Guild Wars 2

He’s dead, Jim!

I think the biggest problems are 1) the overloads, and 2) the lack of new role.

Overloads
I just don’t see them ever working at point-blank range with such long cast times and punitive CD lockout.

I feel the best solution to all the problems with overloads is to make them cast at point-blank range but make the resulting storm/effect move in the direction of the cast up to 900-1200 range (perhaps creating moving fire/water/lightning fields). Keep the earth overload point-blank because it has the prot + defiance.

This change would make Overloads useful with any weapon, and keeps them as powerful but risky-to-cast effects, with a nice range of risk vs reward depending on whether the caster attempts to cast in close range or from a distance (where they’re much easier to avoid).

Role
Tempest is way too much like current D/?, it’s that simple.

Ranged overloads (as suggested above) makes Tempest more like a mid-range brawler, which IMO would be a step in the right direction.

Closing remarks, it’s hard to see myself ever slotting any of the shouts over another cantrip.

All the other stuff is readily solvable with number tweaks. For me it’s the fundamental role and spec mechanic that are broken.

My humble feedback:

Overloads:

• General: Too long waiting period considering a relatively weak auto-attacks in water and earth attunement. It’s difficult to stay in those attunements for more than 3 seconds without gimping yourself considerably. Moreover, 20 seconds lock-out feels too long for the effects that are not that powerful to warrant that amount of punishment.
• Fire Overload: 180 range is quite low.
• Water Overload: looks good enough.
• Air Overload: 3 targets limit is too limiting considering it’s an AoE skill, not cleave. Static field after a successful overload has too short duration, increase by 1 second.
• Earth Overload: a blast finisher after 5 seconds, I don’t think that’s a good idea.

Warhorn:

• General: not responsive enough.
• Heat Sync: it’s quite powerful, especially for sharing quickness tough it’s not something innovative (Signet of Inspiration v2)
• Wildfire: it used to remove boons with longer cool-down but currently, with 30s cool-down, it’s just a larger flamewall with longer cool-down, lower duration and lower burning application. Slightly increase the cool-down and reimplement boon removal.
• Tidal Surge: not responsive enough. Recharge way too high for its effect, it or Water Globe should remove 1 condition.
• Water Globe: moves either too fast or too slow (depending on swiftness)
• Cyclone: way too slow and its pull range is also quite depressing. I’d recommend giving it a projectile destruction.
• Lightning Orb: well, this skill is quite a let down. Damage is quite low and the more enemies you fight the less effective it is.
• Sand Squall: with blast finisher it looks solid.
• Dust Storm: way too slow in first blind application. Small radius and low duration. Hardly a storm, more like a breeze.

Shouts:

• Feel the Burn: looks solid enough though it lacks utility.
• Eye of the Storm: would it be too strong with Shocking Aura?
• Shock and Aftershock: the cool-down is quite severe for its effects.
• Flash-Freeze: maybe the radius should be increased so it can be used as an anti-escape tool.

Traits:

• Overall: traits focus mostly on defensive support, especially on auras which have traits all over the place. There are too many traits that increase the potential of overloads, some of them should be definitely merged. Tempest lacks offensive support or anything that actually increases tempest offensive capabilities, maybe a new trait could be added that increase the damage of tempest under auras effect or after a successful overload. A new trait that decreases the time a tempest has to wait before it can overload to 3s should alleviate that issue (maybe even baseline considering it could probably be a must-pick).
• Speedy Conduit, Hardy Conduit: those two minors should definitely be merged. Minor grandmaster should offer something different than just another boon.
• Latent Stamina: the endurance gain is way too low to be even noticeable, especially after vigour nerf to 50%. It doesn’t feel like it should be in tempest line, more like water. I would say to change it to “Auras you apply also apply vigour”. That way it would feel more in line with the other specialisation traits..
• Unstable Conduit: auras should be granted at the start of channelling, not after it. Overloads cannot be self-interrupted without getting a full recharge time so it can’t be abused. Tempest needs additional defence while casting overloads.
• Harmonious Conduit: make that baseline.
• Tempestuous Aria: it lacks shouts cool-down reduction
• Elemental Bastion: merge with Unstable Conduit and remove Frost Aura from it.

The spec felt strong this time, and I have kind of given up on trying to deal damage in air (used mainly fire). However, the channeling nature of overloads render the spec useless in serious PvE (I’m looking at constant-CC mobs in raids).

In my humble opinion you devs could sit down and split gameplays throughout the traits, much like Daredevil and pretty much all the other elite specs. It’s not like the overloads idea is complete useless. It is not useless. But you have to work out what you want to offer us with the elite spec, so we don’t feel like “oh, base ele can do better”, or “why am I spec’ing if it doesn’t offer new gameplays” (I’m looking at chronomancer usefulness, and reaper chill damage).

Your suggested “Rebound!” is far more useful than the current one, but it requires us to predict some stuff and it can be very hard to do. It’s different than other elite specs which have a fixed effect for elites which doesn’t depend on third criterion. You could give us a 10sec PBAoE effect that empower allies around the tempest to increase effectiveness in an area (damage? outgoing condi. duration? periodic super speed?). If it could give some sort of boon, I wouldn’t mind to channel it, as long as I’m not forced to stay in melee.

One thing I tried was running. I used all my skills to see how movable/evasive the spec was (since WH is melee), and I kind of felt it was a bit lacking in that department (only one synergic enough to get me out of a situation was Burning Speed). Supposedly, our CC should be enough to help us stay alive (Tidal Surge W/Water #4, Shocking Aura D/Air #3, Cyclone W/Air #4, Dust Storm W/Earth #5). Cyclone has a swiftness factor but I’m still studying if it’s worth rather than some sort of Teleport + Control (not sure if it would be too OP if it was control PLUS teleport, though).

One thing I noticed that really helps survivability is Blinding Ashes (5s cause blindness upon setting foes on fire). It can be coupled with Overload Fire + Drake’s Breath + Wildfire. If you trait into Burning Precision it helps even further, but then we need a condi. removal trait if you’re trying fire/air/tempest, and it leads me to…

Condition removal. Not sure if I was the only one, but I kind of preferred Ether Renewal rather than the other healing skills, and I also took Burning Fire to help cleansing condis. If I spec’d into water everything would be smoother, but then I’d lose Bolt to the Heart (+20% boost to foes under 50%, not an unusual scenario, and specially strong against legendaries and champions).

For the traits I always get Latent Stamina + Tempestuous Aria, for GM I usually get Element Bastion (REALLY helps survivability with Frost Aura but the healing is too meh to even consider part of the trait). I think Speedy Conduit is the most useless minor trait I have ever seen in this game, considering how overloads work. When overloading, you don’t need to be fast, except maybe Overload Water to get away from the mobs? But in team gameplay you will have someone giving you swiftness every now and then, so having swiftness to channel something onto a stack of mobs isn’t useful in any way, it doesn’t help me because if I want to get away I will simply evade out of a situation, or Lightning Flash away, or blind foes so I can safely run away. If I’m in a bad situation I won’t need swiftness to continue channeling because the overall point of overloading an attunement is staying onto the mob (except water), and if I’m running away I will simply give up on going on with the channeling, right? Replace it with 2 stacks of stability upon STARTING an overload.

TL;DR Fire feels strong, melee overloading is a no-no without stability, “Rebound!” will hardly ever be used and is way less useful than other elite specs’ elites, we may need more evasion depending on upcoming content. Traits are… bad.

@rotten, Heat Sync is the core skill for the WH. The reason we may equip it even if we’re not attempting at being support. It’s like a weapon-defining skill, along with Sand Squall and Water Globe. And I’m still hoping for a trait that increases condi. damage when wielding a WH.

Karl McLain.5604:

Hi all!

Another small change we was due to the case that warhorn was missing an aura. As such (in our test iteration), Magnetic Aura now belongs to Sand Squall, in addition to its other properties. Looking forward to your constructive feedback from this BWE.

-Karl

This is certainly a nice but, but the problem is that Magnetic Aura is so powerful that this skill will only be used for that. And how often will you need Magnetic Aura and a blast finisher at the same time?

