Guild Wars 2

Hello

I did more tempest playing and now also warhorn.
I am not a PvP player that goes for meta. I enjoy fire + earth traitlines using scepter.
I had been testing air,water,arcane since playing ele to find what fits best. Water is the save one, air so/so and arcane gave me the best experience but none was perfect for me.
So i looked on tempest, especially a shout build and it was promising for my playstyle.

The result:
It seems the right third line fore me, but it feels a bit lacking.

Warhorn: Felt slow. It´s not the weapon for me.
Also i am not a fan of fire 4. I have concernes it might lead to ele groups sharing permanaent max boons and thats worse then the 4 ele stacking meta ….

Overloads:
Not a real PvP tool. But i am OK with it. I usually am a WvW romer and its useful outside of hard small scale fights.

Fire: the most used for me. But not in player combat (used it once in a figth and without interruption it killed …). It helps to finish NPC´s fast and without klicking much. While i can do camps fast and easy an early interrupt might even kill me.

Air: a bit like fire in use. But feels not great i left it after a few uses.

Water: It seems good with the shorter channel but i don´t get a real oportunity to use it ….. äh ….

Earth: Second most useful for me. Its for engage/disengage. The effects feel weak but in a situation where you can´t/won´t do much other things OK.
So like all on CD and fights going bad … Turn and overload earth … Or go through the oponents so your teammates can flee … one for all ^^.

Traits:
I only see one straight forward line for shouts/aura support being good.
This feels like full shouts or scrap tempest.

Shouts: The part i like most. Traited shouts feel good. All instant cast will be the kick.
A -20% shout trait added to gale song would be great.

So for my playsyle tempest fits, but its a bit below the needed floor.

My personal wish still would be baseline speed for better build options. Rebound is reworked so i will see.
Also a runeset for condi removal on auras with apothekers stats will be the kicker for aura builds allowing to drop water.
I now wait and watch what will come with next beta.

As mentioned by others: overloads make you a sitting duck (despite the protection for 3 sec), traits feel all over the place, elite should be completely reworked.

Warhorn
*Heat Sync should display the amount of allies affected
*Water Globe should display the combo water field
*Water Globe moves a bit slow, increase speed/radius
*Lightning Orb way too weak: either increase vulnerability, or damage (perhaps increased damage against vulnerable foes?)

Shouts
*Shock and Aftershock: decrease the cooldown
*Eye of the Storm: lightning aura
*Flash Freeze: a bit underwhelming, increase chill by 1 or 2 seconds
*Shouts in general: no cast-time

Elite
*Instant, and completely change elite (perhaps decrease all cooldowns by 25%, bump up the recharge, makes this more useful with overloads)

Overloads
Risk vs Reward is not worth it. Increasing damage is not the right way to go. Either decrease the risk (traits seem perfect for this), or increase the reward upon finishing the overload.

*Overload Fire: pulse whirl
*Overload Lightning: superspeed (1 sec pulse)
*Overload Earth: blast field upon finish makes no sense, turn into a knockdown instead

Traits
*Speedy conduit and hardy conduit should be combined
*Latent Stamina does not fit in tempest-line given the overload system, change or move
*Unstable conduit should give aura at start of overload
*Tempestuous aria sounds interesting, but given the lack of a shout-cooldown trait and the usefulness of other utilities it should not see much use.
*Earthen proxy should be changed to give proper defense during overloads (I’m thinking blind, stun, chill, and cripple/immob (depending on attunement) halfway during the overload).
*Harmonious Conduit: almost a required trait if you want to use overloads (suggested earthen proxy and adding a possibility for a shout/aura ele build would fix this)
*Imbued melodies: interesting, but no synergy with other traits
*Lucid Singularity: add stability upon overload/resistance boon
*Elementa Bastion: increase healing

Karl McLain.5604:

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 problem I have with this is, in a best case scenario, all you get out of this is a single aura. Still not worthy of an elite skill.

depends. If its instant cast and on a 45 seconds or lower CD as shout it might be worth.

My two cents from playing some Verdant Brink events with this elite:

Overloads:
Fire is at the right spot, but the risk-reward factor isn’t quite there. I would suggest giving it earth’ defiance bar, to make it more useful against interrupts, but also add the counterplay of breaking the bar and being stuned.

Water feels just fine! Its a nice support skill with heal and condi-cleanse. Also don’t add any defensive utility to this since its supposed to be interruptable and cast behind the frontline.

Air is currently just offensive AoE dmg, without the CC or single-target properties of the attunement, maybe add blind or daze to improve survivability, or increase single target damage to fit the theme and differentiate it from fire overload.

Earth is currently the worst IMHO. It didn’t feel defensive at all, since all overloads get protection and the range is to small to reliably kite enemies with the pulsing cripple. Either add survivability to withstand incoming damage, or increase the range so I can kite opponents and reduce damage that way.
Secondly remove the defiance bar and just add some stability stacks. This is supposed to be the go-to overload for going in there an taking some hits (it doesn’t do much damage) so why should it have a drawback for actually taking those hits? This kind of risk-reward gameplay fits much better with the fire overload as stated above.
Also adding bleed as some suggested would fit nicely with the attunements theme.

Warhorn
Tidal Surge: The knockback should happen right away to make it more reliable and responsive.

Water Globe: Make it always move as fast as the character, even if his speed changes while the orb is up. This way its always useful, not just when the character is in combat and has no speed/slow on him.

Lightning Orb: It would be great if we could swap location with the orb on 2nd tab. This would make it a great tool for mobility and also improve damage on enemies standing still or moving elsewhere, since we could make the orb move through them twice. Also just make it move into the direction the character is facing.

Utilities:
They work pretty well for what they want to do and I managed to run a pure shout build (hot including heal and elite, Signet of Restoration is just to strong for solo play and rebound currently to weak).

Flash Freeze: It feels underwhelming as a CC tool compared to Aftershock. Maybe lower the CD, increase chill duration, add vulnerability (to make it a nice option between the pure offensive fire- and the pure defensive earth shout) or add a short Deep Freeze.

Elite:
The current version is just to weak and difficult to use with others, but I like the sound of the new version! Please make sure the type of aura depends on our attunement while casting rather than when the effect procs.

Overall I enjoyed playing the tempest more than I would have thought! Its quite clear that this is supposed to be the auramancer spec for the ele, maybe rename it as its much more fitting than Tempest (probably to late though). :P

I feel like warhorn is confused on what it supposed to be for air/earth/water. These are so un-synergetic it plays weak in pvp of all types and even odder in pve.
Rebound is…well…it…I want to say it is useful but 99.9% of the time when I told the people I was on skype with that I was gunna use it they all got scruwged over and it got used on nothing but autos. So totally useless
Overloads, still have way way way too high of a risk for a damb awful reward. What good is an aura at the end of a overload if you can never ever finish to get the dumb aura. Please, fix this. There is no way anyone will let you cast these in a " melee " role. Who ever thought that this was a good idea,no just no! Oh and the earth overload break bar breaks 100% of the time in pvp it broke over within seconds
I don’t even need togo over how useless the traits are, others have done that more than enough
Shouts.way too long of a cool down for how weak they are. Every time I used them I regretted pressing that utility compared to GoE, FB, SoF, AoE or CF. please if these are going to remain this weak dramatically reduce the cool downs to something around 20
Specific details
Shouts
Fire shout: a pretty pathetic AoE burn and a fire aura. First of all fire aura is really lame to begin with enemies don’t care that you have it you are already at 25 might stacks and this cool down is just a sad sad joke
Earth shout: this feels powerful and useful it synergies with itself and all the tempest toolkit. But this cool down is way overboard. Either game the immobilize pulse for an additional three seconds or reduce the cool down to 30
Air shout: just give this air aura and it is worth using
Water shout: double the chill duration and aura duration or half the cool down anything less and it would better to use flash

Warhorn:
Earth 4: sounds perfect
Earth 5: needs to pulse faster and more range I don’t think this worked on a single enemy the 80 times I used it
Air 4: completely useless I will call this…“Why press me”. This is by far the absolute worst weapon skill in the game
Air 5: read above ability and it is pretty close to that
Fire 4: this is a great skill it has great synergy
Fire 5: " your cool down is TOO kitten HIGH"
Water 4: too slow too small
Water5 feels perfect for mobile engagements but feels odd when you have to stay in one area or there are small things in the environment that stop it early..very odd

Traits:
I have no clue what the design idea is here. These are all bad.the ones that looked good just sucked in application and the ones that looked bad were even worse. I wish I had one nice thing to say but I don’t

Overloads
Fire. “The risk is TOO kitten HIGH”
Air: The risk is TOO kitten HIGH"
Earth: The risk is TOO kitten HIGH" and it is just too small and weak, it might as well be a death sentence
Water: feels really good risk matches the reward. Protectable with earth shout while booking it out of trouble. Nicely done

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

If you’re changing Rebound, why not make it give alacrity instead? The whole ignoring the death blow thing is unnecessary and would just be used as another emergency button that ele has plenty of already. Make it give Alacrity to 5 allies for 5-10 seconds
with the cooldown increasing to 75 secs?

