Introduction
I really enjoy running a fully specced Tempest with Warhorn and Shouts. While the power level is probably not where everyone wants it to be, I think a few adjustments can put it in a really decent place. The Tempest doesn’t need to be the absolute strongest thing in the game – I think it’s fine if it exists sort of in the middle of the pack of builds.
In a way, this is actually pretty neat. The Tempest and a lot of its abilities are currently overvalued by the devs and underpowered in the actual game, which means there’s still a lot of room for adjustments to be made without creating something that dominates the game.
PvE Tempest versus PvE Core Elementalist
First off – what’s the point of the Tempest anyway, in a PvE context? The Tempest had a pretty difficult challenge, from a PvE perspective, going into the game. The Ele has one of the strongest sustained DPS builds in PvE with a glassy Fire Staff Lava Font spam build, and the Tempest was entering into a game where it would inherently have to compete with that spec.
In this case, the Tempest almost immediately loses while doing any old content. Enemies in old PvE do not move and have large hitboxes. A Glyph of Storms + Lava Font + Meteor Shower combo destroys almost anything, and does a massive amount of AoE damage.
Still, that spec in particular more reflects a problem with the content itself than a problem with the spec itself. This is more apparent with new content – if enemies move, no one wants to run Staff Ele. This makes sense. Since you need an enemy to simply stand still in Lava Font in order for the build to be effective, if enemies start walking around the room (see, the new raid boss), it becomes a lot harder to get a big burst AoE combo, or even get full value off of your Lava Font.
In this way, the glassy Staff Ele spec is actually fine for the game, and serves as a check against the developers from developing lazy content. If an enemy doesn’t move, players will simply destroy it with a Fire Staff Ele. I like this dynamic, so I wouldn’t nerf Fire Staff Ele.
Tempest as Support?
At the same time, getting back to our original topic, one has to wonder then what Tempest should bring.
Tempest could simply try to compete as another pure DPS spec, but from the get go, we see a few problems. The Tempest is clearly meant to be be some sort of hybrid, support-style spec. The 3 Grandmaster Major traits are not DPS traits – two are support, and one is defensive.
I’d like to take this moment to say that this is not a bad thing. Traditionally, players in PvE have shunned support-spec builds that aren’t absolute hard defense (Aegis, Blinds, Reflects, etc.) This is understandable with the content that PvE had – enough of it was easy and static enough that you didn’t need much soft support like defensive boons or healing. However, it is apparent with the switch up in mechanics, both in the new open world and in the new raid content, that they want to make soft defense (healing, Protection, other defensive boons) more valuable.
The Tempest is solidly trying to go the defense and healing route of support. The heal-on-aura trait, as a concept, has a lot of potential to be very strong. Similarly, giving the Tempest a Water Field on its Warhorn, and having Overload Water heal quite a bit show that the Tempest is meant to be able to support a heal-styled spec. The biggest thing though, in my opinion, is “Wash the Pain Away!” This heals, AoE and baseline, 3560 + 1950 + 980 = 6490 HP, with no healing power gear. The heal has a very small radius for allies, but it’s a decent heal outright, and I honestly think that “Wash the Pain Away!” is one of the highlights of Tempest Support. If working with team mates correctly, it is an outright AoE heal that heals yourself and others for 6490 HP if positioned correctly, without having to invest in defensive gear.
Furthermore, the Tempest is able to enhance their auras with the use of many traits, including Powerful Aura in the Water Line, Elemental Shielding in the Earth Line, and Zephyr’s Boon in the Air Line. So from the get go, the Tempest is trying to synergize with these three trait lines. I think this is fine, and sets up the player to make some really interesting build choices.
The issue with Tempest, as a pure Support spec, comes when we start comparing it to other classes – in particular, the Herald (Revenant) spec and the Druid (Ranger) spec. The Herald is able to output massive AoE boons with little effort through the use of Glint’s utilities. It does this while retaining pretty darn good damage with Sword and other DPS traits. The Druid, meanwhile, has massive baseline healing – which by the way is fine. The Druid is meant to be a dedicated healer, so it makes sense that Druid has strong healing.
I don’t like to go around asking for nerfs to all the other classes, especially since I’m not entirely sold that the things that Revenant and Druid do are actually overpowered. So instead, I’d like to focus on what makes Tempest different and special, and try to focus on making those things better.
Overload!
The Tempest’s new mechanic, Overload, is what defines the Tempest. It is a mechanic unlike most others, with a conditional cooldown that starts upon attuning to a new attunement. When channeling an Overload, the Tempest Breaks stun and begins channeling a powerful skill that, at the end, has a massive effect that devastates the battlefield!
Except that it doesn’t, because somehow, over three beta weekends, overloads are still highly, highly, highly underpowered for their investment.
In order to gain an Overload’s effect, one must remain in the same attunement for 6 seconds. Afterwards, they channel the effect for 4 seconds.
That means the skill requires at least 10 seconds in advance thought to finally execute.
Finally, after managing to remain in an attunement, and then overloading for 4 seconds, you are locked out of your attunement for 20 seconds.
