Guild Wars 2

Mode: PvP contest.
Gear: Marauder.
Build: Fresh air.

Shouts:

Pros:
The earth shout is cool. Could be use as a dirty engage and also gives you and magnetic aura which is really powerfull in many situations.
Wash the pain away ( the heal shout) was a good healing base and is a team healing skill so thats pretty good.

Cons:
I think that the fire and water shout are useless in PvP because of the powerfull efficiency of the cantrips and arcana in fresh air.
Wash the pain away (the healing shout) was a cast too long so i prefer use signet even if it heals less.

Overloads:

Pros:
Basically they are all interresting and i felt the up from the last time I played ele on beta. Air overload does a lot of dammages . Earth overload is usefull more for a condition build. Water is really hard to use but the basic healing is amazing, so i use it when I am desperate and my healing is on coldwon. Fire overload is usefull only for might stacking at the start of the game.

Cons:
Over all, the overloads are too difficult to use because of the 5 sec waiting in your attunement ( wich I understand for avoid spaming overloads ) but those 5 sec waiting are too long (maybe check with 2-3 sec waiting in an attunement).

Traits:
Pros:
Trait wich give you stab, protection and swiftness when you do and overload are really usefull so thanks for that. Trait which auto break stun usin “eye of the storm” are really good. The Grand master trait of the healing forst aura is a good idea if you wanna play aura mancer ( but not in fesh air ^^). And the trait wich gives and 100% resistance to mobility conditions when you are overloading is really powerfull.

Cons:
The minor trait which give you vigor is too low. ( 3 sec vigor when you swicht on water) Actually if you want us to leave the arcana line you have to give us more than that. And the trait of the warhorn skill ( grand master trait) is not usefull because warhorn is not use when you are playing fresh air. The Master trait of the 40% portection is not worthy.

Weappon set:

Cons:
I woud say that warhorn is not worthy in fresh air because you have no survability skills. You have more healing than the focus, but you dont have the projectiles protection skills like the magnetic shield and ferocious winds, plus the obsidian flesh skill in focus.

Conclusion:
I think that the new specialisation of elementalist in fresh air is really hard to play. It is hard to cast tempest skills but when you do it ( for example in air) you do a lot of damages. Finally I think that arena net should down the waiting time in attunement before overloading 5 sec to 2-3 sec, they also have to found strong traits for tempest line to make all eles leave the former gameplay system ( wich is base on the swicht attunnement).

Ps: Sorry for language mistakes (I am not a native speaker) ^^.

I would like a trait that give vigor while applying an aura. If i dont take arcana, i don’t want to switch water only for vigor.
Need fury with warhorn.
Overload cd is too long

Overall quite happy with tempest. Some bugs / suggested small-ish changes:

Bugs/incorrect descriptions

• Tooltip bug: Unstable Conduit trait shows 5s duration for all aura’s. Overload tooltip shows 4s duration for the specific aura. Actual duration does seem to be 5s.
• Persisting flames doesn’t increase the duration for Wildfire (it is a firefield).
• By that logic, Overload Fire should also have increased duration from persisting flames.
• Tidal Surge misses a range tooltip. Seems to be 360.
• Overload earth gives too much protection on the Dust Cyclone aftereffect. 3 seconds of protection each pulse once it’s done channeling. Likely uses the wrong number for that part (grandmaster minor = 3s protection on starting overload, normal channeling pulse is 1s protection). Base pulse duration could perhaps use a slight duration increase.
• Flash Freeze wording “on enemy locations” incorrectly makes one think it’s a ranged enemy centered shout. Maybe it should be ranged, not player centered to make for better escape/chase potential. Then again, 600 radius for a ranged skill is pretty big.

Suggested changes
Skills
• Heat sync: remove sharing resistance and quickness. Keep sharing stability please, or limit the amount of stacks to 3-5. I like my frontline ele in WvW actually sharing an important boon and not be only reliant on guardians for that. Armor of earth, the somewhat unreliable automatic armor of earth at 50% health and perhaps starting and immediately cancelling Earth Overload are our only sources of decent stability anyway. Also limit the outgoing duration for the duration stacking boons to 8ish seconds.

• Overload Air: the damage seems a bit too high. Overload Fire was nerfed because its damage was too high, but air currently is higher in a bigger radius (excluding condi specs). Reduce the total amount of strikes by a bit (from 17 to 13?), field duration by 1 second or attack interval. Preferably not the damage per strike, because lots of small strikes makes retaliation a bigger problem in group situations.

• Overload Earth: reduce the immobilize from 4s to 3s base duration.

• Lightning Orb: while I guess the main functionality of this one isn’t changing anymore, I would have loved seeing the GW1 style lightning orb in place of it. 0.75 or 1 second cast time, moving breaks the cast, high damage (along the lines of Ice Spike for staff or Fire Grab without burn). Also enables the hidden gamemode: dodgeball. Either way, lots of other good suggestions on other changes already.

• Eye of the Storm feels kind of weak for the kitten recharge.

• Rebound: make it instant cast or break stun, so it’s possible to use reactively. Mainly a change to make it more useful for the bursty PvP and WvW roaming. Rebound could be set to a 60s cooldown, but it’s an actual usable elite atm. Nice for auras in zergfights, the burst negate potential in smaller scale fights and oneshot negation in PvE. I read somewhere it doesn’t negate damage, but maybe I read that at the gw1 wiki for divine intervention.

Traits
• Elemental bastion: I expected the healing was pulsing. Haven’t tested this in a tough situation yet, but an option could be to add a 50% of start heal to aura end. Then blasting frost fields can actually function as a secondary waterfield :P

• I’d like a 20% shout cd reduction

• Cooldown reduction on overload, I miss it but can live with this. Makes overloads more special. Besides, overloads are strong enough to have some drawback.

• 20% Cooldown reduction for shouts could be added to Tempestuous aura. It won’t become too strong and should make shouts more competitive.

• Earthen Proxy seems weak and will rarely be chosen. Maybe add a “protection you apply lasts 33% longer”.

Other notes
• Tidal Wave knocks enemies away from you, not in the direction of the wave (e.g. use then lightning flash to the other side).

PvP perspective: cele d/wh
I think I’m spoiled since this is my first BWE, and the tempest felt so right, so polished. Healing on auras is great and I think it puts shouts in the same tier as cantrips (if you trait for auras).

My only complaint is fire 4 and 5 on the warhorn. 3/4 second cast time on heat sync is too high. I’d never use this in battle because it leaves you so vulnerable. So only for prestacking might which is lame. Fire 5 has too long of a windup. It would be better if it came out faster (it could die out faster for balance).

My favorite moments were finding buddies that were less than 50% health, washing the pain away, water 4, 5, 3’ing back to full. Crazy burst heal.

The Scars of Time.6324:

Overall quite happy with tempest. Some bugs / suggested small-ish changes:

Bugs/incorrect descriptions

• Tooltip bug: Unstable Conduit trait shows 5s duration for all aura’s. Overload tooltip shows 4s duration for the specific aura. Actual duration does seem to be 5s.
• Persisting flames doesn’t increase the duration for Wildfire (it is a firefield).
• By that logic, Overload Fire should also have increased duration from persisting flames.
• Tidal Surge misses a range tooltip. Seems to be 360.
• Overload earth gives too much protection on the Dust Cyclone aftereffect. 3 seconds of protection each pulse once it’s done channeling. Likely uses the wrong number for that part (grandmaster minor = 3s protection on starting overload, normal channeling pulse is 1s protection). Base pulse duration could perhaps use a slight duration increase.
• Flash Freeze wording “on enemy locations” incorrectly makes one think it’s a ranged enemy centered shout. Maybe it should be ranged, not player centered to make for better escape/chase potential. Then again, 600 radius for a ranged skill is pretty big.

Suggested changes
Skills
• Heat sync: remove sharing resistance and quickness. Keep sharing stability please, or limit the amount of stacks to 3-5. I like my frontline ele in WvW actually sharing an important boon and not be only reliant on guardians for that. Armor of earth, the somewhat unreliable automatic armor of earth at 50% health and perhaps starting and immediately cancelling Earth Overload are our only sources of decent stability anyway. Also limit the outgoing duration for the duration stacking boons to 8ish seconds.

