Guild Wars 2

TL;DR; Invigorating Torrents is the bomb. Opens up build diversity a lot.

The main problems with elementalist build diversity has always been that they are completely dependent on water and arcane traits, and cantrips for their sole defensive maneuvers because the class by itself doesn’t offer any defense besides minor healing from weapon skills, coupled with the lowest armor and health. And with defense here I mean stuff like short-cooldown blocks on weapon skills, evades, stealth etc. Focus offers 3 great defensive moves on long cooldowns but everything else it does is utter manure.

The main thing eles gain (and need) from water is regeneration, vigor and more bearable cooldowns on cantrips, and of course condition removal through regeneration. Arcane is more regen, the much-needed protection and overall utility. These things are the main and basically only (besides the normal dodging) active defenses for eles. So this is what we would always take into competitive game modes because we need it to survive, with celestial stats usually because again we need some toughness and vitality, always.

Now, I’ve always argued that arcane was so mandatory for the high protection uptime, and a bit less so the regen uptime. Evasive Arcana was always just an extremely good ability, but there’s been build variations without it before the recent spec patch, with people just going into arcane a few points for Renewing Stamina and Elemental Attunement.

So, Tempest seemed quite lackluster all throughout the betas, though overloads as stunbreaks and with good damage helped make them usable. But then, seemingly as a last minute change, we got Invigorating Torrents, which makes auras give regeneration and vigor. Oh and as a passive bonus for Tempest, protection giving 40% defense.

And although this might just be the post-launch phase, I’ve now seen and tested lots of different spec combinations with these 2 changes.

Regen and vigor on auras suddenly makes shouts – besides the still kinda bad air one – a viable choice, and paired with soldier runes it enables water-less and cantrip-less builds on itself. And with protection being a bit better you can do with a bit less uptime, making arcane less mandatory (and earth offers prot on auras from shouts), and overloads now actually being worth the cast giving you protection too. The dust storm from earth overload stacks 18 seconds of protection and the low cooldowns of the water and fire shouts offer high protection from aura uptime with earth.

And while of course there will be one or two meta builds after the dust settles, it seems that other build variations now won’t be as kitten as before, where going without water+arcane+cantrips was close to suicide.

I don’t ever see us not use celestial amulet in pvp though

Now if only heat sync shared more than 2 boons again, powerful auras was rolled into elemental bastion and replaced with a new trait, scepter sustain buffed and rebound made into a real elite skill, I would be so happy with the new elementalist.

Oh and on a last note, it seems quite ironic that we all argued that stability on overloads was so important (which it still is, though) that no one would ever take another major trait. And now no one basically takes stability on overloads because Invigorating Torrents is just so vital for the class.

This is my only current issue with Tempest. I’m absolutely loving the class otherwise. I can live with it and it does make for tough decision making between the two, but I rue not being able to have both options.

It’s probably done for the best, but one can dream

I think we’ve all been turning in circles pointing at the same problems from different perspective.

I think many knew how innefective it would be when one week we see the Dragon Hunter developer 1-shot Savnir with a few traps, and then a few weeks later another dev getting down to 1 health point with Tempest while fighting Svanir in a never ending battle.

If Tempest is meant to be a “support” role then was is the Tempest designer barely surviving against Svanir? 2 reasons:
1- Support roles aren’t necessary in this game, their value is way below dps and cc roles; the best defense is damage and the rally mechanic
2- Tempest is just overall bad:
- skills have no synergy together to make combos
- the tempest line has less defense and damage modifiers than arcane and water
- the trait line has no synergy with the other trait lines
- warhorn is lacking what make a melee class viable and is too slow
- shouts are not worth replacing a cantrip
- auras are over-estimated
- there isn’t anything new, or anything at all that the class couldn’t do better with the other trait lines
- etc, etc, etc… the list goes on with stuff like the new “Elite” skill and the lack of verticality with warhorn skills.

So I don’t know, a simple demonstration like: “This is what tempest is good for, look how it works” could perhaps have sold us the idea, but as it is right now, once elementalists get pass by the “it’s new” hype and start crushing down numbers as well as pros and cons, they will go back to their old d/d and staff builds.