Valento.9852:

Your suggested “Rebound!” is far more useful than the current one, but it requires us to predict some stuff and it can be very hard to do. It’s different than other elite specs which have a fixed effect for elites which doesn’t depend on third criterion. You could give us a 10sec PBAoE effect that empower allies around the tempest to increase effectiveness in an area (damage? outgoing condi. duration? periodic super speed?). If it could give some sort of boon, I wouldn’t mind to channel it, as long as I’m not forced to stay in melee.

I agree, I still don’t like it. This seems like the only spec that is specifically designed for something like high level Raid content. This elite spec is missing the fun factor that other elites (esp Reaper, DareDevil) have…would greatly prefer an elite skill that summons some sort of storm.

Overload:
fire – Good ,High damage and might stacking combo with Heat Sync is great.
water – Bad ,heal less than swap to water every 9s and easy interrupt. I see no reason to overload water. You are dead when you camp in water for 5s. Need big impact such as aoe wave push back or 50~100% heal depend on range.
air – Good , but can be better. Could it work like meteor shower provide large aoe damage?
earth – Good, breakbar is great. But immobilize always got clean, could add 1 bleed per plus to avoid condi cleansing and a bit offensive.

The Great Al.2546:

Valento.9852:

Your suggested “Rebound!” is far more useful than the current one, but it requires us to predict some stuff and it can be very hard to do. It’s different than other elite specs which have a fixed effect for elites which doesn’t depend on third criterion. You could give us a 10sec PBAoE effect that empower allies around the tempest to increase effectiveness in an area (damage? outgoing condi. duration? periodic super speed?). If it could give some sort of boon, I wouldn’t mind to channel it, as long as I’m not forced to stay in melee.

I agree, I still don’t like it. This seems like the only spec that is specifically designed for something like high level Raid content. This elite spec is missing the fun factor that other elites (esp Reaper, DareDevil) have…would greatly prefer an elite skill that summons some sort of storm.

Due to its raid-centric design the tempest might be mandatory in raids, especially if rebound can be used to negate the effects of some massive boss attacks that could lead to wipes. Get ready for everyone to continue whining about how the elementalist is top tier in every game mode

Ganathar.4956:

The Great Al.2546:

Valento.9852:

Your suggested “Rebound!” is far more useful than the current one, but it requires us to predict some stuff and it can be very hard to do. It’s different than other elite specs which have a fixed effect for elites which doesn’t depend on third criterion. You could give us a 10sec PBAoE effect that empower allies around the tempest to increase effectiveness in an area (damage? outgoing condi. duration? periodic super speed?). If it could give some sort of boon, I wouldn’t mind to channel it, as long as I’m not forced to stay in melee.

I agree, I still don’t like it. This seems like the only spec that is specifically designed for something like high level Raid content. This elite spec is missing the fun factor that other elites (esp Reaper, DareDevil) have…would greatly prefer an elite skill that summons some sort of storm.

Due to its raid-centric design the tempest might be mandatory in raids, especially if rebound can be used to negate the effects of some massive boss attacks that could lead to wipes. Get ready for everyone to continue whining about how the elementalist is top tier in every game mode

I agree with that aswell. We don’t know raids, only the devs do. If they feel like we can provide some serious advantage at raids, then maybe the suggested elite can be considered part of our very elite spec?

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

I only tried it in pvp:

Warhorn is a fun weapon (and the best thing about tempest right now) but could use quite some tweaks.

Overall I like almost all the skills on warhorn, though it’s really hard to hit frantic enemies with air 4 (the pull-tornado) and air 5 does pitiful damage against both aoe and single targets. Fire skills are really nice though fire 5 is just a max-power focus firewall.

Overall what I liked most about warhorn is that basically all the skills have really low cooldowns for ele 4+5 skills. Nothing more than 35 seconds with the average probably around ~25 seconds. Though it really lacks a strong defensive skill when you’re focused, but I guess that’s the price for low cooldowns. Focus earth+air is just so much defense warhorn simply can’t compete.

Warhorn probably needs a real defensive cooldown (defense or mobility) to make it have a chance of getting used over the awesome power and mobility of offhand dagger or the sheer defensive power of focus.

I don’t see the point in using Overloads as they are right now.

Overloads, while looking cool, don’t really do much you can’t do without them anyway (and better even). Fire overload is nice for might stacking but that’s it, pretty boring. The heal from water overload is noticable if you’re out of heal cooldowns but you’ll mostly get CCed out of it ASAP. Both fire and air overloads do pityful damage for their insanely long channel times and both have pitiful ranges too (air should be straight up ranged). Earth is okay-ish I guess for the aoe protection, but switching to earth usually gives AOE protection anyway so it’s kinda pointless again.

I really think Overloads need to do something eles cannot do normally to ever find use. Something like this:

Fire Overload: grants aoe retaliation while channeling.
Water Overload: converts condition(s) into boons upon finishing it.
Air Overload: pulses aoe daze around you while channeling.
Earth Overload: grants aoe aegis upon finishing it.

Something like this, anything, really to make casting, and even more, finishing them, worth it. Right now it can even be benefitial to cancel the overload by attunement swapping right after starting the channel – because you keep the 5+ seconds of protection and swiftness. And that can’t really be the point of the mechanic?

Shouts seem neat but lack a Cooldown trait.

The auras on shouts make them the best choice for auramancer utilities, though the trait for them really should give 20% CDR. And the frost aura grandmaster trait should probably straight up cast the frost shout (which is extremely weak btw).

Fire shout is really nice, 20 secs cooldown aoe burn + fire aura + condi removal from soldier runes.

Frost shout is, as above, pretty useless, chill is a rather weak condition for us because it’s always really short and doesn’t proc anything like damage.

Earth shout is neat but really really long cooldown for such a small effect. Keep the cooldown and give it some AOE bleed pulses please, bleed is totally unsupported on ele right now

Air shout should really give static aura, at least to yourself.

There’s no way I’m gonna drop signet heal for shout heal, Signet active even heals for about as much as the shout…

P.S. Rebound is such a joke. Best used with other elites or Armor of Earth. Such a boring elite. Please remake it completely, this is a mesmer elite…

He right with all what he said….

Tempest needs a damage option somewhere in the traits. Best would be some damage modifier. Boon support only goes so far, and to be viable in PvE, it also needs damage, pure an simple.

Copy paste from my other thread, [BW2][PvE] Tempest Feedback.

The number buffs helped a bit but there’s still issues crippling Tempest.

Fire Overload:
Damage needs a bit more buff, something around 10%
Cast time halved or allow dodging while channeling.
Might per pulse duration buffed by 20%

Air Overload:
No one will ever channel this, not cause of damage or vuln but because it forces you into that animation.
Nerf damage and/or vuln but get rid of channel time.

Earth Overload:
Blast finisher should be at start of cast, atm it’s impossible to blast any of your fields with this.

Overloads in general:
Allow attunement swap while channeling.

Tempest Traitline:
Needs a shout cd trait desperately, maybe mix it with Unstable Conduit.
Needs a damage modifier somewhere, maybe swap Speedy Conduit with something like 10% more damage while overloading. Would have good synergy with other channeled skills like Meteor Shower, not to mention it would make Tempest a viable contender to Water in PvE.

Utilities:

Rebound:
Needs huge buff, something like from 25% to 35% or 40%.

Very much agree with Comfys analysis.

Rather than just suggesting the usual for Overloads i thought I would suggest an alternative:

Change overloads to be like the Legendary Clockheart ability:

Overload: On activation, the elementalist gains a stacking buff (over 5s or whatever). During this stacking buff the “channel” effect is gained. At 25 stacks, the “complete channel” effect is felt, and the elementalist gains “exhausted” preventing them from overloading attunements for a given time. If the elementalist is knocked down/stunned/etc they are [Insert Penalty Here].

This will allow a more elegant form of the same ability. Allowing the mandatory dodging a front line player needs without changing the core intent of the spec. And it uses existing technology in GW2 to do it!

Edit: Karl, very much approve of the change to rebound! you are playing around with. If it remains anything like what you outlined it will 100% become my elite of choice for WvW.

