too. Everytime fire stops and ends the target will take damage.

I'll summarize everything about the Elementalist for you .

Fire: Most skills are AoE and are really damn powerful. Probably the best class for PvE. As for PvP. It can still be very good, but most of the skills have high mana cost, so unless you have a lot of energy this could be a problem. However, setting people on fire (Health degeneration of 7-8 Pips) can be very helpful, which is where skills paired such as Rogart's Invocation can be VERY deadly when paired with skills such as meteor, meteor shower, or even flare.

Air: This is the element I use (See my thread titled "My Completed E/Me Air/Domination Build." It gives a very detailed summary of Air magic. The other people here pretty much summed it up.

Earth: Not really the damage dealing element. (Although Obsidian, Earthquake, Shockwave, etc... are very strong skills). Earth Elementalists REALLY help out the party with skills that greatly reduce damage, increase armor, and can severely destroy melee characters such as warriors.

Water: The least damage dealing element of the four. Does that mean it's the worst? Not a chance in hell! Water elementalists can hex the living hell out of enemies, while doing pretty good damage. (I really doubt there's many people with Hydromancer Armor, so you'll be doing pretty much your max damage on them). Water also slows down enemies, preventing them from running away and giving you an easy escape route. Water skills also cost barely anything to cast so it's very energy friendly.

u guys r rly helpful ty

rii talks bussiness, thanx, for ur posts