Guild Wars 2

Tim.6450:

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.

Water field on a 16s CD, while have a 2 blast finishers (water 3, earth dodge) always available, and earth 4 usually available IS OP. Mesmer phantasms don’t allow them to full-heal every 16s. If you balance the CD without this double stacking, it makes the weapon UNUSABLE without taking such traits.

BlackBeard.2873:

Tim.6450:

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.

Water field on a 16s CD, while have a 2 blast finishers (water 3, earth dodge) always available, and earth 4 usually available IS OP. Mesmer phantasms don’t allow them to full-heal every 16s. If you balance the CD without this double stacking, it makes the weapon UNUSABLE without taking such traits.

It’s not just their phantasms, it is also clones which means their leap, their teleport, their burst skill, block,… . Also about the water field blast thing, I see your point but I never intended to imply that the whole group of things was balanced, I just find the interaction between multiple cooldown reductions normal. Personally the 20% cooldown on warhorn is not what I consider the problem here nor the warhorn skills themselves. It’s the 33% cooldown reductions. If you get it you need an extra requirement on the skills (aside from slotting them) or a drawback unfortunatly it does neither.

On overloads:

I like how they’re 2 damage ones and 2 defensive ones. They’re fun, but too risky to use which causes a bit frustration.

Overload fire: the damage on this one sure is great – when I can get it off. I kills non-veteran mobs by itself in verdant brink. But most of the time I either get interrupted or the mob moves away. Some more reliability would be welcome, like a larger radius, but it sure doesn’t need more damage.

Overload water: this was the most useful overload, I reliably got it off (since I could use it while at a distance from mobs) and it heals well considering it’s easy to heal several allies.

Overload air: more reliable than overload fire since more of the hits come during the channeling and the radius is bigger. But the damage is low, doesn’t feel worth the effort to use it, and the radius is still small enough thay I’m only hitting one mob with it.
edit: I learned it has some kind of stun on its edges, I guess I have to reevaluate it

Overload earth: very reliable, but it feels like it doesn’t do much, neither to hurt enemies nor to keep you alive. Extra defense on this one (e.g. ground AoE immunity, damage reduction or block) would be very welcome.

On shouts:

Haven’t used the air or elite ones (didn’t seem appealing on their BWE2 form), but the other ones are fun. The earth one is a bit weak for the effort it takes to use it, at least if you use ranged weapons like I’ve done.

On warhorn:

Glad to read about future changes to Sand Squall, because that’s the warhorn’s least fun skill, needed more than just number changes.

BlackBeard.2873:

- 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.

And that’s why air overload has 3 targets limit which doesn’t really make it a real AoE.

sorry for any mistakes or missspellings, but I thought this place might be the best place to get my opinion heard.

I did give Tempest a fair chance (again) this BWE, but still…. It’s not even that I dislike the spec, but I don’t especially like it either. The word which describes it most, would be “meh”. I feel kinda sad, that at some point the people, who worked on it, said: “That’s the best we are able to do”.

My three most played classes are Ele, Thief and Guardian. Therefore I did test them extensively. Let me quickly describe my feelings about Ele, Thief an Guard with their elite specs.

Thief: “wuhhhhhhhh…. giggle…. ahhh I’m dead.. Help… wuhuuuuuuu giggle”
Guard: “I’m a ranger…. pew pew… na na nanana stupid monster”
Ele: “hmm ok.. yupp it’s an Ele”

For me this whole elite spec isn’t elite at all. “Play your existing class in a different way” There is no differents at all. It’s just a plain old elementalist. Not more or less fun, no more or less playable, but after what I’ve seen on other classes just boring and (in lack of a better word) old. I think the ship has sailed with this one and there isn’t any hope for making it any less plain and let me have this exciting feeling of something new, like I did have playing my ele first.

I could make suggestions how numbers could be changed, how overcharge doesn’t feel at all as if you just dropped a nuke on your opponent (which it should for the amount of risk you take as an ele using them), how the traitline should be changed for making it better, but to be frank everything has been said. Just a short overview how bad nearly everything feels:

Overcharges: Just don’t use it. Most of the time I simply forget them, because I’m too busy fighting to stop, wait, stop, wait, cast a tiny “wind” (no tempest there).

Traits: Constant feeling I haven’t skilled a third traitline.

Shouts: Nice… but still I miss a traitline… was it really worth it?

Warhorn: Yeah that’s a thing… do I need it? Do I want it? Not really… it’s just there.

I don’t wanna be mean and I think the devs put a lot of time and effort into the Tempest, but it’s wasn’t fun in BWE1 and it still isn’t in BWE2. My only hope is that they are able to salvage this trainwreck and Tempest might find a niche in GW2 and won’t just simply be forgotten, because standard ele will still be more useful and fun in every gametype.

Let’s hope and see what BWE3 and Release brings. Maybe Tempest turns into a beautiful butterfly until then, otherwise I guess I play some more thief in the future. I do love my ele, but even the most fun gets stale after three years.

Overloads get interrupted 75% of the time in PvP. Earth still gets interrupted 50% of the time. It seems as if one stun will break the bar causing you to be stunned anyways AND give you 25 Vulnerability? Why? Why do some Overloads take over 4 seconds to complete and others less than 3? I’m jealous of some of the Reaper/Chronomancer effects compared to the crummy animations for the Overloads or effects. There’s no offense ability in Tempest trait line, yet I’m better off taking Earth, Water, or Arcane for survivability. What’s the point of Rebound? Why do autoattacks consume the charges? Why does Overloading consume the charge and yet give no effect on cooldown? How come we can start an overload in mist form, but leaving the mist form will interrupt it. Why does swapping an attunement cancel the overload? Isn’t having the stay in it for longer AND be unable to cast / dodge enough of a risk? Why does Lighting Orb (an absolute monster of a nuke ability in GW1) deal such little damage? You could literally increase it 10 fold. Why doesn’t Harmonious Conduit also affect the time you have to be in attunement to overload? Shouldn’t Unstable Conduit apply the auras when you start casting the Overload? Lucid Singularity could give the much coveted Resistance boon and still be a maybe choice over the other two. Speedy and Hardy Conduit could easily be rolled into the same trait. Ele’s lack the conditions Slow/Poison/Torment, have no access to Quickness/Alacrity/Resistance/Aegis, and no way to achieve Light/Chaos Auras. Why hasn’t Tempest done anything to address any of this with the new weapon, mechanic, or traits? Why doesn’t Earthen Protection increase the duration of Protection as well since it’s only a 7% increase on the boon’s benefit or provide some other effect? What’s the reasoning for Imbued Melodies being a grandmaster that only affects Warhorn? Also, does it really need to give the 20% cooldown when there’s no other Elementalist trait that reduces cooldowns across an entire weapon? Why aren’t all shouts instant cast? Christ, I could just go on and on with this.

Please do something with this Elite Spec to make it worthwhile ANET.

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

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!”

Lulz.

A thief finds this familiar.

Here are some things that might need some changes. If something isn’t listed in here, it’s good <3.

Overload

• Initial overload cooldown (5 seconds) seem a bit too long still. Mostly having problems using these in water and earth.
• Overload Fire radius seems a bit too short still.

Warhorn

• Wildfire spreading seems a bit too slow.
• Cyclone pull radius is too short.
• Lightning orb doesn’t seem to bring any useful damage in group fights.

Tempest specialization

• Combine minors Speedy conduit and Hardy conduit. Add one more minor.
• Latent stamina feels like a useless placeholder. I would never pick this one over the other two adept ones. Rework somehow?
• Earthen proxy still is too weak for a master spec. Maybe add an extra way to get protection?

Shouts

• Wash the pain away, my only problem with this is lack of condi removal, so I can’t replace ether renewal with it.
• Aftershock cd is too high!
• Rebound rework looks interesting and better than the current version. Sad_panda.jpg for I couldn’t test it this beta weekend. (quote below)

Karl McLain.5604:

“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.”