I didn’t try this in HoTBWE1, and only tried it in 2 because I realized I hadn’t made a Sylvari to listen for Mordy chatter and NPC reactions. Of those I noticed nothing new, though I didn’t talk to too many NPCs.

I felt Tempest was really weak and lackluster – that is, until I learned to use the overloads. I was very happy that once I’d gotten each element into overload-ready status it stayed that way until used, and then seemed to remain available with just a 4 second delay on swapping to it (or just to refresh if I remained in the attunement). During those 4 seconds I could still use all skills and utilities so I wasn’t crippled at all, and I made a lot of use of the Fire and Air overloads. Water didn’t seem too handy, perhaps because I hadn’t put on a lot of Healing Power, and I’d need to study Earth a bit more to see what makes it useful.

I was very squishy as a Tempest, and I swiftly ditched main hand dagger in favor of keeping a bit more distance with a scepter. I would have liked the warhorn support skill to do some damage or in some way affect the enemy as well as allies, because it felt less useful than it likely was to blast the horn and see no effect beyond a little ripple in the air. I think air warhorn did do that, actually, with the swirling wind that knocked down enemies along with the lightning zappy ball. But fire only gave might (again, that’s probably a powerful thing for it to do, it just wasn’t viscerally satisfying).

Overall I liked Tempest more than base Elementalist. I have one 80 Ele, seldom played, that always felt much too squishy, and one 60 Ele who is a leveling project and has felt much tougher than the first; he might well make a good Tempest one day, but I don’t think I’ll be anywhere closer to maining Ele/Tempest than I am now. At least Tempest looks more spectacular and feels much more like a master of the elements.

I didn’t test the Elite, I’d seen too many complaints about it. I used tornado instead, and not often. I’ll have to try out some other elites to see what fits well.

My biggest problem is I still don’t feel Tempest is bringing anything to the Elementalist that can’t already be done with other weapons and trait lines. I find it lacks any real unique-ness as its one core mechanics, the Overloads, are still lacking compared to other classes.

The pay off for the Overload does not meet the casting time. I was often CC’d or interrupted before the full cast can get off. I believe adding a break bar to all of the Overloads would address this problem, however if that is too much of an ‘op’ move, then at least consider adding a trait that grants Stability when overloading.

Shouts need to have a trait that reduces their cool down. Why isn’t this already a thing?

I feel all the minor traits are bad. Swiftness and Protection on Overload could easily be rolled into one without it seeming overpowered.

Another important thing, please add the following things as they are absolutely core to WvW gameplay, a place where Tempest can exceed:

1) We need to be able to dodge through overload channeling. As it stands, they are so incredibly easy to be interrupted with little pay off. Eles already have bad HP and bad armor, we NEED dodge to avoid being sniped out. I know the animations for Fire and Air overload may make this difficult, but there is no reason why Water and Earth can’t.

2) Switching attunements while Overloading. At present, it stops the overload. Again, this is a risk-reward problem. The second the enemy sees I am channeling Fire or Air Overload, they target me. I have no way to protect myself while channeling outside of switching to water or earth for protection, but upon doing so it ends the channeling and amounts to a whole lot of nothing. This needs to be fixed.

Overall, my problem with the overloads is a risk-reward. Nothing feels worth it to me. And this is why the core idea of Tempest is kinda flawed at the moment.

On the topic of the warhorn:

Heat Sync: Good for what it does.
Wildfire: Takes far too long to appear to be effective. It needs to appear faster or have the damage buffed. Also, unless you change the ability of this skill, please change Firewall on Focus since these are pretty much the same exact skills in terms of effect and effectiveness >_>

Tidal Surge: Good, but should have it speeds increased.
Water Globe: It’s difficult to catch up too. I think the idea was suggested of making the water field appear around the Elementalist itself and move with the character. That is a good idea.

Cyclone: Good for what it does.
Lightning Orb: I feel this should either be a faster projectile that people have a harder time to avoid, or it should deal a little bit more damage and stay the same speed. Right now, it’s just meh.

Sand squall: Good for what it is.
Dust storm: I guess its good for what it is, but I never found much use for it.

Wash Away the Pain is bad. I get that it will heal everyone around you for the same amount, but that amount is terrible for the low armor, low HP ele. Ether Renewal is still superior.

I urge you guys to actually look at the traits this time. Another straight numbers increase is not just the way to go. Tempest is ultimately flawed on a variety of levels, from the overload to the traits. The warhorn, while the skills are generally good, lacks a real purpose that the focus, dagger or staff can’t already provide.

The Great Al.2546:

Another problem I have with this is, in a best case scenario, all you get out of this is a single aura. Still not worthy of an elite skill.

Well, no. If you wiff rebound, it’s still an AoE aura, which can heal allies if you have the trait. It’s not just an aura for you, it’s an aura for everyone affected. Not to mention, 5 man Magnetic Aura is sick.

Mystletainn.6285:

The Great Al.2546:

Another problem I have with this is, in a best case scenario, all you get out of this is a single aura. Still not worthy of an elite skill.

Well, no. If you wiff rebound, it’s still an AoE aura, which can heal allies if you have the trait. It’s not just an aura for you, it’s an aura for everyone affected. Not to mention, 5 man Magnetic Aura is sick.

That’s what he’s saying…for an elite with a 60s CD, you expect a lot more than just an Aura, especially when it’s something another Utility you have already does, but better(and it still sucks).

Tempest issues, part 2
Bug: Cylcone (Air warhorn 4) is supposed to be unblockable. It can be blocked.
Problem: Fresh Air S/W excels at protection uptime by canceling air overload as soon as it starts if there is a huge risk of getting interrupted. Canceling your class mechanic should not be one of the most effecient ways to play Tempest, yet it is.
Bug?: Tidal Surge (Water warhorn 4) doesn’t knockback in the right direction. The wave could be facing towards a point, but it will often knock enemies in the opposite direction. Instead of the attack pushing the enemy away in the right direction, it will simply always push away from me. The problem with this is the knockback is not instant. Meaning if I face north, cast it, and then run through and have someone chase me, even if the Tidal Surge faces north, it will knock people southward just because I am more north of them. This can be fixed by making knockback have less of a delay.
Problem: Lightning Orb can’t be casted backward, but it has no problem being casted directly sideways. This makes the green arrow confusing because you can’t always tell when it’s impossible or possible. As much as I’d like all warhorn skills to be ground targeted, this needs a better showing of what can and cannot be casted.
Problem: Auras are hard to see. Fire Aura hides Magnetic Aura with a similar size and similar color and same shape. Not only can enemies not tell if I have Magnetic Aura, allies cannot tell if they have it.
Problem: Earth Overload is nearly useless. You would get more protection by simply swap out of Earth and back into Earth if you have the Arcane trait line. The damage and the break bar are not worthwhile to Overload because (a) you lose dps, (b) you lose the ability to heal by swapping into water/casting your heal skill without wasting your overload, © everyone can just dodge the immob that you gave them plenty of time to dodge because you couldn’t do anything else for the previous 5 seconds. Earth Overload needs to be different, and in a supporty way. Don’t just provide protection like the Tempest is already good at doing, provide a new way to support allies.

Malchior.5732:

Mystletainn.6285:

The Great Al.2546:

Another problem I have with this is, in a best case scenario, all you get out of this is a single aura. Still not worthy of an elite skill.

Well, no. If you wiff rebound, it’s still an AoE aura, which can heal allies if you have the trait. It’s not just an aura for you, it’s an aura for everyone affected. Not to mention, 5 man Magnetic Aura is sick.

That’s what he’s saying…for an elite with a 60s CD, you expect a lot more than just an Aura, especially when it’s something another Utility you have already does, but better(and it still sucks).

