Guild Wars 2

Once again, leave your thoughts and feedback from BWE3 about the tempest here. Test the heck out of it: overloads, warhorn, mix gear, traits (even the ones you feel it’s meh), see how you perform against solo content and group content, test your healing capabilities and effectiveness, etc.

Ideally, before leaving the feedback, give us a quick summary about your testing environment:

• Mode: PvE, PvP, WvW
• Gear: Cleric, Berserker, Soldier, Sinister, etc
• Environment: Roaming or zerg (WvW), Capture or Bunkering, etc (PvP), Open World, or Instances, etc (PvE)
• Your feedback about how well tempest is performing under the environment you chose.

Happy BWE, and may Heat Sync survive!

Karl McLain.5604:

Bam!
Thanks everyone in advance for your constructive feedback. Please keep in mind that we’re getting close to day zero and that the smaller the change, the more likely we’ll be able to discuss and action that feedback. This isn’t the end, however. We’ll continue to make changes, when necessary, after HoT releases, as well.

Thanks!
-Karl

Like how you ‘fixed’ the sceptre?

Anyway, downloading BWE3 now. Will test to see if burning PvE is still viable.

trying fresh air with tempest right now, tbh it’s kinda sad because i get to use 2 attunements, i can basically neglect fire and water because they don’t give me much and just play air and earth.. being able to switch attunements while using an overload would really help make the playstyle more fluid.

Thank you, Karl! Yes, I also agree that being able to swap Attunements while Overloading would be a massive help.

Tempest need some sort of condition removal on Warhorn or Shouts (“Wash the Pain Away!” or “Feel the Burn!”).
Waiting 5s before Overloading or specing Water is not good for Tempest.

Heat Sync – currently still share all boons, need to be changed to share only Might, Fury, Regeneration, Swiftness and Protection.
Wildfire – can’t be blasted with Phoenix, other blast finishers work fine, need little faster cast time.
Water Globe – it’s difficult to blast, it would be better if the skill was ground targeted or centered on elementalist.

“Shock and Aftershock!” – remove cast time.
“Flash-Freeze!” – remove cast time.
“Eye of the Storm!” – replace Super Speed with Shocking/Light Aura.
“Rebound.” – healing part of this skill should be increased to 5000 and healing power scaling set to 50%.

Latent Stamina – this trait need to grant 25 to 50 endurance instead of 10.
Unstable Conduit – should grant the aura at the start of overload.
Tempestuous Aria – add 20% cool down reduction for shouts
Earthen Proxy – I can’t see good use for this trait.
Harmonious Conduit – need to grant 2 or 3 stacks of stability.
Imbued Melodies – IMHO previous version with cool down reduction was better.
Element Bastion – healing power scaling should be increased for this trait.

Speedy conduilt :4s of Superspeed > 8s of Swiftness
Rebound : Instant cast or bring a breakstun
Lighting Orb : Each orb daze for 1/2s , dont need to speed it up or make some damage with it
Harmonious Conduit :Up to 2 stack of stability ,the 10% damage effect last longer 2~3 second .
Water Globe : Make it centered on elementalist
All others warhorn skills need some speed up.
That’s all for now , was try a d/w build ,not so bad ,at least it’s playable . I was 1v2 double daredevil and they only beat me when they out run me and reset their burst rotation. Swiftness not just enough ,add some more mobility will be better
Sry for my english if somewhere weird , it’s not my main language.

Overloads feel pretty good now!

Rebound – honestly, there is no saving it. It needs to be replaced with a storm-related elite. Has absolutely nothing to do with the specialization, and I haven’t used it once.

Shouts still don’t feel that great. The earth one is an obvious ‘use only when you need a reflect’. Should have the option to clear a condi or 2 without needing the runes.

Dorid.1793:

Heat Sync – currently still share all boons, need to be changed to share only Might, Fury, Regeneration, Swiftness and Protection.

Mesmer’s signet of inspiration works the same way than Elementalist’s heat sync . Please do not change Heat Sync.

mode: pvp & wvw
gear: cele
environment: d/d bunker

feedback:

MUCH improved! few remaining changes that are really, really necessary before release:

- remove line targeting from air skill 5; makes it completely useless – needs to work like water skill 5. To survive as an ele you have to constantly move and circle, which makes line targeting not work for ele’s. Water skill 5 works well because you’re moving anyway and it sets up nicely for a comeback with fire 3

- shouts still aren’t worth a skill slot because the effects don’t last long enough. Need 6 1/2 sec on the buffs like cantrips. The damage is actually a nice addition, but ele’s only survive by stacking buffs and losing 1 1/2 sec is just too much to give up for a condi I’m going to apply with weapons anyway

- fire skill 5 doesn’t do enough damage to make it worthwhile – nice combo with air 4, but it doesn’t work because fire 5 is so weak. needs more stacks of burn than just 2 or more outright damage. compare to dagger 5 – we’re just giving up too much.

- the overloads are so much better than last time, thanks for listening

- the knockback on water skill 4 is too slow, we give up a lot of self healing for the tempest build and need water 4 to push the enemies off us, but by the time the skill gets off you’re dead. The cast time is about right at 1/4 sec, but there is a long lag between cast and actual knockback – I guess because it starts behind us? Anyway its very frustrating and really, really needs to get fixed

- water 5 is fun and actually works REALLY WELL with the ele’s play style but kind of like the other 5 slot skills, not powerful enough to replace what you give up from other skill sets. compare to dagger 5

Thanks again for listening – much improved!

was playing around with rebound a bit… it’s not very good. it would be way better if it just gave you an invul if you happen to die during the 5s instead of the heal as most of the time it won’t make a difference.

another thing is that the 5s until you can use an overload are too long, needs to be reduced to 3s.

My thoughts after playing:

- Overload cooldown is far too long. 20 seconds is extreme.
- Stability while overloading needs to be a baseline minor. Even in PvE, you get knocked out too easily.
- Still too many horrible traits, like Latent Stamina.
- Shouts need to all be instant and all grant auras.
- Also Aftershock has far too long a cooldown, at 50 seconds.
- Air Overload is very weak due to only hitting 3 targets.
- Fire Overload can stack damage well on a stationary target, but anything moving avoids much of it. Maybe give it a bigger radius.
- Lightning Orb is absolutely horrible. Just, wow.
- Wildfire has issues, but has no target cap and can put out some massive AoE damage.
- Feel the Burn is AWESOME, and is how all shouts should feel.

Also, what is up with the starting camera angle?

I played tempest a bit today, the new rebound does seem like it has a place but the duration of the buff on you seems a little short, if you knew an attack would come in those 5 seconds why not just get out of the way? or dodge?

Shout skills feel a lot better but I don’t understand why we do not have a cooldown reduction trait like every other elite with regards to their new skill type. Adding 20% cooldown to tempestuous Aria trait would go a long way in making that trait competitive.

Harmonious Conduit duration on damage buff needs to be higher to feel impact, I can’t even get a full meteor showers worth of damage off within those 5 seconds. If it is meant as a more burst oriented skill it should be a 20% buff to damage otherwise it just feels weak.

Earthen proxy seems like a very boring trait unless it can affect allies.

Lucid Singularity should prevent all conditions while overloading not just movement impairing condis. That would give us some more use out of overloads.