I still think that the only thing that needs to change is the first overload cd, when entering an attunement you should be able to overload it without waiting 5s, the after-cooldown is enough, no need to punish us more… Apart from that, this spec is very powerful in PvP, good job there, no more changes needed imo

EDIT: Oh, and an elite rework is needed

Since ele’s seem to be getting loads of it, make it so when overloading an attunement, you gain 2-3s of SUPERSPEED instead of Swiftness. Make it a trait. The speed and anti-movement hindering abilities such as cripple and chill would make this viable enough both to evade, kite around stomps, and escape/get back into a fray with a small burst such as Air’s and Fire’s overload. Or a good way to use water overload, and get to an ally quicker who needs the healing. It might give more of a reason to overload.

IDK, throwing this out there because if we don’t get any stability, let’s at least make overloads gain a 2-3s super speed on use to avoid some of the incoming cc’s.

Axialbloom.8109:

I recommend refocusing the Tempest onto condition damage.

I secretly long for that too, specially attached to warhorn.

My impressions of Tempest:

1. Fun skills on paper… on reality skills are just slow and ineffective, giving time to the enemy to run around and heal up (impossible to kill Warriors, Engineers).

2. Most skills can be interrupted easily, delaying or canceling the very few possible combos (no chance against Mesmers).

3. Many skills have slow reactions or short range and cannot hit moving targets (example: lighting orb, never hits anyone).

4. Most skills involve great risk or require perfect positioning, that doesn’t pay off!

5. Tempest has very few ways to escape or survive when focused and very few to none tools to reach running targets or keep them in place.

6. “Rebound” is useless getting wasted on autos and 25% is literally nothing!

7. Aftershock cool down is too high!

In general Tempest sounds cool but he doesn’t do damage, he cannot control effectively, the support is circumstantial and buggy (shout’s auras many times are not shared to allies), his survival skills (heals, knockdowns) cannot used while his is under attack cause they are getting interrupted to easy and their cast is too long, lastly he cannot escape or reach targets due to low mobility and range.

He is a sack of potatoes, he needs peeling, slicing and deep frying so you can eat him!

BlackBeard.2873:

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.
.

I made a suggestion above that Imbued Melodies should get a 10% damage mod while wielding a warhorn, and when i made it I was not aware of the new CD reduction on the trait. I just wanted to re-visit that idea and note that with the CD stacking traits some skills are going to be close to unbalance-able (I agree with you especially on the water traits). I still think the % mod is the way to go with this trait in place of the CD reduction, for the same reasons I made in my last post.

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.”

The more I play other elite specializations, the more I don’t like the idea of the new Rebound. It doesn’t solve one of the main issues of the current iteration, which is that it doesn’t fit into the theme of the elite spec whatsoever. What does this have to do with being a Tempest? I’d rather have an elite version of glyph of storms, at least that would fit in to the theme.

My thoughts….

Tempest / Elementalist Changes
Starting with the base class:

Scepter Changes :

Shatterstone – should be an instant blast finisher aswell as a quicker skill.
Arc Lightning – increase damage by 10%

Warhorn Ajustments :

I feel like warhorn is currently focused too much on support and could use a few changes to give it more of a “frontline” feel.

Heat Sync – Fine as is.
Wild Fire – Fine as is.
Tidal Surge – Fine as is.
Water Globe – seems fine sometimes hard to catch up to the field.
Cyclone – Love it.
Lightning orb – I would change it to a cone AOE skill with a small channel that builds up a large lightning ball that then blasts in front of the player kinda like fire grab however it adds 3 second blind to targets hit.
Sand Squall – With the new change i enjoy it.
Dust Storm – remove the vuln. replace with 3 second cripple.

Overloads:

Fire – Should pulse whirls aswell.
water – it is ok.
air – i feel like this one should not be channeled.
earth – its fine when traited.

Traits :
Earth – Rock Solid – should also apply 2 sec stability on aura application.

Tempest –
Shout Traits …..

Gale Song – is alright.
Tempestuos Aria – Allies gain 2 might 15seconds , weakness is fine as is.
imbued Melodies – keep range , recharge , targets.
Change effect to attunement based
Warhorn Fire – Grants 5 seconds of 2 Might.
Warhorn Water – 3 seconds of vigor.
Warhorn Air – Grants 4 seconds of Fury.
Warhorn Earth – Grants 2 seconds of Stability.

Sustain Traits….

Latent Stamina – Fine as is.
Earthen Proxy – Fine as is.
Lucid Singulairty – Fine for now.

Aura Traits….

Unstable Conduit – love it !
Harmonious Conduit – Love it !
Element Bastion – Heal and remove a condition when you apply an aura to yourself or allies. Healing 552

keep the frost aura proc….

Shouts….
“Wash the pain away” 20 second cooldown. 360 range 5 targets.
“Feel the burn” fine as is.
“Shock and Aftershock” CD 45 seconds
“Flash freeze” Fine as is.
“eye of the storm” add AOE blind to it.

REBOUND – i like the post Karl McLain made recently…
Although a bigger Glyph of storms in shout form would rock. Get some more damage output on the tempest.

here’s my feedback – a little long, and probably not all correct (I’m only one person after all), but it’s what I’ve seen (also, note this was mostly PvE, both in and out of the maguuma jungle)

Specialisation: Tempest
Overall:

• Was it fun: sorta? I think the most fun I had was overcharging earth in safe areas.
• Did it change how I play elementalist in a meaningful way: sort of? it’s a little more focused on support, but elementalist’s versatile enough that it’s always had access to support. perhaps not as much, perhaps not on all attunements, but this feels like a very slight augmentation, not a new playstyle.
• The warhorn skills are okay, nothing exceptional.
• The shouts are hit and miss, with rebound still being in its previous iteration.

Mechanic (Overloads):

• The overloads are okay, and the ability to move (and to trait to prevent movement impairment) is a nice touch, fixing the whole sitting duck issue they previously had. .
• Overload Fire: it’s a pretty useful overload. the might’s good, the burning’s nice, and the animation seems to have been toned down a fair bit (perhaps too much? barely looks like fire anymore? I dunno)
• Overload Water: this is a pretty strong healing skill, and the AoE condition cleansing is quite impressive. no complaints about the animation.
• Overload Air: this is actually quite nice. the strikes do decent damage, the vulnerability is nice, and the combo field doesn’t hurt.
• Overload Earth: a decent support option – both disabling enemies and protecting friends. the damage is decent and the (de)buffs are quite useful. also looks kittening awesome.

Weapon (Warhorn):

• Overall: The warhorn provides a good support weapon for the elementalist, but doesn’t bring anything groundbreaking.
• Heat Sync: a decent buff-stacking support skill.
• Wildfire: a reasonable ranged burn/damage skill.
• Tidal Surge: a nice mix of supports, with a heal and a knockback.
• Water Globe: an odd skill, and one that would be very situational, but an interesting one nonetheless. decent healing too.
• Cyclone: the pull doesn’t seem to be working for me (that or it’s just a negligible pull. nice idea though.
• Lightning Orb: feels like a cluster grenade, but has decent (if unconventional) AoE potential.
• Sand Squall: a decent buff, protection helps with damage mitigation and the increase in boon duration has some nice potential.
• Dust Storm: a reasonable utility, helps reduce enemy damage while setting them up to take more.

Skills (Shouts):

• “Wash the Pain Away”: Decent heal, the AoE part helps with team support.
• “Feel the Burn”: some burning damage on enemies, and fire shields for allies. a nice defensive shout.
• “Shock and Aftershock”: disables enemies and grants magnetic aura to allies. a slightly more controll-based defensive shout.
• “Eye of the Storm”: good area utility. mobility out of combat, stunbreak in combat. a nice skill.
• “Flash-Freeze”: another defensive shout, but this one chills.
• “Rebound!”: in its current state, not really worthy of being an elite. the new version we’ve been told about seems a lot more fitting – both in terms of scale and effect.

