Last Updated on by Samuel Franklin
Master the damage and utility of the elements with this Gloomhaven Elementalist guide. This page includes detail from individual card decisions, equipment, perk priority and enchantress enhancements. With my personal experience and recommendations players will create an Elementalist (Triangles) that masters the elements of dark, light, ice, fire, air and earth.
Table of Contents:
– Elementalist Cards, Perks, Enhancements and Items Overview
– Elementalist Cards Detailed
– Elementalist Perks Detailed
– Elementalist Enhancements Detailed
– Elementalist Items Detailed
Gloomhaven Elementalist Guide Overview
The overview section details a damage focused variant that optimises for elemental self sufficiency. This provides the ability to self generate elements, apply varying debuffs when required and most importantly deal damage.
Elementalist Cards Overview
- Level 1: Remove Malleable Evocation, Encompassing Shadow and Frigid Torrent
- Level 2: Crystallizing Blast replaces Lava Eruption
- Level 3: Burial replaces Raw Enhancement
- Level 4: Primal Duality replaces Pure Augmentation
- Level 5: Winter’s Edge replaces Shaping the Ether
- Level 6: Obsidian Shards (level 5 card) replaces Tremulant Cyclone
- Level 7: Vengeance replaces Ice Spikes
- Level 8: Pragmatic Reinforcement (level 7 card) replaces Brilliant Flash
- Level 9: Eternal Equilibrium replaces Infernal Vortex
Elementalist Perks Priority Overview
- Remove two -1 cards (take twice)
- Replace -1 card with +1 card
- Replaces two +0 cards with one +0 fire and one +0 earth
- Replaces two +0 cards with one +0 ice and one +0 wind
- Add three +0 fire cards
- Add three +0 wind cards
- Replace one +0 card with one +2 card (take twice)
- Add three +0 earth cards
- Add three +0 ice cards
- Add one +0 stun
Elementalist Enhancements Priority Overview
- Add an element to the bottom of Infernal Vortex (wind preference)
- Add an element to the bottom of Stoking Hail (earth preference)
- Add debuff to the top of Crystalizing Blast (curse preference)
Elementalist Items Priority Overview
- Minor Stamina Potion
- Eagle-Eye Goggles
- Boots of Striding
- Cloak of Invisibility
Gloomhaven Elementalist Guide Detailed
Below I detail the alternative choices you can make during your progression across cards, perks, enhancements and items with the Elementalist having many options based on party as we have several healing cards we can work into our hand size if required or reduce our self elemental generation if a party member is available to do that for us.
Elementalist Cards Detailed
The Elementalist cards from level 1 to 9 are below with careful balance of adding and removing cards requires to maintain our power level compared to other Gloomhaven classes.
- Starting Cards: In removing our starting cards we want to maintain as much elemental generation as possible and remove the melee attacks. Therefore we remove Malleable Evocation as we simple don’t have the elemental generation available to us to benefit from the flexibility this card is intended to provide and while it does get better later we simply have better cards available by the time it offers something consistently. Next on the chopping block is Encompassing Shadow which is unlikely to be something our party specifically needs but can push us towards a support utility build if we want to play aggressive with a particular ally. Lastly is Frigid Torrent with its weak bottom loss action and melee top action which is not our bread and butter, in particular scenarios though where pierce is critical we might need this for our team which just goes to show how the Elementalist needs to constantly revaluate their hand choices.
- Level 2 Cards: Level 2 offers two similar looking cards with one focused on the element of fire and the other an ice variant while both provide us the best move we are ever going to see with 4. Both of these area of effect attacks are prime targets for later enhancement but we are taking Crystallizing Blast as the way forward given it is the ranged attack choice that is preferable for our playstyle.
- Level 3 Cards: Level 3 once again offers two sides of the coin with a dark and light focused card with either being viable depending on the pathway we intend to take. For damage the clear choice is Burial with bottom attacks always being a fantastic source to improve our damage per turn with the burn top action potentially a great play towards the end of the scenario. Alternatively if we find ourselves playing a supporting role the alternative of Chain Lightning can play a similar role in our hand size as a bottom heal with a last room attack top.
- Level 4 Cards: Level 4 give us a key card for our build as it enables our level 7 combo easily and comes with a fantastic initiative which the Elementalist really needs. Players can consider delaying adding this card into their core hand until level 7 when it gets really powerful given we have no use for dark or light yet (other than the +1 attack bottom of Formless Power which we want to play as our persistent loss card) but I generally add this now for the initiative value.
