Guild Wars 2

This looks a little better now. The Harmonious Conduit is a little worrying. If you want to overload (which is half the reason to take tempest the other half being the war horn) you need that stab just to stand a chance to finish it. I think the stab should be mandatory. For it to be a major trait, it should really give more than one stab, but I think one stack of stab in a minor trait would be the best solution.

On that side note, why didn’t you give all the overloads a break bar rather than remove it from earth? It would have had more flavor and when a person brakes it, each overload could have its own drawback.

Everything else seems to be in the right direction.

Liking most of these changes, a few ideas though:

1. Overloads still just don’t feel right. Why am I overloading my air attunement, which is the damage attunement on both main-hand ele weapons, for more damage? It just turns into a math equation to figure out whether or not to overload on cooldown. Similarly, air doesnt seem to offer much “frontline support” for a frontline support spec. Maybe make the static area pulse short superspeed or shocking aura to allies, slightly dropping the damage or vuln to compensate?
2. The new rebound sounds FANTASTIC for a frontline ele build. Pop that as your hammer train jumps in if you’re worried about certain people (or yourself) getting onepushed. I AM a little worried about the base healing though- As I’m reading it, it means you’ll block the killing blow, and then heal 2k from there? So you’ll have ~3 or 4k health after? Or do you mean it brings you to post-rally health of 50% and then 2k heal from there? The latter would be great, the former usually just results in you dying again.
3. The new stab seems to be in a good place, but how are we supposed to keep up with the hammer train with warhorn? Blinds from dust storm arent useful on the move, we still dont have any blocks or invulns from warhorn, and our only real gapcloser would be burning speed at this rate, I’m worried that the tempests will get left behind during the first push.
4. The 10% damage buff on harmonious conduit just isn’t a good idea. A short term damage buff like that is fine for warriors’ low cooldown burst skill, or for mesmers’ mantra spam, but doesnt make much sense for tempest overloads where you would have at BEST 50% uptime if you were overloading as fast as you could. Furthermore, a 10% personal dps buff just doesnt feel very support or frontline oriented. Maybe change it to a teamwide 10% dps buff for 5 seconds or change it to something that feels more personally impactful.
5. Regarding EP, you could just make it a trait buff like spotter, to give 10% reduced damage and stack multiplicatively with protection’s normal 33% (work the math out so it still gives the old 40%). Most of ele’s protection applications are 3-4 seconds, so I don’t think you need to worry about scaling the duration, though I may be wrong.
   #It doesn’t look like you hit on the shouts themselves- are we still on board with fixing “Wash the cringe away”’s name? And Eye of the Storm still needs a look at regarding its cooldown duration vs effects.
6. Last, while we’re having all these conversations on risk/reward of overloads, remember that a lot of this discussion can and should be applied to Churning Earth. That skill is only ever used as a blast finisher for pre-fight might stacking, its a net DPS loss to channel in a fight and easily dodgerolled or interrupted, and its cast time + aftercast is now actually LONGER than the overloads’ cast times.

I see nothing on Changes to the “shout” skills (apart from the elite) which seriously need to be looked at. The Fire shout was weak with rly only one burn access to it and an aura. The air one needs a stack of stab to go with the break free and the aura to match. And the water one should apply a heal or something to support allies not chill the enemy. The earth one is the only decent one out of the lot, but still they all need to be looked at to be subbed in over all the other utility skills the Ele has. (Reduce the CDs on them).

Although the stab change when traited is nice, that still doesnt stop us from interupting ourselfs when we have to change attunements to stay alive, or dodge out of the way.

I’m shocked… What’s wrong with the current updates? Let’s iterate over them.

Overload Fire – now probably worse than Lava Font while being stuck in the channel.

Overload Air – still 3 target cap, is this suppose to be an AoE skill?

Heat Sync – sharing might is something a base ele can do without a skill on 30s cooldown perfectly fine. If you don’t want boons like quickness or resistance being abused just blacklist them instead of butchering this skill (especially that it’s in fire attunement while you have to start your rotation in this attunement).

Sand Squall – where is our promised aura on warhorn?

No changes to other arguably weak skills like lightning orb?

Shouts – no changes except Rebound? Do you believe they are fine?

Latent Stamina – why this trait still wasn’t deleted? It looks to me like a place-holder.

Swift Conduit – We have tons of swiftness. How about superspeed?