Traits: In general, I’m pretty happy with the herald traits. none are negligible, and many can be quite powerful in the right circumstances. there also don’t appear to be any that are too strong to the exclusion of the alternatives, which is nice.
Adept:

• Minor – Singularity: gives all the Herald stuff, not much else to say.
• Major – Gale Song: a pretty standard use a stunbreak skill on stun kinda trait. works well, nothing much to say.
• Major – Latent Stamina: hands out vigor in an area when switching to water. helpful for those situations where dodging is important.
• Major – Unstable Conduit: gives a little bonus to incentivise overloading. simple enough, and I like the idea.
  Master:
• Minor – Speedy Conduit: gives swiftness on overload. a nice little bonus.
• Major – Tempestuous Arua: really hammers home the support angle of shouts, shifting the damage ratios in favour of the tempest’s side.
• Major – Earthen Proxy: gives earth attunement more defence. could be quite powerful, but is reliant on protection.
• Major – Harmonious Continuity: a recharge reduction for overloaded attunements – takes some of the sting out of overload, but nothing to write home about
  Grandmaster:
• Minor – Hardy Conduit Protection on overload. gives a little defence after overload draws attention.
• Major – Imbued Melodies: a somewhat restricted AoE stunbreak for all warhorn skills. used right, this could be incredibly strong. the 20% cooldown reduction just makes it better.
• Major – Lucid Singularity: basically makes you unstoppable movement wise when overloading. helps with the not getting locked down during overload, which is nice.
• Major – Elemental Bastion: this really helps with the support angle. turns auras into healing sources, and gives you a little extra survivability. not a bad trait at all

Overall, the Tempest feels a little more solid compared to the previous beta, and I’m really getting the whole support vibe from it. unfortunately, the DPS elementalist is one of if not the best DPS builds in-game, while support elementalist falls short of some of its competition, meaning that tempest isn’t really an optimal choice for the class.

Furthermore, Support isn’t really anything new to elementalist. the entire water attunement is basically healing and chill, with other elements of support found in air and earth too. for the most part, I’m failing to see much of anything new.

Right now I would give tempest a 3/10, it need a lot of improvements.
In bold are the elements I judge the most important.

Overload :
Decrease pre-cast cooldown to 3 seconds (I usually stay in an attunement 2.5 seconds) or redesign all our terribly slow and ineffective auto-attacks (on all weapons).
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 ( I would still prefer 5 stacks of stability on overloading )
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

Warhorn :
Increase the speed of the animation, damage, range and decrease the cooldowns. Make skills ground targetable at 1200 range. Make it so that equipping a warhorn increase the scepter range to 1200 . Make the AoE effects bigger.

Shouts :
Normalize the cooldowns around 20-30 seconds, make them all instant and cast-able while overloading. Make a trait that gives you 3 stacks of Stability per shout.

Traits
Refocus them:
Damage line
Support line
Utility line

Elite
Make it as good as other classes elites
__________________________________
Other remarks I posted in the wrong thread:
The lack of synergy between the elements make it so that Tempest will never feel satisfying to play.

Chaining skills should be rewarding, everything should work together in an unified concept, like the revenant legendaries. Warhorn should feel much more epic: Make it a range weapon and Make it synergize with Scepter.

It also makes no sense to force people to use the Tempest trait line for shouts just for the weakness application .

I don’t feel like the traits encourage any sort of playstyle or do anything worthwhile that synergizes with the tempest playstyle. Having tempest for a specialization honestly feels like I’m getting an empty trait line. The minor traits should honestly be baseline (all they’re doing is making up for the risk of overloads, and they don’t even do a good job at that). Picking between major traits feels like “which one is the least useless?” rather than deciding between meaningful choices. I can honestly think of 0 cases where traits like latent stamina, unstable conduit, and element bastion are useful. Also, why are traits like latent stamina and earthen proxy in tempest in the first place, as opposed to water and earth?

Look at the herald traits for example: they all synergize with the herald’s playstyle of providing boons while managing upkeeps. Extra toughness for each point of upkeep, increased damage based on boons, boons applying might to allies, endurance regen while using upkeep skills, etc. All of these are meaningful choices that encourage the herald playstyle.

With that said, I’d like to see traits that:
Provide rewards for granting boons and auras to allies that’s not as limiting as attuning to water or a paltry heal on auras.
Provide rewards for staying in one attunement for an extended period of time.
Lessen the risk of overloading attunements.
Provide rewards for succesfully finishing an overload.

I believe that Tempest should have access to stability, cause skills are getting interrupted a lot! Also playing front makes it hard to survive and actually use some skills.

No one mentioned the warhorn sound changes?

They’re pretty neat.

My feedback:

I really don’t know what is the purpose of Tempest since D/D cele ele already does what Tempest does (frontline support?). Aside from that I don’t really get other usages for Tempest. Let me look into Chronomancer: they got AoE supportive skills (both offensive and defensive, which was something mesmers were lacking because glamour skills were only defensive abilities) and they got Alacrity buff. It’s a new way to play your profession without losing its core mechanichs. Now let’s re-take a look into Tempest’s theme: frontline support…really?

Overloads

Can’t stand a chance against mesmers unless you put some stability on it. The fire overload has pretty low radius. The water overload scales poorly with your healing power. The air overload is just meh. The earth overload seems to make you appear like a boss but without stability the defiance bar is just another addon.
Why not add cool things to overloads if you don’t plan to rework them? Isn’t Tempest about frontline support? Add area retaliation to fire overload, area vigor to water overload, area quickness to air overload and area resistance to earth overload. One thing that bugs me out is that elementalists don’t have interesting condi and buffs like torment, confusion and poison and resistance.

Shouts

Since 2012 I’ve been playing this game and I always identified myself with staff (Yes! I main an ele). The shouts are awesome but I feel they tie better with staff. And lacking of any traits to reduce shouts’ cds is just unacceptable.

Elite Skill: Rebound

Rework it.

Karl McLain.5604:

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

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

Sounds better, but I always have to try it in different builds to give you feedback.

Now my opinion for BW2:

PvE:

It was a bit better for me this time around. There is an event with an OP frog (please don’t change the difficulty, yes it was OP but it was FUN!) in this event I was able to see and experience the true support power of the Tempest (and I wanted to be 100% sure so I did it 4 times with different builds with regular Elementalist)… in this event people were dyeing left and right until I changed to my water element and with the moving water field and the overload… I started to keep everyone alive, the ppl around me started noticing and started saying how awesome it was the battle and how powerful I was as a healer (They called me a Healer!!!) after that we kept together and did every AP for the beta together changing builds and trying different things. It was EXTREAMLY Fun in PvE.

Now, I saw how much synergy shouts had with elementals (I don’t know if the AI changed but they responded better), I just hoped there was a trait that kept the elementals alive and took out the timer.

PvP:

Here was different, and I’m going to divide it in coordinated and uncoordinated.

Coordinated:
With TeamSpeak we made a team where we covered each other weaknesses. The necros and other tempest game me stability (as I did to the other tempest) and while we were able to give stability to each other… we were unbeatable. But the bad thing is that if I soloed I was interrupted every time (when I say every time, I mean 99% the other 1% I was able to complete the overload because of armor of earth).

Uncoordinated:

As I said in PvE, with my elementals I was able to forget about overloads and share auras (this build was: Tempest1-1-3/Air 1-2-3/Arcane 1-2-1) I know this can be achieved by changing tempest by water trait line, but the difference was that with shout I kept High stacks of Might, and weakness around me, and share fury and aura heal to my team and elementals. (idk if its possible, but PLEASE see if it is to make elementals last until killed or until they use their activation skills an X amount of times).