However, best case scenario you can literally just stand in the enemy’s huge AoE and just revive. The raid where a nuke falls? You could just rebound and survive it: in fact, make your entire party survive it. That’s pretty good for a 60 second cooldown. Everyone was saying the never-die trait on Berserker was pretty good, is this not good enough?

Mystletainn.6285:

Malchior.5732:

Mystletainn.6285:

The Great Al.2546:

Another problem I have with this is, in a best case scenario, all you get out of this is a single aura. Still not worthy of an elite skill.

Well, no. If you wiff rebound, it’s still an AoE aura, which can heal allies if you have the trait. It’s not just an aura for you, it’s an aura for everyone affected. Not to mention, 5 man Magnetic Aura is sick.

That’s what he’s saying…for an elite with a 60s CD, you expect a lot more than just an Aura, especially when it’s something another Utility you have already does, but better(and it still sucks).

However, best case scenario you can literally just stand in the enemy’s huge AoE and just revive. The raid where a nuke falls? You could just rebound and survive it: in fact, make your entire party survive it. That’s pretty good for a 60 second cooldown. Everyone was saying the never-die trait on Berserker was pretty good, is this not good enough?

Actually, what’s more likely to happen is that you pop it when you know you’re gonna wipe, you wipe and revive, and then immediately die.
The difference is that one is a trait that just procs(like Unholy Sanctuary for Necros) and the other is a skill that needs to be casted, has a certain amount of time before it runs out, has a certain range, can be interrupted, etc.

So, after playing a Tempest for a few hours in SW and Verdant Brink, here are my thoughts. Caveat: I only tested the spec in PvE, with Zerker weapons/armor/trinkets and the default rune and sigil sets.

WARHORN: Really like the weapon; it has good synergy with a variety of traits like Lightning Rod and Arcane in general (boon sharing.) I think it’s a good middle ground between /D’s offensive support (outside of Water Attunement) and /F’s defensive support. It will only become better with the improvement to Sand Squall.

-Imbued Melodies: Really weird trait. All of our other weapon-specific traits were either scrapped (Enduring Scepter, Windborne Dagger) or made baseline (Blasting Staff.) Why is Warhorn getting its own trait, and a cool down reduction at that? I’m not complaining, since it does stack with the Training traits, but it is a little inconsistent. I’d like to see this trait reworked to something more original. Suggestion: Shouts now affect up to 10 allies, and have an increased radius of 800 (Raid-oriented?)

-Wildfire: Needs to have its cast time reduced (0.25-0.5 secs), and the fire field needs to “spread out” faster.

-Tidal Surge: Needs to have its cast time decreased and/or the wave needs to move much faster. It’s pretty easy to avoid this CC ability.

-Water Globe: Needs to move a little bit slower to allow for more efficient healing and more time to blast the field.

-Cyclone: needs to have a 0.5-0.75 sec cast time. The speed of the cyclones could improve slightly, and the cone could be a little wider.

-Lightning Orb: Needs to NOT be ground-targeted; it feels awkward with this skill. Needs a further damage buff. Alternatively, it could do something like “Enemies it passes through are stunned” or “Deals double damage to vulnerable enemies”, or “The final projectile stuns its target."

-Dust Storm: The windup is insanely long. I think you can dodge this by walking backwards…not cool.

SHOUTS:

- These need a cool down reduction trait! Probably best rolled into Tempestuous Aria.

-Shout Auras need to work with ALL Aura traits (Zephyr’s Boon, Elemental Shielding, Powerful Aura, Element Bastion) AND with all Aura runes (Radiance/Trooper’s/Soldier’s.)!!! I cannot stress how critical this is for the Auramancer play style that Tempest seems to be pushing.

-“Wash the Pain Away!”: Decent, but maybe the final pulse could remove a condition as well?

-“Eye of the Storm!”: Needs Shocking Aura.

-“Aftershock!”: Why is this not a Blast finisher?! It’s jut begging to be one. Please This would also justify its long cool down. If it isn’t made a Blast finisher, it definitely needs a shorter cool down. It would also be super cool if it did double damage to knocked-down foes like Aftershock in GW1! This would give it additional synergy with /D and /F.

-“Rebound.”: What I find awkward about it is the slight, almost 1 second delay between when the first half of the animation finishes and the actual effect is placed on the player(s.) If this is to become a fatality-negating skill, it NEEDS an instant or near-instant cast time. I don’t like that iteration from the sound of it though, but I guess I’ll have to play it to pass judgement.

TRAITS:

-In general, I find that the trait line has poor synergy with the core specializations.

-The way I see it, this trait line tries to push 3 distinct play styles: 1) Overloads (Unstable Conduit, Harmonious Conduit and Lucid Singularity), 2) Shouts/Warhorn (Gale Song, Tempestuous Aria and Imbued Melodies) and 3) Auras/support (Latent Stamina/Unstable Conduit, Earthen Proxy and Element Bastion.) Of these, the only one that I see immediately “working” is the Aura play style, only because it has decent synergy with traits in other lines (Zephyr’s Boon, Elemental Shielding and especially Powerful Aura.) Overloads don’t work well because Overloads themselves aren’t rewarding enough to cast; the traits don’t help that problem much. The other support traits are just…random, and inferior to other options in Arcane and Water. The Shout/Warhorn traits are obviously good for those specific skills, but offer little synergy with other lines.

-Latent Stamina has a nice effect, but feels really out of place where it currently is.

-Speedy Conduit and Hardy Conduit really need to just be merged. Hardy Conduit can then be replaced with another minor. I suggest a trait that gives you 1 stack of Stability while Overloading.

OVERLOADS

The meat of the spec, and, IMO, the most disappointing aspect of the Tempest. The main problem is their risk:reward ratio is skewed way too much towards the risk. Suggestions:

-Make Overloads available to be cast immediately. I get that they are meant to offer a radically different alternative to the rapid Attunement-swap dance that we have done since day one, but the reality is that this is just not practical. Why?

1) Our auto attacks suck, which means that once we’ve used our weapon cool downs, staying and auto-attacking is counterproductive in most cases. This is especially true with Scepter, with its ABYSMAL auto-attacks.

2) We depend on intra-weapon-skill combos to be truly effective, which means we NEED to swap to get full mileage out of our weapon skills via Fields and Finishers.

All this means that we are rarely in one Attunement for longer than 3-4 seconds. While playing in Verdant Brink, I very often found myself stuck in one Attunement, with most of my non-auto attacks on cool down, WAITING for the Overload to become available to cast, thinking “This sucks.” I actually WANT to cast the Overloads, but waiting to cast them totally threw me off. This would’ve been okay if I had something to do while waiting for the Overload, like auto-attack, but because those suck so much, it just ended up feeling very clunky and useless.

-Overloads are easily interrupted by enemies AND your own actions: I was being fairly consistently being interrupted by trying to Overload on Arid Devourers, Mordrem, Beetles and Juvenile Wyverns. I’d imagine it would be pretty much impossible to pull off a full channel in PvP, regardless of how good your positioning is, especially with the plethora of CC that Mesmers, Thieves and Warriors now have access to. I don’t see the logic in making the main gimmick of a frontline spec long channels with no inherent CC mitigation. Not to mention that swapping Attunements and dodging cancel the channel. I see the reason for that, but it feels bad to have the channel that you waited so long to cast canceled by your own swap or dodge. Even Overload Earth’s break bar is easily broken with just a few soft CCs. We NEED reliable Stability or better break bars for ALL Overloads, whether as baseline mechanisms or via Traits. I do not want to be pigeonholed into running Armor of Earth every time I want to use Overloads.

-Overload Fire: My favorite Overload. Feels, looks and sounds great to cast. Should create a mobile Fire field around you while spinning.

-Overload Water: Should create a mobile Water field around you.

-Overload Air: Could use a slight damage increase.

-Overload Earth*: Feels the most underwhelming. Should pulse mobile Blast finishers around you while charging up, and should knock down enemies around you when it ends.

Alrighty, so I played quite a bit more Tempest during BWE2. My thoughts are as follows…

Fire Overload – Needs more whirl finishers (and the tornado should also do a continuous whirl finisher AFTER the channel as well). Needs longer duration burns. Needs a bit more range.

Water Overload – Pretty decent. Animation is horrid though, the sitting animation itself looks off in general, not to mention your character just kind of “pops” into it when you start and then “pops” out of it afterwards, with no real animation frames in between.