Oh, I thought about a trait here (reworked Unstable Conduit):

• Unstable Conduit: Deals damage and launches foes if interrupted when overloading an attunement. (Cooldown: 20s)
  • Launch: 700
  • Damage: 750

What do you guys think? If this replaces Earthen Proxy we can get Gale Song + new Unstable Conduit for a great interruption negation build. I put 20s ICD because you shouldn’t be able to spam, but I also don’t think it’s too low because it fits an anti-interruption meta + works beautifully in PvE. Damage coefficient or additional effects are on devs’ hands.

Overloads:
The overloads in general are things you’d only use in extended fights I feel, I.E bosses, my main problem is that most of them render you too vulnerable for a small return and place you too close to the boss. (The likely-hood of having to dodge in that cast time is high).

Fire: The damage output on this considering the 5 second cast, and high risk that the tornado portion gets interrupted along with the significant chance of damage by being at close range do not match up.
Suggestions: (Not saying to implement all of them just some)
1. A straight damage increase
2. Either by trait (or just change to) make it possible to target or ground cast it, that way it’s useful in PvE, and in PvP it could be used while still having the potential to be interrupted.
3. Give it a blast finisher on completion.

Water
It’s mostly ok the only suggestion I’d have is to give it a blast finisher too at the end of a cast. That way if a person has synchronized their healing rain well they can still burst into it for bonus healing.

Lightning
This one is almost perfect, I was able to take out an entire pack of pocket raptors in one cast of it, allows you to remain mobile while dealing solid damage.
Suggestions
1. Consider adding a ground cast trait like my suggestion for the fire one.
2. Targets to 5, As an AoE it should be consistent with other AOE’s,

Earth
I haven’t used this one too much, but I’d consider it as a defensive last resort type overload and my suggestions are based on that line of thought. From my current uses of it, it exposes you to a high amount of damage, as for maximum use you have to move through the mobs.

Suggestions
1. Add a reflect or retaliation for the duration or
2. Add condition immunity for the duration (I’m not actually sure this would be a good idea, could be overpowered in PvP).

Elite Skill
As everyone else has said, this is not really usable currently and feels like a version of a Mesmers time-warp except, where one misclick and your party members have wasted it. As a utility it would be ok and I can see some uses for it. As an elite, It under-preforms. Unless it preforms some critical role in raids we aren’t aware of I think it needs to be redesigned.

Suggestions
I have two sets one if you’re keeping rebound as a utility, the other for an elite I feel Eles could use.

As Rebound
1. Add some boons, the name implies the likes reflection or retaliation, You could add quickness, but that might steal the mesmers spotlight.
2. Auto-attacks remove this currently, Make it only get removed on casting something with a cooldown <1 second.

As a new elite
The one thing I could really use an an Ele is a settable pull so following that and with the tempest theme:

Heart of the Storm: (Ground Cast)
Pull nearby enemies into the heart of a raging tempest, trapping and slowing them:
Number of Targets : 5
Radius: 240 (Effect radius 600)
Duration: 8 seconds
Pulls enemies into the center of the field (like Guardian GS 5)
Chill: 8 seconds
Blind: 8 seconds
2 second stun (deploys a static field of the same radius)
Cooldown: 60 seconds
Range 1200

Traits:
I have not got too many comments really, the entire line is about making the overloads usable without dying, so it’s quite the investment.

The usefulness of Speedy conduit and Latent Stamina is debatable,
Latent Stamina: is the only skill on that entire track that requires you to attune to a specific element and the gains from the vigor are minimal.
Speedy conduit: The overloads have to be used in point blank range and I feel there are very few situations in both PvP and PvE, where you’d want to chase a person/need the swiftness since eles already have a large number of speed enhancing traits/skills.

Suggestions:
1. Combine the above two into one trait/minor trait.
2. Add a trait that allows ground casting of Overloads (If you feel that is overpowered place it where Harmonious conduit is at the moment so that they have to choose between defense or offense.)

Warhorn Skills
No comment haven’t used it enough to say.

New Utilities
No comment on the other 3
Eye of the Storm: Seems too similar to Signet of Air and I think I’d choose that over it for the on demand blind, could use maybe use a look at and an additional effect.

These are just my thoughts, If they’re not what everyone else feels, thats fine.

Tl/Dr: Rebound needs a rework and I think overloads could use a ground-cast trait.

I think Warhorn skill 5 in Fire needs to speed up a bit. Same goes for Lightning Orb. Even Crippled outrun them

I’ve been making fun of Tempest due to all the issues it has. I decided I should at least try it to justify this. Its not as terrible as I imagined and hear, but it seems to have a lot of conflicting parts to it.

Overloads:
To begin with it I have to wait 5 seconds just to use them. I tend to rotate a lot quicker than this, so usually tend to ignore them. The exception being when my rotation is done and I’m sitting in an element for that time auto attacking.

The numbers seem a little off. For me to force myself to slow down my rotation to use these AND then channel them, the result seems very lack luster. Why use these when I can continue my rotation and do more damage and play safer?

Basically, to use overloads as they are now confuse me as it stands now.

War-horn:
I tend to not like these sort of defensive/support skills, so I’ll leave that to people who know better than me.

Shouts:
I kind of like the fire shout. It seems a little lack luster but I like the feel of it. The same goes for the other shouts too. Its just its far more noticeable on the other shouts since they have long cool downs as well.

Traitline:
I hate the trait line. Its all over the place and you can’t really focus on a play style. Overload’s arn’t well supported, No DPS modifiers (even water/earth has some form of these) and there isn’t a whole lot for shouts.

The worst thing about the trait line is Aura’s. I feel like you took Aura play out of the base class a few months ago and just shoved it here in a poorly thought out way.

Overall:
The overloads, war-horn and shouts need a little tweaking still. A little more damage here, an extra effect there and most of these issues will be resolved.

However, the trait line is a mess and needs to be worked on. More traits for overloads, merge some of the existing ones, a trait or two for shouts and you really need to sort out how Aura’s are working on ele as a whole, not just the tempest.

Did anyone find a working tempest build for PvP? Because I feel completly useless running tempest. :<

omg please the 5 sec for overload is waayyy tooo long and it killing us !! .. please do somthing if u want us to use overload !

and fix unstable conduit trait it say in the trait it give u 5 sec aura but it only give u 4 sec ! if u check the overload load it say only 4 sec while in trait it say 5 sec ..

I think the overloads aren’t even as strong as people think. The water one for example, by the time you finally charge it up (waiting around in water), and then cast it for x seconds, and then lock yourself out of water attunement…How many swaps in/out of water attunement could you have done for similar healing (proccing heal/regen/cond removal trait), while also…you know…doing stuff.

They seem strong because they are an action with compressed power, but how much are you gaining by doing so, instead of continuing with your normal rotations? Occasionally I get a nice spike off with overload, but again, sacrificing a whole traitline for it, and the opportunity cost of use is ridiculous and usually fails.

The Swiftness and Protection while overloading could definitely be changed to something a tad more interesting. Another issue is that the natural Protection you get makes Earth Overload seem less unique. That and Air Overload doesn’t even grant Swiftness like it should. Speaking of Air Overload, I personally would like it a bit more wind than lightning based. On the whole air Attunement is more about lightning than actual air. Lightning’s thematically a part of it, but Air itself seems underrepresented in Air Attunement.

overloads
I am really starting to enjoy them. Water is starting to have a good amount of healing. Fire hits decent, but it requires you to be right on top of your opponent they can either hit you for more, kite away, or cc you. Air doesn’t do enough damage still. Earth is okay, but needs like a pulsing cripple.

Warhorn
Some nice changes to cooldowns and whatnot. It still lacks damage to be worth using in pvp. As far as its support capabilities go, the heals are decent, not sure if its better than a water field because I haven’t tried it large scale yet. Apart from boon sharing and healing it offers very little in terms of defense. Earth 5 is unreliable and doesn’t blind targets when you want them to be blinded. I’d rather see less healing on water 4 to reduce its cooldown and increase the speed of the wave so we have better ways to stop an enemy from trying to kill us.

Traits
You guys didn’t really make any changes apart from more healing from auras. Unstable conduit never gets used because overloads hardly get used. Earthen proxy doesn’t get used because 7% less damage isnt really a big deal when you have protection up anyhow. It also makes you have to trait for more protection. Lucid singularity is cool, but doesnt stop you from getting cc’d.

