Guild Wars 2

Well now that Tempest has secured a place in higher tier pvp, I think its time to revisit its other options, namely staff tempest and D/Wh tempest.

The main strength of the warhorn right imo is CC and giving staff-like AoEs on an off-set so you can use it with dagger (though those AoEs are weaker and slower than staffs).

If you slap on some soldier runes I think the standard earth/water cele support tempest could work with warhorn instead of focus, (and it could work with staff as well). Due to the needed stability on overload, I don’t think it would be wise to touch torrents or cleansing water, and simply hope to got that shout runes and diamond skin can give you enough cleanse. You can also trait cantrips and use ether renewal and cleansing fire, but its still impractical and Wash the Pain Away is the best part about tempest imo.

So, before you flame me for asking such a ridiculous question.., what are your best D/Wh Tempest builds? Do they feel on par with or weaker than an equivalent D/F build?

What build do you consider high tier for tempest? Celestial Auramancer?

Sleyer.7516:

What build do you consider high tier for tempest? Celestial Auramancer?

If you mean D/F aurashare than yeah, being part of the vast majority of top tier pop teams means that it’s higher tier.

I want to see if there’s something else that can work at that level, so I’m trying to think of ideas with warhorn.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJBIhdSfJ0fJWhJ4gJQHBWeAM3H7l9zOcCyAdQhAwBoFC-TJRGwAAeAAJOBAA3fYZZAA

what ive been enjoying

I had best success with water+air and warhorn. Without Focus earth 4+5 the earth traitline loses a lot of value.

horn 4 gives magnetic aura and protection, it’s pretty cool with earth traitline. not op cool but watch those projectile user faces.

Does geomancers freedom reduce the cooldown of the sand squall proc in imbued melodies?

Right now I’m testing water arcane tempest with torrents and cleansing water… Aurashare is probably better, but this build can spam protection better. I think it only works because you need water and arcane to survive well without focus, particularly against condis.. But maybe I could potentially drop arcane and pick up earth and cantrips or something.

So today I had some time to do some warhorn build testing, I have two builds that I came to, so hopefully you guys can test them out as well and give me some feedback.

Basically they focus on using imbued melodies to be be able to spam sand squall. The loss of elemental bastion is mitigated by the extra group heals you get from the water warhorn skills.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJBIhdSfJ0fJWgJYhJwhJWYBM3saXNsSkAOABgiNQDoCA-TJxHABDcCACf/BAeAAFVGAA

This build uses arcane and cleansing water+torrents. With durability, arcane, and imbued melodies you get a whopping 55% boon duration, so you can stack might pretty well, so you’ll actually be able to use heat sync. Its more similar to an older style of D/D ele play, that uses overloads occasionally, though I wish there was more synergy between arcane and tempest, since the CD reduction you get from arcana on overload (2.5 seconds) gets added back after you swap out of the attunement, I’m not sure why this is..

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJBIhdSfJ0fJWgJYhJwhJW2AM39agdwSsCuAVghHQAoAC-TJxHwACOBA62fAwDAoYZAA

This build uses powerful auras, earth, and soldier runes. It can’t stack might quite as well, but it has diamond skin and stab on overload to have better chance of getting off non-earth overloads. Its more similar to the D/F build that most top teams use.

Anyway those were the builds I came to. I settled on using either arcana or earth because tempest wants to have a kitten ton of protection uptime on itself and allies and can’t afford to skimp too much on condi management with all the reapers running around. Being able to cleanse condis on allies is valuable utility too that most dedicated support builds (including D/F tempest) have abandoned since HoT launch. The warhorn and imbued melodies are a lot better than you’d think once you start experimenting with it.

I just don’t feel comfortable with focus after playing warhorn, it may be the way I play but focus lack respect to warhorn, if I’d have to put this in numbers from 1st attunement to last:

1 to 5 [ bad to great]

Focus= Fire (2,1) – Water(1,4) – Air( 3,3), Earth (5,5)

Warhorn=Fire(3,4) – Water(3,4)- Air(3,2)- Earth (4-2)

So in the end, focus has way more bad skills ( fire aura on a 40 CD, freezing gust, flamewall narrow path) and a situational skill ( swirling winds) and 2 amazing skills in earth

By comparison warhorn offers better 1vs1 in my opinion as the utility/dmg is spread across all attunements, it’s less defensive but with training that becomes secondary importance.