• Overload Air: the damage seems a bit too high. Overload Fire was nerfed because its damage was too high, but air currently is higher in a bigger radius (excluding condi specs). Reduce the total amount of strikes by a bit (from 17 to 13?), field duration by 1 second or attack interval. Preferably not the damage per strike, because lots of small strikes makes retaliation a bigger problem in group situations.

• Overload Earth: reduce the immobilize from 4s to 3s base duration.

• Lightning Orb: while I guess the main functionality of this one isn’t changing anymore, I would have loved seeing the GW1 style lightning orb in place of it. 0.75 or 1 second cast time, moving breaks the cast, high damage (along the lines of Ice Spike for staff or Fire Grab without burn). Also enables the hidden gamemode: dodgeball. Either way, lots of other good suggestions on other changes already.

• Eye of the Storm feels kind of weak for the kitten recharge.

• Rebound: make it instant cast or break stun, so it’s possible to use reactively. Mainly a change to make it more useful for the bursty PvP and WvW roaming. Rebound could be set to a 60s cooldown, but it’s an actual usable elite atm. Nice for auras in zergfights, the burst negate potential in smaller scale fights and oneshot negation in PvE. I read somewhere it doesn’t negate damage, but maybe I read that at the gw1 wiki for divine intervention.

Traits
• Elemental bastion: I expected the healing was pulsing. Haven’t tested this in a tough situation yet, but an option could be to add a 50% of start heal to aura end. Then blasting frost fields can actually function as a secondary waterfield :P

• I’d like a 20% shout cd reduction

• Cooldown reduction on overload, I miss it but can live with this. Makes overloads more special. Besides, overloads are strong enough to have some drawback.

• 20% Cooldown reduction for shouts could be added to Tempestuous aura. It won’t become too strong and should make shouts more competitive.

• Earthen Proxy seems weak and will rarely be chosen. Maybe add a “protection you apply lasts 33% longer”.

Other notes
• Tidal Wave knocks enemies away from you, not in the direction of the wave (e.g. use then lightning flash to the other side).

Reduce damage on air overload? What are you even thinking? – That covers like 70% of the reasons to go tempest – for the overload damage

People are asking for radius buffs on fire overload and you come here asking for damage nerfs on air overload? Like it can’t be avoided/blocked/negated/interrupted easily….pls my friend stop with the non-sense

POWERFUL AURA NEEDS TO BE MOVED TO TEMPEST TRAITLINE
I love all the aura traits but im severely kitten having to take water just fro that trait.
Could finally have water not be mandatory but only if we moved that trait. Replace the water one with anything. Doesnt really matter people will still take cleansing water.

I do agree that Air Overload is in a very good spot. I don’t think that the damage is too high for the risk you’re taking with channeling it.

I have now played tempest during all 3 BWE’s and it surely has been improving.
However, there is still much to make it usable.
Here follow my thoughs on how to have tempest be a fun and rewarding xperience in HOT.

Overloads
I found them to be quite well balanced this weekend
The water one didn’t heal enough imo.

Warhorn
fire
4-heat sinc, if you really can’t have it share boons then make it share auras.
this way it would still fit the thematic and it would make warhorn a very good team support weapon (in order to compete with dagger and focus)
5-wildfire, a bit more damage would feel good, overall good skill

water
4- good skill, needs to knockback faster, the delay is painful
5- i like it, really useful skill

air
4- please make it ground-targeteable, or at least make the cyclone move faster
feel free to remove the swiftness giving part if you think its too strong.
5- worst skill in warhorn atm, not enough damage or vulnerability
how to fix it:
– make the orb move faster and have a hotswap skill to swap your position with
the orb
– make it so we can cast it to our backs, currently we can only launch the orb to
our font or the sides, it makes it awkward to use.

earth
4- really solid skill, i enjoyed using it quite a lot, good job!
5- feeling better but still needs to be faster, the blind application shouldn’t take 2 seconds
This skill would also benefict from being ground-targeted, it felt clunky to use

Shouts- WE NEED THEM TO BE INSTA-CAST, so we can use them while overloading
also we need the 20% cooldown reduction trait.
heal – overall very good, could benefict from a light aura
fire – overall really good, not amazing, but usable and fun
water- the effect is barely noticeable, increase the damage or chill duration (still used it for the short cooldown) INSTA-CAST
air- please remove the superspeed and give us shocking aura
earth- its a fun shout but need to be insta-cast to see use

Traits
harmonious conduit needs to be a minor (at least the stability part), or the other traits will never see use (call back to evasive arcana and how no other trait is picked in there), trust me.
- the vigor on water trait really should swap places with the water trait that gives frost aura on critical, also the endurance gain is too weak
- tempest needs a way to clear conditions inherently (aura application removing condis trait maybe?)
-the protection trait would really benefict if it actually applied protection (when you break a stun maybe?)
-the warhorn trait should be scrapped, not fun, and not good if youre nerfing heat sinc

tl:dr
shouts->insta-cast and need 20%cooldown reduction
overloads-> ok, but water needs more healing
traits-> stability to a minor, more aura focus, stick condi clear somewhere
warhorn-> feels good, needs ground-targeting and mobility, if they nerf heat sinc they should make it share auras

Tempest is getting good, ty Anet
from a fellow elementalist

Warhorn needs a second blast finisher. Focus has 2, Dagger has 2, warhorn has 1.

Devildoc.6721:

Warhorn needs a second blast finisher. Focus has 2, Dagger has 2, warhorn has 1.

I disagree that it really needs another one. I mean churning earth and comet generally aren’t very reliably used as blast finishers.

I think wildfire needs its boon removal back and some of the skills just need lower cast times and need to come out faster.

Supreme.3164:

Reduce damage on air overload? What are you even thinking? – That covers like 70% of the reasons to go tempest – for the overload damage

People are asking for radius buffs on fire overload and you come here asking for damage nerfs on air overload? Like it can’t be avoided/blocked/negated/interrupted easily….pls my friend stop with the non-sense

You’re right, I tried it a bit more tonight and it isn’t as strong as I thought it would be. Seems to be in a nice spot actually.

nearlight.3064:

Devildoc.6721:

Warhorn needs a second blast finisher. Focus has 2, Dagger has 2, warhorn has 1.

I disagree that it really needs another one. I mean churning earth and comet generally aren’t very reliably used as blast finishers.

I think wildfire needs its boon removal back and some of the skills just need lower cast times and need to come out faster.

But wildfire base damage is like 400, on zerk stats, that field hit people for like 1k+ on top of 2s burning pulse if anything wildfire is not affected by Persisting flames, clearly a bug and the only skill that needs a look at is lightning orb, it’s completely useless, either up the dmg and CD or change it entirely

Why don’t they replace Lightning Orb to a teleport? Like Lightning Flash style, or something along the lines.

Valento.9852:

Why don’t they replace Lightning Orb to a teleport? Like Lightning Flash style, or something along the lines.

Or lower the travel speed (so it doesn’t fly past the enemy and stop attacking when it’s out of range) and add an effect that any enemies it touches are stunned.

i still am having a lot of issues with tempest most of which are the traits and the stability on overloads its almost impossible to finish an overload while being focused…

Main issues:

Shouts don’t have enough utility the damage they deal is negligible at best, “oh boy feel the burn does 896 base damage!” is not something i said to myself while picking this skills to use in WvW and PvE.

“Eye of the storm” needs an aura, “wash the pain away” needs to remove 1 condition per pulse to be of some relative use, “flash freeze” needs to be stronger, "Rebound"needs to heal for more i can get to 2k hp but whats to stop a reaper or a burn guard from smacking me in the face as soon as i get back up?

We need a shout reduction trait, we need to make stability a baseline minor trait because it should never EVER be an option in limiting how we play this class. I did like that imbued melodies gave us a stun break, maybe we should have it back? at least one stun break per attunement warnhorn skill? Lucid singularity is not useful in the slightest to me.

Also Scepter works kind of well with warhorn please give it an actual buff make some of the skills worthwhile and decent?

thanks once again for the beta test!

Well, having tested some more I think:

Overloads

- They feel -in my opinion- FAR better, maybe the air one could benefit from a little more range or damage, but thats only my perception as in 1vs1 I would prefer fire 100% of the time.
- The Overloads Stun Break doesnt feel OP at all: it needs to charge + then locks you in an attunement that maybe you dont want to overload yet. It feels like a trade, and I think that is a good thing in a mechanic. Sometimes its usefull, others you should use another stunbreak or mitigate the damage.
- The 1 stack of stability needs to be baseline, this time I played far more PvP with different weapons and builds and really, every competent player will interrupt your non-earth overload without that. And even with it, I have lost the overload in 1vs1 several times just because boon striping, corruption or just more than 1 interrupt are not that complicated to have.