Shouts
Reduce the cooldowns of some of them. In pvp I had this problem where I would get stunned and use eye of the storm only to have it auto proc from the trait, essentially wasting it.

Karl McLain.5604:

Hi all!
Thanks for your continued feedback on the Tempest. If possible, let’s compile all feedback into this thread.
-Karl

A dev response! This is so exciting. I have been able to play around in the beta this time and I definitely think it’s stronger, but still needs the core issues looked at. The rework of rebound was a main one, and I really like the version you posted. That is something I look forward to playing around with. I also like the addition of mag aura to squall.

But on to the feed back. Numbers feel better from the last BWE. Overload effects now have a noticeable effect if (which is a big if and i’ll come back to in a min) they get off, so do warhorn. Lightning Orb still feels weak for a #5 skill focused solely on damage. Either utility, like the teleport from air pocket, or another big damage buff would do it. Either of those tune ups, plus the aura addition will leave Warhorn in a great place to compete with dagger and focus.

Now changes that still need to happen for Tempest – Overloads and traits.

Overloads – They are still too weak, and take too long to unlock. Maybe 2 secs post swap for overloads instead of 5. A completed channel feels rewarding, but you will never ever complete them. Every single time I tried to channel in pvp I was interrupted. Overloads have a lot of Tempests defense and power baked into them, and playing the spec without overloads is gimping yourself, and losing out on a major reason to play Tempest. My answer is baseline break bars for each attunement.
1. The standard has already been set with Earth. Having the other specs protected by something else, like stability or evasion, would be weird.
2. Break bars are thematically and balance appropriate for the skills. Big spells with big defenses, that can still be individually balanced around the desired risk and reward for each overload.
3. Base line not traited. Having to trait the ability to even use overloads is bad game play design, and no other competing trait would ever be used.

Traits – Overloads are what’s holding Tempest back in pvp/wvw, traits are what’s holding it back in pve. I think three major traits need to change and it would put non-staff using tempests into the game.
1. Add a 10% damage modifier to Unstable Conduit while under the effects of an aura. A d/w tempest can keep this buff up frequently, but not permanently, and a staff build really can’t at all.
2. Add a 10% damage modifier to Imbued Melodies while wielding a warhorn. A d/w build tempest gets this all the time, a staff build never has it.
3. Change Earthen Proxy to an Empowered Allies type buff with the current effect on protection. Right now its boring, and isn’t really worth taking. But make it a party buff, that combined with the above damage boosts, will put Fresh Air d/w builds at the same dps level as warrior or ranger with desirable unique utility. At the same time these buffs are not beneficial to the standard staff rotation, damage, or utility so power creep to one of the best pve builds is avoided.

Right now Tempest is a neat line, but does not have a place in pvp or pve and will never be taken as anything other than a fun open world spec. I do strongly believe though that implementing the suggestions I just made will develop the roles Tempest needs, with out overpowering the base class.

Overload suggestion:

Decrease pre-cast cooldown to 3 seconds
Remove the attunement recharge penalty if you are interrupted
Add a break bar to all overload and increase the strength of the current break bar
Make the aura trait apply when you start casting

Overload Fire: Make the radius increase each pulse as well as the damage, Gives allies Aegis at the end
Overload Air: Increase the overall radius, make it give Quickness to allies during the chanelling
Overload Water: Make enemies inside the radius Float
Overload Earth: Instead of pulse cripple, pulse Slow

This way the elementalist with overloads would be able to access to the new conditions instead of doing what it has always done in a different manner.

Otherwise if you don’t want to change the current overload then let us swap attunement, dodge and use skills while chanelling.

Honestly I feel overload needs a complete rework, as mentioned many times the risk/reward is just not worth it literally ever with any of the overload’s. The problem is the fact that they’re generally damage over time/channeled type skills and the time they take to fully complete generally isn’t worth the reward (damage/heal etc). IMO overcharge skills should be much faster for example:

- Overload Earth
Currently this pulses cripple and immob which is nice however you are easily interrupted.

Improvement example:
A 0.5s cast skill which knocks down foes in a 360 degree radius and cripples for 6s.

This would be a massive improvement due to the faster cast time and greater reward.

Concerning the overloads, I did feel crippled by the 5 seconds to activate.

The way I see it, it would be more fitting to the “overloading” idea to make the overload ability available immediately, but scale on how long you’ve been staying in the attunement, like building up the power and releasing it in an overload. Overloads wouldn’t do much and wouldn’t be worth using if you only stayed attuned a couple of seconds, but would become interesting after a short time (which is where you could have your 5 seconds), and get stronger after a longer time (10 seconds?). Triggering the overload would put it (not the attunement) on cooldown, and reset that timer.

That enough could make it easier to balance (I guess), and it would open the possibility to add a lingering passive effect, like improved power (fire)/ vitality (water) / precision or ferocity (air) / toughness (earth), that would also slowly get stronger, and reset when the overload is used.
But that last suggestion might be much harder to balance, and could risk to be too powerful.

Otherwise, I’ll agree with the others about the traits needing a global rework, and the warhorn currently being kind of nice, but still not nice enough to be a real choice outside of WvW little roaming groups. I like the idea presented by Karl for the elite, and the magnetic aura.

As for shouts, I have to admit I’m a dirty fire-obsessed ele, and I feel like “Feel the Burn!” could use a little more burning. One stack does feel a bit underwhelming. For the others, I did put some +1 on other posts that say it much better than I could

Alright, I decided to do some number crunching, again. This is obtained in PVP while wearing no amulet, runes, or sigils, so this is basically the base damage of each skill. This time I’ll lead with the reference materials:

Lightning Whip: 448 damage, 300 range. 0.95 seconds attack speed.
Dragon’s Claw: 137 × 3 damage. 400 range. 1 second attack speed.
Vapor Blade: 117 × 2 damage, 1 × 6 vulnerability (x2). 1 second attack speed.
Impale: 178 damage. 1 × 8 bleed. 300 range. 1.04 seconds attack speed.
Fireball: 332 damage. 1200 range. 1.4 second attack speed.
Lava Font: 1,252 damage. 5 targets. 4 second duration. 1200 range. 180 radius. fire field.

With that out of the way, lets look at overloads.

Fire Overload: 426 per pulse. 1 × 3 burning per pulse. 10 seconds of might per pulse. x 8 whirl finisher. 11 pulses. 180 range. 4.5 second activation time, 20 second cooldown. Total off 11 × 10 might, 11 × 3 burning, 4686 damage total.

BUG: No target listing on fire overload.

Water Overload: 392 per pulse. 0.2 scaling per pulse. 3220 final heal. 0.75 scaling on final heal. 8 seconds of regen at end. 1 condi cleansed per pulse. 360 range. 20 second cooldown. 4 pulses + final heal. 2.75 second activation time.
Total of 4788 healing.

BUG: No target listing on water overload.

Air Overload: 302 damage. 1 × 10 vulnerability. 3 targets. 3 second field duration. Attack interval 0.25 seconds. 360 range. Lightning Field. 14 pulses total. 4.75 second activation time. 20 second recharge.
Total of 14 × 10 vulnerability, 4228 damage.

Earth Overload: 266 damage, 1 × 3 cripple per pulse, 1 × 4 immobilize at the end. 1 × 1 second of protection per pulse. 5 targets. 1 second interval. 240 range. Blast Finisher. 4 pulses + final hit. 20 second recharge, 5 second activation time. Provides a break bar.

BUG: Does not list the break bar in the tooltip, or what happens when the bar is broken.

Note: with Harmonious Conduit and Elemental Enchantment, the recharge of each overload goes down to 14 seconds.

A lot of people have usage complaints regarding the overloads. I’m not going to be looking at that, since as a PVE-er I probably wont’ have much issue using the overloads. What I’ll be looking at are the statistics.

Currently, Fire and Air overload are fine. Air overload has a tooltip DPS of 890, not factoring in vulnerability. This is higher than the tooltip dps of 718 that fireball + lava font will give. So, if there are 6 seconds of available time between fights, Air Overload is worth using. Fire Overload is even more monstrous, doing more damage and buffing while also burning. The activation time of Fire Overload makes it blend almost seamlessly into the duration of Lava Font, making it basically additional damage over just auto attacking in that timespace.

