Elementalist: 20 weapon skills, the lowest health

The elementalist has the lowest health in the game and light armour, so a single crit rolls straight over it. In exchange it carries a mechanic nobody else has: four elements on one weapon.

Attunement

You switch between fire, water, air and earth, and each one replaces all five of your weapon skills.

Fire deals damage and burning. Water heals and supports. Air deals damage and control. Earth deals damage over time and defends.

One staff is therefore twenty skills rather than five. No other class comes near that.

The price is straightforward: no weapon swap in combat. Everyone else carries two sets; you carry one in four states.

The ten seconds that shape the class

The tutorial never states this rule: when you leave an attunement, that one goes on a ten-second recharge, while the three you did not use recharge for 1.5 seconds.

Read that again, because the whole class falls out of it. You cannot bounce between two favourites. Fire, then straight back to fire, means ten seconds of staring at a greyed-out button. The game is quietly pushing you to travel through all four in a circle, and every good elementalist rotation you will ever see is built on that push.

Traits soften it. Elemental Enchantment in the Arcane line shortens the recharge, and Weaver’s Flow State does the same for its own faster swaps. But the shape stays: keep moving, or the class stops working.

It is hard for one specific reason.

The health pool is the smallest in the game. One missed dodge costs half the bar.

Playing an elementalist means constant switching: burn in fire, dip into water to heal, into air for control, into earth to take a hit. You can stand in one attunement, and then you are playing a quarter of the class.

This class works best as your second or third character, once combat makes sense to you.

One number explains the fragility.

“Lowest health in the game” is the sort of phrase people repeat without ever seeing the size of the gap.

Base health at level 80 is 1,645 for elementalist, guardian and thief. Every point of vitality adds ten, and a level-80 character starts with a thousand of them, so the bar on your screen reads about 11,645. A warrior or necromancer sits on 9,212 base, which lands near 19,212.

That is not a small difference. It is roughly forty per cent less health for the same hit. Damage in this game does not care that you are wearing light armour; it just arrives. Which is why an elementalist who has learned to dodge feels superb, and one who has not feels cursed.

Its unusual skills

Conjured weapons create a temporary weapon for you and one ally. It drops on the ground and someone can pick it up.

Glyphs change their effect with your current attunement. One button, four outcomes.

Arcane skills cast instantly and often land guaranteed critical hits.

Nobody remembers the conjures.

Five skills, all sitting in the utility slots, all quietly forgotten by most of the playerbase.

Conjure Fiery Greatsword, Lightning Hammer, Frost Bow, Lava Axe and Earth Shield each spawn a temporary weapon with its own five skills. It lasts 30 seconds in your hands, and a second copy drops on the ground for an ally to grab.

Recharge is 60 seconds for four of them and 180 seconds for the fiery greatsword, which tells you exactly how ArenaNet rates that one.

There is something a bit lovely about a class whose answer to “my weapon is wrong for this fight” is to conjure a better one out of the air and hand a spare to the stranger standing next to you.

Weapons

Two-handed: staff, hammer, spear. Main-hand: dagger, pistol, scepter, sword. Off-hand: dagger, focus, warhorn.

Staff means range and support and is the gentlest start. Dagger with dagger means melee and the highest risk.

The elite specialisations

Tempest (Heart of Thorns) adds Overload: stay in an attunement and release a heavy effect. It also brings the warhorn and shouts. The simplest of the four.

Weaver (Path of Fire) runs two attunements at once, half your skills from each plus dedicated combined ones. The most demanding mechanic in the game, without exaggeration.

Catalyst (End of Dragons) places a Jade Sphere that strengthens allies inside it, and adds the hammer and augment skills.

Evoker (Visions of Eternity) uses meditations that cut recharge, plus spiritual companions.

Advice for a newcomer

If this is your first class, take a staff, hold your distance and learn the attunements at your own pace. You will die a lot.

If you have a choice, start on a warrior or a guardian and roll an elementalist when you want depth.

The comparison against the other eight sits in the overview.