Quick summary

> better; >> way better; >>> no contest
< worst; way worst; <<< really bad

Fire= heat sync > fire aura; wildfire>>> flamewall
Water=Tidal surge>>>freezing gust, Water globe >> Comet
Air= Cyclone >< Swirling winds ; Lightning orb >< Gale
Earth= sand squall < magnetic wave; dust storm << Obsidian flesh

Given the vast array of situations you can find yourself into, warhorn beats focus hands down

To nearlight and Supreme:

I would agree warhorn offers more team support and play than focus but since it’s on metabattle, people will bandwagon on it for sure. But that’s not to say warhorn does not need buffs.

Lets start with the tweaks:

• Heat Sync – needs a lower cooldown, and bring it back to the first iteration in BWE3
• Wildfire – This is skill is really good, but the targetting is meh. A 240 radius circle shaped targetting will be better especially on node fights.

• Tidal Surge – needs a lower cooldwon, atleast 30. Targetting needs a fix too. Maybe lower the distance it travels, but make it wider.
• Water Globe – This skill needs a condi cleanse, 1 each pulse. I would say that it would be balanced since you have to run after it since it moves. Make the healing a little bit better around 700-800 base per pulse. Again, you have to chase after it to get all pulses. This skill also contradicts itself, unblockable. For what? it doesn’t do damage to begin with. A little damage or just chill or vuln would be good.

• Cyclone – This is skill is okay imo. Just the targetting, Lower the distance, make it wider.
• Lightning orb- utterly useless skill. Lower the cd. Make it atleast 2 – 3 orbs. It’s only useful against a single target and it tracks through stealth

• Sand Squall – needs atleast 25 seconds cd. Otherwise good effects
• Dust storm – Make it a Circle AoE. Imo this is a really good skill, stacks so much bleeds and blinds.

• Imbued Melodies – It is decent, BUT currently you have no reason to pick this over Elemental Bastion, Elemental Bastion is very good for team play. Unless they improve warhorn first, this will not ever get picked over Elemental Bastion.

Hey sticker, I know we talked about this yesterday but yeah I generally agree that warhorn needs tweaks of this nature. I’m not too worried about cooldowns though. In general I’d say condi cleanse would be the most importanted thing, because as of now, if you want to use warhorn, you have to go fully into cleansing water/arcane and forget about aurashare in order to make it so you don’t melt from condis, since chill reapers are on every team.

My main reason for choosing imbued melodies over bastion is that bastion sees much less use if you don’t have powerful auras (my arcane WH builds doesn’t) so imbued melodies lets me get to 55% boon duration and basically lets me might stack with perma protection like no other ele build has ever really been able to.. though the ten second cooldown of the proc on the tooltip is misleading since my rough testing shows that its actually 30 seconds instead, so some clarification on that would be helpful. I justify taking it over bastion because water/arcane synergy gives me enough AoE heals, and so do the warhorn skills when they’re used properly. Idk though, more heals are always good, so I might go back to bastion, it just doesn’t feel as strong when you trait torrents/cleansingwater instead of aurashare/stability.

Some other general ideas include traiting cantrips on a fire/water warhorn build for mistform rezzes, cleansing fire, and armor of earth, but less ally cleanse from shouts, but the low protection uptime of that build would make it sucky.

Warhorn doesn’t need much buffing. For me, the only thing most people agree that needs the most attention is lightning orb damage. They need to buff it at least 50% to be anywhere near useful. It has a lot of counterplay, including just dodge/walk forward. The damage needs to be a lot more.

nearlight.3064:

Hey sticker, I know we talked about this yesterday but yeah I generally agree that warhorn needs tweaks of this nature. I’m not too worried about cooldowns though. In general I’d say condi cleanse would be the most importanted thing, because as of now, if you want to use warhorn, you have to go fully into cleansing water/arcane and forget about aurashare in order to make it so you don’t melt from condis, since chill reapers are on every team.

My main reason for choosing imbued melodies over bastion is that bastion sees much less use if you don’t have powerful auras (my arcane WH builds doesn’t) so imbued melodies lets me get to 55% boon duration and basically lets me might stack with perma protection like no other ele build has ever really been able to.. though the ten second cooldown of the proc on the tooltip is misleading since my rough testing shows that its actually 30 seconds instead, so some clarification on that would be helpful. I justify taking it over bastion because water/arcane synergy gives me enough AoE heals, and so do the warhorn skills when they’re used properly. Idk though, more heals are always good, so I might go back to bastion, it just doesn’t feel as strong when you trait torrents/cleansingwater instead of aurashare/stability.