Random Thoughts and suggestions.

- Combine Hardy Conduit and Speedy Conduit into Harmonious Conduit. (Overloads grant needed Stability, protection, and swiftness)
- Move Latent Stamina to a minor baseline.
- Shouts should be insta cast with X Cool Down. If not, add reduce recharge of shouts to Tempestuous Aria.
- Earthen Proxy should maybe include …..Increase Toughness and Vitality of allies by +75 or +100). This way it feels like we are supporting our allies.
- Lightning Orb should not be line targeting.
- Overloads well read previous posts in thread and forums.
I feel like we should have some unique or new Aura or something. Maybe one that encompasses all of our elemental auras/traits (Fire, Water, Air, Arcana, Earth).

PvE review:

Overloads seem fine, maybe shorten the cast on fire and air and buff air overload damage by like 5%. Also, allowing us to swap attunements while casting would be nice.

Traits:
Harmonious Conduit needs a desperate duration increase on the 10% buff, 8s-10s would be perfect.
Imbued Melodies currently works with ONLY warhorn, the second part of trait. Boon duration on warhorn only is fine but second part should work with any weapon set.

Weapon Skills:
Wildfire needs faster cast time so can actually blast it with D Tooth and Phoenix.
Lightning Orb needs a damage buff.
Dust Storm, make it pulse every 1s instead of 2s.

Overall after Ice Bow nerf Tempest will be meta in PvE if Harmonious Conduit gets a decent duration buff, so gratz on making this Specialization work

In general: I do think the overload cast time is insanely long and you are too heavily punished beyond this long cast time due to the long cooldown afterwards. The payoff doesn’t seem to be worth it imo. A lot could be done to improve it such as allowing you to change attunements while casting an overload rather than making it cancel it. The cooldown is obviously a problem and could be solved with either a major trait to reduce recharge on overloaded attunements.

The Stability should give more than one stack and be a minor because no matter what tier you put it in it will be the best thing to get for the profession and all other traits will be ignored.

In general: It feels like Tempest might be one of the only elite specs that actively punish the player for using the special abilities.

Edit: Also, 5 seconds is a really long time to remain in attunement. Unless you get CC’ed or something you’re usually ready to swap attunements by the time overload is up and you would usually do that since it does the same thing.

you should become a moving water field when you use the water overload, afaik you also become a fire field when you use the fire overload.

I don’t see the heal being used over Ether Renewal because there is no other condi removal.

I don’t see the water or air shouts getting any use. Why doesn’t the air one give an aura? As others have mentioned, they all need to be insta-cast. And unless I am missing something, basically any skill that does ‘something + earth aura’ is strictly going to be used when reflect is needed.

Swiftness on overload doesn’t make sense and is a waste of a minor. Stability on overload should be that minor, because it’s a must have trait anyway.

All of my posts are from a PvE perspective.

I still have no reason to use this. Everything I run with tempest immediately gets better the less tempest options I take.

The only thing I was able to do with it was a standard pve staff build with tempest replacing water. I could open with overload air and then just camp fire and use overload fire on cd to get reasonable results, but nothing I was doing with that build required tempest in any way.

Here are my thoughts. I’m mostly a PvE player. I like it a lot better than its first version, but it could still use quite a few improvements.

Overloads:

I like them all, actually. They’ve gotten a lot better since the first iteration, and I love how we can actually dodge in them (even though it cancels the channel). They also seem to stunbreak which is awesome.

Shouts:
Flash Freeze and Aftershock should have no cast time. That allows them to work pretty nice with the overloads.
Eye of the Storm – Superspeed is kind of lame. I don’t think shock aura would make it too strong.
Aftershock – Cooldown is way too long. Maybe 40 seconds would be better.
Rebound – Base healing and scaling could be a bit higher. Kind of lowish right now.
Wash the Pain Way – The healing scaling seems kind of low.

Traits
Speedy Conduit – Seems all right for a minor
Hardy Conduit – At the very least, it should give 4 seconds of protection to match the cast time.

Gale Song – Would be better if Eye of the Storm were improved (see above)
Latent Stamina – Seems decent.
Unstable Conduit – Would be a lot more usable if the aura was at the start of the overload.

Earthen Proxy – Hard to get enough uptime on this. Maybe it should also increase the duration of protection as well.
Harmonious Conduit – Way better now! Love it.
Tempestuous Aria – Could use 20% CD reduction on shouts

Elemental Bastion – Healing could be improved. The Frost aura effect is too similar to Soothing Ice in Water. Maybe instead have it grant a damage bonus while an aura is active.
Imbued Melodies – I like it for a support tempest. Not bad.
Lucid Singularity – Not a huge fan of this one, even in PvE it seems kind of limited. Maybe instead it could affect the damage or radius of overloads? Not too sure.

Weapon Skills
Heat Sync – Probably shouldn’t copy quickness. If it’s still being abused, maybe swap its cooldown with Wildfire (it could use a bit more uptime).
Water Globe – Way too awkward to use. Maybe just have it follow the tempest around similar to Berserker torch 5? Could maybe also use some better healing power scaling.

On a side note, could you maybe rebalance auras, or make them a little more interesting? In PvE especially most of them just aren’t that useful.

Thanks for looking at our feedback!

Let me start by saying that IMHO Tempest is a worthless and awful “elite” specialization for reasons posted here https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Why-is-tempest-bad/first#post5556720.

And pardon me for not giving a kitten about “we will fix it after release”, this should be decent on release. This mentality of “screw it, we will fix it later” is one of the biggest issues I have with game companies nowadays and, IMHO, is what separates the good ones from the bad ones.

That being said, here comes the last gamble on feedback that I hope once again doesn’t get just ignored. I tried to keep in line with the Feedback Guidelines from now on.

Role: Tempest should have a role of a Group Support and CC applier, thus working as a party buffer and debuffer.

Traits:
Gale Song (and the shout): All stay the same, but the skill should cast an AoE of 1 or 2s stun.
Reason: Promotes synergy with Lightning Rod. Fits the role above for the Tempest and makes enemies think twice on CC the Tempest.

Latent Stamina: Vigor boon should be deleted. Stamina recharge should come from staying in the attunement and should be party wide, i.e., after 2-3s in an attunement, each 1s recovers 10 stamina to self and allies.
Reason: Promotes better attunement camping. Works as a better party buffer. Does not related to a single attunement.

Unstable Conduit: Duration of Auras need to be extended for Fire and Frost. Shocking and Magnetic are fine.
Reason: Auras are bad already and don’t stack in duration anymore. Fire and Frost need to be longer to have meaningful effects. Aura giving should be AoE

Speedy Conduit / Hardy Conduit / Harmonious Conduit: Should be merged into this minor master trait:
Reason: Makes no sense to have minor Master and GM benefiting only Overloads. Stability on Overload is also mandatory to reduce the risk and, thus, justify a non-nuke reward on the skill.

Tempestous Aria: It’s fine.

Earthen Proxy: Should be deleted and replaced with Elemental Bastion.
Reason: Elemental Bastion is barely GM worthy thanks to the high heal, heal should be lower though and this should be made in to a Master trait to open room for a better and GM worthy trait.