The kittenes to balance are Water and Earth. Water is a tough one. Whether you are using staff or D/D, you’ll be sitting in water attunement for 3 seconds after going through the standard rotation. Unlike Air, it isn’t wise to sit in water to pre-charge the attunement, as healing is an on-demand skill. This puts water in this strange spot where you would need to have additional healing, but it isn’t so necessary as to cause your teammates to die. I can still see use for it, though, so for now I won’t touch it.

Earth Overload is, quite frankly, nigh useless. It doesn’t do enough damage to warrant use on that side. The ele is at the bottom of the AA war, so 8/9 times enemies will be chasing you down. This makes the PBAoE cripple and immobilize nearly useless, only keeping chasing enemies at slightly longer than arms length. It gives AoE protection, but less than elemental attunement or sand squall. The blast finisher at the end is the most difficult to use blast finisher in the game, having a delay of 10 seconds, so it might as well not even exist.

It is so broken, I’m not even sure how to fix it. Immediately I’d say triple its damage, and add a blast finisher at the start of the overload. Back-end the damage for counter-play.

Now, Warhorn Skills.

Heat Sink: 3 × 10 might, boon duplication. 600 range, 600 radius. 0.75 seconds activation time, 30 second recharge.

Wildfire: 211 Damage, 1 × 2 burning, 8 pulses, 180 width, 600 length, fire field. 0.75 seconds activation time. 30 second recharge.

Tidal Surge: 323 damage, 1203 healing, 8 seconds of regen. 240 knockback. 35 second cooldown. BUG: No range indicator.

Water Globe: 470 Healing, 4 pulses, 1 second per pulse, 180 radius, 750 range. Unblockable(?). 0.5 second activation time, 35 second cooldown.

Cyclone: 288 damage. 10 seconds of swiftness. 180 pull. 9 Impacts. 3 targets. 240 width. 750 length. Unblockable. 1 second cast time. 25 second cooldown.

Lightning Orb: 115 damage, 1 × 10 vulnerability per hit. Interval 0.25 seconds. 1200 range, 300 radius. 25 second recharge. Does 9 hits against a stationary small target.

Sand Squall: 2 seconds of protection, 2 seconds of duration increase on all boons. 600 radius. Blast finisher. 30 second recharge. Actually self applies about 8 seconds of protection.

Dust Storm: 96 damage, 1 × 10 vulnerability, 1 × 2 blind. 5 second duration, 2 second interval. 180 radius, 750 range. 0.75 second activation time. 30 second cooldown. Hits a stationary target about 6 times. Makes a series of storms along its path.

Notable Warhorn Traits: 20 second cooldown reduction + group stunbreak on use (10 second recharge.

I can appreciate what the devs are trying to do here. But it doesn’t work that well. The devs are making a glass buffer. I’ve seen this concept done before, and it rarely works. On the relative side, the ele is incredibly squishy, even when built for durability. Because of this, the ele needs utilities in order to survive. The off-hand dagger provides these utilities via movement and control. The off-hand focus provides it via control and invulnerability/blocks.

The warhorn does not have movement. It does not have invulnerability. It has paltry control. What we are left with is a buffer that can’t support itself. A lot of these skills by themselves would be great. But without the ability to defend themselves, the warhorn using tempest is left as fodder.

The Fire and Earth Warhorn skills are fine. So I’ll concentrate on the water/air skills.

Water Globe and Lightning Orb are interesting ideas, but “interesting” doesn’t make it good. These skills are essentially moving wells. They suffer the same weakness as wells, but magnified. When one is confronted with a well, they simply walk out of said well. But with Lightning Orb being mobile, “walking out” is now accomplished much more easily. Water Globe in particular is really bad, because it is a support skill, and to make use of that support skill your allies have to drop what they are doing and run along with it.

This problem exists in both PVP and PVE. Now, there are a couple of ways to solve this. #1 is to make it so instead of a traveling projectile, they behave like dust storm and wildfire, and just linger along the travel path for its entire length. #2 is to make it so these skills are not multi hit skills, instead just cause their effect once to whatever target they hit.

Cycle and Tidal Surge are the control skills, however they lack any defensive utility. Cyclone exists solely to pull enemies in line with the other warhorn skills. Tidal Surge is basically a heal with a long delay knockback. Both have a cast time, then a long delay for using. Immediately, the first solution I see is to make their control effects instant along their path instead of on a long delay. I would also make tidal surge cleanse conditions, as currently tempests don’t have that much condition cleansing. Likewise, it would be very beneficial for one of those skills to have a block/invulnerabilty attatched to them.

So I guess in short, the warhorn changes would be the following:

#1: Tidal Surge’s control effect is instant after cast.
#2: Water Globe is converted into a 180 × 750 area, and pulses a heal + condition cleanse in its entire area 4 times.
#3: Cyclone reflects projectiles for the length of its animation.
#4: Lightning Orb now hits all targets once, but discharges a large bolt that does 920 damage (at 100o power) and 8 stacks of vulnerability for 10 seconds.

And now for Shouts.

Rebound: already being changed so I won’t cover that.

Wash Away The Pain: 3560 heal, 0.3 scaling. 1.5 second activation time. 25 second cooldown.

Feel the Burn: 266 damage, 1 × 4 burning 600 radius, 5 targets, 20 second cooldown. AoE Fire Aura for 5 seconds

Flash-Freeze: 186 damage, 1 × 3 chill, AoE frost aura for 5 seconds. 5 targets, 600 range, 25 second cooldown, 0.25 second activation time.

Shock and Aftershock: 398 damage 1 × 6 cripple, 1 × 2 immobilize. AoE Magnetic Aura for 5 seconds. Blast Radius 240, 600 range. 0.25 second activation time. 50 second cooldown.

Eye of the Storm: 1 × 5 AoE super Speed. 600 radius. AoE stun Break. 45 second cooldown. BUG: Number of targets isn’t listed.

Notable Traits: Tempestuous Aria: 2 × 10 might per shout, 1 × 3 weakness per shout.

The shouts are a very mixed bag. It is hard to have a frame of reference. In general, I’d say the problem with shouts is the same problem with warhorn: Glass Buffer. Good news, however, is that shouts aren’t exclusive with other utilities, so it isn’t as bad as the warhorn.

On the PVE side the shouts are in competition with arcane skills. With Elemental Surge, the arcane skills become just as powerful and versatile as the shouts do. For comparison:

Arcane Wave: 372 damage,+150 ferocity for 15 seconds, 24 second cooldown, instant activation. Blast Finisher. Causes either 1 × 5 burning, 1 × 3 chill, 1 × 5 blind, or 1 × 1 immobilize.

Traited, Feel the Burn does less damage, has less versatility, and is less controlled. The only things that it has that arcane wave can’t do better is weakness. So, my suggestion is a 33% increase in the direct damage of Feel the Burn.

Shock and Aftershock is good, mostly because it is an AoE Magnetic Field, which makes it a life saver. Flash Freeze is alright I guess. I’m comparing it to Suffer from the reaper. Suffer has condition transfers, the same damage, same chill duration, longer recharge but shorter activation time. Flash freeze has AoE frost Aura, might stacking, and weakness.

Eye of the Storm is good relative to Ele’s other stun breakers, but not that great globally. Eye of the Storm should provide a Shocking Aura to make it more useful, and to complete the theme.

Finally, the traits. Probably the biggest turnoff with the tempest are the traits. They are highly focused, often times accomplishing things that should be baseline quite frankly. They are uninspired, and exist mostly to deal with flaws that are innate to the classes other abilities. As such, they contribute very little.

On the Minor Side, Speedy Conduit isn’t that good of a trait. Eles generally aren’t lacking for speed, having many ways to apply swiftness and many movement skills. Speedy Conduit basically exists for those who want to have speed, but don’t want to apply it properly like everyone else. Hardy Conduit is better, but it still leaves you vulnerable for 40% of the Overload’s animation. My suggestion here is to increase the duration of Hardy Conduit’s Protection to 5 seconds base. Likewise, merge Lucid Singularity and Speedy Conduit.