Air Overload – Range increase helped, but it still needs more range IMO. And more damage. And the lightning field really needs to stick around a lot longer after you finish the cast, right now its gone faster than the channel for the cast itself, which is a shame as having an on-demand lightning field on something besides Staff would be great and a unique aspect for the Air overload to have. I’d say 7 seconds at absolute minimum. Gives the Elementalist some time to use the field themselves, even combo it with Fire Overload if you’re quick.

Earth Overload – Blast finisher should be at the start (or perhaps at the start and the end, a double finisher on a skill would be pretty interesting). Protection pulse durations need to be longer so that you can actually build up some protection that will last after the skill is done. Like with Water Overload, the animation needs work. I notice its a bit better in BWE2, since your character actually falls to the ground now after the earth breaks at the end instead of just warping down, but the start of the animation is still as choppy as ever. Need some transition frames at the start.

Cyclone – I like the concept of the skill. Gather enemies into a line, and since all your other Warhorn skills happen in a line, it gathers them nicely for other attacks (and even Overload). But the range is so bad that it doesn’t tend to actually gather anything, since everything that can get hit by the skill is already close enough to be hit by most of your other WH attacks just fine. The radius / cone on the attack needs to be significantly increased so that it actually does what its supposed to. Right now its only use is as an interrupt.

Lightning Orb – Lackluster all around. Its clearly supposed to be a pure damage skill, but the damage it puts out is too low and it gets out of range of enemies far too quickly unless they stupidly run with the orb. I’d suggest slowing the orb down a bit while also increasing the range at which the orb will fire at enemies, which should help it be more reliable and make the skill more powerful overall. I’d also like to see the cooldown reduced significantly so that it becomes a semi-spammable sustain damage source, which could coincide nicely with Tempests’ overall theme of staying in attunements longer. For instance, if it had a 12s cooldown, you could fire it off as soon as you entered Air attune, then by the time you wait for your Overload to come off cooldown and use that, you could use it a second time before attune swapping.

Dust Storm – Good skill once it gets going, but the problem is that it takes forever to do so. Definitely needs to be sped up some on the startup of the dust storms.

Feel the burn – In the vein of Warrior’s torch, I’d like to see it “burn off” a condition.

Eye of the storm – Needs Shocking Aura added. It just feels off without it since all the other utility / elemental shouts give an aura, and given the long cooldown I feel its a justified addition without becoming broken (the skill is a touch “meh” as it is). Plus, it actually gives the skill a nice dual nature, where you’re breaking stun while applying an aura that can in return stun other enemies. Besides, what kind of lame “storm” is this that has no lightning or anything? The Shocking Aura would be the storm in the name “Eye of the Storm”. A slight cooldown reduction could also be handy since its the only stunbreak a Shout Ele has.

Shock and Aftershock – Well, for one thing the name needs to be changed now that the voiceover has been altered. Could also really use a cooldown reduction, its quite long for the modest effect the skill has, but increasing its effectiveness might be a bit much. 40 seconds, perhaps. EDIT: Actually, now that I’ve read some other players’ thoughts, I agree with many that suggest adding a Blast finisher to this skill. Would fit thematically and give Shouts a bit more of a varied utility to them.

Flash Freeze – I’d increase the duration of the Chill to 5 seconds. Its already very similar to Aftershock, but the duration is a lot shorter compared to that one, so at the very least I’d give them similar soft-CC durations. Maybe also add some vulnerability to enemies (3 stacks maybe?), since right now it just seems kind of simplistic and lacking.

Harmonious Conduit – Really lackluster as a standalone trait, but helpful as something you get for free. Ditch the Major trait entirely, fold its effects into Hardy Conduit, make a more interesting trait for that Master slot. Alternatively, add a second effect to this trait besides just a cooldown reduction to make it more worthwhile. Maybe this trait would allow you to swap out of your attunement while Overloading without cancelling it, for instance.

Hardy Conduit – Needs to pulse Protection every 3 seconds of the Overload to the point where you have Protection for the full duration of the overload (I say it needs to pulse instead of just being a longer duration at the start to prevent people from starting the channel and then cancelling for long duration Protection).

Lucid Singularity – In addition to the current effects, should also pulse 1 stack of Stability every 3 seconds for the duration of Overloads. Enough to keep you from getting knocked out of them by stray CC’s, but not enough to prevent a focused assault from interrupting it.

Tempestuous Aria – Cooldown reduction on Shouts, please. Its not as though they already have super-short cooldowns to the point where it would be OP or redundant.

Latent Stamina – Why is this even here? I mean, Elemental Bastion, while it is also somewhat water-reminiscent, at least has to do with Tempest as well since a lot of Tempest skills give Auras. But this? Just, why? What does vigor in Water have to do with Tempest? Nothing, that’s what. Here’s a suggestion. Remove the “on water attune” effect, and instead make it grant vigor when you remain in any element long enough to gain access to an Overload. Makes it more usable overall and now fits Tempest thematically. And getting Vigor before you trigger overload can be handy, since now you have a bit of extra stamina so you can dodge and get into position for your overload.

Earthen Proxy – Seems a touch weak, honestly. Revenant gets double Fury effectiveness, while Tempest only gets a 20% boost to Protection? I mean, granted that double Protection effectiveness would probably be broken, but how about at least 50%? Or, if even that is deemed too much, how about a 20% boost under normal circumstances, but a 50% boost while channeling (which would mean 50% boost while Overloading).

My thinking is that they tried to be too clever in creating the tempest. Boons, auras, nice graphics but then playing in WVW there was almost zero difference in game play. Ele in WVW is about 99% used as a ranged damage and healing support player. Adding the tempest features did nothing to improve those basic capabilities and did nothing to make anyone change the way the ele is to be used. In roaming pve and some pvp the changes are nice and Ill use them but in WVW eh, no help and probably the ele takes a step back in usefulness as the other classes improvements will bring down an ele quicker.

My 2cents on Tempest.
I think it’s missing AoE Stability and AoE Quickness on the Shout system. We already have access to plenty of chill and I think “Flash-Freeze!” should be reworked into the AoE Stability Shout, and Rebound to be the Quickness one.
Mid-rangers need stability and I think this can fix it.

I think Water skill in warhorn need a condi cleanse, can see it happen in Skill 5.

Wildfire and Lightning Orb should be a lot faster, especially the Orb. Something like 80% of the Guardian LB skill 3.

I felt like I was missing something from the trait like but I can’t remember it… Maybe the Grandmaster minor trait should offer Protection and Stability (like Armor of Earth does) so that Overcharge can work like the new Defiance bar… so players get the feel like something important is coming .

Oh yeah I think the a trait that I was missing is to reduce CD on Warhorn skills. Rotations are faster then the recharge which doesn’t happen with other Ele OH.

Will add more stuff if I recall what might be missing.

I will say that Tempest did feel better, but the aura heal trait still I think is to low of a heal, and I still thing it should remove a condition on aura apply, with the removal of the frost aura, and the healing should be between 1000 to 1500. I’m okay with the overloads. Still think air and fire should be ground targetable, not necessarily huge distance maybe the distance is about the size of lava font with similar area, with the same with air. Earth should have at most a double knock back for enemies closest to you. Think flash freeze should apply slow and chill, you can do slow for 2s and chill for the original 3s, as for warhorn skills, I find them unremarkable, unrememberable, and uninportant, most of the time I got the the 2 skills mixed up. At this point I would give tempest a new niche kinda like Cronomancer with Alacracy. Don’t have an idea of what.

Leo’s Feedback
So glad lots of people were experimenting in PvP otherwise I’d probably just frustrate myself mainly because I was practicing with a new control set-up (again!). That being said, my perspective is mainly PvE and a bit of PvP.

Shouts
Really only played with either Wash the Pain away and Aftershock. Kind of disappointed this couldn’t be made into a 2 step skill like some of the other new utilities made. All in all, I like it because it’s a decent source of magnetic aura despite the recharge being so long. Honestly wish the effect of this was improved. Wash the Pain away, I always felt was decent on a support build but the pulse range could be boosted so I don’t have to be ontop of players to get them as much HP as I can.