Some other general ideas include traiting cantrips on a fire/water warhorn build for mistform rezzes, cleansing fire, and armor of earth, but less ally cleanse from shouts, but the low protection uptime of that build would make it sucky.

One thing I can advise you is, you can go up tom 65% boon duration with leadership runes, and have an aoe 2 condis removed with rebound. OR. Get leadership runes and Remove Arcana and put a different Trait line and still end up with with 55% boon duration. Imo Arcana traitline is Only most gotten for Evasive Arcana.

Another gimping thing is, Harmonious Conduit. If Stability on overload is put in place on Swiftness on overload, you can get Invigorating Torrents which is I think an awesome substitute for Elemental Bastion since you get Condi removal (which again removes the need for Soldier Runes) on Regen + Soothing Mist if you trait into water. Don’t forget healing ripple is an additional 1.6k Heal every time you attune into water.

Next, I would suggest Eye of the storm to be replaced, Imo it is useless bec its on a very high CD and does not provide any auras. So that could be the place to slot in armor of earth (tempest Lacks on demand stability) OR Mist Form.

On your build, Since Sand Squall, Feel the burn, Flash Freeze all give AoE Auras, Cleansing Water is great.

Here is the debate you should think about, IIRC overload Auras is self only, I think Powerful Auras is MANDATORY for a support build since you only have 4 things that give AoE auras, Sand Squall and the 3 shouts.

StickerHappy.8052:

nearlight.3064:

Hey sticker, I know we talked about this yesterday but yeah I generally agree that warhorn needs tweaks of this nature. I’m not too worried about cooldowns though. In general I’d say condi cleanse would be the most importanted thing, because as of now, if you want to use warhorn, you have to go fully into cleansing water/arcane and forget about aurashare in order to make it so you don’t melt from condis, since chill reapers are on every team.

My main reason for choosing imbued melodies over bastion is that bastion sees much less use if you don’t have powerful auras (my arcane WH builds doesn’t) so imbued melodies lets me get to 55% boon duration and basically lets me might stack with perma protection like no other ele build has ever really been able to.. though the ten second cooldown of the proc on the tooltip is misleading since my rough testing shows that its actually 30 seconds instead, so some clarification on that would be helpful. I justify taking it over bastion because water/arcane synergy gives me enough AoE heals, and so do the warhorn skills when they’re used properly. Idk though, more heals are always good, so I might go back to bastion, it just doesn’t feel as strong when you trait torrents/cleansingwater instead of aurashare/stability.

Some other general ideas include traiting cantrips on a fire/water warhorn build for mistform rezzes, cleansing fire, and armor of earth, but less ally cleanse from shouts, but the low protection uptime of that build would make it sucky.

One thing I can advise you is, you can go up tom 65% boon duration with leadership runes, and have an aoe 2 condis removed with rebound. OR. Get leadership runes and Remove Arcana and put a different Trait line and still end up with with 55% boon duration. Imo Arcana traitline is Only most gotten for Evasive Arcana.

Another gimping thing is, Harmonious Conduit. If Stability on overload is put in place on Swiftness on overload, you can get Invigorating Torrents which is I think an awesome substitute for Elemental Bastion since you get Condi removal (which again removes the need for Soldier Runes) on Regen + Soothing Mist if you trait into water. Don’t forget healing ripple is an additional 1.6k Heal every time you attune into water.

Next, I would suggest Eye of the storm to be replaced, Imo it is useless bec its on a very high CD and does not provide any auras. So that could be the place to slot in armor of earth (tempest Lacks on demand stability) OR Mist Form.

On your build, Since Sand Squall, Feel the burn, Flash Freeze all give AoE Auras, Cleansing Water is great.

Here is the debate you should think about, IIRC overload Auras is self only, I think Powerful Auras is MANDATORY for a support build since you only have 4 things that give AoE auras, Sand Squall and the 3 shouts.

Well thats the problem, without focus, if you want to take powerful auras over cleansing water, you’re almost forced to take soldier runes and diamond skin to have enough cleanse to survive, so you don’t immediately melt when diamond skin gets broken. Adding to that, thats why arcane synergizes so well with cleansing water. Leadership runes sound pretty good and could be a stand-in for durability runes on a cleansing water build, but it wouldn’t be enough condition removal to make it worth it on a powerful auras build compared to soldier runes.

