Guild Wars 2

Some good recent changes, but it doesn’t fix inherent problems with tempest in general:

1. Lowering the risk (interrupt risk) on overloads a bit is helpful, but it still doesn’t solve the combined risk of “wait 5s for overload, eat all the dps someone can dish out for 4s during overload, suffer 20s CD after overload” being still unreasonably high.

2. I like the concept of trying to make tempest less about frantically swapping elements, but there just aren’t the tools available to make 5s in attunement work. Since you didn’t have time to make a MH weapon, Tempest needs some kind of trait (fill one of those minor slots so every tempest can have it) that either allows them to have more access to skills before their 5s wait, or increases the power of auto-attacks. The BEST option, IMO, would be to decrease the wait prior to overloading to 3-4s, and have all skills in a given attunement recharge upon successfully overloading.

3. Stunbreak on overloading isn’t going to be OP, even on d/d ele. It can’t be used as your only stunbreak, as being without a stunbreaks at least half the time (the 5s before overload is available) leaves you too vulnerable. It DOES however gives overloads an actual reason to be cast (they lack that in most cases).

4. Leaving stationary fields after overloading isn’t effective AT ALL. Since you have decided to make the “reward” for overloading gaining the benefit of a persisting field afterwards (since overloading is not that effective compared to just using skills/lightning whipping), these fields need to be effective in a front-line role. Letting a field sit behind you as you run completely negates the benefit of such a persisting field except in content where you stack in a corner.

Edit:
5. Aurashare is killed by the fact that auras do not stack in duration. If you are going to make immobilize stack in duration (one of the worst changes ever made) at least make auras stack too!

6. Shouts lack the necessary aspects to make a truly competitive shout build as an alternative to cleansing water/cantrips. All shouts need a MUCH shorter CD, and to be instant (kind of like shoutbow has). The effects (like immob on aftershock) can be delayed, but these need to have no cast time. No ele utility sees real use in pvp that has a cast time, and since the “tempest” focuses overloads that pretty much say “here! Kill me! I can’t dodge, or if you force me to I am screwed for no benefit!” it is necessary to have some kind of instant defense during that time.

Kain Francois.4328:

I thinl Lightning Orb is perfect from BWE2. It’s for cheese builds that just like to spam Lightning Whip autoattack, without worrying about element swapping. Sometimes Lightning Orb for burst on recharge.

No changey plz!

> lightning orb
> burst

Please tell me you are not serious. This skill deals pitiful damage.

You do far more damage with Lightning Whip than Lightning Orb…

kitten I was hopin sand squall tooltip was just wrong… 2s of protection is like nothing. 2s of extra boon duration…maybe its not worth casting now anymore.

Anyway other things are nice except for heat sync

The V.8759:

kitten I was hopin sand squall tooltip was just wrong… 2s of protection is like nothing. 2s of extra boon duration…maybe its not worth casting now anymore.

Anyway other things are nice except for heat sync

It takes 0,5s to cast it, it’s obvious that protection is just an addition. It’s all about blast finisher and that 2s increase of boons which is only strong whenever there are boons like quickness and resistance.

We were also supposed to get a magnetic aura with sand squall because every weapon has some aura. Every, except warhorn.

Ty for confirming me that i was right to give up on tempest (still wondering if i should just give up on GW2 tho)

2good news:
stability on overload
rework to rebound (still kinda weak and …. wtf does it have to do with a TEMPEST ???)

for tons of bad news:
nerf to WH which could already barely compete with D and F
no overhault to trait (tend to say it’s even worse than before since stability on overload is mandatory)
no fix to crappy overload mechanic (risk/reward still the worst balance i ever saw)
etc.

all hope is gone
(soz for non metal guys, this song just came to my mind while concluding ^^)

I agree with bleackbeart on most things.
But after the changes for BW3 i think overloads are fine now unless fire damage doesnt get dropt to much. This should do significant more damage (expecialy burn) then you can do in 4s ele swaping if you realy sit in it.
And yes shouts should be instants. The direction tempest goes requires it, otherwise we will still see all eles runing cantrips. This and the 20s CD is the reason why feel the burn is used. 1/4 cast time and 50s CD will even kick out the good effect of shok/aftershok and we see LF again in the toolbar.
Stacking auras on the other side would be bad. I now it hurts and i would realy like to see fire auras stack, but this can get out of hands by stacking eles.
An the new rebound instant on 45 second cooldown would make it great. Not for its effect, just for the combinations possible.

Axialbloom.8109:

Lightning Orb should fire an orb that sits in the air, zapping everything in its radius. Like a evil disco ball.

That would be pretty cool but we already have Glyph of Storms and Air Overload which already do this but w/out the cool evil disco ball thingy.

Kidel.2057:

still no Ice Bow nerf? It’s going to be fun in raids.

I know. As much as I love the Ice Bow it is way OP in PvE and needs to be balanced properly.

Mattmatt.4962:

Ty for confirming me that i was right to give up on tempest (still wondering if i should just give up on GW2 tho)

2good news:
stability on overload
rework to rebound (still kinda weak and …. wtf does it have to do with a TEMPEST ???)

for tons of bad news:
nerf to WH which could already barely compete with D and F
no overhault to trait (tend to say it’s even worse than before since stability on overload is mandatory)
no fix to crappy overload mechanic (risk/reward still the worst balance i ever saw)
etc.

