D/D Tempest roaming vid
Been playing tempest for about 2 months or so
How did you learn to play? Do you spam keys or do you everytime see enemy’s animations and counter with correct skill?
Are there rotations which gives boons, health, etc that I could rotate hours long? Without enemies. Just to get fingers flexible enough, maybe.
A lot of it is just getting out there and playing the class and getting experience. For the most part, I think attunement switching is rather fluid. In my opinion, it is best to try and get off your own combos rather than worrying what the opponent is doing. Obviously still worry about what your opponent is doing, but always keep in mind what you are trying to do and how you are going to execute it. I say this because your reaction to what the opponent is doing is always going to be different depending on the situation. However, YOUR own general combos and gameplan is never really going to change and it is easier to focus on what will remain static rather than what changes dramatically (which are opponent builds, whether you are outnumbered, etc). Like I said, some of it is reactionary, but a lot of it is executing the high damage combos that will get your opponent down. However, knowing your opponent’s general gameplan goes a long way too (for example, when a Shatter mesmer goes invis, 90% of the time he is going to try and shatter you, or if a Thief goes invis, a few seconds later he will probably backstab you, so react according to these basic manuevers).
For example:
Generally after you use a major CC, you want to attune to fire and use Burning Speed/LF into Fire Grab. This can be after an updraft, Earthquake (dodge backwards first otherwise your burning speed will probably miss), Earth Overload (dodge backwards as well then use the combo). Or if they are stunned by your shocking aura. Ideally you want to repeat this as much as possible.
Also , many people will run away from you or blow a cooldown to get away from your Air Overload. A good way to actually have the lightning field land on your opponent is to teleport just before the lightning field spawns. And if you can use CC’s like Updraft and Earthquake to keep them inside. You can do the same thing with Earth Overload.
Other things as well too are might stacking combos. Ring of Fire then attune to earth and dodge (you can dodge before attuning to earth as evasive arcana procs at the end of a dodge). Then attune to water and use the #3 blast finisher. Also, Ring of Fire into Magnetic grasp gives you a Fire Aura.
If you get CC’ed by an opponent it is generally a good idea to attune to earth as it gives you protection to mitigate damage, or if you get condi-bombed to attune to water for condition cleanse. I generally don’t wait till I get to low health to attune to water, I will attune to water at around 13K-14K-ish HP just to make the most of my healing.
In an ideal world you should be attunement swapping fairly often to make the most use of the boons you get. However, Tempest runs kind of contradictory to that as you have to wait 5 seconds before your overload can be used, and generally you don’t want to stay that long in one attunement, so you kind of have to balance that. There will be times where you use air auto-attacks as filler (it’s great for regenning health with SoR so generally if you are running away or chasing an opponent spam it).
It’s hard to anticipate everything the opponent is going to do or even if you can there will be some error in the execution. You’re not always going to use the correct skill for the situation, I’d say about half the time I mess up but knowing your opponent build and general game plan goes a very, very long way. More often then not, if you know what you are doing generally, unless you kitten up really bad, mistakes aren’t going to cost you very badly.
For example a Berserker; all he wants to do is headbutt you then go berserk on you literally (power build). Once you know that, you can save your mist/armor of earth/LF for if you get CC’ed by headbutt. Or at the very least attune to earth. If he does go in berserker mode, you should probably realize that you can’t outDPS him in melee so it is better to kite a little bit, use CC’s, heal, and take a more defensive-offensive approach. Then once he is out of Berserk mode, start to go more offensive and put the pressure on him, but keep in mind the CD of his headbutt.
Overall, it is all muscle memory man. Elementalists can seem pretty daunting with 20 weapon skills, attunement swapping and what not but once you know the basic combos to deal damage/might stack and get used to it, you’ll be fine. I’m still learning too so yeah
(edited by killahmayne.9518)