Guild Wars 2

“Harmonious Conduit: This trait has been re-worked. Upon activating an overload, gain stability for 4 seconds. If the overload is successfully completed, gain 10% damage for 5 seconds.”

This is good, at least. Is it a single application? either way this is a change that was necessary. Now if only we could do something about Thief’s steal always ripping stability first. :P

The changes I see make me happier.
Now I have a reason to use warhorn and overload more often when desired.

With Harmonious Conduit, how many stacks of stability, or is it a pulsing stability?

These changes are a huge step in the right direction. Harmonious conduit is exactly what we needed, but as such, will be basically required.

I think there are SO many ways to give group might, that a skill to spread just your might seems redundant.

One thing I am honestly confused about now is what role this elite spec is supposed to fill. If heat sync gets nerfed, the boon sharing of this build seems significantly worse than what we already have. And this isn’t a damage oriented elite either.

I still can’t imagine how this will survive in melee range against bosses.

I still don’t like rebound. It’s too twitch based and 5 seconds is nothing. This elite specialization still screams ‘for the most competitive team with everyone on teamspeak’.

Karl you followed my feedback about stability! I might actually want to play tempest now again! I mean theres still some dubious things, like the heat sync nerf, but stability from tempest traits was so needed to even make the foundation of tempest worth playing.

Can we please look at increasing the speed at which dust storm spreads, as well as giving clearer indicators for its effective area? The same is definitely true for tidal surge as well. The delay before the knockback can even occur, and the pitiful range make it awkward to use.

I also feel like even with these changes overloads are still likely to be very underwhelming, but I suppose we’ll have to see.

A lot of changes that are a step in the right direction, however, why was Speedy Conduit increased to 8s? The issue was more that Hardy Conduit(is that the one that gives Prot?) only lasted 3s. Whatever, still some good changes here, but the Stability is going to be pretty much mandatory, might be better for it to be a Minor skill.

Oh God! These changes are sweet! I’ll read more carefully and give my feedback soon.

Feedback:
Overloads are overall much much better, I thought you’d screw Water by normalizing to 4sec but then you put the first pulse when it starts channeling (clever!). Overload Air looks yummy aswell. I have a question:

• For Overload Fire, how different will the burning applications be? I was almost setting up a condi. build, but I don’t know how effective it will be. The damage part is understandable because it is too offensive, but it should still allow for good condi. synergy.

Warhorn changes are nice, Dust Storm now serves as an addon for condi. builds as well depending on how effective the bleeding application is. I’m a bit worried about Heat Sync. It shouldn’t just spread might as it is already too much easy to stack might, if you guys are afraid of AoE Armor of Earth, I suggest you whitelist what boons the ele can pass. You should allow, besides might, at least: protection and swiftness (or fury?). They’re too much required for survivability and can turn the tide in a PvP match, or a hard boss encounter. Just my 2¢.

Rebound can now be slotted because it provides a boon for an uncommon scenario, I just hope such scenario exists outside of PvP (hint hint raids).

About the traits:

• Imbued Melodies now officially allows for a great support option rivalling D/D in a sense (for PvP), specially the Sand Squall part (protection is a bless y’know). Element Bastion looks like it can now make a difference (the healing was too low, been testing and the coefficient seemed way too low), and it’s a possibility for tempest healers (yay for healers).
• Speedy Conduit… I don’t mean to sound harsh, but I just wanted to know why it gives swiftness. I know, it fits the name, but why does such a minor exist in the first place? Why would someone need this to be fast while overloading when eles have so much access to swiftness? And Harmonious Conduit isn’t paying off, unless it’s more than one stack of stability. Remember we will be giving up on Tempestuous Aria which can be huge in open field fights (ANY game mode: WvW, some PvE areas, and sPvP, because AoE weakness and might).
• Lucid Singularity and Unstable Conduit still too meh. I don’t think someone will get them, specially Unstable Conduit.

I very much welcome all the changes as a whole, and I hope some of my questions can be answered. If not, well, at least it’s some sort of feedback! Thank you so much for not forgetting about us, Karl.

Step in the right direction. Won’t know how it feels till the next beta, but I still feel Tempest is lacking compared to the other specializations. But stab on overload was a much needed trait change.

I’ll echo what others have already said, the speed of multiple moves on the Warhorn still need to be addressed (Lightening Orb, Sand Squall, Tidal Surge).

Please be careful with the nerf to Heat Sync, it’s already more than possible to pump out high might to allies as an Elementalist… I agree it could use some tweaking, but the idea of the Tempest is suppose to be group utility. Don’t make this a one step forward, two steps back kind of thing.

I believe we’re still lacking a trait that reduces the cool down of shouts though?

Love the new Rebound. The Trait changes look cool too, though Speedy Conduits still seems pointless and should instead really be the new Harmonious Conduits, if anything.

I still don’t see Overloading as ever being a good idea. The risk/reward is still way off, and I’m not convinced it can ever be right (especially since you went overboard on Fire’s damage and it still isn’t as good as running through standard rotations).

Nice changes, steps in the right direction. The Stability trait immediately makes Overloads more worth using, but HOW many stacks does it grant, seeing as how Tempest is supposed to be a melee spec? Also, I’m afraid now that no one will really pick Earthen Proxy or Tempestuous Aria…perhaps the Stability functionality would have been better off rolled into a Minor trait…

Speaking of Shouts, why do we still not have a cool down reduction trait for them? “Feel the Burn!” is also a little underwhelming. “Aftershock!”’s recharge is way too long.