In the adept line you have Gale Song, Latent Stamina, and Unstable Conduit. Gale Song is good. Latent Stamina is meh: it is trying to replace the role that cantrips provided by giving water swap a vigor buff, but compared to the defense and long duration vigor, it just doesn’t compare. Unstable Conduit is pretty bad. Most Auras are clutch maneuvers, and giving an Aura at the end of the overload is 5 seconds too late.

Increase the vigor duration of Latent Stamina to 5 seconds, and make it so Unstable Conduit casts the Aura at the start of Overload, and not the end.

On the Master line we have Tempestuous Aria, Earthen Proxy, and Harmonious Circuit. Tempestuous Aria is fine, but it is lacking that oh-so needed cooldown reduction. Earthen Proxy is not as good as it sounds. By changing the damage reduction from -33% to -40%, you are increasing the effective health of an ele by just 9%, and given how low an ele’s health is, that isn’t much. Harmonious Conduits is fairly generic, but it isn’t that good. I would merge Harmonious Conduits with Unstable Conduits.

In the Grandmaster Tier we have Imbued Melodies, Lucid Singularity, and Elemental Bastion. I already merged lucid singularity with another trait. Imbued Melodies is one of those traits where, I appreciate what it is doing, but I don’t actually know how effective it might be in practice, so leave it there. Elemental Bastion probably should’ve been part of Powerful Aura, but as it stands it is far inferior to just blasting a water field. It is a pretty paltry heal, so at base I would double the amount of healing that Bastion provides.

So, in summation:

#1: Merge Lucid Singularity and Speedy Conduit as the adept master trait. This leaves an open spot in the Grandmaster line.
#2: Add a 20% cooldown trait to Tempestuous Aria.
#3: Increase the protection duration of Hardy Conduit by 2 seconds to 5 seconds base.
#4: Merge Harmonious Conduits and Unstable Conduit. Make Unstable Conduit Grant the aura at the beginning of its use.
#5: Double the base healing and scaling healing of Elemental Bastion.
#6: Increase the Vigor duration of Latent Stamina to 5 seconds.
#7: Change Earthen Proxy to be a 52% increase in protection strength, making Protection now cut direct damage in half.

You may notice that this leaves two open trait spots. One at the master tier, and one at the grandmaster tier. This is where my analysis fails me: I don’t have the creativity to come up with new traits that will help out the Tempest. Currently the Tempest is the class with the most changes proposed, so with all of the above I’d be frightened of adding anything too strong.

Amicable Pugs.4503:

Copy paste from my other thread…

Doing the same thing. Thanks to Atrophied.8725 for calling my attention to this thread. I had left some BWE2 feedback on the HoT forum not knowing about this thread. This is from that feedback thread:

BWE2 Ele Tempest “Rebound” Feedback

For the second HoT Beta Weekend Event, I decided to try out the Elementalist’s Tempest elite specialization. I have feedback about the HoT “Rebound” elite skill and about Elementalist elite skills in general.

“Rebound.” – Every time I tried to use this skill, it wound up getting wasted on my autoattacks. I know you can disable auto-attack by ctrl-clicking the skill, but that really causes a lot of damage loss to do that, plus it’s really not intuitive (“confusing for new players,” maybe, even…). Autoattacks don’t have cooldowns, so the Overload elite skill should not be wasted on them when they are used.

Further, I’m sure all the allies hit by Rebound near me also had it wasted on their autoattacks. Is the designed function of Rebound to tell all 5 of your party members to all turn off their autoattacks, then have them all wait for you to cast it, then all use a long cooldown spell, then all turn on their autoattacks again, all for a 25% cooldown reduction? It seems like you’d lose a lot more damage than you’d gain organizing all that – even in voice comms. Let alone trying to get it to work via text with people in-game.

That being said, Rebound seems kind of underwhelming in general, even if it worked and was not wasted on autoattacks/require insane coordination + stopping AA on 5 people to work. New HoT encounters may prove to be different, but 25% of a long cooldown probably won’t enable using the cooldown-reduced skill again in most encounters I can imagine.

During my playtime I thought I’d like to slot something else in my Elite skill slot. But then I remembered the ele alternatives are a Tornado that scatters enemies about, an Elemental that is AI-controlled and somewhat unpredictable, and a Fiery Greatsword which replaces your skillbar, which might have been a damage increase at one time but which many now regard as a glorified movement speed skill. In other words, none of the elementalist elite skill options really appealed to me. Some of these skills may appeal to some players or have situational/niche/limited uses, but none of them appealed to me at all while playing the BWE2.

Elite skills should be something that makes you drool. Something you want to put in your build so badly. Something that makes you feel restricted by “why can I only have ONE of these?” Instead, I found myself wishing I could slot a 4’th non-elite utility skill in that slot. Something is wrong with this.

In Guild Wars 1, an elite skill was optional. You could have 1, or you could have 0, in your build. Trying the Tempest elite specialization this weekend made me realize how much I wish for that option in general, but especially for the elementalist, in Guild Wars 2.

I hope you can figure out a way to make Rebound more appealing/work better. But I also hope, for all Elementalists, that you can find a way to make all ele Elite skill slot choices more appealing. Maybe that means opening up functionality (gamewide) where the Elite skill slot can also hold a 4’th Utility skill if the user doesn’t feel enticed by any of the Elite skill options, as was the case in GW1. But if you manage to make Rebound appealing, and it becomes the primary appealing ele Elite skill, then you may see a lot of players pigeonholed into always selecting the Tempest elite spec even if only for access to Rebound.

tl;dr Guild Wars 2 has a lot of freedom and openness and player choice. Today, I felt like all the choices presented to me for elementalist elite skills were unappealing. Elites are supposed to feel like the ace up your sleeve, but for elementalist they all (especially Rebound) just felt like an anchor weighing me down – a slot with VERY limited use. Maybe letting another basic utility fit into the elite skill slot is the answer, or maybe giving elementalists more appealing options is the answer, but I know an answer is out there.

I hope this feedback is helpful. I am very excited for Heart of Thorns but this BWE2 has left me frustrated and concerned about the state of elementalist elite skills in general. I hope the developers and the players can work together to find an answer to this problem. Thank you.

I’ve been playing the tempest/warhorn combo in spvp and one issue I encountered is that very often you have to leave the point you’re holding to chase your water field if you want to blast it a few times. It’s not very suitable for conquest. It would be better if the water fields followed the ele, like the warrior torch fire field.

Also, the combat is very fast paced and the warhorn air/water CC skills will often miss as they move very slowly.

While nice, 20% recharge on Warhorn skills on the grandmaster trait feels somehow wrong with us otherwise having 33% reduction on specific attunements instead of weapon CDR. Also with 2 of those traits combined you can get 11 sec CD aoe CC in air or 14 second boonshare in fire, not sure if intended.

On the other hand Shouts really need a 20% cooldown reduction added to the shout trait.

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

While nice, 20% recharge on Warhorn skills on the grandmaster trait feels somehow wrong with us otherwise having 33% reduction on specific attunements instead of weapon CDR. Also with 2 of those traits combined you can get 11 sec CD aoe CC in air or 14 second boonshare in fire, not sure if intended.

On the other hand Shouts really need a 20% cooldown reduction added to the shout trait.

The shouts as is are on low enofe cd drooping them over all any more would be a bit much for all they do. The thing about the WH cdr is that most wh skills are on high cd but are on ok cd once you get the -20%. The thing is you need to go all the in to get the max cdr of 53% to the point that you can at best only get 2 atuments types on that low cd and most ppl will not push it by that much.

Tempest needs less to do with shouts and more to do with auras and being under the effect of an aura. Kind of “why do you use the shouts if not for the auras?” point of view. If there is talk about runes sets that have on aura application or when under the aura effect there needs to be info or even need to be in the beta it self to give tempest true effect. Though having some more build in effect with auras on tempest line would be nice but not needed if they are going to be on rune sets.

My tempest feedback is based around playing a bit around with scepter/warhorn in PvE (even did a dungeon).

overloads
Overload fire: Radius is way too short to be usefull outside prebuffing. Cast time felt bit too long and the might duration was too short.
Overload water: it felt fine.
Overload Air: I kinda find it lackluster or maybe it is just me.
Overload Earth: Seems pvp/wvw only.