Traits

I like many of them, but some really feel underpowered

- Gale Song: its an auto-stunbreak that 1) has 45 secs of cd, 2) competes with the overloads stunbreak-mechanic and 3) its almost 99% guaranteed wont be effective as an area/friendly stunbreak for its randomness
- I know that devs know, but Latent Stamina is worse (by focusing in only 1 attunement)
- Harmonius Conduit: Its an auto-pick for the stability, nothing can compete in PvP or WvW with that
- Earthen Proxy: On paper seems awesome, but in game I never felt it strong, probably the reason is that tempest are food for conditions. They really need help with that.
- Lucid singularity: Another ""stunbreaker"" skill that -in my opinion- cant even begin to compete with the others

Warhorn:

- While I never complained about Water Glove, I have had so much fun with the player-following fire field of bersekers that I cant not post it: a following water field would be probably FAR more fun. Now, I know the problem that may bring: for supporting, the radius should be bigger (300 +/-?) and that would make it more OP. BUT as it is, warhorn has only 1 blast instead of 2 so it probably would be balanced.
- Lightning Orb is horrible as it is: slow, lacks damage, cant be targeted behind you and takes the place of a movement skill that would REALLY help the class (as eles needs to engage or escape) and specially the warhorn, that has many skills area related and need that you position yourself in the right place.
- Dust Storm needs a tooltip fix, but other than that, I still think that it would be a far better skill as a defensive one, where the cyclones cover the area around you for the duration
- Has no condition cleanse, making it MELT vs conditions without specific builds/contingencies, thing that is worsened by the fact that shouts, auras or the tempest traits dont have anything to mitigate conditions
- Dont DESTROY Heat Sync, if it needs change, limit the buffs transfered or the amount of time

Shouts

- Eye of the Storm works FAR better than the trait because you can select when to use it, still, with that CD and no lightning aura I doubt Ill ever use it

Elite

- Rebound its better than the original, but I could not use it even once to save me or others. 3k hp is nothing when you are focused or in area dmg. I think they key to make this skill awesome but not OP is on how much exactly should it heal.

Well, thats it, I hope it helps!

edit: Something that makes earth overload such a nice thing is the protection it gives, if its a bug, maybe normalizing it would be far better than just taking the protection out and leaving earth as the least used

There’s something wrong with the spec when almost half the traits are dedicated to make overloads somewhat viable. Overload traits should all be made baseline, and create new traits that work with a regular playstyle. Other elite spec don’t have to trait their new mechanic so heavily.

I have been testing Scepter/Warhorn in PvE, a fresh air build. Having a fun time with fire and air overloads. I haven’t used the earth one much, maybe once, because I am not finding any reason to go into earth attunement. Water doesn’t feel right. If I need it, I need it now, not in 5 seconds. It should also have better condi removal.

I find the warhorn skills to be lackluster. Air #5 is just awful, and I am really finding myself missing RtL/Updraft. I felt like water #4 was more powerful in the last beta, but maybe that was just me. The water field on #5 is too fast.

The shouts are probably the worst part of the spec. I find no reason to use them. As others have stated, some of the overload traits need to be made inherent to the overload, and there needs to be some love in the traitline for the shouts.

Attunement to overload cooldown:
It needs to be lowered by 50% to 2,5 seconds. Right now it is way to easy to read for opponents and way to long to sit in some attunements for PvE

Healing on water overload:
It heals for around 500 per tick right now unless going deep into healing power. This is the same as warrior does with a passive signet and a guardian do with an Empower with some fluff healing power. Increase the heal by a decent amount and lower scaling with healing power instead. Don’t force healing power stacking when you know what happens with the rest of the profession by doing so

Auras applying after overloads
Auras need to apply when starting an overload. It makes the overloads more of a force to be reckoned with and allows for more play with overloads. Right now it feels that risk is to high unless in air attunement

Rebound not an elite
Rebound does still not feel like an elite. I think the healing needs to be higher if being hit by a fatal blow. This should feel like something that can change the course of a fight, not a slight delay before downstate.

Warhorn speed
When an elementalist is dual wielding they are put into a more twitchy playstyle with fast attacks. Warhorn is pretty much turning a dual wielding weaponset into a Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde scenario with a fast mainhand and a slow moving off hand. The entire pace of the warhorn feels extremely off when used for an elementalist. I would love to see a increase in the attackspeed for the warhorn to make it feel more fluid

Oh and you missed a big kittening opportunity with the warhorn by having an elementalist, master of wind to actually be using the warhorn solely by blowing into it. Seriously kittened that up by not experimenting more with animations like you did with Reaper and Revenant.

Tempest completely lack identity and feels like things have just been plastered on to make it look cool, but even that it does not do. Every spell effect besides some shouts lacks all kind of elemental identity. A lot of specializations do elemental looking stuff way more impressive than the tempest.

I still have some hopes for it since this BWE was a small step towards something better, but right now I will just keep dragging along my staff and my fire/air/water specc looking at the other specializations trashing the jungle :/

Tempest feedback, mostly from open world pve in verdant brink.

let me start this off by saying I was very surprised by how much fun i had playing a tempest! this was my first beta weekend, and I came in a little worried about how much I would enjoy it. I gotta say, it was pretty darn fun! BUT there are a few things I took issue with, i’ll outline those in this post

TRAITS:
I still feel like the minor traits need something more. It feels very weird that we have a minor trait that introduces the overload mechanic and then the next two overloads complete the overload abilities. I feel like the swiftness and prot should be part of the base overload ability. the second two minors should be built around rewarding the ele for staying attuned to one element.
I felt like Gale song and Unstable conduit were very effective. I mostly used UC, because there’s not really many situations that call for group stunbreak in verdant brink. Latent stamina is way out of place, but y’all are working on that so I’m sure it will come out good.
The master tier needs a little work. Mainly because Harmonious conduit just feels required. That stability needs to be worked into the baseline overload mechanic, or into one of the minors (i know i said the minors shouldn’t only effect overloads, but I think that having hardy conduit give prot and stab would be strong enough to justify this.) i can’t imagine a situation where one would be better served by tempestuous aria or earthen proxy. That Stability needs to be baseline!
The grandmaster tier felt pretty nice! I mostly played with elemental bastion or imbued melodies, and i think they’re both very good traits. Lucid singularity needs a little work i think, something to make it more aggressive? right now all of the GM traits are more supportive, and I think there’s room for a little bit of offense in this tier.

Overloads
These were really fun! I do think the charge time is a little too high, if it was brought down to 3-4 seconds, this would be really nice. the water overload felt very weak. i was running full clerics and the heal values were just too low. especially considering the 5 second charge time. water overload needs to be much stronger to justify that wait time. also, it would be really nice if air overload would recharge from fresh air without having to switch to another attunement! it was my favorite overload by far, and a little change to the way it interacts with fresh air would make it perfect.

Warhorn
this weapon felt pretty nice. The fire skill 5 could use a little something extra. I think if the field expanded faster, and if there was a large burst of damage when the spell is first cast, it would be a really effective skill. the air skills felt pretty undertuned. I would like for cyclone to activate a little faster, and have a wider area of effect. Lightning orb needs a big damage boost, and some other type of utility.

Shouts
feel the burn feels really nice. eye of the storm needs a cooldown reduction, maybe 30-35 seconds. also, shocking aura! flash freeze is underwhelming. I think it needs to be instant cast, and do at least 5 seconds of chill. a damage boost would also be welcome. aftershock is a nice skill, but needs a cooldown reduction, i’d say about 35-40 seconds, as well as being instant cast. The shouts all need to be usable while we’re overloading, otherwise they feel clunky.

overall, i’m pleasantly surprised by how tempest is turning out, but I definitely think it needs these few changes if it’s going to really shine!

PvE, open world and demo story experience:

Overall, I had fun with Tempest compare to last BWE. Overcharge is better, but I feel that it needs to be 3 seconds instead of 4, especially if you interrupted. And also, the penalty shouldn’t apply if it’s interrupted (just have the normal cooldown). I enjoy the movement while channeling the overload. Overload Air is my favorite of the four.