Why do we still have a weapon-specific trait for warhorn, while none of our other weapons have specific traits? Seems weird is all.

I’m still not sold on Overloads doing what they do better than our current builds (whether damage or support), but I am excited to try them out nevertheless. However, there is no justification for the 5-second charge-up time for Overloads. Because our auto-attacks suck outside of Lightning Whip and Fireball, we end up burning through our weapon skills and are then stuck, waiting to cast these situational Overloads; the opportunity cost is simply too high, whether for damage or support, and these changes are still not enough. Also, still hate the fact that swapping Attunements cancels the Overload.

The Heat Sync nerf is way too harsh. Seriously, a blast finisher is almost as good as this skill now. If Stability, Resistance and Quickness were the issues, fine, just exclude those boons from the boons that Heat Sync can share. At the very least, it needs to share Fury, Protection and Swiftness in addition to Might. Maybe Regen too, since these are all boons that Eles can produce themselves.

Why no changes to Wildfire? The full Fire field needs to be available a lot more quickly.

Why wasn’t the knockback on Tidal Surge improved to be at the very start of the skill? It’s clunky as is.

Why wasn’t Lightning Orb’s damage improved, or extra functionality added to the skill?

What happened to the Magnetic Aura on Sand Squall???

Why no Shocking Aura on “Eye of the Storm”?

Why don’t all other Auras besides Frost Aura stack?!

Speedy Conduit is extremely, even with the buff to Swiftness.

Now for something less constructive, though I still think it’s a valid point to bring up:

After the pages and pages of feedback that were compiled on the BWE2 feedback thread, I can’t help feeling…that’s it? Look at the Reaper and Daredevil changes. Tempest was the most in need of help and we got barely anything in the way of changes. Especially with the nerfs that baseline Ele is sure to get soon, I am not at all optimistic about the future of this spec and this profession.

That’s all? Really? REALLY?

I read all other BWE3’s posts changes. Just by the looks of them, compared to this, you can say that Tempest is the most ignored one. Exactly the one that was in a desperate need of love.
All the feedback about Tempest were strong in one direction: it needed hard changes (not minor buffs).

Before, we didn’t have any good trait options. Now? We have traits that we HAVE to have. In some aspects, we still don’t have real options…

Tempest didn’t add any other role or nice aspect for Elementalists. And it still doesn’t.

What about revamping aura traits from other lines and putting them all as options for Tempest? At least, it seemed that auramancer was an intended build for tempest (it is a nice mid range support option) and aura traits are not used at all the way they are now (and will still not be used when Tempest arrives, because they are all spread in so many specializations that it doesn’t synergize well). Auramancer was a fun build to use in the days. You took it from us, maybe now it’s the time to give it back. It’s an easy and cheese solution for the most frustrating Elite Spec of them all.

Generally, sounds pretty good. However, I think that Heat Sync should do more than just might (as just might makes the skill lackluster in many ways, and type casts the tempest into just producing might). Maybe include Regeneration/Protection(maybe?)/Swiftness as the other boons tempests can reliably keep up. You still avoid passing along problematic stuff like stability or quickness, while letting the skill being somewhat more relevant.

Not bad changes. There are specifics I’d like cleared up, like the changes to Speedy Conduit (what about Hardy Conduit?), does Rebound wear off once you take the lethal damage? How does this interact with damaging conditions? Also, are you looking into giving Warhorn Air 5 some usefulness?

1. Please don’t nerf fire overload, it’s only thing that’ll make Tempest anywhere near viable in PvE. Nerf the burn application or might but leave the damage as it is.

2. Heat Sync, might, fury and swiftness would fit more instead of only might.

3. Harmonious Conduit, please make that 10% to 15-20%, buff duration to 10s to be on par with Berserker’s Power and move it to Grandmaster tier.

4. Overloads really need a -20% cd trait, don’t think reworking Harmonious Conduit trait is a good idea. Should leave it where it is now, as master tier and rename the new Harmonious Conduit to something else, buff it and move it to Grandmaster tier.

5. Warhorn needs a -20% cd trait too so I’d suggest:
Imbued melodies: Warhorn skills cd reduced by 20%, while wielding a warhorn your boon duration is increased by 20%(or more since Grandmaster tier?).

Please don’t change Heat Sync.

It is the key to the Tempest’s Support spec. Removing its ability to share all boons would more or less destroy what made the Tempest’s Support spec special. Right now, as it is, Warhorn has to compete against OH Dagger and Focus. Heat Sync actually made it fairly competitive, in my opinion.

Removing this key capability, however, will all but assure that no one will use Warhorn over OH Dagger or Focus, really, ever.

Harmonious Conduit does become must-have for anyone planning to use Overloads, but that’s fine if there are no other Overload traits in the same tier. It can be the “Overload” option. I’m very wary about the other Overload changes though. I’ve had a lot of faith that you guys were going to fix these, but it seems like you just nerfed the only one that was almost good enough, and did not raise the other ones to be good enough still. What are your plans for future changes beyond these? I mean, if these were BWE2 changes, they’d be fine for calibration purposes, but we’re getting a little late in the game for baby steps.