Tempestuous Aria – can we finally get 20% cooldown reduction? Or shouts are too strong utilities to receive a cooldown reduction trait?

Hardy Conduit – I’m pretty sure you are more than capable to merge it with Speedy Conduit and implement a fun new minor that isn’t just a different boon. Take a look at other elite specs.

Harmonious Conduit – 10% damage increase for 5 seconds is too low. Berserker’s Power lasts for 10 seconds while being much easier to pull off.

Considering we had almost no changes between BWE1 and BWE2, and how much refine Revenant, Reaper and Chrono got, those changes are cry-inducing.

Ohoni.6057:

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.

Movement speed cap at 400u/s and we have 300u/s ooc cap at 133%, so no difference between Swiftness and Super Speed when ooc .
In combat, we need 50%+swiftness to max the movement speed.(see thief)
Maybe super speed is OP, but 50% movement is good. you need to maintain your swiftness and camp 5sec for overload to reach the max.

I’m curious how certain people feel about losing that “fresh feel” of tempest. It can no longer share boons and stun breaking was also removed.

So, what new mechanic tempest brings now?

Wait, so you’ve removed the ONE THING THAT TEMPEST COULD DO THAT NORMAL ELE COULDN’T? Boonshare. That’s the only thing tempest adds to ele. You’ve already removed the boon-rip from Wildfire and now you’re removing the boonshare too? Making Tempest EVEN MORE USELESS?

We got Karl’ed again.

Also, Minor traits still 100% about overloads, please change. Also, no CDR on shouts? Again, Anet completely ignoring ele feedback.

Also, did you really remove the 20% Overload CDR on the trait that now gives stability? Unbelieveable.

As I’m reading it, it means you’ll block the killing blow, and then heal 2k from there? So you’ll have ~3 or 4k health after? Or do you mean it brings you to post-rally health of 50% and then 2k heal from there? The latter would be great, the former usually just results in you dying again.

As I read it, you hit zero, don’t fall over, but instead heal back up to 2000+bonuses. It’s not a lot, but it’s better than being on the ground if you can make it work for you.

Last, while we’re having all these conversations on risk/reward of overloads, remember that a lot of this discussion can and should be applied to Churning Earth. That skill is only ever used as a blast finisher for pre-fight might stacking, its a net DPS loss to channel in a fight and easily dodgerolled or interrupted, and its cast time + aftercast is now actually LONGER than the overloads’ cast times.

Yes, but it’s also “loooooooow damage then SPIKE!” Overloads should be balanced as “worthwhile damage. . . more damage!” You shouldn’t be “working for the weekend” with an Overload, you should be enjoying every second that it’s up for what it is. They aren’t there yet, but they should be. The spike itself can never be enough to make them worth using while still being remotely balanced.

I really do think that someone on the dev team needs to do a better job of “selling” the Tempest than they have been. Explain why YOU think it’s a good idea, what role YOU think it’s the best class at. Karl has not yet done that, and that is not exactly his fault, he’s a designer not a community rep, so promotional skills are not in the job description, but they need to find someone at the company who can enthusiastically articulate what they want the Tempest to be, why they think people will want to use it, and how they plan to get from here to there.

Not a single shout trait? What the hell, Karl? None of them are usable… MAYBE the fire one but only because it’s a low cooldown fire aura…

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Not a single shout trait? What the hell, Karl? None of them are usable… MAYBE the fire one but only because it’s a low cooldown fire aura…

The hilarious thing is that it’s about 10 times better than the focus fire shield on a way shorter cooldown but it still sucks.

In general the changes are all good. I hope fire overload is not destroyed. The pulsing burn application is the most important part to make it worth and support condi builds. The final blast can be adapted if to much but it didn´t feel OP in BW2.

Shouts: I would find it perfect if the shouts are all instant cast so i can use it while channeling. Also while i agree it is strong the 50s for shock and aftershock still feel to long. With the healing buff shouts got much closer to being good.

Rebound. While i would have prefered instant aura aplication it now fits the support tempest much more. But i am not shure if it is good enough. FSG might still outperform it significant. A 45 seconds cooldown would make my day here.

In general a 20% shout reduction will do the job.