I feel exactly the same. I think Warhorn ele/Tempest still doesn’t work at all and it’s nothing close to being ready for release. It’s just not fun to play: no skill offers the support or damage worth the penalty (melee range, standing still not able to dodge or swap attunement, camping attunements, 20 seconds cooldown penalty on attunements, long WH cooldowns, lack of mobility, lack of evade/block, loss of damage modifiers in trait lines). Some people may thing it’s “ok” but I still think it’s pretty bad overall.

I disagree risk/reward is worse, the change to Air and Earth are pretty much fine for me. They’ll serve different purposes, and depending on numbers they might be decent.

Karl McLain.5604:

We added two things to overloads today:
Overload Air will imbue allies with electricity, giving them the Static Charge buff. An ally with this buff will deliver a Lightning Jolt to the first enemy they strike.

This is a great idea, and honestly it’s what I really think the Overloads should be focused around. Right now, they have a number of problems (disorganization being one of them), and I think the “add an effect to the next several attacks” method might actually be the most interesting way to fix them.

Problem

While the overloads are a cool concept, at the moment, they mostly feel either pointless or overpowered, depending on numbers, because all they really have done is given eles an extra skill in each attunement that does mostly the things that other skills in that attunement already do. They offer nothing essentially new, but come at the price of interrupting the ele’s normal attunement/skill rotation. Further, without a new main-hand weapon, the ele’s essential combat style is not likely to change very much. In this state (as basically just bonus skills for each attunement), overloads are very likely to never really be satisfying or properly balanced: They’ll either be overpowered enough that everyone uses them whenever they can, instead of even bothering much with ordinary skills, because they’re so good, or else they’ll be fairly balanced and therefore irrelevant — because eles already have 20 weapon skills with similar effects and power.

Suggestion

The idea seems to have been (and I believe was stated in the PoI to be) to offer eles a more frontline brawler (seems to have been a common theme with almost all the E-Specs, really) role (although daggers already fill that fairly well) that offers some allied support and uses a more deliberate and thoughtful attunement-swapping pace. So I suggest that overloads do the following:

Overloading an attunement should continue to be a channel (although perhaps somewhat shorter than currently) which pulses some kind of supporting effect to you and nearby allies (and some damage/negative effect to enemies) while channeling, which when completed kicks you out of that attunement into the next one but imbues your next several attacks (say, ten or fifteen) with an appropriately powerful effect from the overloaded element, and possibly also generates an appropriate field that follows you around.

• So, for instance, overloading Fire would, upon completion, kick you out of Fire into Air (and put Fire on an appropriately long recharge), but you would then be followed by a burning fire field for several seconds and your next (say, ten) attacks would be imbued with a powerful fire effect — like causing a firey AoE explosion on the target, or dropping a flaming meteor on the target/target area, or creating a lava font on any struck targets, or… you get the idea. Use your imagination!
• One of the Grandmaster Major traits should cause this next-several-hits buff to also apply in some form to nearby allies.
• Bonus Points: Let each overload have a flip skill that removes the field/weapon charges from you in exchange for area casting (say, 600 range) the overloaded effect in the form of an appropriate elemental tornado that persists for however long the effect was going to remain on you for.

Reasoning

While this would require a considerable amount of thought for each of the particular weapon effects, I think it would make for a highly desirable and interesting choice for elementalists. It would, at least, fulfill the purpose of creating a somewhat new style of play, while also making overloads powerful and meaningful but still fairly balanceable (between numbers of charges, damage numbers, cooldowns, and duration of effect). But they would be interesting because they would offer players a chance to get a particular element’s effect while using a different one — but at the cost of being temporarily locked out of the first element. So one’s water attacks could temporarily call down lightning bolts, or one’s fireballs could heal nearby allies or chill or cause vulnerability or some combination of those. It’s at least an improvement in mechanics and interest and possibility from what we have right now, I think.

Thoughts?

Karl McLain.5604:

We added two things to overloads today:
Overload Air will imbue allies with electricity, giving them the Static Charge buff. An ally with this buff will deliver a Lightning Jolt to the first enemy they strike.

Overload Earth will now leave behind a dust-nado (name ongoing) at the tempest’s location when complete, which delivers the same effects that occur while overloading (cripple, bleed, protection). Increased bleed duration to 9 seconds per strike.

Dust Storm – warhorn: Increased the velocity that each storm appears by 33%.

I missed this update. Air sounds pretty good; I think if all the overloads did this a similar buff to allies you might be on to something interesting. Leaving something behind after isn’t really useful however. It should just burst damage/condi at the end.

With the proposed changes to Heat Sync I can’t think of a single reason to take warhorn over OH dagger or focus.

It’s unfortunate how the development of the Tempest has been progressing. Elite spec’s are supposed to make meaningful changes to how we play our classes.

I understand it is supposed to be a choice and that choice isn’t necessarily going to be the higher damage one.

Tempest does not offer this change in play, so far the overloads do not provide anything that you can’t get elsewhere in current ele specs. Aura share is already a thing and work well in the current system and seems like a reused idea.

Outside of the new rebound and heal tempest gets (which are situation at best) there is no reason to run Tempest.

