Guild Wars 2

So, with the new traits unveiled, earthen proxy has been combined with hardy conduit, which now gives protection on overload as well as increasing protection effectiveness to 40% less incoming damage.

To replace Earthen proxy, we now have:
Invigorating Torrents: Auras you apply also grant regeneration and vigor.

Needless to say, this one trait essentially gives us an equivalent to the Cantrip Mastery trait in Water line, in that now shouts can be used to remove conditions through synergy with cleansing water.

Which now creates 2 competing tempest builds (assuming we want to have one line for damage), water for far more condi cleansing, or earth for easy access to improved protection and general toughness towards direct damage.

I’ve made a test build for each, as shown below:

water:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAoYn0XC9XiNYCWYCcYilHAzdyeZ/sEDhXwOQIAcA2gA-TZAZAAQZAA

earth:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAodn0XC9XiNYCWYCcYilHAzdymZ/sDngMQHUIAcA2gA-TJBGwABOBAu2fAwDAgZZAA

Which one do you think will come out on top?

Interesting, didn’t see that change, will have to test it when I fully unlock tempest.

My friend tried basically you water build with staff and it worked pretty well. The only problem is the lack of stability.

You will take:

Water, arcana, tempest if you want to play tempest as a variant of d/d bruiser/bunker build. Taking arcana allows you to have nearly 100% prot uptime, plus the other benefits of arcana, while earth has crappy traits at GM generally.

If you want to play some kind of tempest build (that actually overloads), I guess you take air/tempest with either: X/F can take earth b/c of cleanses in earth, or X/D would take water to have sufficient cleanse. Seems like your best choice would be x/f with earth, as that the gives you both decent prot uptime and cleanse. However, I don’t think THAT build works well either, b/c it is offensive without the tools to survive vs. something like a dragonhunter, thief, or chronomancer.