- Level 5 Cards: Level 5 has two cards I like to have available and why I recommend taking both of them eventually in my recommended build as I think they are stronger than some of our future cards in most situations and makes the Elementalist easier to play. When first hitting level 5 the value of Winter’s Edge is preferred as it adds a hard hitting attack with 2 range and when empowered our enemies will never see the attack coming from a range of 4. The reason I’ll often come back for Obsidian Shards later is that it powers up significantly when we have fire and earth consistently available to hit two targets and the ability to create two elements on the bottom when we don’t need to move is convenient with relying on the default move 2 not worse than most of our other move cards.
- Level 6 Cards: Level 6 is on the weaker side of level ups for the Elementalist but it comes right before our large power spike at level 7. Of these two options the Simulaerum would be my preferred choice as it gives us a flexible top attack that can use any element we are able to create and is thus great where we have generated a random element from our modifier deck or had to (or accidently) played our cards out of our preferred combo orders. The reason I prefer to go back to our level 5 choices for Obsidian Shards is the extra flexibility the bottom of this card provides over the Doppelganger action which isn’t useful outside of the experience at the end of a scenario.
- Level 7 Cards: We’ve finally made it to the fabled level 7 where we unlock Vengeance that allows us to simply delete enemies with easy elemental requirements given we have several cards to create dark and can pick up the other random element in various ways. The other level 7 card for the Elementalist is by no means a poor card and why I’ll come back at level 8 to grab it with the card having both healing and attack sides that adds incredible flexibility to our role.
- Level 8 Cards: Neither of our level 8 cards are particularly useful to the Elementalist and why I’ll go back to our level 7 options as noted above. One the one hand Elemental Aegis provides huge shield potential for ourselves and a strong self heal but neither of these are going to be useful to us outside of an alternative tank build. Volatile Consumption is similarly weak overall with our hand size not supporting another persistent loss and while we do lack move and jump options this move simply isn’t enough to justify it when we can use a default move of 2 on a more flexible card (like Pragmatic Reinforcement from level 7).
- Level 9 Cards: Ethereal Manifestation could have been an interesting Elementalist card if it was available during earlier levels as it would have played perfectly into our theme and helped with some of the earlier elemental generation difficulties. At level 9 though the elemental generation is not particularly useful as we have already developed the tools we need through card selection, enhancements and even potentially equipment slots. The bottom of this card does have great flexibility but we already have cards that do each of these things better which means we will want to look at Eternal Equilibrium instead that pairs perfect with Primal Duality to damage and curse everything in range while giving us another heal.
Elementalist Perks Detailed
Perks are a regular source of elemental generation for the Elementalist although given the lack of control they shouldn’t be relied on for particular combos and instead used in a flexible manner as they are generated. This source of generation is most notable early on where our other sources are lacking which makes for an interesting balance of improving our damage consistency by removing the -1s and +0s and adding elemental generation from perks early on.
I recommend finding that balance by removing the negatives as we do for any Gloomhaven character and then adding both fire, wind, earth and ice to provide some potential for all of our core elements. I recommend increasing fire and wind chances higher by focusing on these first as most of our early cards will benefit from them and we have the fewest options to generate these before finishing with earth and ice. At this point we return to what would be the traditional order of perks in Gloomhaven to trim our zero cards and add some utility with stun and wound which are most useful when randomly drawn.
Elementalist Enhancements Detailed
Enhancements are another piece of the puzzle when it comes to elemental generation and a focus for our gold spending. While in an ideal Elementalist world we would simply place choose an element on everything that cost is not something that is sustainable. For this reason we want to look at pairings of elements on the bottom actions that setup attacks which means ice and wind through Infernal Vortex bottom for Winter’s Edge and then fire and earth Stoking Hail bottom to enable Obsidian Shards. Another expensive option is adding curse or a similar debuff to Crystalizing Blast that can quickly dominate at the largest party sizes where we can hit 3 or 4 enemies consistently.
These are just some of the potential options that the Elementalist can find themselves with and if looking to spend less gold you can instead add some simple movement values (like the bottom of Crystalizing Blast) or buffing the base attack values that makes a lack of elements less punishing (like the top of Obsidian Shards).
Elementalist Items Detailed
Items are the last stop on creating our Elementalist build and the starting items we purchase will be fairly obvious with the stamina potion allowing some repeat combos (incredibly power at level 7 in particular) while adding Eagle-Eye Goggles for our multi target attacks and also looking at Boots of Striding to counter our movement issues.
Beyond these items players will want to look for other movement speed options, elemental generation and the ability to recover items that simply allow us to do more of what we want. The Elementalist is also one of the few Gloomhaven mercenaries that benefits from other players carrying supportive items for elemental generation and if you can convince your allies to leave a pocket slot available for such an item your time as the Elementalist will feel easier.
For information and build guides on other Gloomhaven character options visit our Gloomhaven classes overview and the related Gloomhaven class tier list.