Overloads do not seem to have as much of an impact as the original concept seemed. The risk of casting for 4 seconds with no active defense to be rewarded with a lack luster effect and harsh punishments if interupted (includes self cancel to avoid death) really doesn’t make the overloads feel good at all. For example the skill Meteor Shower, this skill a 3 and 3/4 second cast time, less than the cast time of the overload, hits a massive area for 9 seconds, hits a total of 24 times at 3 targets each, does significantly more damage and doesn’t lock you out of an entire attunement for 20 seconds if you decide you need to cancel it. All of this is done from the safety of 1200 range and is useable right off cooldown.

The nerfs to warhorn are going to make it an almost never used weapon especially with the focus and dagger offhands already being as good as they are. Warhorn HAD its place but has been removed before even being useful, tuning some skills down makes sense but to remove anything unique from the skills is just plain bad design.

I feel that Tempest in its current itteration will see very very low play, warhorn will be non existant. The Tempest sounded good on paper but then those unique aspects got ground and filed down into a generic pile of skills noone will care about.

RebornbyFire.7913:

Suggestion

The idea seems to have been (and I believe was stated in the PoI to be) to offer eles a more frontline brawler (seems to have been a common theme with almost all the E-Specs, really) role (although daggers already fill that fairly well) that offers some allied support and uses a more deliberate and thoughtful attunement-swapping pace. So I suggest that overloads do the following:

Overloading an attunement should continue to be a channel (although perhaps somewhat shorter than currently) which pulses some kind of supporting effect to you and nearby allies (and some damage/negative effect to enemies) while channeling, which when completed kicks you out of that attunement into the next one but imbues your next several attacks (say, ten or fifteen) with an appropriately powerful effect from the overloaded element, and possibly also generates an appropriate field that follows you around.

• So, for instance, overloading Fire would, upon completion, kick you out of Fire into Air (and put Fire on an appropriately long recharge), but you would then be followed by a burning fire field for several seconds and your next (say, ten) attacks would be imbued with a powerful fire effect — like causing a firey AoE explosion on the target, or dropping a flaming meteor on the target/target area, or creating a lava font on any struck targets, or… you get the idea. Use your imagination!
• One of the Grandmaster Major traits should cause this next-several-hits buff to also apply in some form to nearby allies.
• Bonus Points: Let each overload have a flip skill that removes the field/weapon charges from you in exchange for area casting (say, 600 range) the overloaded effect in the form of an appropriate elemental tornado that persists for however long the effect was going to remain on you for.

No comment on the actual idea but one issue that will likely occur with such a suggestion is the complaint (and rightly so) that such would take control of skill usage away from the player. Having the game auto-kick you from an attunement into another will come with more problems such as Air pushing you into water attunement when you might not need to swap into it and thus putting you in a situation where you need to swap again and put water on cooldown which will then leave you in a troubling predictable state.

Commenting more on the idea now, why do you feel it is better to push you out of an attunement and give you an attunement-specific effect for X amount of spells vs just making that attunement’s spells have greater attunement effect? I.e., taking your flame burst for fire overload as an example, just give your fire skills a chance to flame burst or give your next X attacks flame burst or any foe touched by your flame tornado will explode in a flame burst if hit by a fire spell. Doing so retains control for the player and gives a specific new style of utilizing your attunements.

Reasoning

While this would require a considerable amount of thought for each of the particular weapon effects, I think it would make for a highly desirable and interesting choice for elementalists. It would, at least, fulfill the purpose of creating a somewhat new style of play, while also making overloads powerful and meaningful but still fairly balanceable (between numbers of charges, damage numbers, cooldowns, and duration of effect). But they would be interesting because they would offer players a chance to get a particular element’s effect while using a different one — but at the cost of being temporarily locked out of the first element. So one’s water attacks could temporarily call down lightning bolts, or one’s fireballs could heal nearby allies or chill or cause vulnerability or some combination of those. It’s at least an improvement in mechanics and interest and possibility from what we have right now, I think.

Thoughts?

I suppose but it’s not that different from what we have now. Currently, I can burn foes with my water skills, I can call down lightning bolts with my earth and water skills, I can heal allies with my fire balls, etc. Just taking traits (Burning Precision and Lightning Rod) and sigils do that. Is it amazing? Well, in some cases and in other cases, not so much. And is it new? I can’t say it is.

My personal opinion on Overloading Attunements is that, it’s like overflowing a container or overclocking a computer. Doing so doesn’t dump the whole container or shut down the computer (in some cases), it just pushes the limits. That’s what I’d like Overloading should work, pushing the limits of what you can do inside the attunement. Swapping attunements should be the “dumping” because I doubt the overload effects would really be ramped up to “dumping” the strength of the attunement’s capabilities out there all at once.

Wolfric.9380:

Stacking auras on the other side would be bad. I now it hurts and i would realy like to see fire auras stack, but this can get out of hands by stacking eles.
An the new rebound instant on 45 second cooldown would make it great. Not for its effect, just for the combinations possible.

I’m actually hoping more people latch onto the idea of a trait for tempest that boost auras by giving them additional effects instead of stacking them for perma application. It’s easier to balance and a more fun and meaningful change. I remember someone mentioning the idea earlier in the thread but can’t find it. But I had the same idea.

Karl! It’s a good idea! Auras you apply have additional effects! Just have to think what those effects would be (outside of applying boons/conditions on hit)

Overloads sound pretty solid with the upcoming BWE3 changes, but I feel WH has been barely addressed and is still a bit slow and lackluster. My suggestions would be (some taken from a previous post):

Wildfire: Make it appear faster.