I like what I see, but overloading still seems meh. In my opinion, the final overload effect needs to stick to your character instead of leaving it behind in the dust. For fire, let us use our regular weapon skills after we’ve fully channeled the overload, while having the fire tornado on top of us. The overloads feel too high risk and low reward as of BWE2, and something along the lines of this would help.

Anyways, I really like the changes to Rebound. I actually think that I might run that now, which is something I never thought that I would say. So woohoo Rebound!

(But give us back the good Heat Sync please. Heat Sync lives matter.)

Did you guys just nerf the warhorn?

You realize most PvE eles will never run condition damage gear, so switching out vulnerability for bleeds is actually nerfing the skill.

Especially since bleeds are so weak right now while burning is so strong.

Nobody will use Tempest in PvE. I can’t believe you think the fire overload does too much damage when a single Lava Font at full duration does comparable damage without locking you out of doing anything for 4 seconds.

Nobody will use overloads in PvE, period. You need to understand DPS is everything in PvE and nerfing your DPS for 4 seconds for a mediocre effect is going to mean this specialization won’t be used in PvE.

Karl McLain.5604:

Overload Fire: Reduced cast time to 4 seconds. note: We’ll be reducing the damage of this overload, as it’s got too much in its current state. I don’t have the numbers on this right now, but will update when I get a chance.

But you’ll slightly increase its minuscule range to compensate, correct?

Warhorn:
We’ve been looking at expanding the warhorn’s utility and will continue to work on its overall effectiveness and purpose.

But then:

note: Heat Sync is currently over-performing in its ability to spread all boons to allies. We’ll be looking to narrow down the boons it can spread, to just the Might boon, in order to keep its purpose more clear.

Yes, Heat Sync was overperforming, I give you that. But you just went from one extreme to another. All you have to do is prevent it from sharing boons such as stability, quickness and resistance. It was the one skill that defined the warhorn, with that single change you removed half the fun and half the utility of this weapon.
Might stacking comes naturally nowadays. You just butchered the skill and with that the Warhorn is close to trash tier, right next to Scepter.
By the way, Herald’s boon share is on par with prenerf Heat-Sync or even stronger, in addition to all the other utility (and damage) it has, which the Tempest doesn’t. I’ll leave it at that.

Traits

Speedy Conduit: Increased swiftness duration from 5 seconds to 8.

This is too random, Elementalists can already achieve 100% uptime of swiftness very easily. This is still an incredibly boring trait. I already suggested 4 secs of superspeed instead.

Harmonious Conduit: This trait has been re-worked. Upon activating an overload, gain stability for 4 seconds. If the overload is successfully completed, gain 10% damage for 5 seconds.

You just made this trait mandatory in every single game mode. You also made it compete with Tempestuous Aria, the shout trait. And shouts were already a poor choise of utility skills, GG!
But, you also removed the 20% CD reduction on Overloads, and 20 seconds is now the base, and a single stack of stability is not going to cut it.

Please, pleeeeeeeeeeeeease, consider making overloads have 15s CD as base, and reduce the time to channel from 5 seconds to at least 3. The penalty is just too extreme, a single overload already interrupts the whole flow of your rotation. Support me on this one fellow elementalists!

We also need to be able to change attunements during an overload channel.

No comments on Earthen Proxy, I don’t know what you have in mind with that. Do you mind sharing your thoughts here?

Imbued melodies: This trait has been re-worked. While wielding a warhorn, your boon duration is increased by 20%. Use sand squall when you are struck while below the 90% health threshold.

Meh, definetly not worth its grandmaster slot, but fair enough. It was too strong with its 20% CD reduction before though.

Rebound: This ability now applies an effect to nearby allies for 5 seconds. If the ally would take a lethal blow, they are healed instead of going into the downed state. If this effect expires naturally, grant an aura based on your current attunement. Reduced cast time from 3/4 second to 1/4 second. note: It heals for about 2000 at level 80 and heals additionally based on 1.5x your healing power.

This is the one and only change I’m almost completely satisfied with. The duration seems a little too low at first glance, but the effect can be somewhat strong, we’ll see.

My overall impressions of these changes are bad, honestly. With the massive nerf of Heat-Sync and the time you have to wait to start a channel of 5s and the attunement CD of 20s on overloads staying as long as that, I don’t think I’ll play Tempest that much if at all.

tl dr; 1 step in the right direction, but the 2 most requested warhorn ‘fixes’ (water globe and lightning orb) remain unchanged, shouts unchanged, and still some trait issues. Will have to test the changes to the elite and overloads first. Also some very viable concerns Khenzy.9348 is pointing out.

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

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

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

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

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

Traits

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

Tempest: Not a numbers problem

Anet: “We changed the numbers!!!”

Sigh….

It is like putting a band-aid on an amputated arm…

Karl McLain.5604:

Rebound: This ability now applies an effect to nearby allies for 5 seconds. If the ally would take a lethal blow, they are healed instead of going into the downed state. If this effect expires naturally, grant an aura based on your current attunement. Reduced cast time from 3/4 second to 1/4 second. note: It heals for about 2000 at level 80 and heals additionally based on 1.5x your healing power.