The tooltip info of Lightning Orb is misleading. I thought I was gonna launch a giant electric ball that hits foes as it moves. The ball looks very small compare to the radius size, and it doesn’t look like it’s firing projectiles.

Why does Dust Storm have number (624704) as its tooltip?

Shouts in general are nice! I feel like it’s suppose to sync with other Aura traits. “Eye of the Storm” has a bit too long of cooldown, maybe what Thomas suggested or 40 secs at least.

While in BWE2 I liked warhorn best and basically hated overloads and was indifferent to shouts, now I actually like Overloads and half of the shouts, while warhorn seems really underpowered compared to focus/dagger.

Here’s a short list of stuff I liked (+) and disliked (-)

Overloads:
+ Stunbreak and Stability really gives Overloads a purpose. Stability should be a minor trait though.
+ Overloads feel powerful now with the lightning strikes and the earth one also pulsing a bit of bleeding (though that could be more).
- There’s no way to reduce overload cooldowns anymore. Maybe make the 33% attunement reduction traits also reduce their respective overloads? Or add it back to the now stability trait and make the stability minor.

Warhorn:
- Feels underpowered compared to focus and offhand dagger.
- Without the 20% cooldown reduction trait all the skills feel like they have way too long cooldowns for their effects, especially fire, air and earth.

Shouts:
+ Water and Fire shouts are nice with soldier runes because of the short cooldown and auras.
+ Healing shout gives probably the best burst healing we have for ourselves.
- Earth shout has way too long of a cooldown for it’s tiny effect.
- Air shout feels completely useless. Needs shocking aura and cooldown reduction.
- Rebound still feels useless. The heal will NEVER save you and 75 seconds is WAY too long a cooldown for basically “gain an aura after 5 seconds”.

Traits:
- Stability on Overloads really needs to be a minor trait.
- I don’t like that all the minor traits are about overloads. Chronomancer minor traits aren’t about Continuum shift either besides the adept one.
- Still some useless or wrong-feeling traits (Latent Stamina, Earthen Proxy).
- Warhorn trait feels really underpowered too.
+ Heal on Auras (and therefore some of the shouts) is nice
- Proc Air shout on stun is useless because the air shout is useless, you’ll just get CCed again.

Overview of my experience with the Tempest

I’m expecting to hear that this iteration was not including the nerfs that were put in the 29th.

I’ma go over my extensive testing of this elite specialization. I played it in VB, in sPvP and in WvW. I play a lot of professions, mostly elementalist, mesmer, thief, warrior and ranger. I mostly play unranked for fun, because I truly enjoy it. I also enjoy farming and fractals, which I run with guild and friends and seldom run a PUG. I help this helps place my perspective.

I ran this BWE3 with a zerker build and a rabid build, I ended up enjoying the rabid far more and found that it synergized with the tempest far greater. I would of liked to attempt a more support oriented build but it was just not in my cards. so I will be talking from a DPS outlook.
___________________________________________________
Tempest Trait line: This is better but need to be looked at.

Grandmaster (8/10) overall: All really healthy for player options, none overpowers and one very specific. The grandmasters have Elemental Bastion and Imbued Melodies as options that work in PvP and PvE, which both work well with my experience. Lucid Singularity is pretty powerful in WvW and pretty much useless elsewhere, and that is fine.

Master Traits: One option, is that an option?

Tempestuous Aria (3/10): Might have it’s uses but when I attempted it. it felt weak. I thought the idea was for enemies to get weaker and for allies to get stronger but I was l shouts are on too long of a cooldown and the weakness is only for 3 seconds. overall, pretty weak, not something I would of taken but considering I was going to be surrounding myself with lots of enemies and many friends I didn’t notice the might or the weakness. almost like I never took the trait.

Earthen Proxy (2/10): I went with Elemental Shielding so I could get the biggest bang out of this. and have to admit it is not noticeable. if this was protection also increases healing and damage by 7% I would have been singing. but 7% less damage is nothing, I saw no reason to have this when it doesn’t support a group not help the group. it also doesn’t increase survivability enough. if it was 17%( to 50% total) I could see this as a PvP/tanky option that the devs mentioned we could be, as a “Melee support brawler ,up in the fray with.”.

Harmonious Conduit (9/10): For PvE this feels godly, it is absolutely perfect. the 10% for 5 seconds is what I thought overloads would do naturally, actually all of this should be built in. I truly do not understand how this is not a minor/baseline. this makes the overloads worth using and usable. without this…tempest feels like garbage. I tried it last and am very happy with this trait. VERY HAPPY. the right direction

Adept Traits (6/10): close, but no cigar

Gale Song 8/10: Perfect for a minor, wouldn’t change a thing. I won’t use it. but it works in all builds, can help anyone and everyone, it is competing with Tempest Defense, an air master trait. but I prefer options.

Latent stamina (1/10): considering water attunement for tempest’s who are not using a dagger in the off-hand water attunement is absolutely god awful, I do not see anyone taking this. vigor is rare and this 10 endurance is painful.

Unstable Conduit (9/10): This is a good trait in its output/applicable build options. it works with water, it increases DPS and makes the overloads feel even more powerful. synergizing with many other traits from other specializations
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Overloads, I’ll be talking about these without their overload buffing traits and with them, so please play attention

Fire Overload (7/10): This is feeling really good, the visualy are pretty freaking cool. the support element and the output make it feel like a real overload. I am alright with the range but extremely happy with it’s compliment to the warhorn . I couldn’t ask for more and consider it fair. THIS IS AN OVERLOAD!
TRAITED (9/10)

Water Overload (1/10): this overload is pretty weak ATM, and does not help, it pretty much makes things worse. as people will have to group up which just messes up everything, I really wish this was an exaggeration, but it isn’t. sPvP enemies just undo yout heal with far greater DPS and take advantage of all the eggs being in one basket. in PvE you lose so much damage for a sup par heal. which is just illogical to do. laughably so, this overload was great but now is undertuned. this ability doesn’t need more healing. it needs to reflect damage while channeling and apply Aegis to all allies. I cannot see healing being the only thing this does. it is pretty lack luster.
TRAITED 1(/10): still not worth a pennie

Air Overload (7/10): much like the Fire overload this synergizes strongly with the the traits and works with many builds, it was very powerful in zerker and was pretty helpful for the rabid the new range was a god send. my only issue is that it is in the air tree, which means I only want to be in this attunment for 5 seconds at most. so 10 seconds in this attunement is just WAY too long it goes against everything air is about.
TRAITED (8/10)

Earth Overload (8/10): This is overall an amazing change and iteration of the overload. It doesn’t synergize with many trait well, but it is powerful as it is that it doesn’t need any trait assistance. in zerking it was good in rabid it was good but the positioning and the natural stability make this ability worth that awful 5 seconds in earth.
TRAITED (9/10): it doesn’t get much other than an aura from the traits, it already has stability
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Warhorn skills 4/10: Earth and Fire feel great with the issue of some cooldown problems. If there was a trait for as low as 20% warhorn reduction I think it would be a contender for other option that I define as mandatory. air and water skills were so weak, which saddens me.

Heat Sync (9/10): this tool is so unique and special I find it so rewarding and works with everything the tempest is about, melee support. being close to your enemies and friends. I can see them removing the 3 might and increasing the cooldown.

Wildfire (6/10): The damage is pretty good, meh. but the cooldown is god awful, reduce it’s cooldown. it doesn’t fit a 5 skills criteria. it doesn’t buff anyone it doesnt debuff anyone, it needs to remove boons or or give fury if it is going to stay. this ability is just a firefield with some damage. this also does not work with Persisting Flames. which makes that trait , you get the picture

Tidal Surge (1/10): the cooldowns is really long, the heal is low, the regen is weak, the knockback is too weak, and the speed at which it moves is laughable. this ability with ANY cast time is not worth casting. if this was instant it would be considerably stronger. this is a whole lot of things that do nothing. in PvP it worked 1 out of 40 times on any enemy. but it does something, just nothing worth a penny.