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

Water Globe: Make it always move as fast as the character or make a 2nd tab teleport the orb to the character. This way its always useful, not just when the character exactly matches the orb’s speed.

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

Shrugal.4513:

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

Oooo. I do like this!!

Nike.2631:

Shrugal.4513:

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

Oooo. I do like this!!

I like this aswell. Something I told on my first feedback is a weird lack of mobility from the weapon itself, totally contrary to being “tempestuous”, and actually it doesn’t make sense from any angle…

I’m still really disappointing that tempest doesn’t any big aoe storms. I’ll never understand how a spec named tempest became a aura support build. It seems to me like there is a conflict between 2 different visions.

How about greatly increasing the radius of air-fire overloads by 300% while letting us cast other skills and dodge? It seems to me this would fix the main issue people have with overload which is the melee risk factor. It would also make the trait line viable with staff and scepter perhaps.

[EARTHEN PROXY],

1- can we please make it more like Mass Momentum? make it so we gain 1 stack protection each second we have swiftness or might? (this would better suit the frontline support role if we had more availability of protection while attunement camping instead of of higher damage reduction from protection)

2- or gain protection whenever you break out of a stun, but i think i like the other suggestion better, since this would grant protection at the start of overloads (because of the stun break) and essentially copy the existing minor trait

3- brainstorm… if the stunbreak at beginning of overload channel makes it live ( i really hope it does ) , i would suggest changing the minor trait that grants protection on overload to also grant protection on stunbreak, to allow the minor traits to benefit non overload usage as well. (since there are complaints about how Tempest minors only benefit using overloads)

3b -this would not be as strong as Elemental Attunement, but would also give an alternative to arcana. i think it wouldn’t be too powerful combined with arcana either, because earth + arcana + water already can give higher protection uptime

[HEAT SYNC] (edited due to brain fart…. i originally typed “wildfire”)

1- in addition to might, let heat sync continue to affect / apply vigor as well

2- this would allow removal of latent stamina (i hate vigor traits with a passion, and arcana spec already has a vigor trait)

[NEW TRAIT] to replace latent stamina

Magnetic Conduit – taunt foes when you overload. 3 seconds taunt, 360 radius, 20-30 second cooldown.

- this new trait fits within the theme of a frontline supporter in that it increases survivability

- with the new trait, Tempest traits might need to reorganized, but seeing as how powerful this trait would be combined with granting auras on completing overloads, maybe this should remain as a choice in the same tier.

-this new trait would also synergize with the melee range aspect of overloads, by causing foes to run into the overload while the tempest channels it.

[LIGHTNING ORB]

i like Shrugal’s idea listed above as well, but i fear that the damage would be lessoned to compensate for the mobility…

Leo G.4501:

RebornbyFire.7913:

Suggestion

The idea seems to have been (and I believe was stated in the PoI to be) to offer eles a more frontline brawler (seems to have been a common theme with almost all the E-Specs, really) role (although daggers already fill that fairly well) that offers some allied support and uses a more deliberate and thoughtful attunement-swapping pace. So I suggest that overloads do the following:

Overloading an attunement should continue to be a channel (although perhaps somewhat shorter than currently) which pulses some kind of supporting effect to you and nearby allies (and some damage/negative effect to enemies) while channeling, which when completed kicks you out of that attunement into the next one but imbues your next several attacks (say, ten or fifteen) with an appropriately powerful effect from the overloaded element, and possibly also generates an appropriate field that follows you around.

• So, for instance, overloading Fire would, upon completion, kick you out of Fire into Air (and put Fire on an appropriately long recharge), but you would then be followed by a burning fire field for several seconds and your next (say, ten) attacks would be imbued with a powerful fire effect — like causing a firey AoE explosion on the target, or dropping a flaming meteor on the target/target area, or creating a lava font on any struck targets, or… you get the idea. Use your imagination!
• One of the Grandmaster Major traits should cause this next-several-hits buff to also apply in some form to nearby allies.
• Bonus Points: Let each overload have a flip skill that removes the field/weapon charges from you in exchange for area casting (say, 600 range) the overloaded effect in the form of an appropriate elemental tornado that persists for however long the effect was going to remain on you for.

No comment on the actual idea but one issue that will likely occur with such a suggestion is the complaint (and rightly so) that such would take control of skill usage away from the player. Having the game auto-kick you from an attunement into another will come with more problems such as Air pushing you into water attunement when you might not need to swap into it and thus putting you in a situation where you need to swap again and put water on cooldown which will then leave you in a troubling predictable state.

Commenting more on the idea now, why do you feel it is better to push you out of an attunement and give you an attunement-specific effect for X amount of spells vs just making that attunement’s spells have greater attunement effect? I.e., taking your flame burst for fire overload as an example, just give your fire skills a chance to flame burst or give your next X attacks flame burst or any foe touched by your flame tornado will explode in a flame burst if hit by a fire spell. Doing so retains control for the player and gives a specific new style of utilizing your attunements.