Well, it’s a complete redesign in terms of what it does, but it still only changes numbers around so it’s not going to outshine any elite of the other classes. I mean it’s better (it does something useful) but it’s still not as cool as making people float or trigerring a massive storm.

Does it offer synergy with shouts or arcane traits?
How about it simply heals the amount of the death blow?
It still has nothing to do with the tempest theme.

Karl McLain.5604:

Traits

Harmonious Conduit: This trait has been re-worked. Upon activating an overload, gain stability for 4 seconds. If the overload is successfully completed, gain 10% damage for 5 seconds.

How many stacks since this is a melee role? In WvW you can lose 10 stacks of stability in an instant. 5 seconds is really short for the class that has the longest cast times, the 10% buff will be gone before the first meteor hits the ground. Or is using staff and scepter with Tempest something you had not envisioned? Because most elementalists are really into playing with staff and it would be nice if Tempest would have some sort of synergy with it.

Not in favor of the damage reduction on fire overload. Seriously: warriors can hit an ele with 9k hits and they have an heavy armor, mesmers can shatter your entire hp pool from stealth instantly, yet a 2k critical pulse from a light class at melee range is nerfed? How is this supposed to balance itself with skills like Life blast that hit for 6k at range? It just seems like all this balancing is done without consideration to other classes bursts/armor types/access to stealth.

Oh and the nerf on water overload is really bad also.

It’s a small step in the right direction in general just because you’ve added stability and rebound seems no longer useless, but it’s still not something that is as appealing as playing Reaper, Herald or Chronomancer.

Feniks.6842:

tl dr; 1 step in the right direction, but the 2 most requested warhorn ‘fixes’ (water globe and lightning orb) remain unchanged, shouts unchanged, and still some trait issues. Will have to test the changes to the elite and overloads first. Also some very viable concerns Khenzy.9348 is pointing out.

They seem to not want to give the warhorn any sort of mobility at all, kind of weird as an intended frontliner… so they should vastly increase Lightning Orb’s damage as well as its projectile speed, I can outrun it with swiftness.

Concerning Water Globe. Why don’t they just make the ele be surrounded by said water globe? Effectively making the ele a moving water field, the water field version of the Berserker’s Torch 5. Making your allies follow your blasts to get any heals mid battle proved to be much more annoying than tricky, I don’t really think it’s a matter of the globe moving slower/faster.

I agree that the warhorn skill Water Globe should always center around the tempest.

This is too random, Elementalists can already achieve 100% uptime of swiftness very easily. This is still an incredibly boring trait. I already suggested 4 secs of superspeed instead.

I’m actually curious on this, I know Eles have good access to Swiftness, but do Tempests? Does traiting into Tempest, and taking the other options that would make a Tempest as good as possible, reduce some of our other Swiftness options? I know when I was testing Temepest, I want from Fire/Air/Arcane to Fire/Arcane/Tempest, which reduced some of my speed options. An air Tempest would have an abundance of Swiftness, but a non-Air Tempest might not, right? If so, a little redundancy might not be horrible.

What if they juggled some things around, took Speedy Conduit from a minor and made it a Major instead, moving maybe Harmonious Conduit’s Stability to the minor trait (we can all agree that 99% of Tempest will need that, right? Then they took the Speedy Conduit Major and added in the 10% damage buff they just put on Harmonious Conduit, but now “while under the effects of Swiftness.”

This means you could either use kitten top off your Swiftness when using a low-Swift build (ie an Overload build), OR you could use it to buff yourself up if you used a max Swiftness build (ie a more aura/Air build).

Ohoni.6057:

This is too random, Elementalists can already achieve 100% uptime of swiftness very easily. This is still an incredibly boring trait. I already suggested 4 secs of superspeed instead.

I’m actually curious on this, I know Eles have good access to Swiftness, but do Tempests? Does traiting into Tempest, and taking the other options that would make a Tempest as good as possible, reduce some of our other Swiftness options? I know when I was testing Temepest, I want from Fire/Air/Arcane to Fire/Arcane/Tempest, which reduced some of my speed options. An air Tempest would have an abundance of Swiftness, but a non-Air Tempest might not, right? If so, a little redundancy might not be horrible.

What if they juggled some things around, took Speedy Conduit from a minor and made it a Major instead, moving maybe Harmonious Conduit’s Stability to the minor trait (we can all agree that 99% of Tempest will need that, right? Then they took the Speedy Conduit Major and added in the 10% damage buff they just put on Harmonious Conduit, but now “while under the effects of Swiftness.”

This means you could either use kitten top off your Swiftness when using a low-Swift build (ie an Overload build), OR you could use it to buff yourself up if you used a max Swiftness build (ie a more aura/Air build).

You already get a good amount of Swiftness from Arcana line, then there’s the Air line, then there are the weapon skills themselves(Staff Air #4, Updraft, etc.) and THEN there’s Signet of Air, and THEN there’s Glyph of Elemental Harmony, and the list goes on.

If you want Swiftness on Ele/Tempest, there are already plenty of ways to get it.

Ohoni.6057:

I was testing Temepest, I want from Fire/Air/Arcane to Fire/Arcane/Tempest, which reduced some of my speed options.

With Arcane traits and Warhorn’s Cyclone you can already easily achieve 100% swiftness uptime, you don’t even need air.

