Guild Wars 2

Warning: This is not me hating on tempest, so if that’s what you’re here for then you’ll be disappointed.

Elementalist is my main class, so I was pretty excited for tempest. However, when I first started playing it I felt very unsatisfied and went away not liking the profession. I didn’t really know why, though, and I think a lot of people are experiencing the same thing. It’s just not satisfying. Well, I keep thinking and thinking about it and I’ve begun to understand my feelings for the specialization. What I’ve realized so far is something about the utilities. The Tempest is supposed to be the caller of the storms. Letting us do that with shouts makes perfect sense, but there’s a problem with the way they’ve executed it. Storms are not short. Storms are not a combustion of power that go away just as quickly as they came. When we think of a storm, we think of a torrent lasting all day and all night. A sand storm does not pass in an instant, wildfires last days, and hurricanes crawl slowly across a place, tearing it a part over time. That is what is missing from the Tempest. That sense of “Hey, we’d better not go over there (or we’d better get out of here) because there’s a pretty bad storm.” Instead, we call a storm that’s over the moment it begins. I know shouts are traditionally instant speed, but it doesn’t have to be that way. It would still make sense to have a shout that calls a long lasting storm. That seems waaaaaay more thematic with the Tempest. Kind of like a shaman shouting an incantation to bring rain. Anyways, I think this would make tempest way more satisfying. The shouts themselves would have to change, sure. Like “Feel the Burn!” could slowly pulse out small amounts of burning while “Eye of the Storm!” could create an area where allies cannot be stunned (and maybe grants super speed to allies in that area on cast?) “Shock and Aftershock!” could create a crippling storm where it is cast that pulses small amounts of damage to those inside (to make up for the immobilize), and “Flash Freeze!” could grant frost aura on cast but leave a field that pulses chill. That would have to be balanced of course since chill is pretty powerful. Rebound is just a mess and needs to be completely overhauled in my honest opinion. I don’t know what to do with that. And of course “Wash the Pain Away!” could be something along the lines of a pulsing area of effect heal and hell, maybe even make it a water field. My point is, these shouts should call long lasting storms. Not weather flashes. That’s part of what’s missing from the Tempest class and part of what’s making it feel so unsatisfying.

This is a forum discussion where people are rating the elite specs. In almost every single case, Tempest is in the bottom three.

tldr: The Tempest shouts should create long lasting AoEs. If you want my reasons, they’re up above.