I agree with you about the undesirable effects of being forced into the next attunement, rather than having a choice about it, and my only real thought on that was that it would need to be considered by the player as part of the possible risk. Honestly, though, my only real reasons for kicking the player out of the overloaded attunement were: 1) Interest — adding more fire to fire skills, for instance, is really a lot like that on-crit trait in Arcana and not necessarily interesting or different (i.e., I would still remain in water for healing, air for single-target damage, etc.); and 2) Balance — I’m not sure how well an overload that adds more of the same type of power to skills that are already appropriately powerful in that area can be balanced (i.e., a Lightning Whip that causes a healing burst or raises water geysers or drops small ice fields for a limited time while you are locked out of water attunement might be fairly balance-able and still an interesting/powerful option; a Lightning Whip that does even more lightning damage/control while not really preventing you from accessing anything else might be almost impossible to properly balance without it being so weak as to be utterly unexciting). Really, though, you’re entirely right — and if the cooldown of the Overload is long enough, it should still be able to be balanced and awesome at the same time (hopefully). I also really like your idea that the on-hit effect could require the enemy to be in the persisting field to proc. That’s fantastic, and mechanically interesting. Further, I would love to see some organization of the Overloads to all have some sort of general common theme while also offering something powerful and at least a little unique — or at least not always easily available; right now they are sort of all over the place and bland.

On that note, I would love to see —

• Each Overload offer some kind of Finisher while casting
• Each Overload offer some kind of Field on completion, which follows the player for the next several seconds and causes some kind of continuing effect to allies/enemies.
• Each Overload have a flip-over skill which allows this field to be cast off of the Tempest (around 600 range or so) to sit at a location for its remaining duration.
• Each Overload offer a powerful on-hit bonus (appropriate to the element overloaded) when the Tempest strikes an enemy in this persisting field, whether currently following the Tempest or cast somewhere else.
• A Grandmaster Major trait that causes the attacks of nearby allies to also cause this on-hit effect when striking an enemy in one of the Tempest’s fields.
• A competing Grandmaster Tier trait that offers powerful pulsing boons to allies standing in the Tempest’s fields — or, alternatively, copies boons from nearby allies to the Tempest as he channels the overload, and then spreads all of the Tempest’s current boons to allies standing in his fields.

For Instance, perhaps completing Overload Fire could cause a burning fire field to follow the Tempest around (when range cast, of course, it is centered around the flame-nado that currently exists). Striking an enemy in this field could cause a smaller flame-nado to whirl out towards them and chase them for a couple seconds, proccing burning (and a whirl finisher). Or it could cause a flaming meteor to fall on their head. Or something else appropriately damaging, firey, and awesome.

Each Overload, then, also needs an appropriate persistent field graphical FX — since we’ve already got two tornadoes, I see now reason why the theme couldn’t be continued — an air twister (with thunderclouds?) in the middle of a static field and ice or water twister in the middle of an ice or water field would look quite nice.

RebornbyFire.7913:

Honestly, though, my only real reasons for kicking the player out of the overloaded attunement were: 1) Interest — adding more fire to fire skills, for instance, is really a lot like that on-crit trait in Arcana and not necessarily interesting or different (i.e., I would still remain in water for healing, air for single-target damage, etc.);

That could be a possible avenue to deviate it from Arcane yet at the same time reflecting Arcane in another light…kind of like making Arcane’s opposite, if you will. But rather than on-crit, it utilizes other means of providing similar benefits. Just a thought.

and 2) Balance — I’m not sure how well an overload that adds more of the same type of power to skills that are already appropriately powerful in that area can be balanced (i.e., a Lightning Whip that causes a healing burst or raises water geysers or drops small ice fields for a limited time while you are locked out of water attunement might be fairly balance-able and still an interesting/powerful option; a Lightning Whip that does even more lightning damage/control while not really preventing you from accessing anything else might be almost impossible to properly balance without it being so weak as to be utterly unexciting).

I’d say, the way you’d balance that is “once you swap out of air, you don’t get those benefits anymore and require you to wait for the cooldown, ramp up and overload all over again”. Considering that the various utilities are spread through the different attunements, focusing on one at a time is already coming up with its balancing points. But beyond that, you don’t have to make the overloaded attunement do more of the same…instead of making water heal more, you can just make your spells hit more targets or something, instead of making your air hit harder you can make your air hit further, etc.

Really, though, you’re entirely right — and if the cooldown of the Overload is long enough, it should still be able to be balanced and awesome at the same time (hopefully). I also really like your idea that the on-hit effect could require the enemy to be in the persisting field to proc. That’s fantastic, and mechanically interesting. Further, I would love to see some organization of the Overloads to all have some sort of general common theme while also offering something powerful and at least a little unique — or at least not always easily available; right now they are sort of all over the place and bland.

Right, there are a lot of interesting and fun ideas being thrown around. I’d enjoy playing with a lot of them but we’ll just have to wait and see. I really do enjoy playing Tempest and channeling the overloads so I hope that part remains and they’ll be sure to make them worthwhile to use.

As a french player, i’m sorry for my english.
The overload must benefit from the -20% cd depending on the trait (example aeromancer’s traing for the air).

Hi Karl.

I want to show you some tweaks I made to some of the Tempest Traits. Made sure to keep them rather similar to what we have now, just adding extra functionality, merging, better numbers, etc…

Overall, I think these would help improve the Tempest in all game modes. What do you think about them?

(Just focused on Traits here, even though some skills also need tweaking.)

