Guild Wars 2

HC = Hardy Conduit
RS = Rock Solid

Considering you can pop Auras much more often as a tempest and gain protection with Elemental Shielding (a Adept Trait). This feels weak to have a grandmaster that is doing the same, but way less often.

This would be a much better trait if it granted stability since Elementalist really lack stability and cannot attune to earth (rock solid) in the middle of and overcharge. God help you if you overcharge earth and have Rock Solid. At that point it is a choice between Rock Solid being useless or earth overload being useless.

Even if Hardy Conduit had 2 seconds of stability there would still be a window for over charge interruption and allow people attunement camp Air to play a real tempest.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/tempest

As a minor HC is nice imo. It protects me well while casting my overload making it easier to land it.

While a Tempest certainly has ample access to auras, they all require you to use certain utilities / traits, plus it requires you to also take the Earth line in order to get Elemental Shielding in the first place. Not to mention that one source of auras (the trait that gives auras on overload completion) doesn’t even serve the same purpose, as that gives you an Aura / Protection AFTER the channel, and not during. So I don’t think Protection during Overload is weak or redundant at all. Its a way to defend yourself during overloads if you choose not to go the aura route.

I do think that it needs to last the entire duration of the channel, however, not just the first few seconds. Obviously making it a long duration Protection proc would leave it open to abuse by people starting their Overload, then cancelling immediately, so it should instead pulse Protection every couple of seconds for the duration.

As for stability on overload… that feels a bit too powerful to give “for free” (since minor traits are just there for everyone who takes Tempest period). I’d tie it to Lucid Singularity instead, that way it at least requires a commitment and sacrifice.

Not even sure why you brought up Rock Solid. Given the duration of the stability that grants, it’s physically impossible to even use it for Overloads, since they can’t even be used until after you sit in an attune for 5 seconds, by which point the stability from jumping into Earth is long gone.

I was using rock solid to compare trait power and how tempest simply does not work with that trait or fresh air and man other traits. That is the main issue with this specialization. It simply limits what you can do with other trait lines, is not a front line specialization as it was advertised to be. Good luck having a meaningful overcharge in WvW or any decent Spvp as you are going to get interrupted like crazy.

Perhaps making the overcharging ranged would be a good solution, which was major solution with Necros This would make staff viable.

Over the specialization limits synergy far more than what it adds and many of the traits are underwhelming. They really need to look into this if they seriously want people to play Tempest.