Overall:
I did not had time to go with my awesome guild to WvW
(Shout out to Kinght of Roses – KoR \\(^_^)//), that’s why I did not have a WvW section (I’ll try next time).

War horn felt stronger this time, but Air 5 only hit in PvE… It missed like 80% of the time and it wasn’t because it was slow or fast (the speed of the projectile seems ok) but the casting time of all WH skills makes it feel a bit sluggish.

I see some ppl asking for a WH CD reduction trait… but elementals don’t go by weapons, they go by element and in each trait line you got a CD reduction for each element.

I saw that the moving water field only allowed one finisher and I had my combo ready in my mind to do a lot of heal blast to see that I was only able to do only 1.

Overloads are very easy to interrupt, so it would be good if like every other channeling skill the ele had, we were able to change attunement while we cast it.

In BW1 I hated the Air overload… This time it was my favorite. Earth felt only useful to give protection to ppl, and only that. Water I saved for emergencies, but I never was able to last even 1 sec in PvP, so it was only used in PvE. The Fire OL felt like I had to get closer to hit (Idk if it was a bug) but yeah, I was not able to do much with it in PvP, only used in PvE.

Visual Effects and Animations:
I left this to the end, because this won’t affect the performance of the Tempest, only how it would look and feel.

There is a difference between Visual Effects and Animations. This Spec was praised by it animations when the Visual Effects are the awesome part… The actual animations are bad, the Earth and Water overload are in the worst state (Fire and Air are ok) the only race that looked good was the asura, the other races only did the /sit animation in water and the very awkward earth OL once ended it did not make sense.

For War horn, thanks for not making it sound like the necro’s fart WH sound. But what can I say about an animation that only consists of blowing the WH… The skills visual effects did look good, but as I said before the casting time made it really hard to hit my targets in PvP.

But let’s face it, Scepter looks worse and it was never changed, so I know this is not going to either.

Ending comment:

Sorry for the long read, but yeah, it would be better if the aura traits weren’t scattered in all trait lines, and I know you are working on the mesmer elite… I mean the Ele Rebound elite (sorry for being a smart kitten at the end… but deep down in your heart, you know it is the truth).

Here what i would like:
Overloads: Now all take 3-4 sec to cast base cd is 15 sec arcain line no longer effects overloads cd but you can still get the -20% cd from tempest line.
When your overloading water air and fire you also get a field that stays with you earth gets a blast finnisher ever sec when overloading.
All overloads give you a brake bar of (5 cc) all have an if broken you get the condition your overload was out putting. So fire burns you if your broken etc..
WH: Over all faster moving effects (they are a bit slow atm).
I would like to see a frost field over getting an aura so it makes WH able to blast for its aura. So water 4 becomes an avalanches of snow that reg heals knock backs and an after effect of an 4 sec frost field.
Also earth 4 and fire 4 need a better indicator of there effects so maybe a ring that shows ppl this effect is going off
Shouts: I think earth shout needs a lower cd.
I think eye of the storm needs more effects such as a stab or lighting aura OR put it on a lower cd such as 25 sec.
Trait line: Vigor on water swap is kind of on the weak side and mostly seems out of places to only effect water. So i think it should be vigor on shout use.
Over all added effects: I think they need to add in aura runes that remove condition on aura use also a rune set that give effects base off of being under an aura.

Added note: something that ele needs fix too make all auras stack not just frost aura.

TRAIT CHANGE IDEA:

A great way to help the tempest support and frontline is the elementalist auras, even Anet knows it and thats why theyre trying to implement it on shouts etc.

The current tempest traits are badly placed and dont feel unique (i.e the traits the should be in water or the earthen proxy that should be in earth), AND the aura traits are spread over 5 traitlines, meaning you cant use a aura build viably since you cant spec into it.

How to fix the traits:
-simply SWITCH the place of the aura traits with the weirdly placed tempest traits:
– latent stamina with the water minor(the one that gives a frost aura on crit)
– earthen proxy with the earth minor(the one that grants protection when you apply an aura)

-make the aura on overload minor grant the aura on the START of the cast, otherwise well never use the trait since we get interrupted ALOT.

This is how you should handle the trait problem tempest currently has

ps: the fire aura on conjure weapon is bad, and should go back to signet :/

ty for your attention

i was playing around with Reaper today, and it hought to myself… WOW, i sure wish Tempest felt this powerful…

i won’t rehash all the previous suggestions, but here’s one i think would help:

[SUGGESTION]

fire overload…. instead of casting on the caster, cast it on the target (1200 range) and the firenado follows the target around, wherever the target is located when the channel is completed, is where the final firenado lands.

or

fire overload: cast your firenado on your target (1200 range), upon completion of the channel, the firenado blasts the area and splits into 5 more firenados that spread out in a star pattern for the next 5 seconds.

[WHY?]

this would give another ranged option for all weapon sets, opening up more possibilities in all game modes.

would it be balanced? right now firenado is hard to use because it’s so easily interrupted, in addition to having to stand on the target as you cast, so it makes it essentially a triple risk, due to how squishy elementalist is.

at triple risk, the fire oveload needs to do way more damage to feel like the risk is worth it. (especially in melee range). i almost feel like, that to make the damage worth the risk, the skill would become OP, being able to kill anyone who stayed in the AOE the whole duration (including 50k health transformed necros) changing the overload to a ranged skill would alleviate some of the risk, and therefore wouldn’t need to be buffed to the point of being OP.

So I wanted to preface that my main is NOT elementalist, but I’ve been trying to play all of the specializations and strength test them (almsost exclusively in PvE); here’s some things I’ve noticed for Tempest:
1) I’ve been running an aura build, using water, arcane, and tempest; while it offers great support, amazing cooldown and healing, and there’s some great use of auras now (and so many ways to make them procc) I will say that it’s often hard to tell if you’ve actually made an aura procc properly (magnetic aura in particular is hard to see).
2) I’ve seen people complain on here that there’s no reason to use the overloads: while I think the main problem is people are expecting to do massive damage I don’t think the tempest currently does that. I primarily use the Overload to procc another round of auras, though the Air overload can actually be really useful if I have people with me.
3) The Overloads do seem a little weak, but I think that could be fixed if they could grant boons when they are fully overloaded. It could be an effect added by a trait, or a static boon added to the overload, or (one I think is more rewarding) making it so that when you start an overload it makes the appropriate field, and then once it’s complete it executes a blast finisher.
4) I kind of wish there were more runes that had synergy with auras or boon duration.

As a person who’s put over 12 hours into Tempest and over 1000 into Elementalist, I would like some consideration on these issues:

With the Air specialization line on, when I use lightning orb + overload air, I can apply 25 stacks of vuln onto a single enemy, and sustain about 20 stacks. Oddly enough, Glyph of Storms does the same thing. So does grenade Engineer. So does Reaper. Now I get that Air and vuln has always gone hand in hand, but I’d prefer to see either a change to vuln or something other than vuln be on air overload. Having played this class into PVP so much, I haven’t felt like this class has actually been dedicated to doing support (other than stacking 90 seconds of swiftness at the start). Rather, Air Overload and the vuln it brings feels more like a burst dps Overload. It doesn’t seem to actually bring anything in terms of support, except for vuln which I already established is pretty much maxed out at all times.
Also, I’d actually like to see the 33% cooldown reduction trait (like Pyromancer’s Training) affect the charge for overload and the cooldown for overload (not attunement swapping). I think this fits very thematically. A class that “masters the elements and brings them to a whole upper level” should have easier access to Overloading more often if they’ve traited in such a way that one or two elements are evenstronger. If I’ve traited for Air and specifically chose the one that reduces skill coodlowns by 33%, I’d like to be able to access an overload 33% faster and then if I choose to stay in air, use it again 33% faster.