Sunshine.5014:

Warhorn doesn’t need much buffing. For me, the only thing most people agree that needs the most attention is lightning orb damage. They need to buff it at least 50% to be anywhere near useful. It has a lot of counterplay, including just dodge/walk forward. The damage needs to be a lot more.

I agree with Lightning Orb, But dude you gotta remember Warhorn Does not have Any condi cleanse. Focus does. Which is also why Focus is good. Focus also has an invul. WH does not.

With that said, Focus atm is clearly a superior choice. If no tweaks to warhorn are done to put it on par with the other off hands, I would bet you it will never get picked in a competitive pvp setting.

The Targetting of Fire 5, Earth 5, Air 4, are all sluggish.

Air 4 is easily evaded. which is sad.

I will try out my arcane build with leadership runes over durability though, since those tunes could be stronger, then I could probably take elemental bastion again for a bit more sustain. And yeah I know it’s not optimal just because of the warhorn’s weakness, but I like it a lot as a weapon and I feel as though arenanet will improve it one day. Most of the slow interrupt skills I mostly use for stopping Rez attempts, and I like that cyclone gives swiftness and that tidal surge gives regen.

As of now though the arcane build just feels a bit better overall than running earth/aurashare/soldier runes, but I do agree that evasive arcana is the main reason to go down that route at all.

On a related note, one of my friends who mains staff ele said that they felt that staff didn’t work very well with full on aurashare compared to cleansing water, which makes sense to me given how the warhorn feels derivative of staff. I’ll also add that running AoE condi removal right now is a very valuable form of support that most other support builds, like Druid or metabattletempest can’t really do that well, and has died elsewhere considering how shoutbow and bunker guard are virtually extinct.

nearlight.3064:

Does geomancers freedom reduce the cooldown of the sand squall proc in imbued melodies?

Right now I’m testing water arcane tempest with torrents and cleansing water… Aurashare is probably better, but this build can spam protection better. I think it only works because you need water and arcane to survive well without focus, particularly against condis.. But maybe I could potentially drop arcane and pick up earth and cantrips or something.

I tested it some time ago, and yes it does reduce the cooldown of the proc, like other talents do with skill procs.

Sadly even with 20 second cooldown auto-proccing sand squalls don’t make the talent worth taking. The heal on auras will basically always be the best GM right now.

The sand squall doesn’t even proc when you don’t have warhorn equipped…

nearlight.3064:

I will try out my arcane build with leadership runes over durability though, since those tunes could be stronger, then I could probably take elemental bastion again for a bit more sustain. And yeah I know it’s not optimal just because of the warhorn’s weakness, but I like it a lot as a weapon and I feel as though arenanet will improve it one day. Most of the slow interrupt skills I mostly use for stopping Rez attempts, and I like that cyclone gives swiftness and that tidal surge gives regen.

As of now though the arcane build just feels a bit better overall than running earth/aurashare/soldier runes, but I do agree that evasive arcana is the main reason to go down that route at all.

On a related note, one of my friends who mains staff ele said that they felt that staff didn’t work very well with full on aurashare compared to cleansing water, which makes sense to me given how the warhorn feels derivative of staff. I’ll also add that running AoE condi removal right now is a very valuable form of support that most other support builds, like Druid or metabattletempest can’t really do that well, and has died elsewhere considering how shoutbow and bunker guard are virtually extinct.

Keep me posted.

So the Warhorn Trait, the sand squall proc is in fact 30 seconds? If its not 10 seconds then this would be not even an option to spec at all. That was the only thing making this trait remotely viable.

StickerHappy.8052:

Sunshine.5014:

Warhorn doesn’t need much buffing. For me, the only thing most people agree that needs the most attention is lightning orb damage. They need to buff it at least 50% to be anywhere near useful. It has a lot of counterplay, including just dodge/walk forward. The damage needs to be a lot more.

I agree with Lightning Orb, But dude you gotta remember Warhorn Does not have Any condi cleanse. Focus does. Which is also why Focus is good. Focus also has an invul. WH does not.

With that said, Focus atm is clearly a superior choice. If no tweaks to warhorn are done to put it on par with the other off hands, I would bet you it will never get picked in a competitive pvp setting.