Main point for Speedy Conduit is being fast during and after the overload (4s overloading+ free 4s of swiftness), but why would you want to move faster? I agree that at the very least 4s Super Speed is more appealing in some cases.

all in all still a doomed elite spec that can not be fixed. It was dead on arrival the moment you tried to make it complete for D/D D/F. Overloads are still not worth it. You have added a trait that is a must therefore it isn’t even a choice, to run without harmonious conduit would be to shoot yourself in the foot.

The design of the tempest is the core issue and can only be fixed by scrapping it and rebuilding with a new role and theme

Blaine Tog.8304:

Love the new Rebound. The Trait changes look cool too, though Speedy Conduits still seems pointless and should instead really be the new Harmonious Conduits, if anything.

I still don’t see Overloading as ever being a good idea. The risk/reward is still way off, and I’m not convinced it can ever be right (especially since you went overboard on Fire’s damage and it still isn’t as good as running through standard rotations).

Yep, don’t see how fire dmg can be considered reasonable when we get better damage via alternate means and with more flexibility. There is no point to fire overload.

Speedy Conduit – increase 50%~100% movement speed during overload is better than swiftness which is almost 90% uptime.

kankanKk.2748:

Speedy Conduit – increase 50%~100% movement speed during overload is better than swiftness which is almost 90% uptime.

But why give something NEW when you can just give more of the same things ele already does without tempest?

While you’ve certainly addressed one of the big issues of overloads by adding stability to them, a much larger issue still remains.

The opportunity cost on them is just insane.

Here’s what a meta dd ele can do with 10 seconds:
3724 instant healing
2360 healing over time
5.5s of swiftness
5.5s of protection
28s of 9 stacks of might

All of that is aoe. That doesn’t include any of the effects of the weapon skills used beyond the blast finishers or any procs of any kind.

To use any one overload you have to spend 9 seconds in a single attunement. 5 of those seconds only allow you access to the weapon skills of one attunement and 4 of them will be spent channelling the overload and prevent you from using any non instant cast skill. Then after all that you also get a 10s increased cooldown on the attunement you overloaded.

All these costs for what? The meta dd ele can very nearly outperform all of the overloads put together just by attunement cycling. Consider also that the master and grandmaster minor traits just give a bonus to using overloads, where a regular spec would give much more broadly useful perks.

To sum up; you’ve made it possible to cast an overload, but there is still no reason to ever use one.

Coldtart.4785:

All these costs for what? The meta dd ele can very nearly outperform all of the overloads put together just by attunement cycling. Consider also that the master and grandmaster minor traits just give a bonus to using overloads, where a regular spec would give much more broadly useful perks.

To sum up; you’ve made it possible to cast an overload, but there is still no reason to ever use one.

They aren’t backing down on making overload risk/rewards more balanced. I guess they want you to choose tempest for the awesome, super-unique warhorn skills, like that one that can share ALL your boons…oh wait…

Tempest started out as a support-brawler, but then they removed most of the support that you care about. Now, it is only left with self-blasting water-fields and using rebound to bunker down a point forever.

The only reason Tempest will see any use is on a staff bunker ele to survive basically forever.

Of course, I am 90% sure they are planning on nerfing the class’s sustain a LOT, sending us back to the post-dhuumfire days, in which case it is fitting that tempest is equally crappy!

Pretty good changes all around, I have a few concerns though.

• Please add -20% CD reduction to one of the two Shout traits. Simplest would be Tempestuous Aria, but I could also see it on Gale Song.
• Imbued Melodies isn’t needed. Ele itself got rid of all of the weapon-specific traits for a reason, please don’t make the same mistake with Tempest.
• Auras are still wonky with the Powerful Auras trait since they do not stack duration (Aside from Frost Aura and Light Aura), please allow them to stack.
• Latent Stamina is not a very good trait since it ONLY applies when attuning to Water, that and it also seems to be counter-intuitive to a Tempest’s design of staying in an Attunement for a while so it can Overload it. I’d propose to possibly have this trait activate whenever you activate an Overload effect, with the same ICD.
• For Earthen Proxy the best guess I’ve got is to make it so that all Protection applied to you (either by yourself or others) is also extended by either 33% base duration or 1 second (could potentially also just have it apply another stack of Prot for 1 sec, like how the Thief Grandmaster Trait in Critical Strikes works.

LOL – kittening solidified that tempest wont be fixed. By refusing to change mechanics you have guaranteed that overloads can only ever be OP or UP (compared to base ele) because it’s NOT A NUMBERS PROBLEM

“Fire was too strong” wut… did I miss something. I ran haste runes, ramepage, marauder, carrion etc amulets, armor of earth, arcane shield, LF. Gimic as kitten builds just to get max damage overloads off haste procs under protection and blocks and I STILL couldn’t kill anyone but the glassiest of glass (I’m talking good players not mid to low tier sorry if gimmicks work on them)

OneKlicKill.4285:

“Fire was too strong” wut… did I miss something. I ran haste runes, ramepage, marauder, carrion etc amulets, armor of earth, arcane shield, LF. Gimic as kitten builds just to get max damage overloads off haste procs under protection and blocks and I STILL couldn’t kill anyone but the glassiest of glass (I’m talking good players not mid to low tier sorry if gimmicks work on them)

Fire overload almost let a dev beat Svanir 1v1. Didn’t you know being able to solo Svanir means it MUST be OP!