…So, I have quick question: In the Guardian forums, we’ve repeatedly mentioned the problem with an obviously Longbow-related damage bonus on a minor trait which is required in order to even equip the Longbow; the bonus damage should either be baseline, or else it should be a major trait. As a minor, it’s a waste. It seems we sort of have a similar problem here with the Tempest minors. So the question is, If you can’t even overload an attunement without slotting the Tempest trait line, why are all of the minor traits focused on buffing overloads? If overloads need all of those things to be even usable, then those things should obviously be baseline for them, and the minor traits should be something else.

Therefore, it seems like it would make a lot more sense if the base functionality of overloading an element was tweaked in whatever manner necessary to make it potentially useful without the bonuses from the current minor traits, or else those bonuses should just be made baseline for all overloads, and the minor traits should instead deal with something Tempest-related but not only performable by a Tempest.

Wouldn’t it make more sense for the minor traits to offer some kind of reward for remaining in an attunement for a given length of time? And, perhaps, for being in close proximity to enemies/allies, or for sharing boons, or for attunements on cooldown?

Karl McLain.5604:

Regarding Latent Stamina and Earthen Proxy: We’d like to change these up a bit, being as they don’t feel all that great and don’t have the best impact yet.

-Karl

Nice to see a lot of much needed changes so far and nice to see some of my suggestions actually making it (maybe were also suggested by others).

Not sure if you can understand my point of view and I get that tempest traitline is very much focused on melee but what I really miss with the tempest traitline right now is some level of usability and compatibility with using staff as weapon on elementalist.

To me, water and arcana is holy to me in playing my staff elementalist in WvW with fire or earth as good 3rd traitline. The tempest traitline right now can not compete with either fire or earth (obviously one is offensive and other defensive) imo for staff elementalist in WvW. It would be nice to see changes (maybe in minors) that can benefit the ele on more grounds.

The daredevil is a good example where two minors benefit any thief build. While an elementalist gets two boons for 3 and 5 seconds. Can’t say that protection is bad to have, but as a staff elementalist you don’t really want to use overload in situations where you need protection.

What I like to see and would find an interesting challange (which I’m going to think about from now on) is to think of a change to the minors to give staff ele’s a reason to be wanting to use overloads as part of their build.

Karl McLain.5604:

Rexx.1805:

Hi Karl.

I want to show you some tweaks I made to some of the Tempest Traits. Made sure to keep them rather similar to what we have now, just adding extra functionality, merging, better numbers, etc…

Overall, I think these would help improve the Tempest in all game modes. What do you think about them?

(Just focused on Traits here, even though some skills also need tweaking.)

Regarding Latent Stamina and Earthen Proxy: We’d like to change these up a bit, being as they don’t feel all that great and don’t have the best impact yet.

-Karl

What about adding 20% cooldown reduction to the shout trait? The shouts REALLY need cooldown reduction to ever feel viable (especially the earth, air and elite shouts that have way too long cooldowns for rather minor effects).

Make it possible to use other weapon/utility skills (except channeling skills) while overloading. This would be a major improvement. Think it will stay balanced as well if you can’t use other channeling skills at the same time, so can’t overload while using meteor, churning or drake breath at the same time.

It should make it possible to switch attunement while overloading, quite sure people will like that and I don’t think that’s going to be OP either, but something that would make the tempest less clunky and more flowing like it should be.

Idea for a minor trait with above idea in mind:

While overloading:
Fire: your damage is increased by ##% and lingers for 5 seconds after overloading has finished.
Water: your outgoing healing is enhanced by ##% and lingers for 5 seconds after overloading has finished.
Earth: You’re you’re immune to conditions. (could clash with another trait already?) Or toughness increased by ###.
Air: You gain superspeed.

So with this trait, and the ability to use other skills while overloading you can make use of added bonus depending on the attunement you’re in and abuse that. So by going tempest traitline you can gain such a bonus at the cost of dropping another traitline. It gives you more options, for example, if you like to do more damage, you can do that but at the cost of some survivability and vice versa.

Maybe op though :P but this would give us more reasons to use overloads and keep gameplay flowy, even in more tempered form and actually make the tempest traitline viable for more different builds.

But in short, overloading becomes a lot more exciting when it would boost/enhance your weapon skills when you can use them at the same time (at cost of longer attunement cooldown). Having the overloads do the same things as now would be a bonus of course and maybe OP?, but you can get away with somewhat alright effects that way that are not too strong that won’t make it OP.

Out of curiosity, is anything being done for the responsiveness of tidal surge? Maybe a bit of a range increase as well? Feels very awkward to land.

Karl McLain.5604:

Regarding Latent Stamina and Earthen Proxy: We’d like to change these up a bit, being as they don’t feel all that great and don’t have the best impact yet.

-Karl

Hello Karl, could you give some indication whether we’re talking substantial reformulation or more of a ‘tweaks-and-tuning’ level of adjustment? It’ would really help in setting some outer boundaries on our brainstorming. Thanks!

Personally I’d like to see each of the Tempest’s 4 elements get one trait, spread 2 in the apprentice tier and 2 in the master tier… so a fire-synergy trait, a water-synergy trait, an earth synergy trait, and an air synergy trait. I don’t know that this structure is achievable at this stage, but it seems like it would promote some truly Arcane-free builds, which would immediately put us into new territory vis-à-vis core Elementalists.