Wish I could have played with Warhorn more but I was having fun with s/d which is rather rare for me…

Overloads
I think you’ve got them tuned just about right, at least for Fire and Water overloads. Air overload does good damage too + the vulnerability application is nice but I found myself using Fire, Water and Earth overload more than Air primarily because they covered what I needed, namely Fire = AoE damage, Water = condi removal and heal, Earth = defensive….kind of. I’d suggest improving Earth’s defensive utility and keep its damage where its at. A blast finisher at the start instead of the end would be great too. Perhaps the protection application from earth overload could be boosted, the radius at which you apply it could be increased or an added effect (like blocking attacks for allies behind it?) could be a put in.

Air overload is nice damage but seems unnecessary to have 2 overloads that have the same function. Why not keep with the element’s nature and make Fire overload the AoE dps overload (increase the radius while you’re at it) and Air overload could be a ranged single target (with some short-radius AoE) spike damage? But just an idea.

Now work on sorting out the traits next!!!

If Tempest is going to be as we’ve played in the last betas then the elementalist needs a way to switch from ranged combat to close quarter combat:

Giving the elementalist weapon swap would already make the Warhorn an interesting complementary weapon to staff perhaps, but as it is currently I don’t see any game mode beside PvP that would perhaps use it, but even then I won’t as I simply swap attunement too fast to even consider overloading.

If the Revenant can swap weapons (from dps to support, to condi, etc) and swap all it’s utilities and elite skills, which are all really powerful I don’t see why the elementalist wouldn’t be able to swap weapons. In a game where mesmers shatter you from 18k hp to 0 hp in half a second I fail to see how weapon swapping on the elementalist would be that overpowered. The number of skills shouldn’t be an issue, as they all have very long cooldowns anyway. To the contrary it would open the class to many combo opportunities that would be more interesting than tempest is currently, like an updraft into a static field for example.

Without that flexibility you really have to raise the bar on tempest because it is quite lackluster to say the least. You watch the chronomancer Float, Alacrity or Slow and you think “That’s cool”, you watch Reapers cleave for 9k downs and deep-freeze everyone with intense chill you think “wow, that’s strong”, same with the Revenant elite spec elite, but then you try tempest and there is just nothing impressive about it.

well a weapon swap would be to powerful for ele.
I did suggest to give a weapon swap on 6s CD (5 if arcane) instead of elementals swaping.
With tempest playstyle more focused against arcane playstyle i have another idea i would find gorgeous.
Instead of latent stamina a new trait:
Dormant element:
You loose the ability to swap untraited elements. Gain all passive abilities from untraited elements.

Fire: 150 power + 10% damage boon against burning
Air: 25% speed + Vul proc
Earth: 150 toughness + 10% damage reduction 360.
Water: Sothing disruption + 15% outgoing heals.

So if you trait tempest + air + water, you gain 150power, 150 toughness, 10% damage on burning targets and 10% damage reduction. Nicht buffs if you like to mainly camp one element …
Also it helps specing out of water for gaining permanent healing.

This would fit tempest. Its against ele playstyle but i makes sense.

The main thin it does is: It lowers the eles skill floor. You go on a two elements swap (or even none but that might be stupid but for pure fire ele maybe)

This trait would help new ele players + be good in PvE. For high tier play i think it´s not so good, because you loose 2 swaps and the 10 skills keyed to it.
This will give a diffrent feeling and especially help PvE and casual players. IT´s just one trait, you must not use it so nothing is realy lost.

So when I first saw the Tempest concept I start wondering for what game mode it was built. “Bring the Elemntalist to the front line” as it was stated I could only think about wvw, as Elemntalist already is mostly close combat in pvp and in pve you also stay close to your party. Even in wvw small scale you mostly chose D/D close combat. So the last thing left would be wvw zerg, because this is the only place where you couldn’t go to the front line as Elementalist. Maybe it will also be useful for the new group content, but we don’t know much here.
Maybe I was mistaken by this assumption, but I don’t see a way Tempest will ever be a front line zerg spec or be useful in any other situation beyond 5v5. It misses everything you would need there. Movement, evades, invulnerability and stability. Even with the high protection, frost aura and the good heals you stand no chance to survive. Most irritating in Tempest in my opinion are the overloads. These are obvious made to be set up in close range, but the risk is far too high to ever use them. They don’t support the front line play stile at all, as they don’t offer any kind of active defenses. Using them feels the same as with Tornado. When you try to use them you lock yourself out of your skills, which is pretty much inevitable death. So you can either cancel the Overload and run away or you are focused and killed within seconds.
So as summary I think Overloads are interesting but just don’t fit together with the Tempest close range/support play stile. Use them on another elite spec and give us something that actually works together with the role we should fulfill.

Tempest is suppose to be a melee support but I think you can fit more than just support into the spec unless you just go ham on support and put in major stuff like AoE team blocks, condi cleanse + immunity and speedier rezzing utility (put that on the shout too along with take lethal damage heals you and next spell cooldown sooner!).

Was actually thinking maybe it should reflect Arcane line somewhat but instead of with swaps, its with overloads. Then I started thinking if you combine the two, you might get too strong of an effect. I think they actually have a bit more room to adjust Arcane line to be less prominent while at the same time giving it a more clear role that can then be reflected on Tempest. For example:

Minor Traits
Arcane Fury = Fine as is.

Elemental Attunement = [change] From applying boons when you swap depending on your attunement to apply boons whose strength increases with how many your attunement on-swap spells hit. ((Rather than getting crazy boons by swapping to every attunement, this trait relies on your On-swap minor traits in other attunements to hit and the boon strength is magnified…if you don’t have said on-swap minor trait for that attunement, this effect won’t proc. So if you have the Water and Fire line, swapping to water and hitting 5 allies with healing ripple will apply regen 5 times to yourself and allies, hitting 5 foes with Sunspot will apply 5 stacks of might…but if you have aura share and also give 5 auras with that swap, you get 10 stacks of might))

Elemental Enchantment = same

I’d say swap around the order, making Elemental Enchantment the Minor Adept, Arcane Fury the Minor Master and Elemental Attunement into the Minor Grandmaster but honestly doesn’t really matter the order at this point unless you’re leveling up.

Adept
Arcane Abatement = [change] I’d say combine this with Arcane Resurrection for your full utility adept trait and make room for a new trait.

Arcane Precision = same

Renewing Stamina = same

Master
Elemental Contingency = [add] Apply a boon to self on swapping attunements depending on the attunement. This is to slightly cover the fact that swapping attunements won’t give you and everyone around you boons except the lines you specialized in.

Final Shielding = [add] longer duration to Arcane Shield (just 3-5sec ought to do it).

Bountiful Power = same just moved to Master

Grand Master
Elemental Surge = [add] Create an Arcane Wave around yourself with your attunement on-swap effect (talking about Healing Ripple, Sunspot, etc.) (50sec ICD)

Evasive Arcana = [change] Cast a spell when you dodge roll dependant on the last on-swap effect triggered. This means you can, at most, only have 2 evasive arcana effects which will trigger when you dodge and have an ICD of 8sec. So even if you’re in fire attunement, if you’re specialized in water you will get healing ripple…this also means, if you want the blast finisher dodge, you need to specialize in earth.

[NEW GRANDMASTER HERE] Perhaps something like Equivalent Exchange = Applying boons can remove opposite conditions for shorter durations. For example, if you apply might to an ally or yourself who has weakness or blind, you remove either weakness or blind and that might is applied at 2/3 the duration. Applying regeneration to an ally with poison or bleed, etc etc.

Overall, the Arcane line is still about crits, arcane skills, swapping and dodge-casting. The tempest line would need to reflect that in some way; being about shouts instead of arcane, being about camping an attunement for a time instead of swapping and channel-casting instead of dodge-casting. I think one core problem with any new elite spec right now is that it will require reforming to the Arcane spec’s form of play instead of creating a new way to play. Funneling Arcane into a slightly narrower style can help other specs shine while also allowing more breathing room to create new ways to play an ele spec. I don’t want every spec to be about swapping to attunements as soon as possible for more boons because Arcane has the most simplest and unencumbered means of applying them nor do I want the spec to hold dodge-rolling hostage along with all its other boons.

And segwaying off of that, if some of the stronger arcane utility is limited by which attunements you specialize in (so your water/earth/arcane ele will be super bulky or your fire/air/arcane will have strong offensive boons and damage, etc) you can sort of reflect that into the Tempest line. For example:

Minors = you can combine effects of Speedy and Hardy conduit and add a minor that pretty casts each attunements’ minor trait spell upon casting an overload and pulses said trait IF you’re specialized in it. If you combine it with Arcane’s trait, you can GREATLY enhance ONE attunement or get a greater effect while channeling for 2 attunements.