On shouts:
I’d like “Shock and Aftershock” and “Flash Freeze!” to be instant cast. S&AS might be more powerful than the guard shout “Feel My Wrath!” but to be fair it’s also on a much longer cooldown.
I’d also like to know what the point of “Flash Freeze!” is. Aurashare D/D can provide Frost Aura easily. You can blast a Ice field on staff for Frost Aura. Aurashare with the water/tempest traits provide aoe Frost Aura. Frost Aura is the most accessible aura (other than Fire Aura) to elementalists and Tempests. In that respect, I’d like at least a portion of the shout to be different. “Eye of the Storm!” doesn’t need to provide an aura to be useful—why not go that direction? Or why not have “Flash Freeze!” grant short duration stability upon hitting an enemy, since stability is rarely accessible on Tempest/Ele? Or better yet, lower the cooldown to 20 seconds, allowing heal-on-aura builds to use this in combination with “Feel the Burn!” as a staple in their heal builds, making it a “high aura low damage” skill? There are many solutions to improving “Flash Freeze!” and even if my examples aren’t good enough, I wish Anet would fine tune it more.
Also, “Wash the Pain Away” is really mediocre. Yes, it heals allies, but the problem is it barely heals yourself. Taking Arcane Brilliance and simply blasting the water field provides a weaker AoE heal to allies but it can reliably heal yourself. Since every class has access to their own heal, taking “Wash the Pain Away” is pretty much giving up on your individual heal to be able to heal allies, meaning you’re (oddly enough) reliant on other people to heal you for the amount of healing you give up not taking other healing skills. Granted, I don’t think it’s a numbers problem. Maybe make it grant light aura upon finishing the heal? That way, a class built around healing (once again, heal on aura) would be able to heal allies even better! Once again, solution’s up to you.

On traits:
They’re not ALL as bad as everyone says they are. Like really.
20% cooldown reduction on Warhorn skills is amazing. In fact, other than the “remove crippling effects on overload” the two GMs are amazing. Both are very supporty and they fit thematically with tempest, I love them. Yes, stunbreak on warhorn skill isn’t the greatest, but having an entire 8 skills having reduced cooldown is incredible.
I have a serious problem with Latent Stamina. What is this trait doing in the Tempest Line? We can’t dodge effectively because overloads are messed up when dodging and if we’re taking the Arcane line for Evasive Arcana, we’re going to take Sigil of Energy + Vigor on Crit. This trait is a water attunement trait, not a tempest trait. It feels like filler because no one could decide another adept trait for tempest.
20% bonus to protection isn’t doing us much either. Elementalists can: get bursted when they don’t have any protection on, get CC’d while their stunbreaks on cooldown and then bursted, get boonstripped, get condi bombed when condi removal on cd. I’d prefer to see something more interesting here, like “Swiftness you apply to allies allows them to evade for 1s upon getting attacked, but is consumed in the process. 5s ICD.” or “Auras you apply to allies have extra effects and stacks in duration. i.e. Fire aura blinds neary enemies when it is first applied, Magnetic Aura grants retaliation, etc.” or anything else Anet thinks is smart.
Finally, we’d like to see some love for cooldown reduction on shouts on the shout trait. Or at least something other than might on shout. I was thinking something interesting like this: “All shouts apply weakness to enemies and recharge 10% faster. 20% extra cooldown reduction if used in its attunement. If used outside of its attunement, grants a boon corresponding to your current attunement.” If you value the Magnetic Aura on S&AS, you would use it in earth attunement, versus in other attunements for whatever boon it provides. Once again, this is just an example.

Finally, on Rebound:
This has nothing to do with the effect of the shout. In the PoI, Rebound was promised to be an “Arcane Shout skill” which would take effect of both Arcane and Shout traits, yet it’s only a Shout. What has happened to this? I’d appreciate some light on this.

Feedback: first of all, i need to say that i played just WvW and PvE
Specialisation: Tempest, i didn’t use the warhorne

Overall:
Honestly, I found the tempest quite boring. I tried lots of different traits combination and the only one i found interesting (with staff) was an hybrid celestial staff auramancer with water line for cantrips, tempest and air lines.
It provided massive auras to my allies, supporting them in different kind of situation. The main problem with tempest is that it should be a front line character, but lacks stability, leapers, Hp and armor to really be one, so you are forced to play it with staff but overloads are not intended for range combatants

Mechanic (Overloads):

Overload Fire: really difficult to land on a moving target
Overload Water: perfect
Overload Air: the casting is way too long and the range is so narrow
Overload Earth: it could be better, i used just for extra group protection

They should have bigger range and ground targeting positioning

Skills (Shouts):

“Wash the Pain Away”: horrible, with celestial plus 10% more healing to others i could heal for more or less 4.000.
“Feel the Burn”: not used
“Shock and Aftershock”: really good shout
“Eye of the Storm”: with shock aura, it would be perfect
“Flash-Freeze”: never used once, never seen the chance to use this in combact.
“Rebound!”: redo this elite please! And give some special aura

Traits: This is the biggest problem of all: traits are completly inconsistent. I really had so much trouble in choosing one over the other because they didn’t match or help one another, nor for support neither for damage. +They need to be completly redone. +

Sorry for the bad english, not native speaker.

Here is what i think could make the tempest at least playable:

Overloads:

Give the oppotunity to swap attunement while overloading without canceling the overload.
Give it something to counter CC because right now when i’m overloading I just get insta rekt by CC.

A better idea, but anet won’t change it, is to rework overloads to make them work the same way than burst skills from warrior. You can get a heal wave that chill enemies and heal allies, a firestorm that bun/deal damage, things like that. Just swap overload to this and add some cool animations.
An other cool thing would be creating a 5th element like arcana, while using your 4 attunements skills you would load your power and releasing it gives you access to 5 new wapons skill for a short period of time.
I don’t really like overload, ele gameplay is suppose to be very dynamic, haters would say faceroll. But the overload mecanic breaks it. For me, overloads shouldn’t be channeling skills but just normal skills.

Traits:

Minors: Giving swiftness and prot after overloading is just useless. We are already perma swiftness and also we get so much prot from warhon and earth attunement. Swapping it to something like :
“after overloading you get a bonus depending on the overload
– fire: you get extra power and condi damage
– air: you get precision and ferocity
– earth: you get tougness and condition damage reduction
– water: you get heal per sec”
Latent stamania: nothing else to say than useless: we are already perma vigor from arcana. Since arcana is the best ele trait line every build are based on it.
Gale song: i’ll come to this later when speaking about shouts
Unstable conduit: This trait is weak if you aren’t running aura share. Running aura share means water so your build will be Water/arcana/tempest so your auras don’t have boons such as prot or swift/fury you get from air or earth. To be totally honnest, aurashare isn’t interesting, anet tried to buff it so many times but I don’t think this will be meta because it’s just boring and weak.
Tempestous aria: should add the -20% CD duration for shouts
Earthen proxy: This trait should be in earth not in tempest even if it scale with hardy conduit
Harmonious conduit: Since overloads are weak this trait is also weak
Imbued melodies: I don’t like it because since specialization patch we don’t have trait that change our wapons (aoe for staff, speed dagger or endu regen from scepter) so i don’t see why war horn should have his own trait. Also the aoe breakstun is weak because it’s hard to place in a teamfight and useless if you are stun too. Granting stab on some wh skills would be better.
lucid singularity: it’s the same than Harmonious conduit, overloads are to weak
Elemental bastion: YEAH some aura share stuff. I tried a full aura share build with all these traits and i felt like useless. Auras are weak compare to other mecanics.

Shouts:

First off all, WTF COOLDOWNS. Guardian aoe stab is 30 sec cd (24 if traited) warriors got 20sec cd on two shouts, only the aoe fear got a long cd.