Speedy Conduit: Why not make it basline speed or even 33% instead of dancing around swiftness?
With 8s Swiftness i will have permaswiftness while running with constant overloads. Well … i don´t like switching and overloading constantly just for running around :-/. Its unneccessary complicated. Also in a group you usually get swiftness flields annyway …

Sounds good changes, but in another post said about sand squal giving earth aura??
reduction trait for shouts needed, shocking aura for eye of the storm and the stability on overloads to be 2 stacks pulsing every second is what is needed for the tempest to really shine. I enjoyed playing as tempest the support was amazing! think this would help so much <3

Not so convinced about the changes.

• Overload times: cast times being normalized at 4 sec feels too long. Especially if Tempest is meant to be at the frontline. The recharges after overloarding are too much for the effect they give also.
• Overload fire being nerfed: don’t think it’s warranted. As other said, Lava font is already preferable to this. Pulsing might and burn is nice, but being locked out of fire overshadows those effects in my opinion.
• Heat Sync: this skill was one of my favorite because of the utility potential it had. Synergy within the class, and also with other classes. It opened nice teamplay perspectives. Now with only might, well, might as well stick with the usual fire field/blasts rotations. Much more efficient.
• Imbued Melodies: this change I simply hate and don’t understand the logic. I find the cooldowns on Warhorn quite high already. The previous iteration of this trait was hence mandatory for me. Overloading attunements are locking us out of them for a significant time. If the Warhorn skills are on a high cooldown, we’re going to be useless while overloads recharge… And the loss of stun-breaking allies is another loss of utility of the Tempest. Why change that ? You even say in your post that the changes are meant to increase Warhorn utility ! Doesn’t make sense to me.
• What about the Magnetic aura on Sand Squall ? This was a very welcome change, introducing a lot of possibilities for Warhorn-based support. Either selfish, or group-based with the aura-sharing. You’re missing on both your word and some nice synergy within the class and its Elite spec. I hope this will be changed. Maybe you didn’t add this aura because of the change to Imbued Melodies, but I’d rather you kept Imbued Melodies as before and give the aura to Sand Squall.
• Harmonious Conduit: so, now we are forced to have a crazy long recharge for overloads, while those recharge times are already disliked by many among us. I don’t understand the logic. The added stability is nice, I admit. But you want the Tempest to be able to go at the frontline. And the overload is a long channel, very easily interruptable. As many have said already, this stability is needed. So the other trait options are useless. What I get from that is that this stack of stability needs to be baseline upon Overload activation. Make this trait add a second stability stack and cooldown recharge, so that the other trait options are more attractive: either spec offensively with Tempestuous Aria, defensive/supporty with Earthy proxy, and more versatile/adaptive with Harmonious conduit giving more stability.
• Again on Overloads: would really like to see the cast times normalized to 3 sec. It’s still a long time and hence a risk to decide to overload, but low enough to warrant taking this risk… Especially given the current weak versions of Overload skills. The recharge time on the overloads are still way too high. As it is now, overload is too risky and too likely to be interrupted, and being locked out of an attunement when it fails… Can’t see using much overloads in their current state. I’d consider a 50% attunement recharge increase upon overload preferable: still affects your rotations and makes you wonder “is it the good moment to overload?”, but this time the answer can actually be “yes, I can take this risk”. Now, not worth it.

EDIT:

• Rebound: Forgot to talk about this. I like this new version. Nothing more to say.

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Not a single shout trait? What the hell, Karl? None of them are usable… MAYBE the fire one but only because it’s a low cooldown fire aura…

Actually. Aftershock, the heal skill, and now even Rebound are really good, at least for my Aura DPS build. The fact that Rebound can now save allies or apply Auras adds more Fury and Swiftness uptime for me. Aftershock and the heal I already liked a lot since the last BWE. Aftershock hits pretty hard and the immob+proj reflect is awesome. It flowed really nicely into my D/F build as I was able to land both Breath attacks and Burning speed with ease as well as escape tricky encounters by aoe immobing and running. The heal skill is just tons of sustain.

I do think that the aoe weakness on shouts could use a bit of a buff in terms of duration but aside from that, 3 out of the 6 shouts for me are pretty good. I run Lightning Flash and Armor of Earth in my other two utility slots.

those changes won’t do anything meaningful for tempest

rebound, a 2k heal, that’s a joke if you ask me. 1 more auto attack and the person resurrected by this shout will die again.

1 stack stability on overloads? better than nothing i guess. still useless in teamfights. pulsing stability for 2 stacks per second would be acceptable.

overloads still not worth using

overloads still cancel upon swapping attunement

remove the overload cooldown penalty but leave the cooldown on overloads. attunement cooldowns still at 8.5s with arcana but overload cooldowns stay at 14 or whatever they are.

the shouts are still terrible and the only reason anybody would ever take them is because of the low cooldown some of them have combined with the auras for the heal and protection, the shouts by themselves are weak and horrible.

karl, for once it would be nice if you gave us what we actually wanted.