Harmonious Conduit: The 10% buff should be increased to a 20% buff, duration should be: During overload and then, after completing, for 5 extra seconds. The 20% during overload should apply to damage and to heal. Party wide at all times.
Reason: 10% is too low, only after overload means that your damage overloads lose this important buff for no reason. This way you get a better payout during the overload and can then use your weapon skills to ditch some pain with the buff.

GM Minor Trait: Should be changed to an increase duration of outgoing stun/daze and CC conditions you apply.
Reason: See role above. This would greatly help with that concept.

Imbued Melodies: 10s ICD is too low considering that you gain Magnetic Aura of 5s. This trait results in almost immunity to projectiles. 10s ICD is fine if you remove the Magnetic Aura application. Increase boon duration buff to 25%.
Reason: It is OP currently, this is bad.

Lucid Singularity: Should also provide a super speed buff (4s) when using Overloads.
Reason: Currently it is not GM worthy, by applying super speed you go the full other way around, i.e., from being subject to those abilities to being super fast and unstoppable.

Elemental Bastion: Should be changed to be another Aura Trait. Auras you apply are now “Tempestous Auras” (different icon and not overriden by other non “Tempestous Auras”. Auras have additional effects:

Easy mode:
Fire Shield: Now applies also Blind on enemies that hit you (1s). ICD 5s.
Frost Aura: Damage reduction buffed to 20%
Lightning Aura: Now also grants retaliation when applied (3s) and enemies suffer Weakness (3s). ICD 5s.
Magnetic Aura: Now applies immobilize (1s) to enemy when struck. ICD 5s.

Cooler mode:
Fire shield: Effects of boons are buffed (varying %)
Frost Aura: Conditions on you have their effects reduced. (varying %)
Lightning Aura: Returns 20 % of damage dealt to you.
Magnetic Aura: Steals 2 boons from enemy upon cast on you.

Warhorn: Repurposed to Group Support / CC / Area denial.

Heat Sync: Should creating a pulsing field that grants might to allies and burn to enemies within (Duration 5s, pulse every second).
Wildfire: Needs to spread a bit faster. Needs to work with Persisting Flames.

Tidal Surge: Needs to have a bit more range, it is too low now. It should also be a bit faster. It feels too cluncky now and difficult to use.
Water Globe: Should follow player. It would improve efficiency of skill, easier to burst and for allies to burst. That would help a lot with WvW uses. Should also remove 1 condition when cast.

Cyclone: Needs to be faster, suffers same issues as Tidal Surge.
Lightning Orb: Damage is pitful. Needs to be increased. Should not move, should be area cast and be stationary. Would work great as an area denial being a disco ball of lightning destruction.

Sand Squall: Weird skill with a lot jumbled together. Don’t really know what to do with it, but it feels like a mess.
Dust Storm: Make it faster to spread out. Reduce casting time. Improve the area (make it a circle and not a line) and make it clearer to see. It feels very strange to use it now.

Shouts:
Wash the Pain Away: Slight reduction to cast time, should be 1s. up the radius of each tier by one tier, thus 240, 360, 480. Would help in making it a better party heal.
Feel the Burn: Will never slot it, but its fine for its Cooldown.
Aftershock: Make it instant cast, reduce cooldown to 35 or 40. Rest is fine. The skill’s effect does not justify the cooldown.
Flash Freeze: Make it instant cast. Cooldown should be equal to Feel the burn.
Eye of the Storm: Reduce cooldown to 40s. Rest see trait comment above.

Rebound: Instead of “heals if would die”, give a flat damage absorption with a % of healing from damage cause, i.e., it absorbs up to X amount of damage done to you and heals you for Y%. Buff should be longer, increase to 10s, but with the X being a cap. Remove the granting of Aura part. This would make skill useful.

Overloads: With the changes above, only Earth and Water feel bad for me because their effects are far too weak. Water needs to heal more during channel, whilst Earth should have the bleed application increased to 2 or 3 stacks and that should fix it.

That is it from me.

This post is all based on my experience gathered in BWE #3 in PvP (first day):
1. MOST IMPORTANT: Make warhorn abilites skillshots that can hit behind you. I know we are getting close to release, but warhorn is very clunky and uncomfortable, making you able to hit behind yourself would make this specialization 10x better. (Please, I beg you, scepter “buff” was astonishing joke, so please, please make Tempest better than scepter)
2. Rebound needs a bit more heal, something like 4k heal, otherwise you’re better of running FGS (please don’t nerf it into the trash bin too, just like you did with Icebow).
3. Condition cleanse is incredibly painful, since you need to sacrifice a MASSIVE amount of damage or utility by taking Trooper runes instead of Strength or Radiance. You could simply ditch shouts, but whats the point of having them then (if 70% of the class is based on auras)?

Still, the tempest is leagues better than the old version, even tho it’s still very bad compared to other specs (there are exceptions). Stability helps a lot, but I am worried how it will feel in WvW frontline zerging. Lets be real, a single stack of stability in frontline zerging is pathetic (maybe scale it with the amount of players in a 2000 radius?). Imbued melodies is fantastic and 10% increased damage after overloading is a fantastic idea.

Tomiyou.3790:

10% increased damage after overloading is a fantastic idea.

It just needs to last longer.

Overloading yourself is a cool idea in itself fantasy wise.
Love the stunbreak on overloads.
Great to have the needed stability if traited
(shouldnt that be baseline actually?).

Changes:
I think the overloads are a bit too weak and the waittime before you can use them + the cooldown that they increase on attunements, is to high.
I would like to see the waittime and cooldown being lower.

Water overload:
Increase the healing some?

Earth overload:
In addition to this, stoney armor being added for the elementalist when overloading earth (the focus #5 ability, while in earth overload). Becoming stoney armor/earth yourself while overloading the earth, seems very fitting.

This gives the overloads this extra oomph that they need imo.

Cyclone pull warhorn #4.
This 180 range pull is very small.
A range increase would be welcome.

Rebound:
The Rebound heal seems very low.
You basically can get killed by the next hit right after it.

Personally I would really really really want the earth overload change the most.

Overloading yourself is an idea I like fantasy wise and I would love the Tempest being a strong Elite spec like many others.

EDIT:
Final edit.

Two changes to fire and air overloads to give them a defensive element, so that you dont become a complete punching back (with protection and stab on), while overloading these two attunements.

Overload fire:
In addition to its current effects, the radius increased to 360 (the 180 is to small).
While overloading fire, while spinning as a tornado, you will destroy projectiles.

Overload air:
In addition to its current effects,
when you start this overload, you will gain shocking aura.

Alphard.6529:

Tomiyou.3790:

10% increased damage after overloading is a fantastic idea.

It just needs to last longer.

It is pretty kitten stupid that the only way to keep reasonable up-time on this buff is to constantly Attunement swap. Runs counter to the entire spec.

20 second attunement cooldowns are WAY TOO LONG.

Tempests get 4 dark stained claws (junk) when created? It says, Tempest reward, why is that?

I need to test more to give a good opinion (only tested 2 hours +/-), but the improvements are noticiable. For the first time in the betas overloads can be casted in PvP without failing 99% of the time, and the damage, healing un utilitys feel worth. There are some skills, shouts and traits very underpowered (in the “I will never use them” lvl) in my opinion, but they are FAR less, and looking at heat sinc unchanged (or almost, I didnt tested it too much) brings me joy as it is a unique mechanic that shouldn’t be scraped, only tweaked for balance (by limiting some boons, time or whatever).