Water Globe (0.0000001/10): wow, im not even sure this is usable. I tried, I really did. I have never gotten so frustrated and yelled at my screen, until now ( I came close that one time in skyhammer against 2 guardians, 2 warriors and a mesmer and 2 of my team members went AFK) this ability. my F!@# GOD. this needs to be way more than it is, this…35 second cooldown is . for what? what is this. I’m so sad, I need the ability to survive until the overload. this. I …im done (<<) …. ( --.)

Cyclone (5/10) a reasonable cooldown for a hefty swiftness and an unblockable extremely short range pull. I believe the range o the pull needs to be 240-300 and not 180 the cast time of 1 seconds is not okay and the travel speed on top of that obviously allowed for every single person to dodge it. This didn’t touch one enemy not a one, so it is pretty much a swiftness ability.

Lightning Ord (1/10) the damage of this ability is non existant, the vulnerability ( at best 5 stacks most of the time is was 2-3) I feel like this needs to track and move slower OR move faster and hit 20 times harder

Sand Squall (10/10): this ability is exactly the types of abilities a tempest should carry. a supportive and powerful ability that help everyone in all situations.

Dust Storm (8/10): this ability is powerful enough to take a 5 slow, it does a godo amount of bleed and protects it’s caster, it does a great in a defensive and offensive aspect of gameplay.
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Shouts (6/10), these are pretty odd. I’m not sure how I should feel about these. they share the aura minus"Eye of the Storm" . which is nice, but other than the aura most of these are pretty kittenty, but they share auras, but they suck, BUT they share. you see my thought process?

“Feel the Burn” (7/10): This has a reasonable cooldown, feels like it is meant to support the melee brawlers around me as I play, this synergizes better with buffs on aura application.

“Shock and Aftershock” (7/10): the damage is not important here, the cripple and immobilize are great, but the frosting on this cake is the magnetic aura. the issue is the range and the cast time. this does not work well with overloads, it is very powerful in WvW. I just wish this did less and had no cooldown, remove the damage, remove the cripple, it doesn’t help that much to give it a cast time.

“Eye of the Storm” (3/10) this is probably the worst of the shouts a 45 second stun break. , this needs an aura to warrant this cooldown. or to cleanse all conditions, or pulse knock-DOWNS. would be nice to have a way to eat through stability stacks

“Flash-Freeze!” (4/10) 3 seconds of chill, and 10% damage reduction for 5 seconds. with a cast time and a 25 second cooldown. Chill is too short ( I know they don’t want to make it longer, it is a scary condition) needs weakness, needs more range. as it stands I’ll never use it over a signet or cantrip or a sigil.

“Rebound” (0/10): mostly because this is broken, I activated it I still die, the cooldown is really bad. the heal that I read on the tool-tip if it were to heal me, that is just pathetic for an elite skill. this is supposed to compete with Rampage? to compete with Lichform? yeah, even if the heal did go off, which now that I think about it, it might of went off and was just so weak I still died, 0/10

Overall, this allows for some pretty good builds, I am pretty happy with the majority of it. I am confused on what some of these have to do with tempest. overall it is a (7/10) feels good. I enjoy it.

After some more time playing celestial builds with Tempest in pvp and collecting my thoughts, I’m adding this to the feedback list, it mainly concerns traitlines.

I think that the stability stack from harmonious conduits should be made a minor trait, perhaps merged with hardy conduit, and Speedy conduit should give super speed on overload isntead of swiftness. The harmonious conduits could keep the cooldown reduction from the first iteration and the 10% bonus damage modifier.

Additionally Earthen Proxy, Latent Stamina, and Lucid Singularity are lacking and need either stronger effects or a generally rework. Tempestuous Arias needs to provide 20% cooldown reduction on shouts. Lucid Singularity isn’t very good in its current form because geomancer’s training exists, so theres no point. I think if it reduced the precharge time before an overload to 3 seconds down from 5, the overload cooldown itself, and/or cleansed 1 condition AoE per second of overloading, it would feel much more grandmaster worthy.

The warhorn skills are mostly decent, they just need shorter cast times across the board. Heat sync is fine spreading all boons and wildfire should have its boon removal back, albeit reduced from its first incarnation from the livestream. Lighting Orb should become a mobility based skill, such as “teleport to your target and release lighting orbs on them that damage and inflict vuln on nearby foes”. This would help with the frontline feel.

The utility shouts are niche, and I think Wash the Pain Away should heal a condition per-pulse on yourself and allies, since Tempest is forced to rely on cantrips/water traits for condition removal. Since the chronomancer well of eternity got reworked to clear conditions on self and allies, I don’t see why Wash the Pain Away shouldn’t, and it could possibly even free the need for water in every build a bit by giving more AoE cleanse from an active skill instead of passive water/arcane trait synergies that the base class has been brought up on. Since its cooldown is higher and its effect is less personal healing/more ally healing, I don’t think it would conflict with ether renewal for its role too much. Tempest could really use some more condition removal, since elementalist is a bit vulnerable to condition unless it devotes most of its build to removing conditions through regen/cantrips, and Tempest doesn’t want to go all out into regen/cantrips in order to survive since its trying to break the mold of arcane builds in pvp.

Overall, Tempest was a ton of fun to play and it really feels better, but still needs a bit of work.

I have to say that for PVE, tempest is perfect and is precisely what Ele needs to be. It is a beautiful team class that as tempest drops down long-duration fields that can be repeatedly combo’ed

It provides great staying power and group utility, while not increasing the solo abilities of an already too-powerful class.

It should absolutely not get any more condi cleanse than it already has, as that would place it over the top.

Looks like I posted this to the incorrect thread, going to try again here.

I’ve been having fun running a D/Wh Tempest in PVP this weekend. I’m sure it’s far from optimal but anyway, for science right?

I do have some feedback on the Warhorn and shouts that I wanted to share.

• Fire 4: This is ok now but if it is nerfed to only share Might it will be pretty weak. In that case it should build WAY more Might but even then it’s such a one-trick pony.
• Fire 5: This isn’t responsive enough for PVP, it just comes out too slowly. (this is a theme with Warhorn! Slow velocity)
  *Air 4: It’s nice as a Swiftness source, but it comes out too slowly to impact enemies in PVP. Also the pull is far too short if you somehow manage to hit someone.
• Air 5: This doesn’t do enough. It moves too slowly to get where you want it to, but then too fast when it’s next to an enemy. It’s weak overall. I don’t like it’s targeting method either. I wouldn’t be sad if it was completely reworked
• Water 4: As another heal it’s ok, as a knockback it’s just too slow.
• Water 5: I personally like it. But the healing could be higher.
• Earth 4: It’s ok but protection should be longer.
• Earth 5: The animation is really bad (almost invisible) and it seems to move way too slowly, similar to Fire 5. Are there any other weapons in the whole game with such slow velocity? Why does Warhorn need to be saddled with this slow speed?

Shouts

• Eye of the Storm: This doesn’t do enough for it’s long CD. Maybe if it applied other boons in AOE. But I’m not sure which.
• Feel the Burn: I like it for the short cooldown and the aura. But it’s nothing special.
• Shock and Aftershock: A great effect. Too long CD. I think all shouts should be usable during an Overload though (this goes for Rebound too).
• Rebound: This needs to protect yourself as well as your team. The proc’d heal needs to be higher, like 3x more – and if you don’t proc it, you should still get a 50% heal. Forget the aura. Right now this could be a really good Elite but the numbers are far, far too low.

Overload

• Fire: Good damage, especially with a burning build. But I feel with the short range, the risk/reward of this overload isn’t great.
• Water: It doesn’t do enough. It takes too long to charge (5 sec when you need healing is too long), then while you are in it, it feels mostly like wasted time while you get bursted down. Initially I thought it was ok but the sad truth is in is woefully undertuned.
• Air: Great damage. Good range.
• Earth: Honestly I didn’t use it much, only when I had rangers attacking me or I really feared incoming CC. Average, I think.

Pls make air overload hit steath enemy again ,will be much better ,a storm must hit everything on its path.

I did testing tempest as much as i could in WvW romaing with a F/E/T scepter condi build.

Overloads:
Fire: Felt about eqal to BW2. The field and circle shown is great. Its was my most used overload for clearing camps. In my small team they noticed the might stacking. Radius felt meh but enough for what i used it.

Air: felt greatly improved. But i only used it as a combat opener in a teamfight where it´s good.