Consider a trait that says “While your current attunement is ready/not on cooldown you gain +10 recharge speed for all weapons.”

Again, trying to make staying in one attunement not an overwhelming lost of casting opportunities compared to freely cycling them.

Seriously, how is TEMPEST Defense NOT a TEMPEST trait?

Put a shocking aura on “Eye of the Storm!,” rename Gale Song to “tempest defense,” and put something new in the air-line. While you are at it, move some more of the aura traits to the tempest line and give new stuff in air/earth instead, both solidifying the “auramancer” theme of tempest and making it possible to create a coherent auramancer build. Heck, I would roll “powerful aura” (which isn’t GM-worthy in water, as access to auras through skills and utilities outside of tempest is pathetic) into elemental bastion, and remove the inherent AOE aura-sharing of shouts, making it AOE only when traited.

Also, shouts NEED a MUCH shorter base CD. Some people might try out tempest with shouts as a viable alternative to water/arcana/cantrips if you can use shouts frequently (to proc trooper runes). They also MUST be instant-cast, even if there is a delay on the skills.

If you actually made a full-on auramancer possible, it WOULD present a seriously different means to provide a brawler/support than current d/d ele. Of course, its still competing for the same role, but I have resigned to the fact that ele specializations will always just be “more of the same with a slight tweak”

I am one of the eles that will try shouts as alternative to arcane/water/cantrips and agree with BlackBeard here. Especilly on the instant cast part. It makes a huge diffrence for me using shouts while channeling. This is the main breakpoint now to substitute cantrips or i guess stuck again with lighning flash and cleansing flame, which in the end will let tempest unused.
So we are back at the point water+cantrips is ele. Break it or face the truth of no diversity.
Moving aura traits to tempest might be a step to far and even make tempest auramacer to powerful. Its good to decide which synergy you like to use and not put all in one class.

What if we had a regen on aura trait for tempest…

Wolfric.9380:

I am one of the eles that will try shouts as alternative to arcane/water/cantrips and agree with BlackBeard here. Especilly on the instant cast part. It makes a huge diffrence for me using shouts while channeling. This is the main breakpoint now to substitute cantrips or i guess stuck again with lighning flash and cleansing flame, which in the end will let tempest unused.
So we are back at the point water+cantrips is ele. Break it or face the truth of no diversity.
Moving aura traits to tempest might be a step to far and even make tempest auramacer to powerful. Its good to decide which synergy you like to use and not put all in one class.

Absolutely! I was about to write the same thing.

On one hand people complain about missing synergy with other specializations, on the other hand they want every possible synergy in one traitline.
I think the best approach is giving tempest the aura creation traits/abilities, and adding extra aura effects to other traitlines (e.g. water: chill/heal, fire: might/fury, air: swiftness/cc, earth: protection/stability/vigor).
One could argue that Powerful Aura should be a Tempest trait, but shouts and traited overloads already apply auras to 5 allies around you, so its not really necessary to share the occasional aura proc. It might be nice, but it would force you to go Tempest if you want aurasharing.

Also shouts need to be able to be cast in between other casts, otherwise they don’t stand a chance against cantrips. Especially if you consider, that they are currently unusable while overloading, that seams to be a major design flaw!

Vinteros Asteano.1209:

What if we had a regen on aura trait for tempest…

We already have, don’t we? Elemental Bastion is a grandmaster trait that makes auras heal. Or do you mean the boon regen? That would certainly synergize well with condi removal etc.

Regen on auras will synergize with water line and i consider it bad to push water. Tempest should be an alternative to water not getting superpower with water for geting stuck again with build diversity. To let auras directly heal is much better then giving regen.
And for Karl :-).
It realy comes down to changes like making the 1/4 shouts instant now. Its so sensitive that such minor looking things will decide the usefullness of the class. Because when you start to trait two cantrips again you are already off from shouts back to water….
But it means you already did good work and its close …

Vinteros Asteano.1209:

What if we had a regen on aura trait for tempest…

A better thing would be getting a rune set that removing conditions on auras so you would not need to give up the GM powerful aura to get the removing conduction on reg.

A though why not add back in the on channeling effect and make it into a GM on tempest there a lot on ele that channels and now with overloaded there at least 4 more.

Yes i did already suggest two runesets. One apothecary with healing power main and condition secondary with condition removal on aura aplication.
and one condition rune that removes conditions only on yourself.
I gues for tempest the apothecary runset 175 healing power, 100 condition damage and condi removal on auras would fit best.

Karl:

Regarding Latent Stamina and Earthen Proxy: We’d like to change these up a bit, being as they don’t feel all that great and don’t have the best impact yet.

-Karl

On top of whatever you’re planning why not make them minors and makes the current minors baseline.

Khenzy.9348:

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 really think this is a necessary change. The whole point should be to allow us to hit with our overloads but considering everyone else will have swiftness too this trait hardly seems effective in practise.

Also, many of the traits seem quite weak compared to the other trait lines. That seems to be the main downfall of the elite specialisation.