Stability on Overloads is great, but it REALLY needs to be a minor trait otherwise the other 2 master traits will NEVER see play.

Powerful Auras + One With Fire + Unstable Conduit + Harmonious Conduit + Element Bastion = So much fun!

First impressions:

The Tempest is finally performing at a decent level. The changes you implemented from the last beta weekend to this one have brought it up to a level of play that is finally consistant with others in the game. Is there still room for improvement? Without a doubt. But if this were the final product I could at least say that it finally has begun to start working.

WARHORN:

There is still the issue of speed with regards to many of the Warhorn abilities that need to be addressed.

Tidal Surge: It still moves slow. I don’t think I’ve ever hit anyone with its knock-back ability. I think that instead of it dealing knock back, you should scrap that and add an condition cleanse effect. This will allow it to compete with Cleansing Wave in terms of an off-hand self-sustain. At present the Tempest still needs to trait into water to get its condition clearing, and we want to give Elementalists more options in terms of their trait lines.

Water Glob: This water field still moves a bit too fast but, more importantly, the moving aspect of it makes it difficult for people to prepare for it. Seeing as how the Druid got the waterfield on themselves, I doubt this skill will be changed. And granted, its decent the way it is right now.

Cyclone: It’s another slow CC that only really hits people if they are right ontop of you. This is kinda pointless considering the ability of Cyclone is that it pulls them towards you. I would like to see the cyclone materialize in front of the elementalist and travel forward quicker to ensure it hits players and then pulls them back. It is also difficult to use the speed burst on other players in your group if they are ahead of you.

Lighting Orb: I don’t know what to say… this move is painfully slow. It never hits and does terrible damage. This move needs to be changed ASAP. It either needs a speed buff, a damage buff, or it needs to do something special that makes it worth its terrible slow travel speed. Perhaps allow Lighting Org to reveal players it passes through? Please look into making this skill more useful A-Net.

Dust Storm: Did you increase the speed? It feels a little bit faster, but I think it may just be me. In any regard, it can still be dodged but just backing up. It still has the smallest amount of usefulness on the warhorn. Please buff the speed of this skill and make it worth using as a nice blind.

SHOUTS

Please, for the love of all six gods, we NEED a trait that reduces the cool down on shouts. At present, I was only able to make the Tempest work for me when I used the same three Cantrips I have been using for the past three years. I’ve tried running support aura and a condition build with shouts, and both fell flat.This is not a good sign. The shouts are just painful, they don’t deal enough much damage for the cool-downs they have. 50 seconds on Aftershock is unacceptable for what it does considering you can use Signet of Earth for an even stronger immoble, better damage and shorter cool down (plus the added toughness)

If no trait is given, then please just do an across the board reducing in cool downs for these shouts. They will not replace any utility in their current state which is another major problem that needs to be addressed for Elementalists.

Wash the Pain Away: I’ll echo it again, Tempest have no condi-cleanse right now. If you want to try and break up the water/arcane/x meta, please include some form of condition cleanse on this skill, even if its at the cost of group healing.

Rebound: This is an okay skill. It is extremely niche, but I think it fits for what its trying to do. Thank you for this change.

ABILITIES/OVERLOADS

Honestly, I think the abilities are finally getting together. I still feel the minor traits Speedy and Hardy conduits should be merged and the final minor should offer one stack of stab. on overload. The three stacks of stab on Earth overload is GREAT and it makes it actually useful.

We still can not dodge through overloading though. It is unfortunate. On a whole, Overloads are still situation at best. They feel better, but at the end of the day I still think it isn’t a very good profession mechanic. 17 second recharge on attunements is just terrible.

Auras share builds are getting better, and this is a huge plus. However, please look at how spread out the aura traits are. They are spread across too many trait lines to really be a game changing mechanic for the game.

Also, maybe a small suggestion, instead of Frost Aura which we already get with Soothing Ice, can Elemental Bastion apply a Light Aura instead? At present, these two skills kinda are at odds with each other (EB and Soothing Ice) due to the natural of how Auras stack. So changing this aura to Light Aura may be a good way to address that.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Tempest is finally shaping up to be a good class, but it is still lacking behind other professions. At the end of the day, we can’t all hope to be like a Reaper I guess in terms of all the new shinys they get. Still, please continue to balance Tempest in a way that ensures it brings a new style of combat to the Ele. I don’t want to have to use Temespt only with cantrips… Please.

We will never have condi cleanse on aura nor can we.

Guys,

Keep in mind that when giving a suggestion you need to consider the bigger picture.

Tempest’s biggest issue is that it directly competes with the D/D water/arcane/X meta we have today (trying to be an upgrade or a downgrade). And, therefore, you can not have stuff that would work too well with the water/arcane/x meta, because then Tempest becomes the standard For X in the meta – specially now that fire got the nerf bat hard.

Think about this, if you give condi cleanse with auras with a trait or with a rune that can also work with Elemental Bastion, water/arcane/Tempest would have insane healing and insane condi clear thanks to: Water swap + High Aura generation (and if trooper runes could be used. It would have even higher cleanse). It would be unbeatable in 1v1 and almost so in all 1v2 scenarios and still do decent damage (it would still be able to ramp up high amounts of might with D/D).

You would create a monster that would be terrible for the meta and would only call forth the nerf bat.

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Stability on Overloads is great, but it REALLY needs to be a minor trait otherwise the other 2 master traits will NEVER see play.

This. It is mandatory.

While I am still disappointed that tempest just competes with other ele builds for the same role, that is the hand we have been dealt. That being said, one major change that would help both water overload and/or warhorn a great deal:

- Warhorn 5 should be a PbAOE water field, like the engie toolbelt skill on their heal gyro and druid water field skill. It is WAY more useful than having a water field that just runs away from you.
- Water overload as a waterfield might make it useful.

Alrighty,

Mode: PvP & WvW
Gear: Berserker scepter/x
Enviorment: Small scalefights (1v1 up to 10v10)

The game play needs to be more rapid and fluid for it to work with damage builds. being able to swap attunements while overloading could be a thing.

The warhorn needs to be faster and have more impact, for example cyclone is not enough CC to land a dragon tooth and lightning orb is way too slow. I also don’t feel the defense from earth is enough, I mean compare it to focus.

As of now I see no reason why I should pick up Tempest at all if I want to play scepter/x

Axialbloom.8109:

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Stability on Overloads is great, but it REALLY needs to be a minor trait otherwise the other 2 master traits will NEVER see play.

This. It is mandatory.

I agree with this.

this is an important observation that I would have missed if not for playing tempest so long:

THE TEMPEST BUILD / WARHORN HAS NO RANGE CLOSING SKILL = OWNED BY RANGE ATTACKS

this is a critical flaw that will undoubtedly get exploited soon after release – please fix

Okay..

I tried running Tempest with cele D/D, taking out arcane field and fire field, replacing fire with lightning. Basically, Fresh Air D/D, if that even makes sense.

Overload Air seems to be pretty powerful on Fresh Air build. Just overload it, swap to fire and begin your usual chain, then swap back to Air again to overload it. Deals a ton of damage.