BlackBeard.2873:

kankanKk.2748:

Speedy Conduit – increase 50%~100% movement speed during overload is better than swiftness which is almost 90% uptime.

But why give something NEW when you can just give more of the same things ele already does without tempest?

I do agree tempest need something more.
But tempest need trait to help positioning since you cant dodge in overload.
Give super speed is a good choice to avoid kited and aoe damage.

I dont know why they spread Speedy Conduit and Hardy Conduit into two minor.
These two are same purpose, give boon when overload should be combine.
Give us a new minor that is tempest need. Front line suitability,increase vitality,heal effectiveness or whatever.

BlackBeard.2873:

OneKlicKill.4285:

“Fire was too strong” wut… did I miss something. I ran haste runes, ramepage, marauder, carrion etc amulets, armor of earth, arcane shield, LF. Gimic as kitten builds just to get max damage overloads off haste procs under protection and blocks and I STILL couldn’t kill anyone but the glassiest of glass (I’m talking good players not mid to low tier sorry if gimmicks work on them)

Fire overload almost let a dev beat Svanir 1v1. Didn’t you know being able to solo Svanir means it MUST be OP!

It’s okay though, he added one stack of stab so he might be able to get an overload on Svanir now! OP status surpassed, Checkmate Chieftain Utahein!

OneKlicKill.4285:

LOL – kittening solidified that tempest wont be fixed. By refusing to change mechanics you have guaranteed that overloads can only ever be OP or UP (compared to base ele) because it’s NOT A NUMBERS PROBLEM

“Fire was too strong” wut… did I miss something. I ran haste runes, ramepage, marauder, carrion etc amulets, armor of earth, arcane shield, LF. Gimic as kitten builds just to get max damage overloads off haste procs under protection and blocks and I STILL couldn’t kill anyone but the glassiest of glass (I’m talking good players not mid to low tier sorry if gimmicks work on them)

Well they did provide the most important fix of all, and that is stability on overload. With that, Tempest could finally be worth playing. Sure it doesn’t add much thats new to ele, but with this change, the goal of attunement overloading they envisioned can actually have the potential to be a useful and viable mechanic, while still having room for counterplay as its only one stack.

The Rebound and Imbued Melodies rework are also very helpful. The traitline is still a little wonky, but it doesn’t seem as useless on paper anymore.

What will make or break tempest will be how bad the nerfs to base ele do to fire D/D abuse will be.

Coldtart.4785:

While you’ve certainly addressed one of the big issues of overloads by adding stability to them, a much larger issue still remains.

The opportunity cost on them is just insane.

Here’s what a meta dd ele can do with 10 seconds:
3724 instant healing
2360 healing over time
5.5s of swiftness
5.5s of protection
28s of 9 stacks of might

All of that is aoe. That doesn’t include any of the effects of the weapon skills used beyond the blast finishers or any procs of any kind.

To use any one overload you have to spend 9 seconds in a single attunement. 5 of those seconds only allow you access to the weapon skills of one attunement and 4 of them will be spent channelling the overload and prevent you from using any non instant cast skill. Then after all that you also get a 10s increased cooldown on the attunement you overloaded.

All these costs for what? The meta dd ele can very nearly outperform all of the overloads put together just by attunement cycling. Consider also that the master and grandmaster minor traits just give a bonus to using overloads, where a regular spec would give much more broadly useful perks.

To sum up; you’ve made it possible to cast an overload, but there is still no reason to ever use one.

The very clear problem here is that they don’t want to give the elementalist any burst damage at all, just low damage pulsing. And that is where it’s impossible to balance properly.

How do you balance a 10k backstab or 5-7k heartseeker with a slowly pulsing 2k fire overload? You can’t. The overload pulse is not only weaker than every good ele rotation but also terribly weaker than any other class cleaving, and it doesn’t even burst high numbers like churning earth.

Unless they find a way to make landing the final blast of an overload as satisfying as a backstab or a churning earth (or a reaper shroud 5) then you might as well play another class that also has support, burst and weapon swap, like the revenant.

Solution: Make F5 the single overload key: massively increase the damage on the final blast of overloads, add a cooldown for the F5 attunement overload in proportion to the damage output (like 25 seconds).

nearlight.3064:

OneKlicKill.4285:

LOL – kittening solidified that tempest wont be fixed. By refusing to change mechanics you have guaranteed that overloads can only ever be OP or UP (compared to base ele) because it’s NOT A NUMBERS PROBLEM

“Fire was too strong” wut… did I miss something. I ran haste runes, ramepage, marauder, carrion etc amulets, armor of earth, arcane shield, LF. Gimic as kitten builds just to get max damage overloads off haste procs under protection and blocks and I STILL couldn’t kill anyone but the glassiest of glass (I’m talking good players not mid to low tier sorry if gimmicks work on them)

Well they did provide the most important fix of all, and that is stability on overload. With that, Tempest could finally be worth playing. Sure it doesn’t add much thats new to ele, but with this change, the goal of attunement overloading they envisioned can actually have the potential to be a useful and viable mechanic, while still having room for counterplay as its only one stack.