Earth: Its great. The protection pulse + stab make it top and i see the bleeds added. It doesn´t kill fast but its a great condi support now withs prot/cripple/bleed. This one is my favorite and i used it quite regulary also in 1:1 fights where it seemed to scare off oponents ^^.

Water: A bit of a problem here. I replaced arcane with tempest. The result is less ele swaping and very low water useage. Water is situational and the thing here is the 5s wait. To make that overlaod work in a non water build you need to have it at hands when situation calls for. As result i could not pull it off the whole weekend.

conlusion: Overloads are in a good shape now. I even don´t agree making stab baseline is good. In teamfights you can pull them off without stab or from a friend´s stab. When solo only use earth, i got lots of interupts when alone and using non earth overloads without traiting stab. But its a team spec so i am fine.

Warhorn: Not used in BW3. It felt not fitting my build and i focused more on testing shouts. Time is short in one weekend and i can´t play for two days.

Shouts: Not much changes here.
Shouts are the main part i want to use in tempest. So i tried to make them work.

Rebound: It lost very fast and i swaped back to FSG. It might also be because FSG is extreamly well fitting my build. I think a dagger build would make more use of rebound. Even as team emergency you will loose 90% annyway if needed. Guess its a bit better in sPvP. I could make nice use when CD is way down like 60sec + 20% reduction so its on 48seconds.

Feel the burn: The best shout. Soso damage, but its 20s cooldown and instant cast make it good when traited. Its a nice defence/offence mix with heal/weaken/aura.

Flash freeze: The 25sec cooldown make it useful. So traited it works but it needs being instant cast.

Shok/aftershok: I got disapointed. While it has good effects its CD was to long and not being instant hurts. It got removed from my toolbar after a day freeing a place for a cantrip or air sigil again.

Eye of the storm:
Found no place on my toolbar. But the passive version is OK. I agree shock aura instead of speed would be great but this might make it to powerful.

Wash the pain away:
The casting time hurts. The group heal is fine but having to stay so close is also a bit hard. Without having condi cleans this one looses against eather renewal or arcane brilliance.

Conclusion:
Shouts need to be instant cast to ever compete with cantrips and synergize with overloads. Tempestious aria crys for 20% CD reduction.
Shouts are the core why i would take tempest fitting my playstyle. Overloads instead of my arcane ele swaping alone would not pay off!

Traits:
Since i am shout focused i didn´t try much varity. But its easy just by reading the description to tell whats up and most is aleady written. I just can´t agree with stab baseline, because this would allow to go for souts + stab overcharges and this might be a bit much. Latent stamina is weak and the trigger is wrong here. Go for aura or shout as trigger.

What i realy would wish is making speedy conduit a permanent 33% (or at least baseline 25%). I got a jealous when seeing Natural Stride :-/. This is needed to open build options.

Build conclusion:
While there is some condi support, it has major drawbacks. One is condi removal and one speed. Needing to put those on the toolbar ruins my tempest. I did play my non tempest arcane version inbetween, and it felt like an ele with all instants on the bar and arcane tools wrecking oponents much faster …. Once you have learned to play an arcane ele tempest gets a hard competition.
The only way i got it playable was with traveler rune, because it synergizes (15% boon, 10% condi duration) and gives 25% movement. I lost damage but i could at least run around but it did´t fully convince me in being more fun an on par with my arcane + scavenger rune.

Since when does Fire Overload have a movable Fire Field centered on the player? This is godkitten awesome. I’m not even asking Water Globe to be a movable Water Field anymore, just slow the speed it travels! :0

Valento.9852:

Since when does Fire Overload has a movable Fire Field centered on the player? This is godkitten awesome. I’m not even asking Water Globe to be a movable Water Field anymore, just slow the speed it travels! :0

I actually didn’t notice that, it’s pretty awesome! It even combos with it’s own whirl finisher.

I just tested this with the persisting flames trait and it doesn’t seem to work. The trait reads "Executing blast finishers on fire fields grant fury. Fire fields last longer. Create a lava font when you go down. ". It doesn’t say that the fire fields need to come from weapon skills specifically, so I wonder if it’s intended or a bug.

Ganathar.4956:

Valento.9852:

Since when does Fire Overload has a movable Fire Field centered on the player? This is godkitten awesome. I’m not even asking Water Globe to be a movable Water Field anymore, just slow the speed it travels! :0

I actually didn’t notice that, it’s pretty awesome! It even combos with it’s own whirl finisher.

I just tested this with the persisting flames trait and it doesn’t seem to work. The trait reads "Executing blast finishers on fire fields grant fury. Fire fields last longer. Create a lava font when you go down. ". It doesn’t say that the fire fields need to come from weapon skills specifically, so I wonder if it’s intended or a bug.

I think that’s by design, you get roughly 7s-8s (5sec channel+2s/3s aftercast). That’s quite a lot.

Valento.9852:

Ganathar.4956:

Valento.9852:

Since when does Fire Overload has a movable Fire Field centered on the player? This is godkitten awesome. I’m not even asking Water Globe to be a movable Water Field anymore, just slow the speed it travels! :0

I actually didn’t notice that, it’s pretty awesome! It even combos with it’s own whirl finisher.

I just tested this with the persisting flames trait and it doesn’t seem to work. The trait reads "Executing blast finishers on fire fields grant fury. Fire fields last longer. Create a lava font when you go down. ". It doesn’t say that the fire fields need to come from weapon skills specifically, so I wonder if it’s intended or a bug.

I think that’s by design, you get roughly 7s-8s (5sec channel+2s/3s aftercast). That’s quite a lot.

It is likely to be by design, but I believe that it should still be mentioned just in case it is a bug. You also get 9 seconds of the fire field. 4 seconds from the channel and 5 from the field aftercast.

Warhorn Air #4 reads that it is unblockable but I had it blocked many times. Either a error in the tool tip or bug in the game.

Shouts seem very lackluster, still. Shouldn’t have to spec to get might or boons on shouts otherwise, what is the point? Already have to spec to even make them relevant and they’re still not….

Someone, somewhere suggested that air #5 should follow your character instead of being aimed and I agree.

Warhorn #4 water knockdown needs to be instant so you can actually use it correctly.

I think if overloads are going to break stun they need to be put on some sort of global cooldown because 4 stun breaks on essentially a 5 sec CD is broke.

Remove eye of the storm from traitline along with the rest of the passive play in this game please, no one wants to fight passive CD procs.

Some sort of mobility on warhorn would also be desirable.

Wolfric.9380:

I did testing tempest as much as i could in WvW romaing with a F/E/T scepter condi build.

Overloads:
Fire: Felt about eqal to BW2. The field and circle shown is great. Its was my most used overload for clearing camps. In my small team they noticed the might stacking. Radius felt meh but enough for what i used it.

Air: felt greatly improved. But i only used it as a combat opener in a teamfight where it´s good.

Earth: Its great. The protection pulse + stab make it top and i see the bleeds added. It doesn´t kill fast but its a great condi support now withs prot/cripple/bleed. This one is my favorite and i used it quite regulary also in 1:1 fights where it seemed to scare off oponents ^^.

Water: A bit of a problem here. I replaced arcane with tempest. The result is less ele swaping and very low water useage. Water is situational and the thing here is the 5s wait. To make that overlaod work in a non water build you need to have it at hands when situation calls for. As result i could not pull it off the whole weekend.

conlusion: Overloads are in a good shape now. I even don´t agree making stab baseline is good. In teamfights you can pull them off without stab or from a friend´s stab. When solo only use earth, i got lots of interupts when alone and using non earth overloads without traiting stab. But its a team spec so i am fine.

Warhorn: Not used in BW3. It felt not fitting my build and i focused more on testing shouts. Time is short in one weekend and i can´t play for two days.

Shouts: Not much changes here.
Shouts are the main part i want to use in tempest. So i tried to make them work.

Rebound: It lost very fast and i swaped back to FSG. It might also be because FSG is extreamly well fitting my build. I think a dagger build would make more use of rebound. Even as team emergency you will loose 90% annyway if needed. Guess its a bit better in sPvP. I could make nice use when CD is way down like 60sec + 20% reduction so its on 48seconds.

Feel the burn: The best shout. Soso damage, but its 20s cooldown and instant cast make it good when traited. Its a nice defence/offence mix with heal/weaken/aura.

Flash freeze: The 25sec cooldown make it useful. So traited it works but it needs being instant cast.