Adept, Master and Grandmaster
Play a bit with channeling. Beyond looking into breakbars for each overload (more to do with boosting overloads than it is for traits so not going into that atm), give some extras to spells that require a casting time of >2sec. Just like you’ve got a vigor on crit, provide a stability on shout. Just like you’ve got cast on dodge give cast pulse or something during channel or the ability to move/dodge while channel or something unique. Etc.

Why I think Tempest crticism is mostly innacruate:
People want Tempest to be overpowered. They want it to power up Elementalist rather than be an alternative to Elementalist.

With Fresh Air S/W Tempest, I’ve never had a problem ever with the 5 seconds wait time for Air Overload. Now, there is a very big problem with Earth and Water Overloads: when you need the protection and the heal, it’s often too late. However, what you can do as a S/W Tempest is Cylcone —> Lightning Orb —> Air Overload. Go into might stacking combo and by the time you return to air, Cyclone and Lightning Orb will be mostly off cooldown if you take the 20% off Warhorn Skills. Cyclone is on a 11 second cooldown and you can overload while it knocks because down and always have access to a blind on your 3 skill. Then a smart tempest will abuse LoS and overload to an enemy who cannot hit them. With a Marauder Amulet, Air Overload can 100-0 a glassy ranger.
Yes, Tempest is not perfect. Please don’t listen to people who demand it to be perfect. It should be balanced, not have every tool in the game. Our shouts don’t have to be absolutely perfect: yes, some could do some work, but they shouldn’t be the absolute strongest kitten in the world. Eye of the Storm does not need to give lightning Aura: that’s just people wanting even more on a class they’re not fully certain how to play to make up for the difficulty of Overloading, which should not be an issue if they work around LoS and Cyclone.

Mystletainn.6285:

Why I think Tempest crticism is mostly innacruate:
People want Tempest to be overpowered. They want it to power up Elementalist rather than be an alternative to Elementalist.

With Fresh Air S/W Tempest, I’ve never had a problem ever with the 5 seconds wait time for Air Overload. Now, there is a very big problem with Earth and Water Overloads: when you need the protection and the heal, it’s often too late. However, what you can do as a S/W Tempest is Cylcone —> Lightning Orb --> Air Overload. Go into might stacking combo and by the time you return to air, Cyclone and Lightning Orb will be mostly off cooldown if you take the 20% off Warhorn Skills. Cyclone is on a 11 second cooldown and you can overload while it knocks because down and always have access to a blind on your 3 skill. Then a smart tempest will abuse LoS and overload to an enemy who cannot hit them. With a Marauder Amulet, Air Overload can 100-0 a glassy ranger.
Yes, Tempest is not perfect. Please don’t listen to people who demand it to be perfect. It should be balanced, not have every tool in the game. Our shouts don’t have to be absolutely perfect: yes, some could do some work, but they shouldn’t be the absolute strongest kitten in the world. Eye of the Storm does not need to give lightning Aura: that’s just people wanting even more on a class they’re not fully certain how to play to make up for the difficulty of Overloading, which should not be an issue if they work around LoS and Cyclone.

Your feedback is highly biased. There’s another thread that screams “Tempest issue: NOT A NUMBER PROBLEM!”, as in we’re not asking for more damage, or more healing, but working mechanics that you can actually use, and well-stablished trait line. You can see most of the elite specs provide more focused gameplay with interesting and synergic trait options, whilst tempest ones are all over the place and unfocused, and on top of that we have easily-interruptible overloads (mesmer, necro, warrior, ranger, engineer, etc etc pretty much all classes can daze/stun/knockback you from afar, in PvE this holds true for a lot of HoT creatures aswell).

See, I still think 50s on “Shock and Aftershock!” is balanced, despite what people say, when it provides a powerful projectile reflection, but your view about the tempest issues seems too narrow. No one is asking for “more”, we’re asking for “different”, and they’re simply throwing old gameplays into an elite spec and calling it new. At this stage, as it looks quite impossible to go back to the drawing board, we’re simply asking for tweaks to overloads and mainly traits. Again, not a NUMBER issue. Think it through.

thats it. We won´t go back doing a new elite. But traits can be reworked a bit. There are aproved and implemented mechanics that can be reused. Easiest are static boons like basline speed or stat boons which will get better build options.
I am already fine with overloads. A stability trait just to swallow one CC would be great but i am not shure if this is already to much.
If you trait shouts they are already fine. If you don´t trait them tey don´t feel worthy.

I try to keep my feedback brief and this is based entirely on my Fresh Air burst build for tempest which I played in both PvE and PvP environments.

I didn’t use Warhorn, its simply too slow and dont provide enough damage pressure for either offensive or defensive purposes so I used Focus mainly.

I was pleasantly surprised by how good the new shout heal was.

For me, the 2 major changes that could allow Tempest to feel more naturally and less clunky for Elementalists who are so used to “Attunement Dancing”:

• Allow switching attunement while overloading without self-interrupt.
• Charge up time for overload reduced from 5s to 3s.

These 2 changes would open up a new playstyle for Tempest by allowing “chaining different Overloads” making the class a bit less predictable and generally more fun as u can perform certain combos/rotations with fields and finishers like normal Eles do.

In my opinion (once again) the real problem is how punishing melee overloads are compared to other elites’ mechanics. Lowering the channeling time won’t solve that I’m afraid.

Then again, if the “risk” factor from “risk vs. reward” lies in not being interrupted (which is really impressive given how “free” accumulating alacrity is), I just won’t comment anymore and just skip it.

Alright, I only had time to play Tempest during reset night in WvW. From all the negative stuff I had read during BWE1, I was scared to go into my first BWE with tempest, elementalist being my main. So here are my thoughts

I decided to try the most out of the class, so I went with Scepter / Warhorn and Shouts (Flash-Freeze, Eye of the Storm, Shock and Aftershock)with the Rebound elite and Wash the Pain Away! for the heal.

I usually main Scepter / Focus, cause I love the survivability of the focus. And was really scared of losing that.

So on to the Warhorn, I was pleasantly surprise by the skills. The warhorn felt more supportive in it’s type of play, with AOE heals on the 2 water skills, a fire field with a blast for might stacking, some crowd control and a bit of damage skills. They felt pretty good imo.

Shouts made it fun in WvW, especially in smaller group skirmishes. I could give us some AOE superspeed, I could cripple and immob the enemies, and chill them, making it really easy for us to nuke them down.

Rebound How the hell are you suppose to make use of this, even with all my group on voice comm, if you call it, that means everyone needs to stop their rotation so they can trigger the proper skill… hoping it works. Instead of “for 8sec your next skill CD is lowered by 25%” Why not make it for 2sec, all your skills CD are lowered by 25%

Overloads, I really haven’t had a good use for them, cause I would start them, and then dodge an attack, or switch attunement to heal up or protect myself, and they would cancel out. Fire was good for stacking might pre-fight, and water was good when needed, but in most cases, in a fight they would get canceled out…by me dodging or switching attunement.

All in all though, I miss playing tempest now.

I almost forgot, Traits
So the tempest trait line, if I compare it to other classes, where if you choose to go all top, or mid, or bottom, they have a theme within that line, which the tempest has, but it would require changes to fix it

Top – Defensive line – Gale Song, Earthen Proxy, Element Bastion This one is OK
Mid – New Skill line? – Latent Stamina (attunements), Harmonious Conduit (Overloading), Imbued Melodies (Warhorn) This line doesn’t have a theme to it
Bottom – Overloading line – Unstable conduit (Overloading), Tempestuous Aria (Shouts), Lucid Singularity (overloading) Still not following an overloading theme

So here’s the changes I would make
TOP is fine
Mid Latent Stamina (attunements),Tempestuous Aria (Shouts), Imbued Melodies (Warhorn)
Bottom Unstable conduit (Overloading),Harmonious Conduit (Overloading), Lucid Singularity (overloading)

This gives all three lines a better feel. You’ll say it doesn’t really matter the order they’re in since you chose them from the list. But it does matter when build switching and you can easily remember that the bottom line is overloading, mid is about the new skills and the top is defensive.

Why not just make the OL have stability instead of Protection and Swiftness ? That way the vulnerability would compensate for the power of an OL.

I played some duels during this BWE with Tempest. I was dissapointed during BWE and with the changes Karl made in between i thought i was dissapointed this BWE as well.
In the end. I was right.