Wash the pain away: nice heal, weaker than the signet but more supportive, 25sec cd is a bit too much.
feel the burn: low damage, 1 burn and fire aura. Nothing special, i don’t think it’s going to be use because we prefer running defensive utilities
Shok and aftershok: To be honnest this one is the best but 50sec CD is too much. Good damage and good criple/immo.
Eye of the storm: 45sec CD for a breakstun even if it’s aoe breakstun i don’t like it. While warriors got 40sec CD on a 10sec stab we get 45sec for a breakstun. The shout is weak.
Flash-Freeze: aoe chill nothing special here
Rebund: JOKE wait what is it real? Yes eles doesn’t have any good elite (fgs only good for mobi) but this one is even worst than tornado. I don’t see any use of this. Maybe it should change to a buff that reduce all CD.

Warhorn:

Fire: skills are ok, very supportive, the fire field is a little bit too slow
Water: the water field should be like the fire field from warrior torch, linked to the player.
Air: Both skills are to slow
Earth: Sand Squall is very good but i don’t understand dust storm.

Overall the cooldowns are too long compare to other offhand wapons.

To conclude this, I’ve been playing ele since the beta, I really like the class and the way you can deal hudge damages. But finally, after 3 years, the only very good ele build is cele (yes it’s broken and yes i want anet to nerf it). I was hoping for a different gameplay with the tempest, back few month ago i was waiting for sword and the name Tempest sounds like storm doing damage but instead of that we get an other support gameplay. As other class get new mecanics our overloads are just a joke. I also don’t like shouts, I think it’s low skillcap and if you want to play them then you have to go full defensive because you won’t have cantrips. Unless Anet rework it, to make it funnier i won’t play it, I will stick to my fresh air and probably reroll to something else.

P.S.: This is the point of view from a pvp/wvw roamer player. I’ve no clue about pve or wvw zerg but I don’t think it’s going to be played.

Hello
i dont know if this has already been mentioned. When traiting for aura share (Powerful Aura) it has no effect on the utility shouts. It would be nice if there was some sinergy there, for example when traited with powerful aura the shouts would give aura to 10 people not 5, or the length of the aura is increased.

I can’t understand how the Tempest doesn’t even have a SINGLE condition-support trait.

A few comments limited to pvp and wvw since that’s what I play:

- air skill 5 has no purpose ; air overall is so weak, even the overload is weak and sad.

- water skills are livable

- I can see what you were going for with fire skill 4, not terribly useful but could be devastating with practice in spvp

- perhaps you aren’t listening because the community said in in bw1 and I see a lot of posts saying it again here..THE OVERLOADS ARE TOO EASY TO INTERRUPT WHICH MAKES THEM USELESS

- overall the tempest feels very very weak compared to other ele builds so, while it might be fun in mindless pve, it’s disappointing for the rest of us.

So me and friend were trying out the so called “breakbar” for earth overload and I realized that it’s so easily broken it’s not even fun. Necromancers chill breaks it from just one chill and you get stunned for 2 seconds.

skills that were used: “Suffer!”, Spinal Shivers, Chillblains and Dark Pact (immobilize) removes half of it. What’s the point to even try overloading, is the purpose to stun yourself?

Specialisation: Tempest

Was it fun?: Yes! but overloading is a bit dangerous (melee case) and isnt good enough to stay to long in the attunement, im not gonna lie.. the shouts and the traits needs a huge buffs and changes
Did it change how I play elementalist in a meaningful way: Yes, i tried to support my mates all the time, but i think we lack some offensive support.

Mechanic (Overloads):
The overloads have pretty cool animations, but they need to be more strong, so we dont “lose” time overloading, the feeling has to be “I need that overload now!”.
Overload Fire: it’s the best overload. the might’s good, the burning’s is a bit low, the damage needs a 50% buff, and at the end of the animation have to be a huge AoE explosion.
Overload Water: I liked so much, its pretty strong, AoE condi cleanse and a big heal, no changes in it.
Overload Air: its a great overload but the damage is very low. the number of target need to be 5 intead of 3, the vulnerability is ok.
Overload Earth: a pretty decent protection, if added a blast finisher at the beginning would be cool ( yes two blast finisher in one skill ).

Weapon (Warhorn):
I really enjoy the warhorn, the animations are good and the support too.
Heat Sync: a really good support skill.
Wildfire: a little bit slow, the fire spread need to be 100% faster.
Tidal Surge: heal and crowdcontrol, i like it.
Water Globe: good heal and interesting mechanic, very useful skill.
Cyclone: the AoE cc are great to stack a bunch of mobs, good skill.
Lightning Orb: i dont like this one, its very slow and has no damage, probably needs a 50% buff.
Sand Squall: another nice one, with the reflect will be complete.
Dust Storm: and another slow ability, the dust need to spread faster.

Skills (Shouts):
All shouts needs 20% more damage.
Wash the Pain Away: new mechanic, good amount of heal, but compete with really good skill so adding 3s AoE resistance would be cool.
Feel the Burn: a good skill, 3 stacks of might in it and will be useful.
Shock and Aftershock: amazing shout, but long cd.
Eye of the Storm: yeah we need the shoking aura here and a bit less cd.
Flash-Freeze: lack something, maybe cond removal?
Rebound: with the changes that will come seems good enough.

Traits:
the real problem is here, we need trait that fits defensive and offensive support and not tied only for wvw, and we need to make the tempest tougher.
Adept:
Minor – Singularity: the tempest it self.
Major – Gale Song: and if stunbreak and trigger “Feel the Burn”.
Major – Latent Stamina: useless, put a perma buff like assassin’s presence and strenght in numbers but applies 150 vitality points.
Major – Unstable Conduit: not enough incentivise for overloading. add 5 stacks of boon based on the attunement. (might, regen, swiftness, protection).
Master:
Minor – Speedy Conduit: useless, change to gain 2 sec of AoE resistence overloading.
Major – Tempestuous Aria: could be better, like shouts do 10% more damage plus 2 sec of fury.
Major – Earthen Proxy: could be useful if not tied to protection.
Major – Harmonious Continuity: 33% recharge intead of 25%.
Grandmaster:
Minor – Hardy Conduit: better give 5 sec of quickness.
Major – Imbued Melodies: the one that i liked.
Major – Lucid Singularity: lets make it better, just put some resistence.
Major – Elemental Bastion: plus auras you apply gives 2 sec of quickness.

Obs. feel free to correct my english and give opinion.

I did not really follow the previous Beta events, but tried the tempest spec this time.

To sum it up:

I really like the idea of having a group/support based option. That said, i liked the shouts and the warhorn (although some numbers still need some tweaking in my opinion). The traits need some more work and the overloads felt pretty clunky. I actually dont know if I would ever use these – without stability I had trouble getting these off even against a single arid devourer (I’m not even talking about other players in PvP that intentionally try to interrupt you – i’m talking about a kitten arid devourer…). I addition to that, the spec felt like it was lacking condition remove and stability – so you are always going to need a cantrip or two – but then the usefulness of tempests gets even more doubtful.

So to the details

Overloads:
These require waiting in one attunement for 5 seconds to get available. I never realised how fast I usually switch attunements with D/x or S/x until I tried to start an overload. It was really breaking the flow (I’m lacking a better word here). I had to force myself to wait in order to get the overload ready. I may not seem much on paper but as a player it really felt awkward and unfinished. The proplem is excarbated by the fact that most ele auto-attacks really lack damage and utility and you will have burnt most other skills before the overload is available (at least when you are doing your second attunement rotation). After that I could chose between:

Fire: good damage, but locking myself out of my damage attument for 17 seconds is most likely a net damage loss in the long run. The teamplay also seems pretty insignificant on this overload.
Water: this one is actually pretty decent and may be the only overload that i would actually use.
Air: the damage is barely above (or even below?) dagger auto attacks – so why should i use it? The dagger auto attacks give me way more control and dont lock me out of the attunement. It seems like more of the same with a higher opportunity cost.
Earth: I do not really like this one either. Yes it does immobilize your opponents, but they are just going to laugh and shoot you, as the potential magnetic aura (from the trait) is applied afterwards. The blast finisher is pretty pointless as well. By the time you can start the overload any of your fields will have timed out already, let alone when you have finished it. The damage is not worth it either.