Overload Fire is pretty stupid for it’s damage, but I find it’s useful for pre-stacking might, you should be able to get 16 stacks of might with it after the overload is finished, and you swap to earth and cast #4 and #5.

Rebound is.. pretty lackluster. The heal doesn’t do much and the next attack would probably kill you. It might be useful if a thief decides to heartseeker you but, for other classes it doesn’t really help much.

You could probably buff the healing amount, perhaps the lethal strike would heal you instead for 200% of the amount? There would be a hard limit on how much heal you can receive though.

And swapping attunements while overloading might be potentially OP.. I could Overload Air, swap another attunement and proc Fresh Air, then swap back to air, wait for 5 sec and overload again.. Perma overload?

5 secs to wait to use overload is fine, but the longer recharge is honestly really locking you out. I wouldn’t mind if the overloads are shorter, and the effects more prominent.

Oh and warhorn.. Never really tried it but it seems to be lackluster..

Rebound – the base healing is way too weak. Either make the duration longer or dramatically improve the healing effect.

Frost Aura – this aura need some improvement to work with new skills/trait lines. Damage reduction should be 20% plus giving this aura a % to freezed enemy.

Flash Freeze – Recharge time should be shorter…. or give this shout a % to “freezed” the enemy (matching the name and make up the lost of FrostBow).

-Wash away the pain (Love it)
-Rebound is useful
-Overloads (are fun, but aren’t useable because of 5 second timer on attunement)
-Shouts (meh)
-Warhorn (isn’t fun or useful, the buffs are weak and the 5 skills are sloppy targetting. Skills are more stand alone or poorly cycled through)

I won’t be using tempest or my elementalist. After a year and half break from the game I am already ready to quit again (before the expansion when starts).

Overload – Even if you take every possible overload trait, they aren’t worth the cost + risk to cast in pvp…even when you can get frequent aoe shocking auras with powerful aura. If you make the mechanic as OP as possible, it still isn’t rewarding enough because the costs are just too high. Honestly, the costs NEED TO COME DOWN. Remove either the pre-charge (if you want them to be powerful effects that you sometimes delay for) or the CD penalty (if you want them to be used on-rotation, leaving you weak to interrupts). The 4s cast time is also an eternity still. If you aren’t going to give 3 stacks of stability baseline, they should be 2.25s cast max (same as drake’s breath).

Warhorn – Honestly, this just doesn’t fit in any build. It doesn’t do anything unique, has mechanics that don’t work, and doesn’t even have the tools to work in combination with either dagger or scepter. How I would fix it:
1. Heat Sync, if changed to only share might, is a dead skill. If it needs a cap on the shared duration, that is fine, but it NEEDS to be able to share boons like stability to make up for its baseline dearth.
2. Wildfire needs a much shorter cast-time. The skill doesn’t do much other than just be a fire field, and it does that worse than ring of fire.
3. Water-globe needs to be PbAOE and follow you, like the ranger and engie skills. If the point is front-line support, this would improve sustain capability way more than having to chase a moving field that runs away.
4. Cyclone needs to be faster or have a wider area of effect.
5. Lightning orb is just 100% useless. It needs to either do way more damage, or would improve if it just sat in an area where cast as a form of area denial.
6. Sand Squall – This honestly just seems like a bad version of focus 4 in earth (doesn’t cleanse condis, has a cast time, and all for just a very short boon duration increase).
7. Dust storm – it is impossible to see where this is and moves way too slowly. Either have it sit in an area or move with the ele.

Mode: PvE and PvP
Gear: Cleric
Environment: Bunkering and Strong Hold omega super wtfisthisamazingness Escourt, PVE Raid healing (once it gets fixed)

Holy. Freaking. Wow.

While there is certainly room to improve on some areas, the Tempest as its “intended” Support Close Range role is bar none one of if not the BEST support options in Guild Wars 2.

Currently in PVP and PVE, I run clerics max healing build with Staff primarily.

The Tempest can maintain 100% aoe protection up time, and can layer their abilities 25 seconds of Magnetic Aura for team wide projectile reflection, and can likely get 30 seconds if you combo it correctly, and can provide substantial, immediate healing on demand. This is with a full shout build with Earth/Water/Tempest traits to maintain protection on auras, powerful auras, and stoneheart to keep you extremely well protected in Earth.

A different build can effortlessly maintain 25 Might stacks and 100% protection and good fury uptime as well, something that a base line elementalist simply cannot do at the same time, period. (Might and Fury yes, but NOT with Protection uptime)

People are vastly underestimating how amazing the buff to Overload Earth and Water are.

All that said, there are certainly a few areas that could use some improvement:

Shouts:
These are almost perfect, a few small, reasonable QOL enhancements will make them staples and to expand their use out of pure support builds:

• Each shout needs to be instant cast, with the exception of Wash The Pain Away. Not being able to use two of our Aura shouts while Overloading very clunky. They are not at a power level in which blasting all shouts would be overwhelming, and if so, reduce their raw damage a tiny bit to compensate.
• Eye of the Storm NEEDS Shocking Aura, and Wash The Pain Away would be very nice if it gained Light Aura to give us some Vuln application and Retaliation up-time, particularly useful for Cleric builds as we have some power to and toughness to make good use of Retaliation.
• Rebound: Have it apply the Aura at the start, and increase its duration to 10 seconds. Healing values are perfect for any build that invests in healing, especially since it could also proc Elemental Bastion with these changes. If changed to Instant cast with these changes, it will definitely see plenty of uses in multiple builds.
• Please add a -20% cool down on Tempestuous Aria, and maybe consider slightly lower recharges on the shouts that are above 30 seconds.

Overloads:

• Please consider having Unstable Conduit at the start of the channel, as this can help finish off an Overload and could allow Overloads to have a bit more front loaded potential.

• Please considering merging the stability from Harmonious Conduit into the Hardy Conduit minor trait, as it makes it impossible to take any other trait this would ever be matched against. Its entirely too mandatory.

Traits In General:

The Tempest appears to lack clear, defined trait line options like the Reaper. I’d suggest the following switches to make some options more “optional” and instead of “pick the best one, never use the other” by dividing them into clear roles of “Support-Auras”, “Defense and Survivability” and “Damage and Attunement Camping.”

Adept Tier

• Latent Stamina changed and moved or removed, and Harmonious Conduit moved to this location, possibly renamed something more like “Rampaging Conduit.” Increase the 10% bonus damage to last for 10 seconds, and also make it increase healing by +10% as well.

• Unstable Conduit is the Aura Support, and Aura granted at start of Overload.

• Gale Song is the person defense trait, which will now also apply a Shocking Aura thanks to the change to Eye of the Storm, fitting the Defensive Role.

Master Tier

• Tempestuous Arias: Keep as is, but also provide -20% Recharge to Shouts. If all shouts gain auras, this then is the “aura” trait for the master Tier for support builds.

• Earthen Proxy – Keep this as is, but let us provide this effects as a buff to allies in an area, making all Protection stronger. This works well for builds that offer support or just like to maintain personal defense, and can be used with or without Auras thanks to Overload Earth’s potency. Maybe add an additional effect of “Protection provides -20% damage from conditions” as well as increasing Protection to 40%.