Is there even will at Anet to improve tempest? The feedback of BW3 was completely ignored anyway so if that is an indication, and judging by how some of the animations and skills feel rushed or recycled, probably not.

Anyway, one thing is certain: we can’t blame the amazing community feedback during the 3 beta weekends.

Schmendrick, it is good you can recognize some of the good things tempest brings to the table, and you are right, invigorating torrents does make tempest USABLE in pvp. However, do not kid yourself into thinking that a tempest spec will really rise to challenge d/d for the ele meta-spot (except those that go water/arcana/tempest just for the extra sustain). There are a few critical flaws that will prevent tempest from being more than just an add-on to traditional water/arcana:

Shouts: Would be great for condi clear with the new trait + soldier runes, but they are on too long of a CD, aren’t all that impactful outside of what you get from traits (except wash the pain away), and lack a good stunbreak option. The air shout really should have a 25s CD, as all it basically does is stunbreak (the superspeed is pretty worthless), and would only be worth a kitten CD if it also gave shocking aura. The earth shout CD is way too long for what little it does, further hurting any cleanse synergy. This whole scheme also revolves around taking water still, also.

Overloads: These are basically unusable in pvp. Maybe earth is worth casting b/c the prot duration seems longer than intended and it has built-in interrupt protection. The fresh-air specs just aren’t very good as the class (and tempest) don’t have the tools for a dps spec, and you are so exposed while overloading. The dps is pretty good, but still only a little better than auto-attacking. Water overload is so bad, and should only be cast as a last-ditch attempt to survive while running away.

Warhorn: Beyond the terrible fart sounds, the warhorn skills are just not amenable to the tanky/support style that they elicit. Heat Sync killed its true support, and the cc on it is pretty weak (you get stronger single-target dps from range with focus, and better aoe cc with dagger). This is even more hurt by having the fire skills with such unreasonably long CD’s, making it harder to even might stack, or leap-finish for that fire aura.

Traits: All the traits really just come down to getting extra healing (through healing auras) and cleanse on a class that specialized in those exact things. In this regard, I am ok with the performance of tempest, as it is simply an alternative to fire/earth due to having to trade damage/defense for a different form of defense (although more supporty). The real bummer is that the tools aren’t really there to truly make other build options viable.

What could be done to make these things happen:
- Shout CD’s need a decrease, perhaps with a trait. The top-line shout trait should honestly just disappear, as invigorating torrents is basically a shout trait that is strictly better.
- Air shout needs an aura or much shorter CD.
- Overloads need their channel durations reduced. An extra change like being able to swap elements, reducing the pre-charge by a few seconds, or reducing the post-use penalty a bit is still necessary to make these more generally usable.
- Warhorn needs to fix the fart sounds. It also needs shorter CD’s in fire, a complete revamp of air 5, faster response for the slow-moving fields, and something to truly distinguish it from focus/dagger.

There are some of the baselines for making tempest open up new options, but this is about where the class should have been for BWE2 (and could have been if they listened to feedback). To have a product that is just so meh at launch is disappointing.

The reason you take Water is more for the ability to cleanse conditions which is something in addition to healing you need in spades when you have the lowest base hp and a lot less armor than most other classes when you get the stats you need. Invigorating torrents kinda solves the problem of healing by giving more things healing but really it isn’t any better (not to say I have a problem with cantrip builds because I actually enjoy them).

Instead of Cantrips for regen → now you use Shouts+auras with some healing (slightly higher than cantrips). To get condi clear on it you have to run a very specific rune set for some condi clear giving up completely the idea of using any power runeset when you need a lot of stats to make Ele work in front line/PvP. It is also arguable that as a tempest for those modes you really can’t afford your elite spec as it does not really add damage per say. You need Power, Toughness, Vitality, Healing power to sustain since you don’t have the armor/health to back anything up, percision for crits (30% approx), and of course feriocity so you can be sure you actually do crit for a decent amount. And this is not mentioning condi damage which does contribute to your damage.

Funny that the change that makes tempest that much more of a real option does it by giving regen and vigor to auras, the exact same bonus you can get for cantrips.

We’re progressing from ‘the same, but worse’ to just ‘the same’.