This all wouldn’t be much of a problem if it weren’t for the fact that Overloads are the primary mechanic of the Tempest. So there’s no getting away from them. They take up all of the Minor Trait slots as well, with traits based around overloading.
The fact is that Overloads are probably just too costly for what they do. They either need to have their effects buffed, or their costs reduced. And even if their costs were reduced, they’d have to be reduced significantly, since the effects of the overloads really aren’t that impressive as is.
To me, the Overloads are the most undertuned part of the class, which is incredible given that they’ve been buffed each beta weekend. It shows just how weak the mechanic is. And that’s a shame, because being so close to launch, it’s unlikely that a new mechanic can replace them. I’ve tried to be as positive as I could be up till now about everything else in this post, but as they are, and given that Overloads are the key to everything about the Tempest, it’s a shame that Overloads have just been so darn mediocre so far.
So here’s what I would do to make overloads stronger:
First, the channeling of Overloads in itself should be much stronger. When an Elementalist actually sticks around in their attunement and gets ready to Overload, there should be a huge payoff from the start. Here’s what I’d have:
- Overload Fire – The damage was nerfed before, when it really should have been left alone. The Might and Burning should tick twice as fast and twice as much (to increase from 10 ticks to 20 ticks), to inflict 20 stacks of Burn and give 20 stacks of Might.
- Overload Water – This skill need to be much stronger, especially considering that an Ele can easily heal 2600 HP baseline through Evasive Arcana + Healing Ripple. Overload Water should heal 1000 base with 1:1 Healing Power scaling per pulse, removing a condition each pulse. At the end of the channel, you and all allies gain massive Regeneration, cleanse a condition, and heal for an additional 2000 HP with 1:1 Healing Power scaling. The actual Overload Water channel should be a Water Field.
- Overload Air – This skill does a lot of damage, but it’s not much more than autoattacking right now or even Lava Font spam. The damage needs to be buffed by another 30%. Otherwise, it’s fine as it is.
- Overload Earth – This should blast finish at the start instead of at the end. This skill should also grant 3 seconds of stability per pulse, AoE (but should no longer grant 3 stacks of stability at the start). The pulsing should be doubled to be twice as fast and twice as much (going from 9 pulses to 18 pulses), granting 18 pulses of Protection, 18 pulses of Stability, 18 pulses of Bleed, and 18 pulses of Cripple. (This may sound really crazy, but one need only actually ever try to Overload Earth to see just how weak the skill is right now. It really needs a very strong buff in order to be useful for all the investment given into it).
Finally, the range of all over the Overloads should be standardized to 360 Range. As it is, Overload Fire (180 range) and Overload Earth (240 range) are very short Range, while Overload Water and Overload Air are 360 range. Since the cast times have been standardized, you might as well standardize the ranges as well.
Overloads, overall, need to be made much stronger in order for their investment to make any sense. Right now the effects are very undertuned, and they need to be made stronger in order for the Tempest to bring anything special to the class as a whole.
Shouts and the Warhorn
The addition of Magnetic Aura to Warhorn was a really good change, and the decision not to nerf Heat Sync was honestly probably what saved the Warhorn from becoming completely useless . The other skills are OK, though it’s hard to compete with Staff or Focus’ utility. Overall though, if all of the changes I mentioned are made to Overload (which is the most important part of Tempest, really), then Warhorn as is, as a sort of boon-sharing weapon, is probably passable. There clearly needs to be some refinement on the kit (especially that horrid Air 5 skill), but honestly, I don’t want to push too much right now.
The Shouts are probably the most well placed part of the Tempest in terms of where they need to be for power level, but they are still just a little too weak, given their long cooldowns and the other strong utilites (such as Glyph of Storms or Arcane Wave) that Ele can take.
I think one of the biggest things that could change would be to make all of the Utility Shouts (not the Heal or the Elite) into instant-cast shouts. Then, even with an instant-cast buff, “Shock and Aftershock!” still has too high of a base cooldown to be considered, and should be reduced from 50 seconds down to 40 seconds. Finally, the Shout trait should have a CDR effect attached on top of it, in addition to all of its current effects. These changes would really help make Shout Ele a strong support-style build in its own right.
The Traits
Tempest Traits have gotten better, and I think they could still continue to get better.
For myself, I think there’s no other way to go about this than to go through each of the Major Traits, and say what needs to be done:
Adept Major:
- Gale Song – Good as it is.
- Latent Stamina – Increase the range to 600, and remove the Vigor effect. Instead, it should grant 50 endurance (1 dodge) to you and up to 4 allies in range.
- Unstable Conduit – If all of the changes were made to Overloads so that they were actually good, this trait is probably fine. If the changes were not made to Overloads, then move the Aura to the start of the cast of an Overload instead of the end, and have it grant the Aura to allies within 600 range.
Master Major:
- Earthen Proxy – This trait is misleading as it’s written. I spoke to many, many, many people who thought that this trait increases Protection’s protection from 33% to 53%. According to tooltips and just general testing, it seems to just increase Protection to 40%. Honestly, if Earthen Proxy actually increased Protection on yourself from 33% to 53%, it would probably be fine.
