Haha, happen to remember what event that was? Combat early on in Guild Wars 2 can be sort of deceptive. You can more or less get to a certain point playing it as though it were a traditional "trading blows" MMO system (which is a bit of a flaw IMO, but something that was tweaked to where it is now due to feedback). However, even if it doesn't seem like it yet, lots of encounters can be overcome with skill, and that is definitely something you just build up over time. Ele in particular has a rough go of it early on because they're so squishy and there's so much to manage- you need to be constantly rotating through the elements to survive.
You got into the guild right man? You should always try and get a group with us before LFG... but yeah. You're definitely gonna want to start doing dungeons when you hit 30. I personally am always down to run Ascalonian Catacombs Story (the first dungeon) as it's a fun little run and remains rewarding all the way at 80. Just in case you don't know how the downscaling/leveling curve works in GW2, you could very easily level from 79 to 80 by running that very first, level 30-35, dungeon once or twice.