• The empty space left from moving Harmonious Conduit can be replaced with an offensive trait. “Singularity of Purpose”: Your Damage and Healing are increased by 2% for each second you remain attuned to a single attunement, capping at 20%.

Grand Master Tier:

• Elemental Bastion: Keep the healing as it is, its perfect. I’d love it if the Frost Aura was removed, and replaced with an effect of “Auras you apply remove 1 Condition” in addition to the current healing effects. Perfect GM for the support role, very similar to the Water line’s condition removal.

• Imbue Melodies: I suggest changing this to: “While wielding a Warhorn, the damage of your main hand’s abilities are increased by 5% for each weapon ability currently recharging, and you gain +20% Boon Duration.” This would allow, for example, a Damage-Focused dagger/Scepter + Warhorn to benefit by staying in an attunement once their weapon abilities have been expended rather than switching to another attunement. Assuming all four weapon abilities are on recharge, the auto-attacks would receive a +20% damage boost.

• Lucid Singularity: Needs something else to make it the go to anti cc/Defensive option, and needs to hold its own. Adding a huge chunk of Vitality to this trait, like +300, would make it a very Competitive alternative to the other two options.

Shouts:
- You can’t make a shout-cleanse build to reduce water dependence because the shouts have too long of cast time and WAY TOO LONG of a CD. Auras aren’t that great to justify the long CD, especially because the other effects are pretty poor too.
-Eye of the Storm needs to give shocking aura, and even then could be justified as a 30s CD. Honestly, I never want to take this because it does nothing better than another utility. If I need a short-CD stunbreak, I take signet of air. When do I plan on my entire team getting stunned and needing to use this?
- Flash freeze: basically just a frost aura, as 3s of chill and negligible damage are hilariously weak. Why would I ever take this over another skill, unless I want to maximize use of trooper runes and don’t care if I have a skill that does nothing other than what traits/runes make it do.
- Wash the pain away: Decent, but long cast-time really hurts it.

Traits:
- There just isn’t a cohesive build here, and the themes don’t work.

-Gale Song – This does the same thing, in essence, as tempest defense, but on a longer CD and you get no shocking aura, despite tempest being aura-heavy…It just doesn’t seem right. Add shocking aura to “eye of the storm” and remake “tempest defense” into something else.

- Latent Stamina – Just so bad, and still seems like it belongs in water. Swap this trait with soothing ice and you both increase aura synergy while making the adept in water more varied.

-Unstable Conduit – This trait is a good idea to make overloads more cast-able IF THEY GAVE THE AURA ON CAST. Yes, it would be very strong to get shocking auras frequently, but that would be balanced if you still had the cost (up-front or CD afterwards), and would at least make you feel like you got something out of overloading rather than PRAYING you don’t get interrupted during a long cast.

- Tempestuous aria: fix shout CD’s and maybe its useful, but still seems lacking.

- Earthen Proxy – you know this just needs to be completely replaced.

- Harmonius conduit: stability should be baseline via a minor trait. 10% damage for 5s is just useless. It’s not a great enough benefit to risk overloading pre-burst, and not long enough to support a frequent-overload play-style.

- Imbued melodies: This is a terrible trait again. 20% boon duration – who cares. A random blast finisher and bit of prot every 30s…why? What am I supposed to do with that, stand in a fire field permanently, which I don’t have b/c warhorn has redic. CD on fields.

- Lucid Singularity: maybe if overloads were usable.

- Elemental bastion: Primarily just makes auras heal (which makes shouts heal), which is interesting, but the healing is so low its barely noticeable. Compare to Warrior GM shout-trait…this is way worse. Honestly, this could absorb powerful aura functionality and be just about right. Powerful aura is not GM-worthy anyway (esp. b/c it doesn’t work with shouts, and you can’t get enough auras and traits to make them worthwhile otherwise).

- Minors: hardy and speedy conduit need to be merged and given 1 stack of stability too. Make the GM minor something that enables you to hold in 1 attunement for a longer time. All the minors shouldn’t just effect overloads, which will never be used as they are.

Nikaido.6739:

Rebound – the base healing is way too weak. Either make the duration longer or dramatically improve the healing effect.

Frost Aura – this aura need some improvement to work with new skills/trait lines. Damage reduction should be 20% plus giving this aura a % to freezed enemy.

Flash Freeze – Recharge time should be shorter…. or give this shout a % to “freezed” the enemy (matching the name and make up the lost of FrostBow).

It would be really neat if Flash Freeze would apply the “Frozen” stun effect for 1 second on foes who are already chilled. This would let it combo with Dagger/Warhorn, Staff, or offhand Focus.

I haven’t had much time to play so far in BWE3 because of time constraints, so I did a quick PvE test on SW and VB mobs and some test dummies for about an hour. For this reason, my feedback will be limited and won’t be too specific, but hopefully I’ll be able to test more in a day or two.

Overloads are almost in a good spot now but there are a few problems.
-Overload fire has a tiny radius which forces you to risk too much while using it. Increasing the radius of the fire overload should be a priority, in order to make it more appealing. The animation should also be changed to make it look like an actual firestorm, it’s pretty small right now.
-The one stack of stability should make overloads good enough in PvE if you are not careless, but I’m not sure if it holds up in PvP.
-I don’t feel that good about the double penalty of having a 20 second cooldown and a 5 second delay before overload use. I believe that these need to be slightly reduced.
-I feel that earth overload could use slightly more damage, but I’m not so sure about it, maybe I’m just asking for too much in this instance Edit: Please ignore this, after toying around with it a little more I believe that the damage is fine.

Traits need more improvements because they are not competitive with other trait lines at the moment.
-There are some decent options for majors but there are also some majors that are almost useless.
-Renewing stamina would be the best example of a useless trait, especially since it goes against the gameplay style of the tempest.
-The biggest problem is with the minors. Swiftness on overload is incredibly redundant because the elementalist is the king of swiftness. I honestly didn’t even notice the swiftness because I have swiftness up almost all the time and even if I don’t, there is still the 25% speed boost from the air line.
-Hardy conduit does need a bit more of a kick to it but it is better than speedy conduit.
-The stability from harmonious conduit needs to be consolidated to one of the minors because it will be mandatory in every single game mode in my opinion.

Shouts are a bit of a mixed bag.
-I really like “Feel the burn!” and “Wash the pain away!”. They won’t be used everywhere but they are solid and definitely have potential use in a variety of situations.
-Rebound is kinda niche and I didn’t really get to test it, but it might be useful.
-“Eye of the storm!” needs shocking aura because what it offers simply does not justify its cooldown and I would never slot it in its current form.
-"Shock and aftershock! and “Flash-freeze!” need to be instant as they are clunky to use with overloads. The tempest doesn’t have that much synergy with the rest of the elementalist, but it should be at least capable of good synergy with itself.
-Why don’t we have a 20% cooldown reduction for shouts as part of Tempestous Aria?

The warhorn is pretty trash if you exclude the yet to be nerfed Heat sync. Heat sync is the only thing that warhorn has going for it, so you’d better fix the warhorn if you want to nerf heat sync.
Most of the abilities either take too long to cast, have too long of an after-cast, or both. It reminds me of how clunky the scepter is and why I never use it. Lightning orb must be the worst ability that I have ever seen in the game, if I just use my lighting whip auto I will do much better damage and it will be more reliable as well. I seriously struggled to use the warhorn for more than 5 minutes so I can’t really say much more about it or specify its problems. It’s really not a fun weapon right now and I wasn’t one of the warhorn complainers that wanted a sword, just check my post history. Both the warhorn and the scepter need major work to reduce their cast times and delays. As long as they remain this clunky I won’t be going near these weapons.