- Harmonious Conduit – I would remove the Stability (and add it to Lucid Singularity below). Instead, this trait should grant the Harmonious Conduit buff (10% damage) to you and all allies within 360 range upon completing an Overload. The Harmonious Conduit buff should be increased from 5 to 10 seconds.
- Tempestuous Aria – This should have a Shout CDR effect of 20%, in addition to its other effects.
Grandmaster Major:
- Elemental Bastion – This trait is just weird, but I suppose the biggest problem is that the Healing is just too low. It’s clearly meant to give the Ele a way to support allies with small heals. I would change the heal to 1302 baseline (to reflect Cleansing Wave), with 1:1 Healing Power scaling.
- Imbued Melodies – I like the changes to it, having it cast Sand Squall automatically and give 20% Boon Duration really for the Warhorn. It’s fine as it is.
- Lucid Singularity – This trait does a lot of weird stuff when I think it could be made much simpler. It should just give you 1 stack of Stability and 1 stack of Resistance each for 4 seconds upon starting an Overload.
Playing the Tempest
What’s funny about a lot of these changes is that even if they were all made, I doubt the Tempest would still see much play. That’s honestly why I suggest most of them, because right now, as it is, the Tempest’s power level really is that low. There’s a lot of room for the developers to make changes to the Tempest, and these proposed changes would go a long way to bringing the spec up to speed with the rest of the game. In particular, making Overloads much stronger would do a lot to distinguish the spec as a new playstyle and making it stronger as a whole.
I’d also like to talk about what I think is cool about the Tempest, currently.
Mainly, I think where the Tempest has the most success in new content is as a sort of Aura and Boon share build. Running all shouts with Zephyr’s Boon and Elemental Shielding allows you to put a lot of Swiftness, Fury, and Protection on allies. Combine this with Warhorn’s Sand Squall (for boon extension and a personal Magnetic Aura) and Heat Sync, and you can pump out a massive amount of long duration Might, Swiftness, Fury, and Protection on allies for a long time. This is where Tempest shines the most, and given that it’s probably one of the better configurations on a currently underpowered Elite Spec, I really do think it should be helped along to be made better, rather than ignored or nerfed (such as changing Heat Sync).
At the end of the beta, I found I was running this build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJBIhdSfJUgJ2fJYhJwhJWaAM3Lbmd0OsC6AzQhCQA4DC-TxRBABUcCAuS5HN7PgneAAeAAUq+jZKBJFQgTtA-e
I played around with it in the new Verdent Brink (which was much harder in BWE2, and apparently nerfed in BWE3, though apparently this was a bug and not intended), as well as in the new raid. I particularly liked how “Eye of the Storm!” with its AoE Super Speed helped people quickly get to the little Lightning Circle AoE when you needed to stack 4 people there to keep the raid from wiping, and I liked how “Rebound!” could be used to actually save yourself and 4 other allies in case something bad happened. Furthermore, the interaction between the Overload mechanic and Fresh Air allows you to get quite a few more Air Overloads than you would otherwise, which would go well with an improved Harmonious Conduit (and go better with just stronger Overloads in general). The build relied largely on Air Overload, Fresh Air, and Air autoattacking to keep up its damage.
Given, such a build is ultimately unfit for raids, especially given how much better Revenant and Druid do at doing the sort of support-DPS style than Tempest does, which is a shame, but it is what it is. I think that making more changes to Tempest and helping bring its power level to even just where baseline Ele is right now can help at least make it a decent mid-tier spec in the future. And I think that these changes would at the very least make it a good build for going into the jungle and trying to take on smaller challenges with friends, such as the Canopy Fights with a small number of people.
Also for people wondering if Cele or Cleric gear made a difference, the answer is no – Healing Power scaling was poor on Tempest so there was no point.
Conclusions
I really enjoyed the Tempest overall, even if the spec is very undertuned. I like the Overload mechanic even if the numbers are weak. I really enjoy playing with Shouts and Warhorn, giving allies lots of boons and a small amount of heals, even if Herald (Revenant) and Druid (Ranger) do it much better. I understand that balance happens in cycles, and Tempest will be starting at the bottom of the power curve at the release of HoT. This is fine, as there will always be someone there starting out. All I’m asking is that the gap at least be made smaller. I want Tempest to at least be good at the things it’s supposed to be good at – Overloading and Support. As it is, a Tempest can make a significant investment in traits, utilities, and weapons (no bothering investing in gear since the Healing Power scaling is so bad anyway), and it still comes up as pretty mediocre. Even taking all of the on-Aura traits like Zephyr’s Boon and Elemental Shielding leave a build that is pretty decent at easy-to-apply boon share, but it lacks that final bit to really make it worthwhile. That’s why I think Overloads need to be improved – because those can be that last bit that makes the entire Elite Spec worthwhile. Overloads are the key to Tempest’s success, given it’s the spec’s new mechanic, and they’re just not good enough right now.
But I still enjoy the Tempest, and I’d hope the devs consider making at least a few of these changes to make it stronger with the new PvE content.
(edited by Neko.9021)