I cant see how anyone wants to have an Warhorn equipped instead of a focus. 4/8 skills are useless on the warhorn.
You never want to use the Air #4 and #5 abilities because everyone with a brain dodges them by just walking sideways.
Earth #5 on the warhorn spreads so slowly that even while you walk backwards you evade it.
The CC effect of water #4(? i believe) is so late that 99/100 times it wont even hit.

While all of the focus skills are pretty good.

Overloading while in a duel is practically impossible. tried to overload Fire/Air/Water a few times but my opponent laughed a little, walked outside the AoE and waited for the last second to interrupt me. the worst thing about this is though, you cant dodge it.
You know the interrupt is comming and you just have to stand there and take it like a man.

The shouts are ok..ish. Earth shout is pretty good with its reflect and AoE immo. The others wont ever see the light of day since cantrips outshine them in every way.

The elite is a materpiece from Anet. I never would have thought they could make a more horrible elite then Tornado/FGS/Elemental. But they outdid theirselfs on this 1.

The traits are so out of place im pretty sure Karl didnt have any idea what he was doing.

It feels like the tempest is a last minute rework from the original plan to make a sword ele.

-I think a trait for stability on Overload cast would really help a lot.
As PVP player ,i don’t think it’s worth to use your 60-75 cd stability for one skill that won’t change the tide of the battle-duel (especially in team fights)

-Air and earth overloads needs furthermore improving.

-Possibility to change element while channeling

-More useful trait line

Thank you for reading.

Peace and love.

the overloads are mostly ineffectual even if they are not interrupted – just walk away a short distance and apply ranged damage while the Ele sits there like a target dummy.

Mark.1679:

I cant see how anyone wants to have an Warhorn equipped instead of a focus. 4/8 skills are useless on the warhorn.

Take aquamancer’s alacrity with imbued melodies, get:

- Water field (Water globe) on a 16s CD that is easily blasted 2-3 times.
- Tidal surge is amazing as it is basically cleansing wave (1500 hp healed, + condi removed thanks to regen) on a 16s CD, with the added bonus of CC.
- Overload water is good team healing and cleanse and fits into a 16s water-swap rotation pretty well.
- Heat sync can make plays by sharing lots of boons

With that, it feels like you can hold a 1v1 indefinately, maybe even work out a rotation that wins 1v1’s (simply by out-sustaining). You have terrible damage, but so much support and self-survival.

It basically plays exactly the same as a staff ele does in pvp, except a little more melee-centric, a little more healing, and maybe more damage thanks to lightning whip instead of poor staff autos (in a 1v1). However, herein lies the problem, the only way to make tempest work is to basically do what every ele build has done forever: bunker up, win long fights through superior sustain, and provide good support/CC when you get in a teamfight. Is this a new role – not in any way! Is it a different way to do the same thing we have always done? Slightly.

Yes, this spec is a massive failure unless they really make some big changes (esp to overloads). Of all classes, elementalist is the one that least needs a support-oriented spec. Every ele spec already provides excellent support. However, it is too late to fix, maybe they can salvage it slightly by giving it some interesting tools.

Maybe next time they make specializations we will get something actually new.

It is actually sad that the introduction of one single trait – “Fresh Air” did more to open up a varied play-style for the class than an entire traitline, weapon, and set of utilities can.

BlackBeard.2873:

With that, it feels like you can hold a 1v1 indefinately, maybe even work out a rotation that wins 1v1’s (simply by out-sustaining). You have terrible damage, but so much support and self-survival.

Not in the current meta, I couldn’t come close.

morrolan.9608:

BlackBeard.2873:

With that, it feels like you can hold a 1v1 indefinately, maybe even work out a rotation that wins 1v1’s (simply by out-sustaining). You have terrible damage, but so much support and self-survival.

Not in the current meta, I couldn’t come close.

I am not sure if you should looking any class in this game base off of its abitly in 1v1. I think this is more so true for the tempest class who truly gives up effect and and effect that do not effect the tempest them self.

Jski.6180:

morrolan.9608:

BlackBeard.2873:

With that, it feels like you can hold a 1v1 indefinately, maybe even work out a rotation that wins 1v1’s (simply by out-sustaining). You have terrible damage, but so much support and self-survival.

Not in the current meta, I couldn’t come close.

I am not sure if you should looking any class in this game base off of its abitly in 1v1. I think this is more so true for the tempest class who truly gives up effect and and effect that do not effect the tempest them self.

This is true, but the only “mostly support” role in this game’s pvp is a bunker/support role as fulfilled by Guardians. That role requires a good amount of hard mitigation, healing, group cleanses, and stability for stomps/resses. Tempest has only healing and group cleanses, and certainly no significant stability to ever possibly contend with guardian.

Beyond that, the only way to play support is side-node support, which requires you to be tanky enough to stall out any 1v1 while having a bunch of group sustain when you are able get into group fights. This is what staff ele does best, and is all that tempest can hope to do. If you are support only, with no damage to help down people or no sustain to survive 1v1’s, you don’t have a place on a pvp team.

If you reduce the team support a bit and increase damage, you get d/d ele, which tempest can’t really compete with.

The problem is that the only roles that tempest can compete for in pvp are roles ele already fulfills quite well. Not a new role, just the same role. Thus all of the complaints about it being “more of the same, nothing new.”

BlackBeard.2873:

Jski.6180:

morrolan.9608:

BlackBeard.2873:

With that, it feels like you can hold a 1v1 indefinately, maybe even work out a rotation that wins 1v1’s (simply by out-sustaining). You have terrible damage, but so much support and self-survival.

Not in the current meta, I couldn’t come close.

I am not sure if you should looking any class in this game base off of its abitly in 1v1. I think this is more so true for the tempest class who truly gives up effect and and effect that do not effect the tempest them self.

This is true, but the only “mostly support” role in this game’s pvp is a bunker/support role as fulfilled by Guardians. That role requires a good amount of hard mitigation, healing, group cleanses, and stability for stomps/resses. Tempest has only healing and group cleanses, and certainly no significant stability to ever possibly contend with guardian.

Beyond that, the only way to play support is side-node support, which requires you to be tanky enough to stall out any 1v1 while having a bunch of group sustain when you are able get into group fights. This is what staff ele does best, and is all that tempest can hope to do. If you are support only, with no damage to help down people or no sustain to survive 1v1’s, you don’t have a place on a pvp team.

If you reduce the team support a bit and increase damage, you get d/d ele, which tempest can’t really compete with.

The problem is that the only roles that tempest can compete for in pvp are roles ele already fulfills quite well. Not a new role, just the same role. Thus all of the complaints about it being “more of the same, nothing new.”

Ok your talking about spvp (i always come at classes from wvw minded) tempest dose lack a lot of aoe stab like gurd but they get a lot of self stab or cant be knock back buffs (mist form the best stomp in the game!). Even the stab on earth swap is a realy chose for the tempest class if you must have all the stab you can.

I just wanted to post links to my thoughts here as links since I did not see this thread. Fresh air needs to proc during an overload thread. My biggest gripe is that as it currently stands Tempest makes that trait useless and closes a lot of potential game play!

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/HC-and-RS-are-blah-on-Tempest/first#post5474695

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Tempest-Makes-Fresh-Air-Useless/first#post5471062

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

This is a much better direction you are heading with Rebound. Hopefully this has no casting time to it as it sounds like it is being built for twitch play. It would offset Ele squishiness for sure. Infuse light comes to mind, so it would have to have a decent up time (5 to 8 seconds is reasonable in my mind), have a decent heal (since it only procs on death blow and hopefully retains it’s 60 second CD. The Aura on no proc is a good consolation and opens up more aura play. Something like this would be worth slotting rebound.

It is worth noting that Tempest Aria should also reduce the cooldown of shouts since Elementalist have much more reliable ways of applying weakness and getting might. As it stands it feels underwhelming compared to those methods. Eye of the Storm (needs shocking aura) and Shock and After Shock would feel more viable to run with a trait that reduces CD.

That is a pretty reasonable change to Sand Squall. Puts it on par with magnetic wave and unlike magnetic wave it will have an aura that can be shared out or additional boons can be gained from it. I see better synergy with with Heat Sync.

Jski.6180:

Ok your talking about spvp (i always come at classes from wvw minded) tempest dose lack a lot of aoe stab like gurd but they get a lot of self stab or cant be knock back buffs (mist form the best stomp in the game!). Even the stab on earth swap is a realy chose for the tempest class if you must have all the stab you can.