I had to sleep, but now I can go through all of the skills again. As always these numbers are acquired in PVP with gear equipped, so these numbers are effectively the tooltip or base damage.

BUG?: Persisting Flames doesn’t increase the duration of overload fire.
BUG: Persisting Flames does snot work with Wildfire.
BUG: The ending dust cyclone of Earth Overload applies the protection of Hardy Conduit Per pulse, which allows it to single handedly stack 18 stacks of protection.
TOOLTIP ERROR: Dust Storm currently just lists a bunch of numbers for its description.
TOOLTIP ERROR: Water Globe does not list that it is a water field.
TOOLTIP ERROR: Eye of the storm has no target listing.

All overloads have the following properties:
20 second cooldown
Stun Break
4 second listed animation time
4.5 second actual animation time

Overload Fire: 355 per pulse. 1 × 3 burning per pulse. 1 × 12 might per pulse. 5 second duration. 1 second interval. Both a Fire Field and a Whirl finisher x 7. 10 Pulses in Total. 180 Range.

Overload Water: 392 Healing per pulse. 3220 healing on final pulse. 1 × 8 regeneration. 1 condi clenase per pulse. 1 second interval. 5 Pulses Total.

Overload Air: 302 Per pulse. 1 × 10 vulnerability per pulse. 360 Range. 360 Radius. Lightning Field. Duration: 4 seconds x3 targets. 17 Pulses Total. Upon Finishing completion, causes a temporary buff called Static Charge, which will give cause lightning to strike the next enemy they hit. It has the same damage as a single pulse of overload Air.

Overload Earth: 266 per pulse. 1 × 3 Cripple per pulse. 1 × 9 bleed per pulse 1 second of protection per pulse. 3 × 4 stability on activation. 1 × 4 immobilize on end. Blast Finisher. 5 targets. 240 radius. 9 Pulses Total:

Overload notes: Man I wish that weren’t a bug on Earth. That massive AoE protection on use actually justifies using it. Overall the overloads are better. The Stun breaks and standardized animation times are good, and they have improved to such a degree that I can see myself using any of the overloads instead of just Fire.

Fire Overload was nerfed a bit, but it is still superior DPS over the staff auto attack, so it is still optimal to use lava font -> Fire Overload -> Lava Font -> Other combos. Air Overload, however, saw massive improvement. The additional party members essentially add 5 more pulses to a single target, so clocking in at an incredible 1,476 tooltip DPS, Air Overload now melts face.

I can’t comment much on water overload. It is sufficient at what it does, and there isn’t much to say beyond that. Earth Overload saw massive improvements. Though I know it is a bug, I do wish Earth Overload would retain its massive protection stacking. After additional comments later, once this bug is fixed I would like something similar to be put into the game.

Warhorn Skills::

Heat Sync: 3 × 10 might. Shares boons. 600 range + radius. 30 second cooldown. 0.75 second listed activation time. 1 second actual activation time.
Wildfire: 211 Damage Per pulse. 8 Pulses. 180 × 600 range. Fire Field. 1 × 2 burning per pulse. 30 second recharge. 0.75 second listed activation time. 1 second actual activation time.

Tidal Surge: 323 damage. 1,302 base healing. 0.5 scale healing. 1 × 8 regen. 240 knockback. 35 second recharge. 0.25 second listed activation time. 0.5 second actual activation time.
Water Globe: 470 base healing per pulse. 0.24 scale healing per pulse. 4 pulses. 1 second per pulse. Water Field. 180 radius. 750 range. Unblockable(?). 35 second recharge. 0.5 second listed activation time. Closer to 0.75 seconds real activation time.

Cyclone: 288. 1 × 10 swiftness. 180 Pull. 9 Impacts, 3 targets at a time. 240 × 750 range. Unblockable. 25 second recharge. 1 second listed activation time. Closer to 1.25 seconds real activation time.
Lightning Orb: 115 per pulse. 1 × 10 vulnerability per pulse. 1/4th second per pulse. 300 radius. 1200 range. 25 second cooldown. 0.5 second listed activation time. Closer to 0.75 seconds real time.

Sand Squall. 5 seconds of magnetic Aura. 2 seconds of protection. Boon duration + 2 seconds. 600 radius. Blast finisher. Affects 5 targets. NOTE: Magnetic Aura is only on the caster. 30 second cooldown. 0.5 second listed activation time, but closer to 0.75 seconds real time.
Dust Storm: 96 damage per pulse. 2 × 10 bleeding per pulse. 1 × 2 blind per pulse. 5 impacts total. 5 targets per impact. 2 second interval per storm. 180 × 750 range. 30 second cooldown. 0.75 second listed activation time, but closer to 1 second real time.

Warhorn Notes: Overall not much has changed since last time.

Heat Sink and Sand Squall are good at what they do. Wildfire and Dust storm are this weird form of light control that persist long enough to be meaningful. Lightning Orb and Water Globe are basically inferior versions of wells, with Water Globe being especially difficult to use in any meaningful manner. Tidal Surge is better, now that it is much faster acting, and cyclone still doesn’t have a place.

As for changes, they are the same from last beta:

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

Shouts now.

“Wash the Pain Away!”: 3560 First Heal, 1950 second heal, 980 third heal. 5 targets. 180 radius, 240 radius, 360 radius. 25 second cooldown. 1.5 second listed activation time. 2 second real activation time. 0.3 scale healing, 0.2 scale healing. 0.1 scale healing respectively.

“Feel the Burn!’ 266. AoE Fire shield for 5 seconds. 1 × 4 burning. 5 targets. 600 radius. 20 second cooldown. Instant cast.

“Flash-Freeze!”: 186. 1 × 3 chill. AoE Frost Aura for 5 seconds. 5 Targets, 600 radius. 25 second coodlown. 0.25 listed activation time, closer to 0.5 seconds actual time.

“Eye of the Storm!”: 5 seconds superspeed. Stun Break. 5 targets(?). 45 second recharge. Instant Cast

“Shock and Aftershock!” (x2): 398. Magnetic Aura for 5 seconds. 1 × 6 cripple. 1 × 2 immobilize. 5 targets. 240 blast radius. 600 range. 50 second recharge. 0.25 second listed activation time, closer to 0.5 seconds actual time.

“Rebound”: 2,132 Healing. 1.5 scale healing. Grants Aura if it ends. 600 radius. 75 second cooldown. 0.25 second listed activation time, closer to 0.5 seconds in actual time.

Shout notes: Not a lot has changed between weekends. So, my suggestions haven’t changed much, either. I’ll add on a few extras:

Feel the Burn: Increase damage by 33%.
Eye of the Storm: Should give Shocking Aura
Shock and Aftershock: Should be a blast finisher

The main thing holding these back are that most auras aren’t that good.

Special note goes to rebound. This trait is actually worth something now. It works as a nice panic button, and since it negates instead of just rezzing, it technically heals for a lot. Currently I don’t have any notes for Rebound.