A step in the right direction. Additionally, I hope they get rid of the 3 target cap of the air overload eventually. Also, I really miss the cool down reduction on overloads, I hope to see that back.
The new elite feels like a possible life saver, would like to try that out in different situations.

I am glad that its only 1 Stack of stability. Having a stable overload on demand would be just bad. The overloads are against ele mechanic. They need a risk/reward mechanics. You can argue the whole overloads were a bad idea, but to fit them in to much stability will break them in the oposite way as no stab does.
Also the changes to earth overload are good.
I would say the changes are all good. Maybe not enough in the traits, but good for the current mechanics. People that don´t like tempest design in general will always be disapointed. Tempest won´t change its concept, this is up to the next elite maybe in a year or two.

I personally would wish instant shouts and a 20% CD reduction. And baseline speed.
Everything else now seems the right direction. (Well I think i won´t use WH unless doing a full healing build).

I’m honestly rather confused. These changes aren’t half bad but it still feels like you’re kind of fumbling to get Tempest in the right direction. Many people have mentioned how awkward utilizing the Overloads in a standard Ele rotation is, partially because of the 5sec in-attunement wait and the other being the 20sec lock-out afterwards and the solution seems to be take out the option of a 15sec lock-out? Not that I think the 15sec option was a game changer for the problem but it looks like with the standard 20sec Overload/Attunement recharge and the whole “10% damage for completing an overload” you’re aiming for a intra-attunement rotation vs extra-attunement rotation style. But 10% damage bonus for 5sec is hardly an incentive not to mention that bonus isn’t really linked to staying in the attunement.

Would it really be asking too much to give that bonus a full 20sec while you remain in that attunement? Or some other attunement-specific bonus such as more endurance or boon duration for water overload, more armor or condition or combos with earth, more crit with air and more power with fire? Doing such gives options for multiple styles of Tempest such as condition specs would overload earth or something or running a precision-less glass build by overloading air, or support builds would keep overloading water, etc. A 10% bonus to damage only supports 1 spec.

And if this elite is more aimed at overloading an attunement and thus fewer attunement swaps, shouldn’kittens traits reflect such a style similar to how the Arcane line reflects the style of swapping attunements more often?

The 10% Boon triggering after 5s in one element and staying till swap would realy fit. Of course like might. so direct + condi damage.

Nice changes Karl! Keep them coming!

rebound, a 2k heal, that’s a joke if you ask me. 1 more auto attack and the person resurrected by this shout will die again.

It scales with healing though, so on a full support build it might actually be significant, and even otherwise, it’s a heal that is applied if you die, so the alternative is you just die, and if you don’t die during that period, you get more auras. Seems pretty solid to me. I think an ability like this that shoots you up to high health might be overpowered. Also keep in mind that it is across several characters, not just you.

One thing that occurs to me is that it might be really solid for a true “healer” build, since it would give you more time to pull off big heals. Pop this one as everyone gets close, and than as soon as someone dies, or looks about to die, pop your big AoE heals, Rebound keeps them from dying before it goes off, and then your other heals restore them to fighting shape.

Why is the Stability trait not a minor? It is mandatory to actually use the overloads, which means the other two traits in that line might as well not exist.

And why the Fire Overload nerf? It plus the reduced cooldown warhorn trait were actually making PvE conditions viable for the first time ever, and you just killed them both.

Ohoni.6057:

rebound, a 2k heal, that’s a joke if you ask me. 1 more auto attack and the person resurrected by this shout will die again.

It scales with healing though, so on a full support build it might actually be significant, and even otherwise, it’s a heal that is applied if you die, so the alternative is you just die, and if you don’t die during that period, you get more auras. Seems pretty solid to me. I think an ability like this that shoots you up to high health might be overpowered. Also keep in mind that it is across several characters, not just you.