Warhorn:
This one is actually pretty decent and currently one of the only redeeming factors of tempest.
Heat Sync: this looks like the bread and butter skill of the warhorn. This one might be very hard to balance properly as its usefulness will range from useless if you are playing solo to almost overpowered if used in a proper team setup.
Wildfire: This is really decently designed fire field. But in my opinion it still needs some tweaking with the timings. Its recharge should be reduced, as well as the cast time and the time needed to roll out the fire carpet.
Tidal Surge: this one is actually pretty good, keep it
Water Globe: a moving water field, actually works pretty well when used correctly. Keep this one as well.
Cyclone: Cast time and/or aftercast needs to be slightly reduced. Other than that its ok.
Lightning Orb: 1200 range does not fit your mainhand weapon range, should be 600-900 range and do WAY (!) more damage. The way the warhorn skills are designed this feels like it should be one of the main damage dealers but it is pretty lackluster. It also feels weird to have to direct it manually. This is pretty unintuitive because all other skills are directed at your opponent and dont need any further interaction before being cast.
Sand Squall: another nice one, maybe add 1-2 seconds of stability.
Dust Storm: hard to tell where it is, next to no damage (again, this should be a high damage skill). The reflect should be added here, because Sand squall will be mainly cast for the blast finisher, and you shouldn’t overstack certain abilities.

Skills (Shouts):
The damage on the shouts is pretty low, but that was not their main selling point anyway.
Wash the Pain Away: Needs condition remove.
Feel the Burn: pretty good and with the cooldown this will actually see some use.
Shock and Aftershock: cooldown is so long it feels odd. This one really screams to be a blast finisher as well (remove one of the other effects for it)
Eye of the Storm: Add shocking aura (It feels completely off without the shocking aura). Cooldown should be looked at as well.
Flash-Freeze: Again, pretty nice.
Rebound: I think there was enough discussion about it in the current state.

Traits:
I really miss %dmg, stability or condition removal traits here.

Adept:
Minor – Singularity: this should be baseline.
Major – Gale Song: An AoE version of “Tempest defense” without the damage boost. Should be okay.
Major – Latent Stamina: This one belongs to the water line if anything. The endurance boost is barely noticeable. I would change it to give 5 secs of vigor when applying an aura.
Major – Unstable Conduit: This trait should proc at the beginning of an overload, raising the odds for the attacker as well (like: do you really want to interrupt that overload – even if it means attacking into shocking aura?)

Master:
Minor – Speedy Conduit: this one feels pretty useless, I want something better, like one stack of stability when starting an overload.
Major – Tempestuous Aria: why doesn’t it reduce the cooldown of shouts by 20%? It looks weird without it.
Major – Earthen Proxy: This one feels like it should be put into the earth line. And something like stone heart should be put here – like “you cannot be critically hit while overloading an attunement”
Major – Harmonious Continuity: Don’t get me wrong but with the current state of overloads this should be baseline. Change the functionality to remove a condition when applying an aura.

Grandmaster:
Minor – Hardy Conduit: Should be 5 secs of protection.
Major – Imbued Melodies: A really weird choice to make it reduce the skills of an entire weaponset on elementalists. This even stacks with cooldown reduction traits of the attument lines. I dont really know if a trait like this can be properly balanced. Having 8 AoE stunbreaks feels pretty OP as well.
Major – Lucid Singularity: add stability and we are onto something
Major – Elemental Bastion: Heal should be increased i think. Not to warrior shout levels, but a little.

The coolest idea of all the elite specs, generally worst implementation.

The Good
The Warhorn gives us a “party buffing” offhand… and round out our offhand choices.
The idea behind the overload system.

The Bad
Everything about the tempest if built for Everquest speed combat… not GW2.
you would never want to take more than one shout, because they simply aren’t as good as what we already have for utility kills, and don’t synergize with any build other than auramancer.

Speed up the travel speed of all warhorn effects except water 5. widen air 4’s cone.

Rebound blows, pun intended. the new description of rebound is ok… but it should do this: "Instantly cooldown all attunements, and Overloads. CD: 75sec/ grant “arcane Aura” to up to 5 allies around you for 20 sec. (Arcane Aura, gains the effects of each attunement based aura when you switch attunements. This affects party members with Arcane Aura inside range 900. Overloading boosts the effectiveness of arcane aura 100% for the associated element. Yes, it should be able to be all four aura’s at once, if you blow your elite and swap through all the attunements.)

Overload should be removed from the f1-4 keys, and put on f5. It should have its own cooldown. 15 sec. can be used immediately when switching into an attunement. grants stability on cast pulsing 2 stacks per second during the cast. increase the effects of the overload based on the number of stability stacks you have.

redo the traits… there are no obvious builds beyond auramancer…. which isn’t fun to play.

If overloads did not increase cooldown of attunements, were not canceled after swapping attunement, were changed from long channels to something more quick to execute and did not have a cooldown upon entering an attunement then the tempest would start to feel a lot better imo.

What I think might work:

-Fire overload can now be used once your target is standing on top/in your fire field.

-Air overload can now be used after you successfully dodge an attack in air attunement.

-Earth overload can now be used after successfully using a blast finisher

-Water overload can now be used after successfully healing an ally.

I would like to see overloads when being executed provide some sort of ability that didn’t feel like it should be spammed but rather executed tactically.

Some things I’d like to see tempest line focus on:

Conjured weapons; it would be cool to be able to have a trait that made conjured weapons function sort of like engineer kits.

Condition removal; If I’m taking the tempest line I don’t want to feel like I’m forced to also take Arcana(still feels required for any build) and water to have an ideal amount of condition removal, so it would be nice to see the tempest line provide some sort of condition removal.

Some changes I’d like to see to traits:

Latent Stamina: It would be nice if this allowed permanent or near permanent vigor uptime, it would make the arcana line feel less required.

Tempestuous Aria: I would like to see this trait remove conditions after using shouts so shouts could feel like they can compete with cantrips. I would also like to see this trait reduce shout CD by 20%.

Harmonious Conduit and Lucid singularity should be scrapped and replaced with something else, overloads shouldn’t increase recharge on attunements or be long channeled abilities.

Here is my feedback

- Phoenix still can’t blast wildfire

- Stowing rebound gives you the buff on self on a 3sec cd

-Traited wh skills are unaffected by rebound

- Overload wait + channel time is too long

- Traitline is worse than almost every core option

- Shout cds are too long

- Earth break bar gets removed almost instantly by soft cc

The already existing utilities elementalists already have are better than the tempest shouts, I’d still take my 3 cantrips over the shouts, I’ve attempted replacing lightning flash with Shock & Aftershock, but pretty much any class that has a teleport on them breaks away from it, which isn’t the problem really, but the immobilization casts 1 second after the skill has already applied cripple, so you have applied cripple/weakness then 1 second or so later boom immob for 2 seconds that was probably already teleported away from, hence you have to wait another 60 seconds to use this shout.
Where as Lightning flash could have gotten me in or out of a situation and within 30 seconds recharged.
Do not pass go, do not collect 200$, do not use shouts. I don’t see where tempest is super effective 1v1, unless you don’t use any shouts & stick with FGS or elemental elite over rebound. Thats my 2 cents anyways.

Flash-freeze 25 sec CD for that 3secon chill- ok
Eye of the Storm- 50 seconds – ill just stick to shocking aura from my dagger
Feel the burn 20 sec cd- more burning yay

probably end up not using any of the shouts due to long CDs, except maybe feel the burn & keep 2 cantrips

The warhorn animations are pretty ill admit, but its like youll either have to be fighting an npc or really close to another enemy player to hit em

You guys might want to ease up on the Overload and channel time is too long

It’s probably been suggested somewhere, but I’d like to see auras you apply granting a stack of stability as it’s own trait or merged with Elemental Bastion or Unstable Conduit.