The Rebound and Imbued Melodies rework are also very helpful. The traitline is still a little wonky, but it doesn’t seem as useless on paper anymore.

What will make or break tempest will be how bad the nerfs to base ele do to fire D/D abuse will be.

But that’s the problem. The entire spec is competing with base ele due to mechanics. So it can only ever be better or worse because it plays the same roll. If they had made it a burst spec it could have synergized with fresh air. If it was heavy condi it could have been a new branch off entirely. If it was heavy CC oriented it could have brought a new roll. If it was a low mobility high defense it could have brought a true bunker. And much more. But they chose literally the spec to compete with what we already have been stuck doing for 3 years and made it UNSYNERGISTIC with the spec forcing it to compete rather than alternating play-style like all the other specs.

On top of this overloads are not fun. I (and a large majority) hate just durping around spinning for 4 seconds. If it was 4 seconds for a MASSIVE dump it could be fun but its 4 seconds for a ~8 second tickle, I can just apply kittening burning and do the same thing while still getting to dodge, cast other spells, interupts etc.. If i wanted to just spam a channel I’d pick up a long bow and hit 2 (oh wait id do more damage then…)

You already get a good amount of Swiftness from Arcana line, then there’s the Air line, then there are the weapon skills themselves(Staff Air #4, Updraft, etc.) and THEN there’s Signet of Air, and THEN there’s Glyph of Elemental Harmony, and the list goes on.

If you want Swiftness on Ele/Tempest, there are already plenty of ways to get it.

Yeah, but again, how much of that would be BiS for any Tempest build? I’m not saying you’d take Tempest to get Swiftness, but it seems to me that if you’re playing a solid Tempest build, you might have a use for some extra Swiftness, especially since you want to stay melee close.

With Arcane traits and Warhorn’s Cyclone you can already easily achieve 100% swiftness uptime, you don’t even need air.

What about a D/D build? Updraft isn’t a great source for Swiftness with its backflip component. I don’t know, it just strikes me that more Swiftness would be better than less Swiftness. It doesn’t fix the class or anything, but I like it.

Main point for Speedy Conduit is being fast during and after the overload (4s overloading+ free 4s of swiftness), but why would you want to move faster?

Because Overloads are PBAoE, so you want to be able to stick to your targets as best as possible, even if they have Swiftness or are otherwise darting around. In some cases you might want to then get the kitten out of there.

Speedy Conduit – increase 50%~100% movement speed during overload is better than swiftness which is almost 90% uptime.

That would be cool, but seems kinda OP. You could maintain more or less permanent Swiftness+ that way, at least 133% speed, while the remainder of the time you’d be moving 150-200%? Plus the various other Ele travel boosts like Ride and Lightning Flash? Where’s the balance?

Ohoni.6057:

You already get a good amount of Swiftness from Arcana line, then there’s the Air line, then there are the weapon skills themselves(Staff Air #4, Updraft, etc.) and THEN there’s Signet of Air, and THEN there’s Glyph of Elemental Harmony, and the list goes on.

If you want Swiftness on Ele/Tempest, there are already plenty of ways to get it.

Yeah, but again, how much of that would be BiS for any Tempest build? I’m not saying you’d take Tempest to get Swiftness, but it seems to me that if you’re playing a solid Tempest build, you might have a use for some extra Swiftness, especially since you want to stay melee close.

BiS tempest doesn’t take shouts – they aren’t very good. BiS tempest rarely overloads (b/c they will never be good as long as the risk is so high) so you don’t take overload traits. BiS tempest probably doesn’t take warhorn b/c focus gives better support through hard mitigation (swirling winds) and superior blast capability, although that water field on water 5 is the only potential saving grace. BiS tempest ONLY takes rebound b/c it is OP to be able to consistently self-res on a tanky spec. Therefore, anything that regular cele ele builds have for their BiS builds, tempest will take.

Main point for Speedy Conduit is being fast during and after the overload (4s overloading+ free 4s of swiftness), but why would you want to move faster?

Because Overloads are PBAoE, so you want to be able to stick to your targets as best as possible, even if they have Swiftness or are otherwise darting around. In some cases you might want to then get the kitten out of there.

Because all they would need to make Tornado viable is a little bit of swiftness? Think about that…

Speedy Conduit – increase 50%~100% movement speed during overload is better than swiftness which is almost 90% uptime.

That would be cool, but seems kinda OP. You could maintain more or less permanent Swiftness+ that way, at least 133% speed, while the remainder of the time you’d be moving 150-200%? Plus the various other Ele travel boosts like Ride and Lightning Flash? Where’s the balance?

I disagree. Would that REALLY be OP? You get to move quickly in exchange for:

- Being a moving target that can’t dodge while spinning around like a fool, liable to be interrupted during a channel that is super-long.
- Having to linger in an attunement wasting time with your crappy auto-attacks
- Putting your current attunement on longer CD, foregoing all the benefits of just swapping out

Even with super-speed, overloads won’t be worth using except in the most specific of cases (emergency healing in water, earth overload while you run away, fire overload never b/c your rotations are just better, air overload never b/c you might as well just lightning whip and keep swapping).

Ohoni.6057:

Yeah, but again, how much of that would be BiS for any Tempest build? I’m not saying you’d take Tempest to get Swiftness, but it seems to me that if you’re playing a solid Tempest build, you might have a use for some extra Swiftness, especially since you want to stay melee close.