One thing that occurs to me is that it might be really solid for a true “healer” build, since it would give you more time to pull off big heals. Pop this one as everyone gets close, and than as soon as someone dies, or looks about to die, pop your big AoE heals, Rebound keeps them from dying before it goes off, and then your other heals restore them to fighting shape.

it scales with healing power, 1.5 that’s true but 2k base heal + 750 ( from 1500 healing power) won’t make a huge differnce. i don’t expect it to heal as much as AED but at least 5k.

true healer builds are unviable in pvp because of the ridiculous amount of hp you get with a cleric amulet on a light armour class. 11600 hp vs burn guard or mesmer is suicidal, even if you cleanse the burn, you usually get at least 1 tick due to human reaction time.

While many see stab mandatory for overloads being baseline i don´t. It is needed in PvP. especially group fights, but i can come from a team´s guardian too. I see it hurts a bit now being forced to take it, but i think that is OK. Also remember earth has its own stab now!
If -20% on shouts is now added to tempestuous aria it will get grim to decide what to take. And basically its a good sign for balance if choices are hard :-).
And for the to much boon share. Just for might is booring and doesnt do much. Better rework it.Instant light aura on 30 sec CD ? Will fit tempest.

Problem with Imbued Melodies is that they’re trying to rival D/D + Arcane, but Tempest doesn’t have Evasive Arcana. It looks to me Air/Water/Tempest might be an awkward but effective combo for PvE, IF they fix aura stacking with Powerful Aura.

Axialbloom.8109:

Why is the Stability trait not a minor? It is mandatory to actually use the overloads, which means the other two traits in that line might as well not exist.

And why the Fire Overload nerf? It plus the reduced cooldown warhorn trait were actually making PvE conditions viable for the first time ever, and you just killed them both.

I am intrigued about this aswell. It’s not like Fire Overload should be all about direct damage, but burning should be preserved or even buffed.

Stacking auras might lead to OP setups stacking 2-3 water/tempest eles for constant aura power … I feel this is a no go :-/. Overwrite seems the right way. Of course it feels bad for us eles. But annything that givs the option to move away from water is good. Please don´t implement more water synergies.

Karl McLain.5604:

As you’ll notice, there’s now an option for Stability when overloading.

There must be Stability when overloading, it is not an option.

PS: Sorry for my English

Wolfric.9380:

Stacking auras might lead to OP setups stacking 2-3 water/tempest eles for constant aura power … I feel this is a no go :-/. Overwrite seems the right way. Of course it feels bad for us eles. But annything that givs the option to move away from water is good. Please don´t implement more water synergies.

I forgot about that, so I agree with you. On a different note, how about this:

• Heat Sync: Give stacks of might to yourself, then spread burning from your target to nearby foes.

Heat Sync I do think that blacklisting every boon EXCEPT might is the wrong way to tackle this. Either blacklist what you think is OP (quickness, resistance). or Whitelist only boons that Ele can generate himself.

• Regen
• Swiftness
• Might
• Vigor
• Fury
• Protection
• Stability
• Retaliation

Can we do something else with rebound… the current effect is not going to do anything, almost more so than the last effect, I really just want a competition when I go to equip Firey Greatsword, like maybe today I’ll try something else…

Heat Sync: Give stacks of might to yourself, then spread burning from your target to nearby foes.

I would like that :-).

Wolfric.9380:

Heat Sync: Give stacks of might to yourself, then spread burning from your target to nearby foes.

I would like that :-).

Ikr haha kinda troll, like a tempest version of Epidemic. Much evil in sPvP aswell, can’t imagine the rage. xD

“Overload Water: Cast time increased from 2.75 seconds to 4.” Has there been an increace in the amount this heals? It was already weak compared to switching to water/dodging.

“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.” Just remove quickness from being sharable. Don’t ruin the only good skill on the warhorn.

Where’s that blast finisher and/or aura gone that was said to be on the table?

RIP tempest, it was nice knowing you.

Rebound has become useful now, the only ele elite that is worth using in WvW. I would still not trait into tempest just to use rebound though.

Pretty much nerf on what was good in bw2, water overload/heat synk.

No shouts changes?

and we have only one BW to make it viable, cool.

Karl McLain.5604:

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

Thanks for your continued constructive feedback.