One problem with the stability/invulns eles get for pvp compared to guard: Having stab for resses/stomps once every 60 (or 75s untraited) is not frequently enough. Stab on earth isn’t possible to take, because pvp means “water/arcana/x” or gtfo. Even then, the stab on earth swap was a hard sell when it was unlimited, now that it is one stack it is simply pathetic.

This relegates tempest to a side-point role, competing with d/d ele and staff ele as minor variations on the same thing…what variety!

BlackBeard.2873:

Jski.6180:

Ok your talking about spvp (i always come at classes from wvw minded) tempest dose lack a lot of aoe stab like gurd but they get a lot of self stab or cant be knock back buffs (mist form the best stomp in the game!). Even the stab on earth swap is a realy chose for the tempest class if you must have all the stab you can.

One problem with the stability/invulns eles get for pvp compared to guard: Having stab for resses/stomps once every 60 (or 75s untraited) is not frequently enough. Stab on earth isn’t possible to take, because pvp means “water/arcana/x” or gtfo. Even then, the stab on earth swap was a hard sell when it was unlimited, now that it is one stack it is simply pathetic.

This relegates tempest to a side-point role, competing with d/d ele and staff ele as minor variations on the same thing…what variety!

BlackBeard, don’t be foolish. Tempest has a TON of variety! You can choose to get yourself stomped with a whopping FOUR new spells with gigantic cast times instead of having to choose between Churning Earth or Meteor Shower in the middle of a point.

Malchior.5732:

BlackBeard.2873:

Jski.6180:

Ok your talking about spvp (i always come at classes from wvw minded) tempest dose lack a lot of aoe stab like gurd but they get a lot of self stab or cant be knock back buffs (mist form the best stomp in the game!). Even the stab on earth swap is a realy chose for the tempest class if you must have all the stab you can.

One problem with the stability/invulns eles get for pvp compared to guard: Having stab for resses/stomps once every 60 (or 75s untraited) is not frequently enough. Stab on earth isn’t possible to take, because pvp means “water/arcana/x” or gtfo. Even then, the stab on earth swap was a hard sell when it was unlimited, now that it is one stack it is simply pathetic.

This relegates tempest to a side-point role, competing with d/d ele and staff ele as minor variations on the same thing…what variety!

BlackBeard, don’t be foolish. Tempest has a TON of variety! You can choose to get yourself stomped with a whopping FOUR new spells with gigantic cast times instead of having to choose between Churning Earth or Meteor Shower in the middle of a point.

I have to agree. I really felt a lack of interrupts from Mesmer and thief before tempest, now I feel like I can be interrupted again. They really found the role we needed as a class.

I feel like a lot of people’s gripes with this elite specialization come from overloads themselves. Mostly that they make you stay in one element, preventing the crazy switching that is the hallmark of the base Elementalist. Well, that and the interrupt issues of course.

But I had an odd thought that I think could help with it;

What if Overloads count as Attunement Swaps?

It’d be fun and interesting. Tempest would get immediate benefit for risking an Overload in the form of an elemental spec’s minor master trait (fire AoE, lightning stirke, area heal, or area cripple), or Arcane’s spec’s minor adept and master traits (fury on swap, aoe boon on swap). It’s also trigger some major traits too (One With Air, Cleansing Wave, Rock Solid, and Latent Stamina), some of which could be really interesting paired with their Overload, such as using Earth Overload to cripple enemies for longer than base duration and gain a stability stack to make it a little safer to cast. Or Water Overload would have a fast initial heal, with a condition cleanse and vigor added in. Positively lovely support would be possible there. Not to mention Arcane furthering the buff-bot feeling of the build by providing Fury and an attunement-based boon.

Also, maybe reduce the cast time of Overloads to 3.5s. It’s still an incredibly long time in PvP and WvW, so it’s still interrupt bait. Ether Feast is about that long, and it sees limited use due to that cast time, so the risk/reward factor is still there.

But you want to know what else is 3.5s cast time? Stomping. Stomping is the biggest rsik/reward currently in the game, with a 3.5s cast standing between you and preventing a player from being revived. But it can be made moderately safe, through quickness, stability, stealth, and good ol’ fashioned situational awareness. The Overload 5s cast, however, is super-duper-pooper-scooper hard to make safe. Quickness still makes it 2.5s, which is still very easy to see and interrupt. Stability is hard to get on an Elementalist, with only Armor of Earth providing a safe stomp, but it’s on a very long cooldown. And Stealth isn’t really a thing for Eles. So 3.5s… I don’t think that’d be too unreasonable.

I’ll try not to Echo too much here, but I had a thought about Overloads that might give them more tactical use, and hence, viability in PvP.

Each one should be a means of area denial, specifically, a fire and forget node clear/defense. It shouldn’t insta-down anyone, but give them something to think about.

First, the AoE effects should extend just beyond the area of a capture point. So that anyone entering for a cap/de-cap would be affected.

Second, the Overloads should include more control effects, representing their increased strength, and something the Ele is sorely lacking.

Examples:

Fire could cause a Pull in addition to its damaging effects, since it is a tornado, keeping the enemies in its AoE.

Air’s lightning strikes could inflict Daze, you try getting hit in the head by a lightning bolt and keep operating fine!

Water could Launch any enemy within the AoE, representing its Tidal Wave force.

Earth could include pulsing Knockdowns, perhaps in a smaller AoE given the nature of the Overload. Upon ending affected enemies are Knockback’d.

Damage needs to be tweaked, BUT remember the central concern for Overloads is that they provide something the Ele can’t normally do. Additional control effects would add a layer of active defense, something the Ele SORELY lacks.

If they’re going to make the thing 90% aura support why don’t they just call it an Auramancer and be done with it?

Conncept.7638:

If they’re going to make the thing 90% aura support why don’t they just call it an Auramancer and be done with it?

In that sense it does feel awkward. When I read “Tempest” I think “wooooo tempest! yay storms striking kitten everywhere, iz gonna be huuuge!”, and not “oh, yeah, now we got a full healer, healing healing everywhere”.

I’m afraid they might touch other specs before making Tempest viable, all of our traits are too yummy to drop any for Tempest. The main reason you drop a spec for an elite spec is the trait line/mechanics, weapon just should be a flavor, not the focus (I mean focus not the weapon).

My feedback on playing Tempest in Verdant Brink.

OVERLOADS
i will not repeat what others already said, i just say
in BW1 i was using only fire overload as “Pocket Raptor Baker” in BW2 using overloads felt much better.

WARHORN
very good skills.

From my observation Persisting Flames doesn´t affect Wildfire.
Other problem i cant shoot Lightning Orb behind myself not even if staying in one place.

SHOUTS
are middle ground between Guardians support shouts and Reapers attack shouts, i like it.

“Feel the Burn!” is the best, nothing more to say.

“Wash the Pain Away!” great support heal.

“Eye of the Storm!” theme of other shouts is to give friends something good and somthing bad for enemies this one gives only good. My idea is when it breaks stun it inflict damage on enemy which inflicted that stun, visual effect would be lightning from breakstuned player to enemy.

“Shock and Aftershock!” very good shout but i think it would be better as chain skill. Firts skill of chain Shock apply magnetic aura and cripple, second skill of chain Aftershock! apply immobile and damage, and Aftershock! must be used in 5 second after Shock or else it goes on 50% reduced cooldown.

“Flash-Freeze!” i didn´t played much with this one it feels somehow not attractive as others, what about give it 1/4 daze and instant casting time?

“Rebound” new version sounds good but we don´t know duration of effect how much it heals so not much to say until BW3 except please make it instant cast time.

TRAITS
Minor traits:
All ninor traits are about overloads i think Speedy Conduit and Hardy Conduit should be merged in minor Grandmaster trait and new minor Master trait should be made somthing “On attunement swap” since it is still our mechanic.
My ideas:
Melodious Resonance – on attunement swap copy one boon from your ally to you and you allyes in range.
Tuning Attunement – you get retaliation on fire swap, quickness on air swap, aegis on earth swap and resistance on water swap.

Major traits:
Tempestuous Aria – please 20% shout cd reduction.

Earthen Proxy – meybe some increase of effect in this state i says “equip earth specialisation”.

Lucid Singularity – what about adding our loved superspeed?

Imbued Melodies – would be better to break stun ppl in radius not in front of us i think Karl was talking about this during tempest stream.