In terms of heal and support Its good IMO. The heals are solid because of the aura traits. But, damage (condi and flat damage) is low which is what I think they are aiming for. I dont think they’ll buff this much just because ele is at a good place right in all game types.

Pyroen.2086:

In terms of heal and support Its good IMO. The heals are solid because of the aura traits. But, damage (condi and flat damage) is low which is what I think they are aiming for. I dont think they’ll buff this much just because ele is at a good place right in all game types.

Yeah, Anet is obviously not going for damage with this spec at all. However, it still needs major defensive and anti-CC buffs. How is the squishiest class supposed to be in the front line providing support and overloading for 5 seconds if it can’t defend itself? Core ele can build some pretty good active defenses, but those are almost entirely dependent on attunement swapping and cantrips, which conflicts with the design of the tempest.

Shouts and especially the elite are just worse then the other skills.

I gave a few hours to tempest on friday, i specifically rushed home to get into the WvW queue to test this out and i used a few different builds i thought would work. to my sadness i found a few things that didn’t gel with me.

• the traits
  latent stamina, not really noticeable or effectual i like the extra dodges but if they worked while you were using an overload it would be better.

Unstable conduit is completely pointless since the overloads can be broken so easily

Tempestuous Aria, this trait is so bland that i hardly think it’ll see enough use. its bland like a rice cake that’s been sitting out for too long.

Earthen Proxy this is a minor trait pure and simple. i mean it doesn’t really do much compared to the “better trait in the majors” Harmonious conduit outshines these traits imho.

imbued melodies, ok… break stun and recharge warhorn skills faster, its boring but serviceable again bland rice cake.

Lucid Singularity, oh you haha, go away. if anyone is going to stop you while overloaded they will stop you because again overloads are easily broken and easily stopped it pins a giant neon “kill me!” sign on the player.

Elemental bastion, auras aren’t good they don’t give defense buffs with the exception of frost aura. they don’t offer any decent support, aside from the healing this trait is pointless.

my thoughts on the tempest line: why am i taking this line again? it doesn’t do anything special, I’m not helping anyone with it and it doesn’t keep me alive. ill just run base ele thanks.

• Warhorn

Heat sync is fine, Wildfire could stand to be faster.

tidal surge is good, Water globe, i kinda want to say it should cleanse burning maybe? is that too overpowered? it feels like it would be thematic in a way.

cyclone i have no issue with it, maybe it should block projectiles? it would seem cool maybe too overpowered. lightning orb the damage sucks i mean i don’t have anything else to say.

sand squall was this the skill that would have gotten the magnetic aura? that seems ok. dust storm is ok.

• The shouts

Wash the pain away, needs to clear conditions. if it does i might use it.

Feel the Burn, it works. i wont use it

Eye of the storm, why doesn’t this give an aura? cool down is meh. i wont ever use it.

After shock, its fine. cool down is too long, i wont use this.

Flash freeze, this is ok. might use it might not i don’t know.

Rebound, As it is this is a horrible elite. if it gets changed to what was posted i would love to use this since I’m horrible and i die so much it would also make the front line ele have much more use in group compositions.

overall, these shouts will not replace cantrips. mist form is our “oh crap!” button, lightning flash gives us the ability to re-position and escape, and armor of earth gives us that delicious stability and protection.

my advice if you want the shouts to be good, look at cantrips and make the shouts benefit the user in the same way. those skills do. Maybe have a shout that gives a little bit of self stability? (class needs more self stability I’m just sayin)

• Overloads
  they are too easily broken you are a fantastically pretty neon “KILL ME” sign

Look i don’t want to be mean here, i really don’t frankly i love the work Anet has done its a brilliant concept and i love the ideas behind them… however….

Overload fire: Being a damage and condition based skill. i find that having to turn yourself into the tornado puts the player into jeopardy as they are a big target… if possible make this a ground target skill and reduce the time it can be casted. For the Love of god please!

Overload water: this is ok being able to meditate in a water orb to follow your allies around is a great thing i would not change this except for adding a break bar to it.

Overload air: make this a ground targeted skill akin to my thoughts on overload fire, i believe it would benefit greatly.

Overload earth, i have to be honest i hate how this skill is presented, you immobilize and cripple your foes… let me get this strait. you ride a giant pillar of earth into your foes and you just cripple them and immobilize them… a giant pillar of earth… this should knock down your opponent how is it while riding something that looks like it weighs a good 500+ lbs and slam it into your foe doesn’t knock them down? is it made of dirt? does dirt immobilize? make it knock down for 5 seconds Earth attunement should be about control, one of the overloads needs to be about hard control.

in closing i find this class to be lackluster its a beautiful concept, but this isn’t the place where it should be… its not fun, its frustrating its like looking at a beautiful painting of an ocean and then someone draws a beached whale on it. i feel bad for the whale but what i can still see of the ocean is nice…

I’ll leave more comprehensive feedback once the weekend is done but as I was testing out the Warhorn changes, I couldn’t help but think how bad Air 5 is. I mean, they changed it to do more damage from last time but what is it for? It’s not very damaging, it only applies vulnerability and it doesn’t stay long enough to deny enemy their space.

Then I started thinking some more…Air overload is nice (I like it now!) but…it kind of copies Fire overload. And it’s difficult to use them both in conjunction (unless you’re fresh air, you’ll be using them less if you try!).

So I started thinking even more…what if Warhorn air5 was the current Air overload (with increased cooldown) and Air overload was current warhorn5 (balanced to take into account other overloads) but aimed at high damage ranged spike…maybe with some control in it?

Pyroen.2086:

In terms of heal and support Its good IMO. The heals are solid because of the aura traits. But, damage (condi and flat damage) is low which is what I think they are aiming for. I dont think they’ll buff this much just because ele is at a good place right in all game types.

Who is it going to support? Not good one on one so that counts out solo pvp, teams aren’t going to give up cele d/d for it, can’t survive WvW zerg frontline and revenants will do far better anyway.

So that only leaves support for the new content. It would be a pity if the elite spec was built entirely for the HOT content with no regard for other content.

So I buff the hell out of Tempest with my Herald and he uses his Warhorn to throw it back again @allies for limitless boons.

Note that I can easily stack ~40 sec of protection before and if Tempest copies that it becomes even crazier. Not sure which will get a nerf first. Tempest’s Warhorn or Herald :P

And tempest ofc will use that worhorn skill with heralds facet of nature (+50% boon duration).

I feel the tempest is very lack luster, the Horn skills, feel to slow to activate, the overloads are interrupted to easily (i don’t like that u will interrupted it by just attunement swapping. And i don’t see any play from any of the utility skills, rebound mabye, but the 25% doesnt feel sufficient for an elite, and it seems abit buggy when using it with other skills not getting the recharge. For pvp and wvw i don’t it being useful over dagger off or focus, and any other weapon variant. For dungeons i can see some nice support play. Group might share. nice burst heal when in water on scepter/horn, and nice vuln stacking with air, but overall nothing that its over weapons could pull off equally or better.

After trying out the beta, the experience was okay. So far I do not have any major issues on the event. Although, I do have some requests:

Relating to the BWE2:
- Can we have the Mastery Point map markers have up or down arrows to make it easier to locate just like the other map markers?
- An additional range weapon for the Revenant, the hammer still feels a bit weak in terms of damage during solo combat but it is effective in group battles.

Unrelated to the BWE2:
- Is there be a possibility that winged backpacks be converted for glider skins?
- GW1 dryad bow (http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Dryad_Bow) the skin fits nicely to HoT, it would be great as a legendary.