-Karl

Thanks Karl. Now, since the other thread “Howler Fix” has been grossly ignored by devs/designers, I would like to politely and with great hope request that your team PLEASE do something to fix the bugged out new warhorn sound that everyone is unanimously saying sounds like a “fart”. Also, for people who have invested countless hours like myself to craft the legendary howler, only to now have it’s uniqueness stripped away by said bug, it is all the more disappointing. Super Warhorn skin has a unique sound still, but Howler is plagued by the unwelcome tooting that has pervaded 99.9% of all the common warhorns as well. I sincerely hope that this message won’t fall on blind eyes, and that we can see a resolution to this post-haste. thanks again! <3

Also, as a whole, i’ve enjoyed the Tempest thus far, and am happier with these new changes

Nice water overload buff. More condi cleanse without forcing to spec in water. RIP heat sync, you shouldn’t limit this only to might, add at least fury and swiftness in it or even make it a blast finisher. Rebound will be nice against team wipes, might even go suicidal when activating it just to heal from it.

Karl McLain.5604:

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 will be in heavy competition with the Tempestuous Aria, not sure if I like it that way.

just want to second another person that auras should stack in duration when an aura is applied that you already have.

I guess some people complaining about Overload Fire damage nerf doesn’t get that overloads shouldn’t necessarily rival direct damage base ele already has. Think it through…

Valento.9852:

I guess some people complaining about Overload Fire damage nerf doesn’t get that overloads shouldn’t necessarily rival direct damage base ele already has. Think it through…

That is ANet’s fault because they made the overloads do the same thing as the base attunement. Sure, a MUCH preferable option is for them to make Overload Fire do something new that fire attunement can’t do…but they aren’t going to do that.

Since they are stuck making fire overload just be damage, it becomes a numbers problem to see use. The numbers need to justify the insane costs…and to do that the numbers are going to have to be much stronger than not overloading (due to the cost of waiting 5s + 90% chance of being interrupted + 20s recharge). Yes, this means that fire overload has to be even stronger DPS than lava-font + staff auto to see use in PvE, and that is already too strong. Therein lies the problem: overloads do the same thing you can get by NOT overloading, so they need to be INSANE given the INSANE cost/risk of using them.

People just trying to make them viable are working under the assumption that Anet are bad at their job and will only change numbers (a good assumption).

There was a lot of constructive feedback. Plausible solutions for bad design choices. And yet… They sticked with horrible and unpopular choices for one of the most popular archetypes of any game, the mage.

ANet is trying very hard to make people not play their game.

Give Earthen Proxy a bleed on critical factor while in earth. Earth is NOT only about survivability, it shares that theme with Water, it is also about attrition damage through bleeding and doesn’t show it nearly enough in the base class, so little in fact that it is probably the element LEAST able to stand on its own.

As for the overall changes, none of this addresses how so many of the base class traits and abilities are weakened or even worthless when using the tempest overload mechanic.

None of it also addresses the even larger issues with the vanilla elementalist, that no individual or pair of elements can stand on their own no matter how much you invest in to them, or that cantrips and on-swap traits are our only method for gaining any reasonable amount of defense.

We need to know what you are planning to do with the base class, if anything, because otherwise how are we supposed to know what feedback to give about the tempest?

Valento.9852:

Problem with Imbued Melodies is that they’re trying to rival D/D + Arcane, but Tempest doesn’t have Evasive Arcana. It looks to me Air/Water/Tempest might be an awkward but effective combo for PvE, IF they fix aura stacking with Powerful Aura.

PvE builds without Fire spec are pretty much trash tier.

Well they made tempest have more stab then ele it may of just become a must have line for wvw for d/d for sure and maybe for staff.

The heat sink thing could be bad if they do not let tempest shair more then just might.

Rebound sounds op on a healing build even a celstal build its going to be powerful becuse its 2k heal on-top of a 1.5 healing power modifier d/d tempest will be unkillable lol best 1v1 in the game.

I do not understand the changes they are doing to Elemental Bastion can any one explain this one?

The overloade normalizing i think will help tempest over all though the healing from water i hope still heals per sec ontop of the big heal at the end.

Harmonious Conduit may over shadow all other GM now getting 4 stabs (all be it only 3 stacks) is realy big for tempest class in spvp and wvw i think your going to start seeing tempest play like a war class (i am not comply sure but i think tempest can now have more stab then war it may have the most stab in the game now.)

Thanks very much for this. Now I can finally bid my farewell to the Tempest because this was the nail in the coffin! Seriously, do whatever you feel like it with it, it is just a waste of hard disk space now.

Tempest still has no defined purpose.

Oh wait, its designed for group support.

And what did we have as new mechanics to specialize in what we are already one of the best in the game as?

A mediocre 2s duration extension of boon duration and Heat Sync that will now become only able to share might. Hahahahahaha!

