The best Elementalist guides and strategies are available at Skryer.

The Elementalist profession is considered as being the most offensive of them all due to its ability to use devastating skills which can endanger large amounts of characters/creatures at the same time (area of effect attacks). Being able to summon the strengths of 4 elements: air, earth, fire and water; the profession has much more than merely a handful of directions it can pursue. Probably the most important reason a player would choose the profession as being his primary is due to the Energy Storage attribute which allows the character to amass huge amounts of energy, much more than any other profession within Guild Wars. Sadly, a secondary profession elementalist does not have this useful attribute at his/her disposal. For each point spent into the attribute, the Elementalist gains 3 energy points to his maximum energy pool.

Fire Magic skills are often deemed as being the most straightforward skill set. They are often very offensive in nature and are probably the most devastating against large groups of foes. Certain exceptions do exist, which keeps things interesting, but the general rule of thumb is that fire based skills are not 'tricky' to use and inflict simple damage rather than cause deficiencies (which take longer to master as their effectiveness is greatly dependent on their situational use and combo mixes)

Water Magic skills are, as would probably be expected, useful against fast moving targets, which would be beneficial to pin or slow down. As Water Magic skills are actually ice based, many of them slow down characters upon being dealt. These attacks are often not as straightforward as they do not inflict as much damage, but are still rather useful due to their hex like nature. The Water Magic skill set also features many interesting defensive abilities.

Air Magic skills are especially useful against heavily armored characters/creatures as the armor penetration statistic is binded to each lightning based attack skill. The reason being that armor penetration causes greater damage on those using high armor, such as warriors. This is why many PvP Elementalists choose to bring Air Magic based skills into battle and it is often quite beneficial as Warriors will run away due to fear of dying a quick death (those who are not aware of the effectiveness of lightning shall most likely fall to the ground in no time at all). Many Air Magic skills also have many little perks such as knockdown and weaken.

Earth Magic allows the elementalist to use a quite wide range of different skill types, defensive, offensive and beneficial for certain specific instances. An interesting fact to note is the appearance of the knockdown ability within many of the more powerful earth magic skills.

Oddly enough, despite the rather frail body of the Elementalist; the profession paired with a Warrior as a secondary is extremely powerful. This is due to the professions conjure skills (frost, flame, lightning) which allow weapons to be given elemental damage (quantity given is dependant on the related elemental attribute). Even though the character will never be nearly as resistant as a primary warrior, he/she will be extremely effective at dealing melee damage (more so than a Warrior) as a 3-time conjured weapon is devastating against most characters, especially spell casters.