With Arcane traits and Warhorn’s Cyclone you can already easily achieve 100% swiftness uptime, you don’t even need air.

What about a D/D build? Updraft isn’t a great source for Swiftness with its backflip component. I don’t know, it just strikes me that more Swiftness would be better than less Swiftness. It doesn’t fix the class or anything, but I like it.

Main point for Speedy Conduit is being fast during and after the overload (4s overloading+ free 4s of swiftness), but why would you want to move faster?

Because Overloads are PBAoE, so you want to be able to stick to your targets as best as possible, even if they have Swiftness or are otherwise darting around. In some cases you might want to then get the kitten out of there.

With Dagger offhand you already have decent mobility with RtL. Having Arcane is already over 80% swiftness uptime with constant swaps. That’s not the point though.

You’ll never put your attunement on such a CD just to gain some swiftness, unless maybe with Fresh Air, and possibly not even then.

The idea behind providing superspeed instead of swiftness is to help you better reposition in combat while you channel an overload. Superspeed is actualy faster than swiftness in combat and much more effective for clutch mobility, exactly what overloads need as a whole. That was the point of my suggestion, with all the common ele builds you already have perma swiftness or close to it, so Speedy Conduit’s current iteration is pretty much a waste.

I find the effort put into tempest to be a bit disheartening. Out of all of my suggestions lists, tempest had the biggest number of issues. And yet, it receives the lowest number of changes.

There were some good things here. Stability is good. Rebound change is good. I’d have to look at how the new overloads function, since their previous effects were a product of their cast time, but a normalized activation time is good.

But… its not enough. In my previous analysis, I had to throw out some pretty big numbers for changes. I think maybe one of these concerns were touched on. Unless there’s some big additional changes announced later, my suggestion for the tempest after next weekend will be identical to my suggestions after the last weekend.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I find the effort put into tempest to be a bit disheartening. Out of all of my suggestions lists, tempest had the biggest number of issues. And yet, it receives the lowest number of changes.

Just give up, they have no idea what they are doing with the ele class and tempest. The very concept of a front-line support is shaky, and the implementation fails to distinguish itself in ANY way from a d/d water/arcana/X ele.

The whole specialization’s issues aren’t a problem of #‘s, but I’ll be kitten ed if they don’t just keep pounding away with numerical changes hoping to fix the problem.

I’m not sure whether these changes are a buff or a nerf to Tempest overall. Some major nerfs:

1. Heat Sync – no longer spreads all boons (only might)

2. 20% Warhorn skill recharge reduction trait is gone

3. 20% attunement overload recharge reduction trait is gone

Apparently warhorn was too strong in its current form.

BiS tempest doesn’t take shouts – they aren’t very good.

Maybe true, although they probably should be, so let’s hope that they keep iterating on those until they are at least a potential BiS option, right?

. BiS tempest rarely overloads (b/c they will never be good as long as the risk is so high) so you don’t take overload traits.

Again, see, they should be. Look, this isn’t being constructive at all. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that they fix the other stuff, that you’ll want to Overload regularly, that you’ll want to use shouts, Warhorn is an option, but not the only option, etc. Let’s say they make the Tempest, as a whole, work, and you can spec into taking full advantage of it, then wouldn’t the added Swiftness be at least useful?

Because all they would need to make Tornado viable is a little bit of swiftness? Think about that…

Also Protection, which may be improved upon. If they make the Overloads stable enough, damaging enough, and tanky enough that they are worth using, which obviously is their goal, then yes, you want to be able to stick with moving targets.

Look, I get that there are MOUNTAINS of salt about the basic nature of the Tempest, but learn to accept that it’s basic nature is not going anywhere. Work on solutions to make that basic nature more useful, or just give up on the spec entirely.

I disagree. Would that REALLY be OP? You get to move quickly in exchange for:

- Being a moving target that can’t dodge while spinning around like a fool, liable to be interrupted during a channel that is super-long.
- Having to linger in an attunement wasting time with your crappy auto-attacks
- Putting your current attunement on longer CD, foregoing all the benefits of just swapping out

-They’ve added Stability to Overloading, making them tougher to Interrupt (though they might need more of it).
-Even just having out of combat 150-200% speed for roughly half the time would be a godsend in a lot of PvE/WvW situations, or for an initial push in PvP.
-Whatever else the Overload does, which they should eventually balance to be worth using it for that alone.

With that change, I could see people starting a PvP match attuned to water, Overload immediately while racing out to the furthest target location, switching to Air to get whatever speedboosts you can get after that, and then bunkering down while the rest of the team catches up, having the point half-capped before any non-Tempests from the other team could reach you.

You’ll never put your attunement on such a CD just to gain some swiftness, unless maybe with Fresh Air, and possibly not even then.

Oh, of course not, but outside of roaming situations you wouldn’t be actively using Overloads “just to get Swiftness,” you would be using the Overload because you’d want to be using it, but the added Swiftness then wouldn’t hurt.

Superspeed is actualy faster than swiftness in combat and much more effective for clutch mobility, exactly what overloads need as a whole.

Sure, but Swiftness is usually adequate to the task, and large amounts of Superspeed on top of Swiftness might be a bit much.