Warhorn
WildFire: it deployed too slow If I tried too land dragon tooth on it I had too either cast it after WildFire or I had to stand to the side of my foe.
Sand Squall: it is great, it really doesn’t more functionality (so please no magnet aura).
Dust Storm: for PvE it is missing something, also I felt that it deployed too slow and didn’t stay long enough.

Traits
For the rest I have no remarks outside of the fact that for PvE I couldn’t find a suitable trait and that the protection from hardy conduit does not always cover my overload.

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

While nice, 20% recharge on Warhorn skills on the grandmaster trait feels somehow wrong with us otherwise having 33% reduction on specific attunements instead of weapon CDR. Also with 2 of those traits combined you can get 11 sec CD aoe CC in air or 14 second boonshare in fire, not sure if intended.

It’s not that wrong, mesmers have this kind of cooldown interaction for a long time.

Jski.6180:

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

While nice, 20% recharge on Warhorn skills on the grandmaster trait feels somehow wrong with us otherwise having 33% reduction on specific attunements instead of weapon CDR. Also with 2 of those traits combined you can get 11 sec CD aoe CC in air or 14 second boonshare in fire, not sure if intended.

On the other hand Shouts really need a 20% cooldown reduction added to the shout trait.

The shouts as is are on low enofe cd drooping them over all any more would be a bit much for all they do. The thing about the WH cdr is that most wh skills are on high cd but are on ok cd once you get the -20%. The thing is you need to go all the in to get the max cdr of 53% to the point that you can at best only get 2 atuments types on that low cd and most ppl will not push it by that much.

Tempest needs less to do with shouts and more to do with auras and being under the effect of an aura. Kind of “why do you use the shouts if not for the auras?” point of view. If there is talk about runes sets that have on aura application or when under the aura effect there needs to be info or even need to be in the beta it self to give tempest true effect. Though having some more build in effect with auras on tempest line would be nice but not needed if they are going to be on rune sets.

Low enough CD? 50 seconds for the earth shout is ridiculous, as is 45 seconds for the air one that doesn’t even give an aura…

Overloads:
These are, in my opinion, the biggest problem. As I see them, they should be burst skills that temporarily turn you into both an offensive and defensive presence, at the cost of leaving you vulnerable afterwards. However, they are currently so undertuned that they offer little benefit while still leaving you vulnerable. Their casting times need to be dramatically shorter (think 3 seconds max) to turn them into the burst skills they were always meant to be. Damage coefficients will have to be balanced accordingly.

Traits :
These synergize poorly with the Tempest and the Elementalist in general. Some suggestions to make the Tempest not explode in the frontlines:
- Speedy Conduit: replaced by Stable Conduit: gain stability (2 stack, 3s) when overloading an attunement. This will allow the overloads (again 3 seconds cast time max) to grant protection and stability during their channels, protecting against both damage and CC.
-Harmonious Conduit: also grants 3s of superspeed. This will grant you a noticable mobility boost during overloads; the swiftness from Speedy Conduit is extremely weak.
- Lucid Singularity: functionality changed: now grant 3s of resistance when overloading an attunement. This, again, makes the Tempest very bulky during the overload, while leaving him relatively helpless afterwards.

Some more tweaks will probably be needed, but those will make the Tempest less of a sitting duck while overloading, while also making enemies think twice about facetanking you.

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Jski.6180:

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

While nice, 20% recharge on Warhorn skills on the grandmaster trait feels somehow wrong with us otherwise having 33% reduction on specific attunements instead of weapon CDR. Also with 2 of those traits combined you can get 11 sec CD aoe CC in air or 14 second boonshare in fire, not sure if intended.

On the other hand Shouts really need a 20% cooldown reduction added to the shout trait.

The shouts as is are on low enofe cd drooping them over all any more would be a bit much for all they do. The thing about the WH cdr is that most wh skills are on high cd but are on ok cd once you get the -20%. The thing is you need to go all the in to get the max cdr of 53% to the point that you can at best only get 2 atuments types on that low cd and most ppl will not push it by that much.

Tempest needs less to do with shouts and more to do with auras and being under the effect of an aura. Kind of “why do you use the shouts if not for the auras?” point of view. If there is talk about runes sets that have on aura application or when under the aura effect there needs to be info or even need to be in the beta it self to give tempest true effect. Though having some more build in effect with auras on tempest line would be nice but not needed if they are going to be on rune sets.

Low enough CD? 50 seconds for the earth shout is ridiculous, as is 45 seconds for the air one that doesn’t even give an aura…

The other main 2 the mostly used ones are 20 and 25 sec. The earth shout is a root more then an aura generator the air is an aoe stun brake and is set up in such a way to play as other stab / stun brake effects. CDR on earth shout is ok to ask for and more effect on Eye is ok to ask for but to ask for lower cd on all shouts is game braking.

Posted a bug in another thread having to do with a conflict between Aftershock and Overload Earth: one removes the immobilize of the other:

Using Aftershock after having used earth overload actually removes the 3 second immobilize condition on the enemy player on the first “Shock” and then reapply 2 seconds on the following Aftershock. It is impossible to stack the immobilize duration together from these 2 skills.

Also because of this, if an enemy player dodges the Aftershock then he got a free cleanse from the Shock.

First time playing it and agree with most of the criticism. Overloads have very little point, fire overload needs a big damage increase, water is OK, air is OK but is not better than alternatives, earth is OK but again I don’t see much point to it. And its easy to be interrupted in all but earth.

Shouts in general are bad, the only one that was any good at all was aftershock.

Warhorn is good but it is a supportive weapon and the survivability is both WvW and PvP is not good enough that we are alive long enough in the frontline to provide it.

1 on 1 the spec is kittenupport the survivability is not there and never will be due to the inherent nature of the class hence the reason why this spec does not work.

Azel.4786:

Auramancer goal

It is quite clear that the goal is to make this elite specialization the auramancer that never happened with base elementalist. Fine. But make it fun.

Suggestions:

1. First of all, remove all trait auras in other lines and consolidate in the Tempest trait line. Take out from fire, air, earth and water (yes remove powerful aura as well and replace with something better. Tempest is already giving party wide auras so that grandmaster is redundant).

2. Give each line of the Tempest traits a purpose. Make one to be perhaps geared towards selfish builds, another designed around party-wide support and the last one geared towards the weapon and the utilities (warhorn and shouts).

3. Create an unique aura to come with the Tempest. Give the class that special something that is missing right now and an unique aura that made you go “Wow this aura is cool!” would really help sell this elite specialization.

I’d like to highlight this as something Tempest TRULY requires now. The traits for auras are such a mess all over the place that placing them in the Tempest line gives us very strong auras and a UNIQUE playstyle, something all the other elite specs have except for us.

I’m a semi-casual player who doesn’t dance between attunements too quickly, so the cooldown on overloading doesn’t bother me much. But I do feel like they need something a little more. Being able to dodge would be good.

Even better would be a passive ability to overload skills so they are like signets. That would make staying in the attunement much more attractive.

I just can’t find enough use for this in PvE. It’s not terrible damage in fire with it, but the problem is it’s not better DPS than to just autoattack + lava font on staff. It makes me sad but this elite specialization seems overall really poor for the game’s current content.

I don’t think it’s gonna have a purpose for anything other than maybe raids… we’ll have to see. As far as dungeons and fractals are concerned, tempest is almost entirely useless.

Main problems for tempest not having use:
a) traits are just lousy overall, nothing stands out as spectacular and they aren’t better than the other traitline options for the most part
b) doesn’t deal highest damage or replace anything else, resulting in it not fulfilling any role in a group
c) warhorn skills aren’t that good in general… some are decent, but nothing in particular stands out as that great
d) overloading has a longgg cast time, which prevents you from being able to cast other things.

FFiend.4783:

The worst thing about the trait line is Aura’s. I feel like you took Aura play out of the base class a few months ago and just shoved it here in a poorly thought out way.

This IMHO is the most kitten ing thing about Tempest. Eles already had an auramancer playstyle with signets that was actually different from the normal dd cantrips, semi-viable (definitely in hotjoin and maybe even unranked if you’re good) and most of all, fun.

