Hiya Fellow Tempest and Elementalist,
Im new to Tempest and I love the heck out of it. I kill mobs so fast in PvE and ive never encountered anything like it in Gw2. Glass cannon tempest truly stays true to the typical hard hitting mages of fantasy. Only thing is…. I’m super squishy, and not just a little bit. With 12k health… I literally will die from 2-3 hits in PvE. In raids, it’s a bit worse.
My question is, is this normal? Iam in full berserkers gear, with 2 armor peices that are Assassins and one assassin trinket. I have scholar runes and I use a berserker staff. While I have never seen any other class in gw2 kill groups of mobs so fast, and take down bosses health so quickly, I have also never experienced dying so quickly in gw2.
I mained a Druid for a bit ( changing main to tempest now), and prior to that I mained a Mesmer for 3 years. Now that I’m a Tempest main, I just can’t help but be more careful with not being hit versus when I played Druid and Mesmer. So once again is this normal to have such low health? To be easily killed in a few hits, In exchange for huge DPS? I have no issues at all if this is the case… I just want to make sure this is normal, and I’m hoping I’m not missing anything.
Thanks,
-Purecura
Well, there may be no squishier build than glass cannon Staff. You have few real defenses with a DPS build, and likely your utilities are damage oriented as well.
My recommendation is to familiarize yourself with our other weapons. Staff is decent for WvW and some PvE, but terrible everywhere else. Consider also that ANet is designing much more mobile encounters, so the field DPS of a Staff Ele is going to take a big hit.
I personally prefer Dagger over every main hand weapon we have. Its fast, does decent damage, and has quite a bit of utility, from Burning Speed to Shocking Aura. Offhand, its still a good weapon, but some of the skills like Churning Earth are seldom if ever used.
While Focus is a mixed bag, it does offer most of our weapon based defense and some utility. Magnetic Wave and Obsidian Flesh are awesome, as is Swirling Winds. Warhorn is ok-ish, what with the long lasting Fire Field of Wildfire, and I do like the more melee centric CC of skills like Cyclone and Tidal Surge.
Basically, you’re going to want to use D/F for all content. It gets you in melee so you benefit more from teammates’ effects (and they yours), is a more dynamic weapon set, and works in nearly all gaming modes barring MAYBE WvW roaming. For utilities, I’ve become really fond of all the shouts, especially Aftershock for the reflects and blast finisher. And then of course there’s Flash Freeze’s Frost Aura.
But the key really in my opinion for Tempest is to play to the strengths of Auras, and pair it with Earth. You can run full Zerk all day, because you’ll have access to 40% Protection with Elemental Shielding, and your defensive skills on Focus will recharge faster with Geomancer’s Training, as well as shortening movement impairing conditions. With nearly all your offensive skills being within the 360 range, you’ll also benefit from Geomancer’s Defense, and when you add Diamond Skin to the mix you’re very resilient.
So basically, go Tempest and Earth, and then select your other traitline based on your task at hand. Air is good for more boons on Auras, not to mention Fresh Air resetting the cooldown on Air Overload when it procs. Water is great for PvP, increasing sustain and support. Fire of course brings in more damage, as well as extending fire field timers, and is really good for a Sinister (or Viper) burn build. Arcane isn’t as necessary with Tempest, although there is some synergy between traits like Latent Stamina and Renewing Stamina.
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