Don’t get me wrong, as I said before, Heat Sync and boon duration extension combo was insanely overpowered and it was impressive that no one picked that up in ANET during development. It essentially allowed to make ALL boons permanent if you had the right party composition and only a few tempests. - Think how raids would be a joke with all boons available in the game made permanent.

But now that ANET picked up on this mistake what do they do? Take away the exclusive mechanic ability and give us NOTHING new with this elite specialization.

All that Tempest now brings to the table is:

- Poor might sharing (almost entirely reliant on poor Overload);
- Poor Group heal (very reliant on poor Overload);
- Poor Group cleanse of condition (almost exclusively reliant on poor Overload); and

What does base D/D Arcane/Water/X ele does?
- Party might with good efficiency;
- Good group healing;
- Good group cleanse.

New Rebound manages to continue to be just as useless as before. It is impressive how a good elite skill for elementalist can not be conceived by ANET

I am impressed some didn’t pick that up. A 2k heal instead of going to downed state delays the inevitable by 1-2 attacks, at best if you don’t die due to a multi hit attack (ranger RF for instance would still kill you) – in a Zerg fight, it doesn’t do kitten. It is even worse if you are dying by conditions, because then it delays just for 1-2 secs.

What baffles me more is that there are some people going “Oh yeah like what I see…”.

PRO TIP: If you like the “direction” that the changes are taking, here is a hint. Log in today and play the elementalist you have to today. It is the exact same kitten, but better in every aspect over this joke of an specialization.

Seriously don’t get why development efforts are still being put into this crap. Focus on the rest of the game to deliver a product that is at least good in those aspects. This ship has already sunk and is being decomposed.

Oh, and thanks for not doing anything for auras, really helps out on the Auramancer playstyle that this elite specialization could bring… Glad to see all that made contributions on that front continue to be ignored.

I am pretty much going to echo that the nerf to heat sync is silly. Other classes have the ability to share out boons, Mesmer being the shining example. If anything increasing the base CD would be the best fix. Reducing synergy is not the answer considering the lack of synergy Tempest currently has.

Harmonious Conduit should still apply a reduction in CD or the base CD should be reduced. 20 secs on an attunment CD is way too long. Stability is a step in the right direction, but will be a must have in SPVP.

I suppose Imbued Melodies it much better now. Elemental Contingency and Bountiful Power will be way more viable to run. It is also another reason to keep heat sync as is, but increase the base CD.

Shouts need an option to reduce CD and Eye of the Storm needs shocking Aura.

Lightning Orb base damage needs to be address, especially since the additional CD reduction from Imbued Melodies is gone.

Over all I think the rest of the changes are pretty good.

Well, if we are committing to this concept that directly competes with and penalizes us for using the core elementalist mechanic, at least, stability is a step in the right direction of making it viable.

Now, you just have to address the issue of the reward of the overloads actually being worth not attunement swapping and staying in an attunement for about 4 seconds too long.

Rebound is still effectively useless in practice except maybe in WvW zergs, because only in a zerg does death occur so frequently and quickly that it’s plausible to get some value from that 5 second window. Outside of that, in PvP or PvE, you are, at best, provided you can time someone’s death within 5 seconds, going to save maybe one person and give the rest of them auras. Getting multiple downs with a 5 second period is just unlikely unless your group is just really bad. Maybe, this will be useful in raids if the bosses have some kind of mass aoe one shot ability that is dodge or die, but outside of that, this is pretty underwhelming value for an elite, particularly compared to…a whole lot of everything else.

And 2k is like an extra hit from my meteor shower. To move this from pretty underwhelming to slightly underwhelming, you need like a 2k heal AND an arcane shield to provide an actual window for heals.

srsly that all ? .. just look at the other specialization changes then talk! .. let Roy work in tempest ! ..

light.2597:

srsly that all ? .. just look at the other specialization changes then talk! .. let Roy work in tempest ! ..

Adding stab to overloads is a big deal for both the ele and tempest class due to how little is lost from ele becoming a tempest.

Valento.9852:

Wolfric.9380:

Heat Sync: Give stacks of might to yourself, then spread burning from your target to nearby foes.

I would like that :-).

Ikr haha kinda troll, like a tempest version of Epidemic. Much evil in sPvP aswell, can’t imagine the rage. xD

The burning rage

Love the changes to rebound. I think this is a really strong way to make the skill have greater versatility (and make it more interesting to use), while keeping it’s core purpose in tact.