Shok/aftershok: I got disapointed. While it has good effects its CD was to long and not being instant hurts. It got removed from my toolbar after a day freeing a place for a cantrip or air sigil again.

Eye of the storm:
Found no place on my toolbar. But the passive version is OK. I agree shock aura instead of speed would be great but this might make it to powerful.

Wash the pain away:
The casting time hurts. The group heal is fine but having to stay so close is also a bit hard. Without having condi cleans this one looses against eather renewal or arcane brilliance.

Conclusion:
Shouts need to be instant cast to ever compete with cantrips and synergize with overloads. Tempestious aria crys for 20% CD reduction.
Shouts are the core why i would take tempest fitting my playstyle. Overloads instead of my arcane ele swaping alone would not pay off!

Traits:
Since i am shout focused i didn´t try much varity. But its easy just by reading the description to tell whats up and most is aleady written. I just can´t agree with stab baseline, because this would allow to go for souts + stab overcharges and this might be a bit much. Latent stamina is weak and the trigger is wrong here. Go for aura or shout as trigger.

What i realy would wish is making speedy conduit a permanent 33% (or at least baseline 25%). I got a jealous when seeing Natural Stride :-/. This is needed to open build options.

Build conclusion:
While there is some condi support, it has major drawbacks. One is condi removal and one speed. Needing to put those on the toolbar ruins my tempest. I did play my non tempest arcane version inbetween, and it felt like an ele with all instants on the bar and arcane tools wrecking oponents much faster …. Once you have learned to play an arcane ele tempest gets a hard competition.
The only way i got it playable was with traveler rune, because it synergizes (15% boon, 10% condi duration) and gives 25% movement. I lost damage but i could at least run around but it did´t fully convince me in being more fun an on par with my arcane + scavenger rune.

A tempest/water/arcana + soldier runes would have 0 problems vs condi , you can use that set up to increase condi cleanse on your team , making it a far better option respect to simple d/d while still packing a punch

Klaeljanus.7695:

It provides great staying power and group utility, while not increasing the solo abilities of an already too-powerful class.

It’s funny cause none of the teams that killed the raid boys used a single ele.

It should absolutely not get any more condi cleanse than it already has, as that would place it over the top.

Tempest doesn’t have any condition removal except water overload.

Throwing in my 2 cents;

I think the best summary for Tempest is it feels better than it looks. The more I played it, the more I fell in love with how it functions, despite it looking rather lackluster at first glance.

Overloads
Air and Fire feel in a fairly good place, Earth feels a little weak (but I’m also still getting used to it, so can’t speak too certainly), and Water feels distinctly underwhelming of the 4 (partially due to the low tick rate). The fact Fresh Air doesn’t work on the cooldown while still in Air is disappointing, but fairly understandable given the effectiveness of the overload.

Warhorn
Fire 4: while certainly being useful, just feels sort of underwhelming. Would be nice if it transferred the boons that Elementalists reliably generate (stuff like regen/might/prot/swiftness, maybe fury) instead of just might.

Fire 5: just takes too kitten long to extend for how long it lasts. Unless the enemy was perfectly stationary (Something that really doesn’t/shouldn’t happen in GW2) they will have usually moved on by the time the fire field is in place.

Water 4: throws me off with how the hitbox fits with its visuals (hitbox is smaller and animation seems to run notably past when hitbox is active).

Water 5: feels solid and gives a much needed water combo field for non-staff Tempests.

Air 4: needs a faster speed, as it is fairly easy to dodge with just normal movement despite its fairly short range.

Air 5: I’d like if the orb itself also did something (instead of just firing projectiles) to get it closer to the original lightning orb and to give an extra bonus for good targeting on it.

Earth 4: feels sort of overloaded (having basically all of the useful things you can get out of earth in a single skill), but also feels like it NEEDS that overloading to compete with stuff like Obsidian Flesh for a front liner.

Earth 5: really just not sure where the hitbox is post cast, as the visuals are hard to see in any active fight.

Traits
The biggest issue I see right now is that Harmonious Conduit still feels required, because the stability stack and bonus damage just do so much to make overloading safer and a bigger payoff. Running Tempest without intending to use overloads brings up the question of why use Tempest in the first place, since it is so heavily geared toward them.

The Grandmaster traits all seem like they would be useful for different builds, though I find myself being a big fan of Elemental Bastion when combined with Unstable Conduit.

Latent Vigor feels incredibly out of place, since it is the only trait in Tempest that relies on a specific element and ONLY interacts with that specific element. It seems like a Water Adept trait that got lost before squatting in a Tempest Adept spot.

Shouts

The heal is usable, though I have a feeling I’ll be using Arcane Brilliance and a water field to heal my team more often (as the blast finisher on AB provides more utility outside of just healing as well).

Feel the Burn: Very happy about having a short cooldown aura provider with no cast time. Works great with Elemental Bastion without the damage being overwhelming for its CD/cast time.

Flash Freeze: Had a few issues making it land, might need a slightly longer chill application to make up for the low damage.

Eye of the Storm: Without a ton of team coordination, this ability feels sort of meh. There are better personal stun breaks, and the radius means you have to be the on same page as the rest of your team to help out.

Shock and Aftershock: Great effects, but the CD is massive. As opposed to the other shouts, Magnetic Aura (as with all projectile reflects) needs specific timing, which will usually NOT be when you need the immobilize. As such, definitely feel like I’m wasting half the skill usually.

Rebound: Honestly, it feels more like a “I want x aura 5 seconds from now” then “i want this rebound-heal thing going”. This isn’t inherently bad, but 75 seconds for an aura of your choice 5 seconds later is pretty lackluster (especially for an elite).

Animations
[As Human Male] Better than the previous iterations (particularly water), but still feel a little off. Fire is definitely my least favorite, though it does make sense for the visual effects.

rotten.9753:

Klaeljanus.7695:

It provides great staying power and group utility, while not increasing the solo abilities of an already too-powerful class.

It’s funny cause none of the teams that killed the raid boys used a single ele.

It should absolutely not get any more condi cleanse than it already has, as that would place it over the top.

Tempest doesn’t have any condition removal except water overload.

I think that might be a consequence of the high end PvE community being sick of playing ele all the time for everything and wanting to try something else.

And yeah, as I’ve been saying, Wash the Pain Away really needs to cleanse one condition per pulse to make it worth it.

The soldier runes shout-aura-heal builds are certainly interesting, but the trait synergy is off since you need Harmonious Conduits to be able to get auras from overloads reliably, while tempestuous arias is good support but can’t compete with harmonious conduits for the stability, in part because it doesn’t offer shout CDs like it should.

Really though harmonious conduit’s stability needs to be added to hardy conduit, and harmonious conduits could keep its 10% damage modifier and teh overload CD reduction from before. Just do that and suddenly the Tempest traitline would feel a lot less clunky, punishing, and un-synergistic to spec into.

nearlight.3064:

I think that might be a consequence of the high end PvE community being sick of playing ele all the time for everything and wanting to try something else.

I cannot agree with that. Those people, at least those that recorded first kills, do not care about fun when something like virtual prestige is at stake. You play what will give you a victory.

So, I’ve been playing Tempest all weekend, and I think I finally figured out what bothers me about it. The problem, I think, is that it isn’t good at any one thing. It does not excel at damage, and it does not excel at support. As an elite specialization, I think it should pick one thing and excel at that one thing. Granted, there are several elites that don’t “excel” at any one thing, but perhaps that’s why not everyone is happy with them yet.

As an example, I would have probably given Tempest condi damage, and had it excel at condi damage. Earth would stack more bleed, water would do chill damage (Reaper has that on lock, I know), air would have dazed/stunned, and fire would keep on burning. That kind of condi damage could synergize well with the shouts with some adjustments (Chill damage, cripple/bleed, burns, stun). I understand there are likely problems with this idea, but it’s an example. I would have given Tempest a job, and it would do that job well.

Anyways, there’s my thoughts on that. I’m not particularly pleased with Tempest because it does not have the capability to excel at any one thing.