Now traits. I won’t do much archiving, since there aren’t many numbers to list. Overall there has been great improvement. But, there are still a lot of traits that just aren’t that good.

Eye of the Storm: Fine
Latent Stamina: Increase the endurance gained to 15.
Unstable Conduit: Have these auras activate at the start of the overload, and not the end.
Speedy Conduit: Increase the duration to 10 seconds of swiftness
Tempestuous Aria: Have it grant a 20% reduced cooldown to shouts.
Harmonious Conduits: Fine
Earthen Proxy: Change it to be a 52% increase in protection strength, now cutting protection damage in half.
Hardy Conduit: Increase protection duration to 4.5 seconds base.
Imbued Melodies: Fine
Lucid Singularity: Fine
Elemental Bastion: Might be fine. I think the healing was doubled, which makes this quite a bit more useful.

Overall, the tempest is better off than it was before. That isn’t saying much, given how lackluster it was before. Still, though: Shouts, Warhorn, and Traits need buffs.

Hasturmi.4853:

Mesmer’s signet of inspiration works the same way than Elementalist’s heat sync . Please do not change Heat Sync.

I cannot express this enough, please leave Heat Sync as it is. Currently Mesmer has a utility and a trait that does the exact same thing. We do not need another way to share might. The current Heat Sync gives Tempest something unique that Elementalist can’t do and makes Warhorn much more appealing.

Attunement swapping while overloading would be great with fresh air to spam out all the lightningbolts!

Sojurner.8234:

this is an important observation that I would have missed if not for playing tempest so long:

THE TEMPEST BUILD / WARHORN HAS NO RANGE CLOSING SKILL = OWNED BY RANGE ATTACKS

this is a critical flaw that will undoubtedly get exploited soon after release – please fix

Tempests can layer 4 magnetic auras on top of each other. Its 20 seconds of projectile immunity. Tempests still have things like burning speed and lightning flash, too, and not all tempest will take the warhorn. I’m not sure it is as big of a problem as it is being made out to be here.

Axialbloom.8109:

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Stability on Overloads is great, but it REALLY needs to be a minor trait otherwise the other 2 master traits will NEVER see play.

This. It is mandatory.

On a theoretical level this wouldn’t be true, but on a practical one it is. While you can protect yourself with things Arcane Shield and Armor of Earth, the other two traits necessitate that you are using shouts (which can’t protect overloads) or you will be trying to spam protection anyway (warhorn + overload use). So, I do have an idea:

Swap the location of speedy and harmonious conduits
Give the damage bonus to speedy conduits
Maybe make speedy conduits give superspeed instead of swiftness.

That way we get practical options now. You can either go for the damage boost after overload (offensive), the increase in protection (defensive), or the might + weakness on shouts (mixed support). This is all done assuming that my other suggestions for those traits go through, of course.

Mode: PvP, 1v1s (mainly against Reaper)
Gear: D/W Celestial Elementalist running Rune of Hoelbrak and Sigils of Energy and Purity
Traits: Ar221/W111/T223
Skills: Sigil of Restoration, Cleansing Fire, Armor of Earth, Lightning Flash, Rebound

Overall, the tempest is decent, although I found them stronger in BWE2. With my current build, I can sustain well enough on my own, but high poison uptime with lack of immediate condi cleanse really does hurt, hence the need for Sigil of Purity on top of the traits and Cleansing Fire.

I didn’t use shouts in this BWE, except the new Rebound, which in my opinion is worse due to the extremely undertuned heal on Rebound. The heal should definitely be increased on Rebound and I also think it should give boons both after the effect is activated and after the effect has expired (in the case of initiates with Rebound). The cast time on Rebound really should be removed, because it really is costly having a death denial that has a cast time.

I personally like the Warhorn skills, although the skills are still a little weak.
Lightning Orb is still stupidly weak. Lightning Orb should be changed to a placeable skill with a slightly larger radius (maybe 480), which would make the skill more useful than the orb flying off doing nothing.
Dust Storm could change to a storm that is cast as a PBAoE that expands over time (radius 180, 240, 300, 360), which shouldn’t be too difficult to make after knowing that the fire wyvern exists with its F2.
The current fire Warhorn skills are fine to me.
The water Warhorn skills are good too. However, please either change the name of the Tempest’s Tidal Surge or change the name of the Druid’s Tidal Surge. It definitely makes me feel that Tempest was some sort of side project that was neglected during creation.
Water Globe might need a bigger AoE radius that travels on you to be slightly more effective. A range tooltip for ‘Tidal Surge’ might be useful too, with a slight range increase as it really doesn’t travel very far.

Now, on to the Overloads. I have actually had some fun using these Overloads, although being locked out for such a long time is very punishing, especially when 1 of the Tempest’s natural sources of condi cleanse is Overload Water.
For all the Overloads, I think a normalised radius of 360 would make the Overloads better and easier to hit as they are currently clunky and very hard to hit, especially when it has a 4 second cast time.
I personally think that Overload Water should pulse Regen, similar to how Overload Fire pulses Might, although with Cleansing Water, Overload Water would cleanse 2 conditions per tick.
Overload Fire is quite good in terms of damage, but it is incredibly hard to hit the Overload so I’ve used it to get someone off me.
Overload Air is very useful if you can get past the cast time, as it applies so much point pressure.
I didn’t use Overload Earth.

The traits are really off and they don’t feel like they make much of an impact to the Tempest, except, personally, Tempestuous Aria, which I didn’t use in this BWE.
Every ‘Conduit’ trait in Tempest (Unstable, Speedy, Hardy, Harmonious) should really be grouped in to 1 trait. Overloading is very punishing as it is, and Speedy Conduit should grant Super Speed instead of Swiftness, so that Overloads are more rewarding.
Latent Stamina needs a huge buff in terms of the Vigor it provides, especially because Tempest has meant to be an attunement camp spec. The Vigor duration should definitely be increased.
I’m sure Elemental Bastion is good, but I did not notice it at all.

I will continue to look forward and will continue to use and test Tempest throughout HoT.

TL;DR – Go to a different thread, clearly you aren’t interested in actual Beta testing.

My biggest issue with the Tempest has to be the traits. I feel like all the traits should revolve around and augment everything new you get with the tempest. They should be a Major Adept, Master and Grandmaster traits for, Overloads, Shouts, and Warhorn skills.

Latent Stamina: This more looks like a water trait. This should probably be renamed and be a Warhorn trait.

Unstable Conduit: The aura should be applied at the beginning of the overload.

Speedy Conduit: This should give you 2-4s of super speed.

Tempestuous Aria: Should also reduce the cooldown of shouts.

Earthen Proxy: This is more looks like an earth trait. This should be renamed and add back the boon stripping taken out of Wild Fire.

Hardy Conduit: Should give you stability instead of harmonious conduit
Imbued Melodies: It should reduce the cast times on Warhon skills and add back the functionally lost from Heat Sync but instead spread it out to other Warhorn skills so now, Heat Sync can also share out Retaliation or Fury, Water Globe can share out Vigor, Cyclone can share out Quickness, and Dust Storm can share out Stability etc.

Elemental Bastion: This is more of a water trait and the current effect should be rolled into Powerful Aura and the trait should be renamed and replaced with a shout trait.