The Targetting of Fire 5, Earth 5, Air 4, are all sluggish.

Air 4 is easily evaded. which is sad.

Pretty much this. There is just SO MUCH wrong with warhorn:
- No cleanse
- No hard mitigation (like earth 5 invuln, air 4 projectile block, or earth 4 projectile reflect on focus) except 1 reflect every 30s. Not even mobility like dagger OH has.
- The CC is SO slow and doesn’t often hit. Doesn’t provide area control like staff CC’s, or hard single-target control like focus. It doesn’t even provide fast melee control like dagger OH.
- The fire field is on an insanely long CD, so its not even useful for a high-sustain might-stacking build. This is particularly important, because the #4 skill in fire shares only might, which warhorn builds aren’t all that great at stacking up consistently. Dagger builds share more might.
- The water field moves off-point in capture-point game-modes. You would rather have a stationary field like staff to prevent getting decapped.

Even people comparing the individual skill strength, with an auramancer build (which is the only way you make tempest work in pvp, b/c if you JUST wanted to share boons and not spam shocking auras/heals you would play vanilla d/d water/arcana ele) focus gets strong b/c fire 5 is no longer worthless as it provides as strong of a heal as a water skill on warhorn.

StickerHappy.8052:

nearlight.3064:

I will try out my arcane build with leadership runes over durability though, since those tunes could be stronger, then I could probably take elemental bastion again for a bit more sustain. And yeah I know it’s not optimal just because of the warhorn’s weakness, but I like it a lot as a weapon and I feel as though arenanet will improve it one day. Most of the slow interrupt skills I mostly use for stopping Rez attempts, and I like that cyclone gives swiftness and that tidal surge gives regen.

As of now though the arcane build just feels a bit better overall than running earth/aurashare/soldier runes, but I do agree that evasive arcana is the main reason to go down that route at all.

On a related note, one of my friends who mains staff ele said that they felt that staff didn’t work very well with full on aurashare compared to cleansing water, which makes sense to me given how the warhorn feels derivative of staff. I’ll also add that running AoE condi removal right now is a very valuable form of support that most other support builds, like Druid or metabattletempest can’t really do that well, and has died elsewhere considering how shoutbow and bunker guard are virtually extinct.

Keep me posted.

So the Warhorn Trait, the sand squall proc is in fact 30 seconds? If its not 10 seconds then this would be not even an option to spec at all. That was the only thing making this trait remotely viable.

I did a convoluted spreadsheet analysis looking at the feasability of maintaining 100% protection uptime over 20-second intervals looking at different trait, rune, and weapon combinations. Basically what I found is that imbued melodies with earth traits lets you maintain perma-prot much more easily, though this is not a requirement. The “meta” water/earth D/F build can only maintain perma-protection for its team only if it overloads earth off cooldown (9 pulses of 1s prot and 3s from HC) and it and its team remain in the dust storm radius for the full duration of the aftereffect. That scenario is not realistically feasible, especially on legacy and in pug groups. With durability runes instead of shout runes its a bit more feasible, but you still won’t be able to maintain perma prot without camping the dust storm, since that setup peaks at 21.5 seconds (with 20% boon duration, and we may wish to use different runes). Without durability runes, you need to blow multiple cooldowns to get enough protection, so you’ll have way more holes in your defenses compared to an equivalent warhorn build.

Even without imbued melodies or any boon duration at all you peak at 22 seconds of prot per 20 second interval if you camp the full overload if you use warhorn. You peak at 25 seconds per 20 second interval with leadership runes (30% boon duration). This benchmark is significant because it means you don’t have to camp the dust storm to have perma protection. However its important to note that gaps in your protection uptime can be filled by using other auras from shouts or from other overloads, its just that using warhorn for sand squall alone means you need to use less overloads/shouts to maintain perma protection, even with no boon duration.

So basically my main conclusion is that warhorn lets you more easily maintain protection, even without imbued melodies, when looking at the efficacy of earth/water aurashare builds. I also did the test with arcane builds, and have concluded that its not worth it, even though arcane builds let you maintain perma-prot much more easily with EB, I don’t think its worth considering because as you said, aurashare is just better support. And I think I’ve come up with a combination of runes, utilities, and traits for a WH build that has way more potential than the meta D/F build.. but I need to do a bit more testing to be sure. The build I’ve come up with is better support than the D/F build hands down, and should have better practical protection uptime.