Water overload 4 sec is way to long ,, make it 2,5 sec like last beta
it just pointless doing nothing for 4 sec.. while the other hit me it just bad idea to make it 4 sec ..
and again 5 sec to wait for overload is soo loong pls change it to 3sec

Godservant.8736:

So, I’ve been playing Tempest all weekend, and I think I finally figured out what bothers me about it. The problem, I think, is that it isn’t good at any one thing. It does not excel at damage, and it does not excel at support. As an elite specialization, I think it should pick one thing and excel at that one thing. Granted, there are several elites that don’t “excel” at any one thing, but perhaps that’s why not everyone is happy with them yet.

As an example, I would have probably given Tempest condi damage, and had it excel at condi damage. Earth would stack more bleed, water would do chill damage (Reaper has that on lock, I know), air would have dazed/stunned, and fire would keep on burning. That kind of condi damage could synergize well with the shouts with some adjustments (Chill damage, cripple/bleed, burns, stun). I understand there are likely problems with this idea, but it’s an example. I would have given Tempest a job, and it would do that job well.

Anyways, there’s my thoughts on that. I’m not particularly pleased with Tempest because it does not have the capability to excel at any one thing.

Well, it might not excel at something but depending on your Overload preference you can be pretty good at AoE might share, or protection share (as long as they don’t nerf Overload Earth), plus you can heal very good, specially considering Element Bastion and the absurd healing potential from healing shout. It feels it’s very tied to what attunement you want to camp, and what rotations you have in mind.

I still think WH for its GM still seems lacking compared to the other 2 GM overload being the tankly and aura healing being the healing support. I think the WH GM should up the number of targets you can hit with the WH. That and the worlding is odd on it in that it has 2 cd.

It also seems the GM for overloading dose not seem to work right as if you can still be chilled cripaled etc.. when your overloading. Dose the -100% dose not take in account for +40% effects so your just cutting most of the duration but still getting hit with the +40%?

A lot of the effects that WH dose need to center on the tempest and stay on the tempest such as the water field lighting orb and wild fire. The lack of control after you cast it feels like a waist use.

Oddly staff tempest works well with the +10% dmg done after overloading but it dose not last long enofe to do any thing realy big. A longer duration would be nice.

Jski.6180:

I still think WH for its GM still seems lacking compared to the other 2 GM overload being the tankly and aura healing being the healing support. I think the WH GM should up the number of targets you can hit with the WH. That and the worlding is odd on it in that it has 2 cd.

It also seems the GM for overloading dose not seem to work right as if you can still be chilled cripaled etc.. when your overloading. Dose the -100% dose not take in account for +40% effects so your just cutting most of the duration but still getting hit with the +40%?

A lot of the effects that WH dose need to center on the tempest and stay on the tempest such as the water field lighting orb and wild fire. The lack of control after you cast it feels like a waist use.

Oddly staff tempest works well with the +10% dmg done after overloading but it dose not last long enofe to do any thing realy big. A longer duration would be nice.

That short duration +10% dmg is insanely good for melee weapons, though, as they’re much faster and make the most out of it. If you have a guardian give you quickness… oh God.

The minor trait Speedy Conduit seems bugged. Only gives 5 seconds of swiftness instead of the listed 8. Speaking of that, with the Arcana minor trait Elemental Attunement the tooltip on air attunement shows only 5s but gives 8s of swiftness when swapping to air.

Valento.9852:

Well, it might not excel at something but depending on your Overload preference you can be pretty good at AoE might share, or protection share (as long as they don’t nerf Overload Earth), plus you can heal very good, specially considering Element Bastion and the absurd healing potential from healing shout. It feels it’s very tied to what attunement you want to camp, and what rotations you have in mind.

I think people play Ele though so they can use all 4 attunements. That’s how you get the most out of your Ele. If I wanted to be a great healer and only a great healer, I’d probably go Druid. This is another aspect that I think is also what makes Tempest less fun. Tempest needs to excel at one thing, but that thing needs to spread across the 4 attunements. That’s why my example used conditions. You can make conditions across the 4 attunements.

Granted, this is just what I think makes playing an Ele fun and also what makes Tempest less fun to play. It’s just my opinion. Tempest doesn’t provide a common point to capitalize on across the 4 attunements.

I tend to agree with a lot of the criticism and feed back here on the thread.

If I had to change just one thing about Tempest right now, I’d take a look at the Warhorn which should get the 20% reduction back on traits, the general boon sharing and a few more small tweaks (a little damage tweak, a visual indication of AoE paths, them not working on uneven surfaces etc.)

light.2597:

Water overload 4 sec is way to long ,, make it 2,5 sec like last beta
it just pointless doing nothing for 4 sec.. while the other hit me it just bad idea to make it 4 sec ..
and again 5 sec to wait for overload is soo loong pls change it to 3sec

Yeah you’re completly right. They are trying to normalize the skill cooldowns but the attunement skills do not have equal casting times. It’s like they are making a profession by theory crafting instead of testing how the combat actually work in practice.

In Fire it takes 4 seconds to drop all your skills, 4 seconds before overload is fine
In water it takes 2.5 seconds to cast your main skills, therefore 4 seconds is just too long
In earth it should be around 2 seconds as well
In air it should be 3 seconds

Offensive overloads: 3-4 sec pre-cast
Defensive overloads: 2-2.5 sec pre-cast

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -
Shout cd is way too long and they should all be instant, air shout should give a shock aura

Warhorn cds are way too long, on a second rotation barely any WH skills are available
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Traits are getting better, damage trait is too short or too small. If it’s only a 5 second buff then it should be 25% extra damage. Otherwise if it’s a 10% buff it should be for the next 15 seconds. Stability on overloads should be the grandmaster minor.

The Tempest was really fun to play and feels good atm.

I think the fire warhorn skill 5, Wildfire could spread a little bit faster.

and the shout “Feel the Burn!” is to weak. it needs a little buff compare to the other shouts.

Warhorn

• Tidal surge feels slow and awkward. The animation feels out of sync with the actual knockback effect. It could also probably benefit from a small range increase.

• Lightning orb feels very ineffectual. You can’t hit an enemy with more than a handful of attacks before they leave it’s range, either because they walked away or because the orb itself just passed. Would be much better if the orb impacting an enemy had an effect.

• Dust storm is awkward to use because it’s very hard to tell where it’s effective area is. And from what I have been able to see, it could stand to be a bit larger, or at least spread much faster.

Shouts

• They really, really need to be insta-cast. When the core mechanic of the spec requires long channels, the utilities for the spec should have synergy with it.

• Feel the Burn feels underwhelming. The fire aura and low CD is nice, but a single stack of burn and the pitiful damage make it unstatisfying.

• Flash Freeze suffers from a similar problem.

• Eye of the Storm is our stunbreak, but just having some superspeed doesn’t do much to prevent us from getting locked down again. A shocking aura would help.

• Aftershock’s long cooldown, low damage, and short root make it feel like a bad alternative to signet of earth. Being insta-cast would help significantly.

Overloads

• Stab on overloads makes them usable. If it were baseline, it would allow more build options.

• Water overload being locked out for 5 seconds is painful. If I’m a healing ele, I need to be able to react quickly when my allies get hit. I found myself not wanting to leave water just so that my heals and cleanse were actually ready when they were needed.

Traits

• Latent stamina’s effects feel weak and out of place. Small amount of vigor and endurance on a sizable ICD. The only attunement specific trait in the entire line.

• Earthen proxy feels unrewarding. If it had some other interaction with protection or gave it somehow, it might be better.

• Elemental Bastion’s heal scaling could be better.

Auras In General

• It still feels frustrating that we have aura traits spread across every single traitline.

• We also have the issue of powerful auras and tempest, while being both essential to any auramancer build, stepping all over each other. Powerful auras is sharing auras out to allies, but so are shouts, and you receive no benefit whatsoever from using them together.

I want to like tempest, I really do. Whenever I cast an overload though, i can’t defend myself for the duration. Plus I’d have been sitting in an element for a long time as it is to even get to that point. You’re so vulnerable for so long it’s just not worth it.

My first recommendation is to completely remove the 4 second prep time to unlock the overload. It’s bad enough of a channel as it is, and it takes a full 8-10 seconds of planning to have the right overload competed at the right time. By then, chances are the battle has changed and a different strat is required.

OR

Add a defensive buff during the channel associated with the element. Magnetic aura for earth, swirling winds for air, an aoe blind effect for fire, and maybe frost aura for water.

The main deal though is that you’re committed to a move for TEN seconds, not 4 or 5 if you’re overloading. It’s way too much when pvp and wvw require quick changes.