Lvl 30 Ele here...
If you don't want to get 2-shotted, just don't take damage. 90% of the time you can avoid it, and the other 10% you can normally heal it back before you have to take damage again.
Currently my build has 10 points in Arcana for Elemental Attunement, and 10 in air for Soothing winds. I stack Precision > Power > Vitality ~= Toughness. Planning to get 20 more in Air for Aeromancer's Alacrity and Air Training, 20 in fire for Internal Fire and Burning Precision, and 10 in water for Vital Striking.
In PVE vs multiple mobs, I use staff, Glyph of Elemental Harmony as my heal skill, Cleansing Fire, Signet of Earth, and Signet of Water as my Utility, and Glyph of Elementals for the Elite. I mostly stay air attuned, swapping to water/earth if needed to heal/block projectiles. I kite everything. Air has a great autoattack (skill 1) for kiting down groups of enemies. As long as they're all melee it's easy to take 3-5 at a time, sometimes more, without taking much if any damage. That makes up for the lower damage output.
For overland travel I use a staff, switch a Utility skill to Arcane Wave, and use the following rotation to get 100% swiftness uptime:
Swap to Air: 5s Swiftness AOE. Windborne Speed: 11s Swiftness AOE, 30s cd. Static Field + Arcane Wave when inside: 10s Swiftness AOE, 40s cd. Swap to Earth or Water. Wait for Air CD (13s). This just barely works out to keep Swiftness (33% speed, the max possible boost currently) up in a small aoe around me. Good for party travel. If solo I can add Glyph of Elemental Harmony (11s) to make it a little easier to maintain.
For PVE vs 1 mob, I go Sceptre/Dagger. Kiting/poking mobs down with air attunement is easy enough, and Ride The Lightning + Updraft is a nice burst/cc/reposition to make it easier. Then swap fire, Dragon's Tooth, Signet of Earth to hold the mob in place so it hits, phoenix just behind the mob so it hits 3 times and then Fire Grasp since it will be burning from Tooth and thus do 2x damage. Then Ring of fire, and evaluate options: if unhurt, go to Earth and finish the Ring of Fire combo, if hurt go to Water and heal up (keep kiting.) Then back to air.
PVP is about the same, but swap to Cleansing Fire, Signet of Earth, and Mist Form for utility skills, and trait Cleansing Wave in Water. With Cleansing Wave from traits that will be two stunbreakers, a triple condition remover, and a single condition remover. That's enough to win quite a few matchups, and damage output doesn't suffer much (cleansing fire does do damage.)
A note on kiting:
Kiting melee is easy, imagine dividing your screen into 9 sections:
1|2|3
-|-|-
4|5|6
-|-|-
7|8|9
Keep Melee mobs in sections 1 or 2 while strafing and mouse-turning. Don't keyboard turn. Also don't double-tap to dodge, bind it to a key (I use mouse 4). Double-tapping stops you briefly and gets you hit.
For kiting ranged mobs, you actually want to get right up next to them and keep just behind them. They can't hit you when you're behind them, and can't turn fast enough with your small run radius. I tend to run through the mob and turn around rapidly, repeatedly.
Oh, time your dodges, blinds, knockbacks, roots, stuns, etc. Use them when the mob is charging up a big attack, or is just about to hit you. When they get in range to hit you they should be blinded for the attack, then you should dodge or knock them back before the next attack.
I used this (PVE Staff above) to solo a lvl 25 Veteran Earth Elemental and 4 lvl 25 Earth Elementals at lvl 22. I got hit a few times, but was always able to heal to full and swap back to doing good damage for a while before getting hit again. Took a while though, they have high toughness.
» Edited on: 2012-08-28 02:42:05