Anyway I hope this made sense. Feel free to ask me about other protection uptimes with combinations I didn’t say or discuss.

nearlight.3064:

StickerHappy.8052:

nearlight.3064:

I will try out my arcane build with leadership runes over durability though, since those tunes could be stronger, then I could probably take elemental bastion again for a bit more sustain. And yeah I know it’s not optimal just because of the warhorn’s weakness, but I like it a lot as a weapon and I feel as though arenanet will improve it one day. Most of the slow interrupt skills I mostly use for stopping Rez attempts, and I like that cyclone gives swiftness and that tidal surge gives regen.

As of now though the arcane build just feels a bit better overall than running earth/aurashare/soldier runes, but I do agree that evasive arcana is the main reason to go down that route at all.

On a related note, one of my friends who mains staff ele said that they felt that staff didn’t work very well with full on aurashare compared to cleansing water, which makes sense to me given how the warhorn feels derivative of staff. I’ll also add that running AoE condi removal right now is a very valuable form of support that most other support builds, like Druid or metabattletempest can’t really do that well, and has died elsewhere considering how shoutbow and bunker guard are virtually extinct.

Keep me posted.

So the Warhorn Trait, the sand squall proc is in fact 30 seconds? If its not 10 seconds then this would be not even an option to spec at all. That was the only thing making this trait remotely viable.

I did a convoluted spreadsheet analysis looking at the feasability of maintaining 100% protection uptime over 20-second intervals looking at different trait, rune, and weapon combinations. Basically what I found is that imbued melodies with earth traits lets you maintain perma-prot much more easily, though this is not a requirement. The “meta” water/earth D/F build can only maintain perma-protection for its team only if it overloads earth off cooldown (9 pulses of 1s prot and 3s from HC) and it and its team remain in the dust storm radius for the full duration of the aftereffect. That scenario is not realistically feasible, especially on legacy and in pug groups. With durability runes instead of shout runes its a bit more feasible, but you still won’t be able to maintain perma prot without camping the dust storm, since that setup peaks at 21.5 seconds (with 20% boon duration, and we may wish to use different runes). Without durability runes, you need to blow multiple cooldowns to get enough protection, so you’ll have way more holes in your defenses compared to an equivalent warhorn build.

Even without imbued melodies or any boon duration at all you peak at 22 seconds of prot per 20 second interval if you camp the full overload if you use warhorn. You peak at 25 seconds per 20 second interval with leadership runes (30% boon duration). This benchmark is significant because it means you don’t have to camp the dust storm to have perma protection. However its important to note that gaps in your protection uptime can be filled by using other auras from shouts or from other overloads, its just that using warhorn for sand squall alone means you need to use less overloads/shouts to maintain perma protection, even with no boon duration.

So basically my main conclusion is that warhorn lets you more easily maintain protection, even without imbued melodies, when looking at the efficacy of earth/water aurashare builds. I also did the test with arcane builds, and have concluded that its not worth it, even though arcane builds let you maintain perma-prot much more easily with EB, I don’t think its worth considering because as you said, aurashare is just better support. And I think I’ve come up with a combination of runes, utilities, and traits for a WH build that has way more potential than the meta D/F build.. but I need to do a bit more testing to be sure. The build I’ve come up with is better support than the D/F build hands down, and should have better practical protection uptime.

Anyway I hope this made sense. Feel free to ask me about other protection uptimes with combinations I didn’t say or discuss.

Hmm interesting.. you mentioned several times camping dust storm. What does it have to do with prot uptime?

I do agree with the aura part, it’s not even a support matter, heal on aura will keep yourself more sustainable than without it.

Here’s the thing, I use WH for condi bombing, dust storm, geo and doom sigil, earth overload + fire 5, with celestial ammy, regular might stacking and all with leadership runes give you decent might uptime, like around 15 might, that gives you about 900 condi damage on cele which is really good. Try it sometime.

WH has good mix of condis and utility not to mention they are AoE and the blindness from Dust Storm helps a lot of damage mitigation.

I have an Idea, use your prot uptime stacking and get rid of earth, lets face it we take earth bec of the prot on auras trait, diamond skin is just secondary, then maybe you can go water / X / temp.

You also mentioned that you already created a good potential WH build, would you mind sharing it?