I suggestet basline speed like cronomancer instead and its done …

MAKING WARHORN WORTH SOMETHING
Lacks mobility AND utility in general.
fire #5 should spread faster and deal more dmg
water#4 really needs to knockback faster
water#5 field must remain on you like flames of war
air#4 direction neeeds to be ground-targeteable (including backwards)
air#5 increase dps, swap location with orb , dont let the orb just fade when hitting a wall, make it get reflected or walk the same way back
earth#4 not fun but overall a good skill (because of the blast finisher)
earth#5 terrible, my sugestion: make it a smoke field

Furthermore, the weapon needs an aura, my sugestion: make heat sinc give a fire aura aswell

The Great Al.2546:

With the proposed changes to Heat Sync I can’t think of a single reason to take warhorn over OH dagger or focus.

I can’t think of a reason to take tempest at all. It offers nothing we don’t already have. Even worse, anet have almost completely ignored our feedback and is still only twiddling with numbers.

Forgotten Legend.9281:

Karl McLain.5604:

Following up on the Stunbreak conversation: This is something we’ve talked about in the past and felt like it might just be way too strong. However, it still sounds like way too much fun to not try it out… so I’m going to change them over and we’ll see what that plays like in BWE3.
Please keep in mind that this will be a test and we may have to compensate for or remove it at some point in the future, if it’s too strong.

-Karl

Please keep in mind that traited properly, a necro can use f1 to stunbreak every 7 seconds, not including any utility skill stunbreaks they take.

now, elementalists taking signet of air can stunbreak every 20 seconds while traited, not including tempest defense and gale song.

assuming that the stunbreak on overload cast (at start of cast) would have no icd, allowing overloads to stunbreak would be at best, every 5 seconds, IF the player uses the overload to stunbreak, and then immediately swap attunements to start the pre-cast warm up for the next overload stunbreak.

now, using an overload only for the stunbreak also means setting that stunbreak on a 25 second cooldown, assuming that the channeling is interrupted by attunement swap immediately. (an aside, i thought it was said in the Tempest PoI livestream that it was intended that attunement swapping would NOT interrupt the overload channel, but just wasn’t in the beta build yet)

at this point, starting at the first stun break, and assuming perfect timing on attunement swap. we have: SB + 5s, SB + 5s, SB + 5s, SB + 5s, and since 20s have passed, the first attunement is available again. that doesn’t include any aftercast delays. realistically, we can expect every 6 seconds a stunbreak would be available with constant attunement swapping.

this appears to give the Tempest another choice to make: finish the overload or swap attunements to continue regular weapon skill rotation. (if the attunement swap does not interrupt the overload channel, then how else will the tempest be able to interrupt the channel? cast another weapon skill? we currently can’t dodge out of the overload channel…)

that possible every 5 second use could possibly be OP with the d/d cele cantrip ele build that dominates PvP, but i think that d/d cele cantrip eles would think twice about blowing their standard rotations for a stunbreak that essentially locks them out of an element for the next 20 seconds. this would really slow down their rotation, by a lot, so the damage output would fall considerably. i think it’s a fair trade off.

also, the more available stunbreak might finally allow for other utilities besides full cantrips, but i suppose that’s another conversation.

in the current iteration of overload channels, d/d cele cantrip eles also have to consider whether to let the overload finish channeling, too, which adds another 4 seconds before swapping attunements, (since attunement swap breaks the channel) which could essentially put the stunbreaks on longer cooldowns. 4 second channel + 5 second warmup means 9 seconds before next stunbreak is available.) this might make up for some of the damage lost from their regular rotation, but again, it’s a tradeoff.

realistically, i see overload stunbreak potential on par with necro using shroud as a stun break.

i’m actually really excited about this…

necro using shroud as a stunbreak is the most awful, terrible, horrible way to play there is. we use shroud for WAY WAY more things than just a stunbreak. thats.. wow just an awful way to even think.

you ever play necro bro?

I’m just gonna put it out there…

Tempest not having a skill or trait named “The Perfect Storm” is morally wrong and a crime against pithy naming .

Nike.2631:

I’m just gonna put it out there…

Tempest not having a skill or trait named “The Perfect Storm” is morally wrong and a crime against pithy naming .

Agreed! But in regard to naming I still have no idea why the Tempest is even called the Tempest.

caerulean.4837:

Agreed! But in regard to naming I still have no idea why the Tempest is even called the Tempest.

Its actually quite fitting: Blowing in your warhorn, shouting shouts into the wind and creating storms with 2/4 overloads.
Earth and water overloads should be stormy as well, then overloading could (should) be renamed to Elemental Outburst or something and we would be done!

tostadude.9214:

air#5 increase dps, swap location with orb , dont let the orb just fade when hitting a wall, make it get reflected or walk the same way back

That would make it insanely strong in certain circumstances, as you could make it go through your enemies four times if they are fighting you next to a wall (Hit -> Bounce -> Hit -> Teleport -> Hit -> Bounce -> Hit). But it would definitely be a lot of fun and difficult to pull off!

Furthermore, the weapon needs an aura, my sugestion: make heat sinc give a fire aura aswell

2nd that!

tostadude.9214:

air#5 increase dps, swap location with orb , dont let the orb just fade when hitting a wall, make it get reflected or walk the same way back

I would that bounce idea develope even further as basic version or via trait: whenever bounce cuz of wall increase time duration by flat period of time : 1s, decrease recharge duration by flat period of time: 1s, whenever bounce its increase movement of lighting orb by 10%.

Or whenever bounce: lighting orb fly a bit higher increasing its radious, 60 radious per bounce.