Then suddenly signets didn’t give auras anymore. Making signet builds basically unplayable in pvp.

And now they introduce auras on utilities again with shouts on the elite spec? That is SO CHEAP. Like “we’re out of ideas for ele elite spec, well just take some of their stuff away and give it back as the elite!”

Karl McLain.5604:

Hi all!
We’re iterating in quite a few areas for this specialization, including Rebound. Here’s the description of the latest implementation we’ve been testing over the last few days:
“Shout and infuse your allies with arcane energy. Allies who would take lethal damage while this is active ignore the deathblow and are healed instead. If the effect expires naturally, grant an aura based on your current attunement.”

While this design is certainly better than the previous iteration, I think it has major problems. It basically sounds like being able to use the glyph of renewal in fire (team-wide) as an elite skill. In bunkery staff builds that can do this twice (with glyph and elite) this is way too strong, esp. given how long it takes to wear them down. In more aggressive builds, it is balanced, but unless you are going to fix the water/arcana reliance that forces every pvp build to bunker-up, you can’t increase self-survival capabilities to that level in any way that can be stacked.

I also do not like these “gain an aura in X s” kind of things, as it isn’t very skillful. Auras are defensive, and to be skillfully used MUST be instantly (or near-instantly) applied on-demand. Non-instant defenses just aren’t viable in this game unless you go max-bunker and just have them a little bit extra defense for free.

Besides, since the defense provided by auras relies on you getting hit, they play into a bruiser playstyle, which is something d/d already does (and thus just competes for the same role). If you truly want to offer a different, support-oriented play-style you will have to make aura traits more condensed (and in lines that aren’t water, preferably). While supporting via boons and supporting via auras aren’t that different, they at least offer enough difference to make people consider pros/cons for specific applications (or want both).

Another small change we was due to the case that warhorn was missing an aura. As such (in our test iteration), Magnetic Aura now belongs to Sand Squall, in addition to its other properties. Looking forward to your constructive feedback from this BWE.

So now it is just a variant on focus 4 (which is a blast, reflects) where you add 2s boon duration as opposed to cleanse condis? While you are at it, just make the 5 skill in earth an invuln, copy the air skills from focus, and you will have a pretty much ideal survival off-hand. Do you not realize you are just remaking the same skills in trying to make warhorn viable.

A little more feedback given based on recent changes to warhorn:

- Imbued melodies offering CDR of 20% is probably too much when stacked with aquamancer’s alacrity. Tidal surge is better than cleansing wave (dagger 5), having the same healing, a condi cleanse from regen, AND a knockback on just a 0.25s cast time. A water field every 16s (water globe) that I can blast always 2 and usually 3 times is OP. With that, every 16s I can full heal with water swap + water dodge + water 4 (to heal AND CC to cover my heals) + water 5—> water 3 (blast)—> earth dodge (blast)—> earth 4 (blast).
- With a 16s water-field, this is one of the only times overloading water would be regularly worth it, as you don’ t mind needing to wait ~16s to get back to water (notice how, b/c they do the same thing, overloads only become viable when mathematically superior, making them just part of a rotation).
-Sadly, without a low-CD water field, I can’t see myself using warhorn over dagger or focus, but with that its just OP.

- Cyclone (air 4) cast time is too long, esp given the slow projectile speed.
- Lightning orb just doesn’t work in any way as it currently is. It also has a restrictive firing angle (can’t fire behind you like every other aoe) even if the aoe marker is green in every direction. It would honestly be 1000% better if it were stationary as that would offer damage as a different form of area control (like Dragon’s tooth). Perhaps this change would be too strong in a “stack and dps” type strat though.

-Wildfire could have a lower CD to promote the “stack might to do damage because you are a brawler spec” given how weak it is otherwise, but it doesn’t matter if I have a low-CD water-field. I am never wasting a blast on a fire field if I can be blasting a water-field and just live forever.

-BUG Sand Squall currently blasts when you press the skill, before it activates. This makes it possible to cancel-cast and turn into kitten CD blast. Should be fixed.

-Dust storm is awkward: it is hard to tell where it is (maybe white lines would help), it moves way too slowly, and doesn’t really do much. I would rather it just be stationary, honestly.

The slow-moving fields on warhorn are honestly just bad. Either make them stationary, or player-based (like the warrior can turn himself into a fire field) to make them way more usable.

Overloads:
- Still, these aren’t very balanced in risk vs. reward b/c the cost is just so high (with penalties on both ends + a long channel to reap the benefits which are weighted toward finishing the channel). The current cost requires simply insane effects to be balanced (1-shot someone, full-heal, etc) , indicating the costs need to come down to have a good design. Pick between 5s pre-charge or the 20s exhaustion to make it more even. Alternatively, make overloads skills and not long channels.

- Fire vs. Air: Let me get this right. Fire, the “AOE dps” attunement, overloads to do basically single-target higher dps (due to the 180 range) while air, the “single-target dps” attunement, overloads to do moderate damage in a large aoe? These are just wrong.

- Cast times for fire and air are too long. If you aren’t going to reduce the cost, they need to do way more damage, and the lingering effect needs to do way more damage (or last longer) so that it at least serves as area control.

- Water overload seems pretty good now, especially while warhorn has a short-CD water field. I would use it sometimes, but not always.

- Earth overload is 100% useless. Tested against Svanir, 1 single knockdown broke the break-bar immediately. If that is the case, just make it a single stack of stability and call it a day. The only possible use for this overload I can possibly even think, is in combination with the GM trait so you can gtfo with a breakbar (if it doesn’t break on 1 CC) and snare immunity.

Traits:
- Overload traits still useless while overloads have such high costs. Auras for completing an overload is dumb, as I need defense NOW, not in 5s (if I don’t get interrupted or killed).

-Shout traits are hurt by the shouts just being underwhelming. Also, shouts already give aoe auras, making powerful auras even LESS GM-worthy.

- Middle-line traits (the ones that just belong in other lines) are decent, but don’t fit well at all. Vigor trait and aura healing trait belong in water. Protection traits belongs in earth.

Shouts:
- These just don’t seem good. Make them shorter CD (except fire) so that they can at least be used as an alternative (with trooper/soldier runes) to cleansing water + cantrips. As defensive utilities, only instants work on eles. As offensive utilities (which are only used in pve), others are WAY better. Since shouts are tied to auras, you have chosen to make them defensive, yet they still have a cast time. Just remove the offensive capabilities and make them instant if you want them to be used.
- Fire shout has potential as a low-CD aura, but the burning is terrible. Either make it 2 stacks for 4s or 1 stack for 8-10.
- Water shout maybe sees use in wvw in a shout support build, but not being a stun-breaker makes it a tough sell.
- Air shout will never be used. Being an AOE stunbreak isn’t all that useful (maybe it has some strange niche use). As AOE stunbreak is useless, I would take signet of air 10/10 times over this. A 25s CD is way better than a 45-BreakStun with 5s of super-speed . Put a shocking aura on this at least. Yes, this means you either have to rework the minor trait or tempest defense. That is what happens when trying to rehash an old mechanic (auramancer) as if it were “new”
- Earth shout doesn’t warrant a 50s CD. Is this similar in power to “Fear me!” on a shout warrior, which only deserves ITS long CD due to being an instant fear?

It would be really nice if tempest would work in synergy with Staff and Scepter, because with both these weapon it feels clunky and noneffective.

How about a trait that increase the scepter range when you have a warhorn equipped?

My personal thoughts:

Warhorn itself is OKAY but not that great as o/d or o/f. imo warhorn could and should have been made a main hand (its not odd enough as a Mesmer using a gs as a range weapon and rev using hammer as a range) and it might have been better that way because truth is, ele really could use a new mainhand weapon (scepter isn’t that great imo )

shouts are not that great but not as bad as the elite. I mean really, it doesn’t really fit ele. it should have been a storm type elite that changes when u switch to a certain elite (fire: fireballs in a big aoe or eruption around your targets Earth: sand storm? or making foes loose balance while the ground shakes? idk could have been more creative on the skills)

traits are awful and not worth using over ‘real traits’. maybe add stability (like I suggested) as a minor or a trait u need to select while overloading.

those are just my opinions on it.

I recommend refocusing the Tempest onto condition damage.