My thoughts to help improve Tempest via these skills:
Lightning Orb
Problem – difficult to utilise it’s maximum potential as you would have to overlap it’s trajectory with that of your target(s). In PvE this is difficult because your foes will be stationary, running directly for you or even leaping around wildly. In PvP, people can just move sideways or run through it, and the skill ends up having very little point control or damage impact.
Solution – make the skill ground targetable, even if it has to travel to that point first at it’s current velocity. This would allow the Tempest to stack the damage and vulnerability on foes at a particular spot, or discourage foes to enter a particular spot without meeting a lot of pain. If kept to a short range, it helps a lot with the frontliner concept that Tempest is pursuing in my opinion.
EDIT: Forgot to add that if it was made to be ground placed, then it would synergise wonderfully with warhorn 4 Cyclone, to pull targets back into it.
Rebound!
Problem – As the cast time and very low healing factor make it very impractical to use in most situations, it’s more of a glorified delayed aura on a 75s cooldown. This is underwhelming and does not impact play much at all.
Solution – As this elite can only be utilised if one is a Tempest, then it should be encouraged to be used by Tempests.
One of the things a Tempest benefits most from is stability – so how about we gave Rebound! stability, and removed the cast time? In a pinch we could then use this shout to defend ourselves whilst heavily exposed during an overload, and as the shout affects allies we could also offer team stability in a tight situation… which followed up with lovely things like invigorating torrents, would really make the elite feel elite.
The fact that this opens up reactive defense during overloads is huge because typically an elementalist’s defense is to dodge via high vigor uptime, and if we dodge during an overload it is cancelled, undermining the Tempest due to the nature of the base elementalist.
Furthermore it gives the elementalist access to utility stability aside from armor of earth, via a shout, thereby increasing synergy with invigorating torrents and other baseline aura synergy traits in the non-tempest trait lines.
Overload Water
Problem – no lingering effect once the channel is finished, unlike the other 3 overloads.
I appreciate this may be a balance and design choice however as a player I feel it is very disjointed from the other three overloads, causing it to function like ‘something is missing’.
Solution – add a lingering effect of some kind. One simple suggestion would be to add a delayed effect, such as x seconds after the overload finishes the ground will erupt with water (like Cleansing Wave) for further healing and 1 more condi removal.
Just my ideas as a player, would be interesting to hear other peoples’ thoughts and views.
Also… obligatory request for Heat Sync to actually share any boons!
(edited by Humblekain.5418)