StickerHappy.8052:

nearlight.3064:

StickerHappy.8052:

nearlight.3064:

I will try out my arcane build with leadership runes over durability though, since those tunes could be stronger, then I could probably take elemental bastion again for a bit more sustain. And yeah I know it’s not optimal just because of the warhorn’s weakness, but I like it a lot as a weapon and I feel as though arenanet will improve it one day. Most of the slow interrupt skills I mostly use for stopping Rez attempts, and I like that cyclone gives swiftness and that tidal surge gives regen.

As of now though the arcane build just feels a bit better overall than running earth/aurashare/soldier runes, but I do agree that evasive arcana is the main reason to go down that route at all.

On a related note, one of my friends who mains staff ele said that they felt that staff didn’t work very well with full on aurashare compared to cleansing water, which makes sense to me given how the warhorn feels derivative of staff. I’ll also add that running AoE condi removal right now is a very valuable form of support that most other support builds, like Druid or metabattletempest can’t really do that well, and has died elsewhere considering how shoutbow and bunker guard are virtually extinct.

Keep me posted.

So the Warhorn Trait, the sand squall proc is in fact 30 seconds? If its not 10 seconds then this would be not even an option to spec at all. That was the only thing making this trait remotely viable.

I did a convoluted spreadsheet analysis looking at the feasability of maintaining 100% protection uptime over 20-second intervals looking at different trait, rune, and weapon combinations. Basically what I found is that imbued melodies with earth traits lets you maintain perma-prot much more easily, though this is not a requirement. The “meta” water/earth D/F build can only maintain perma-protection for its team only if it overloads earth off cooldown (9 pulses of 1s prot and 3s from HC) and it and its team remain in the dust storm radius for the full duration of the aftereffect. That scenario is not realistically feasible, especially on legacy and in pug groups. With durability runes instead of shout runes its a bit more feasible, but you still won’t be able to maintain perma prot without camping the dust storm, since that setup peaks at 21.5 seconds (with 20% boon duration, and we may wish to use different runes). Without durability runes, you need to blow multiple cooldowns to get enough protection, so you’ll have way more holes in your defenses compared to an equivalent warhorn build.

Even without imbued melodies or any boon duration at all you peak at 22 seconds of prot per 20 second interval if you camp the full overload if you use warhorn. You peak at 25 seconds per 20 second interval with leadership runes (30% boon duration). This benchmark is significant because it means you don’t have to camp the dust storm to have perma protection. However its important to note that gaps in your protection uptime can be filled by using other auras from shouts or from other overloads, its just that using warhorn for sand squall alone means you need to use less overloads/shouts to maintain perma protection, even with no boon duration.

So basically my main conclusion is that warhorn lets you more easily maintain protection, even without imbued melodies, when looking at the efficacy of earth/water aurashare builds. I also did the test with arcane builds, and have concluded that its not worth it, even though arcane builds let you maintain perma-prot much more easily with EB, I don’t think its worth considering because as you said, aurashare is just better support. And I think I’ve come up with a combination of runes, utilities, and traits for a WH build that has way more potential than the meta D/F build.. but I need to do a bit more testing to be sure. The build I’ve come up with is better support than the D/F build hands down, and should have better practical protection uptime.

Anyway I hope this made sense. Feel free to ask me about other protection uptimes with combinations I didn’t say or discuss.

Hmm interesting.. you mentioned several times camping dust storm. What does it have to do with prot uptime?

I do agree with the aura part, it’s not even a support matter, heal on aura will keep yourself more sustainable than without it.

Here’s the thing, I use WH for condi bombing, dust storm, geo and doom sigil, earth overload + fire 5, with celestial ammy, regular might stacking and all with leadership runes give you decent might uptime, like around 15 might, that gives you about 900 condi damage on cele which is really good. Try it sometime.

WH has good mix of condis and utility not to mention they are AoE and the blindness from Dust Storm helps a lot of damage mitigation.

I have an Idea, use your prot uptime stacking and get rid of earth, lets face it we take earth bec of the prot on auras trait, diamond skin is just secondary, then maybe you can go water / X / temp.

You also mentioned that you already created a good potential WH build, would you mind sharing it?

Oh I should clarify, I meant camping the dust storm as in the sand tornado left behind from the earth overload at the end that pulses out more protection bleeds, not the warhorn dust storm skill. I’ll pm you my build later. I can look into more builds without earth, but they’d still probably need arcana instead to have perma prot.