Guild Wars 2

- Remove the channeling completely.
- When overload is activated, it applies a buff to the elementalist that performs the pulses that were performed by the channeling previously. Expiration of the buff creates the final effect.
- Make the buff strippable so there is a counter.
- Scale down the power of the abilities and increase the recharge times to balance it out.

This allows us to swap into an element, overload if we choose to and immediately swap to another and continue using our rotations while receiving additional benefits from the overload.

It keeps the concept more in line with a fast, attunement swapping play style while stilling giving us a risk vs reward option of increased benefits while delaying our attunement rotation.

That’s a good idea. Just give us some buff when overloading and let us continue with our rotation, adjust numbers and effects to balance it out. There must be some adjustment though:

There needs to be a way to keep elementalists from overloading at the beginning of a combat. Otherwise, you could simply run in air while out of combat and when you start fighting, you can already perform your first overload. So it either needs to be a “only usable when in a fight for at least 10 seconds” skill or the activation of overload needs to increase the attunement cooldown of the affected attunement, but only by an amount that still justifies the overloading.

The problem with this suggestion is that the whole idea behind the tempest is being the opposite of arcane, something which rewards you for swapping less and dedicating yourself to fewer elements. And its a design goal that no small amount of the community wishes for, people have begged for less attunment-centric and more elementally themed builds since launch and ANet hasn’t accommodated such requests to any degree until the tempest.

The problem with THAT however is that we have one single trait in the entire base class that supports dedication to fewer elements and attuning less often that actually holds any value in any game mode, Pyromancer’s Puissance.

Honestly I HOPE, but doubt, that they reason for this is that we’re due for major trait changes which will reward and support less swapping.

And I wish they would just tell us whether they are going to make such changes are not, because if they are, we need to withhold judgement on the tempest until those changes are made, because any feedback prior to those changes isn’t really of any value. And if they aren’t going to make any such changes, then a massive amount of the elementalist community needs to find another class to play, as ANet is apparently never going to support how they would like to play this one.

Conncept.7638:

The problem with this suggestion is that the whole idea behind the tempest is being the opposite of arcane, something which rewards you for swapping less and dedicating yourself to fewer elements. And its a design goal that no small amount of the community wishes for, people have begged for less attunment-centric and more elementally themed builds since launch and ANet hasn’t accommodated such requests to any degree until the tempest.

The problem with THAT however is that we have one single trait in the entire base class that supports dedication to fewer elements and attuning less often that actually holds any value in any game mode, Pyromancer’s Puissance.

Honestly I HOPE, but doubt, that they reason for this is that we’re due for major trait changes which will reward and support less swapping.

And I wish they would just tell us whether they are going to make such changes are not, because if they are, we need to withhold judgement on the tempest until those changes are made, because any feedback prior to those changes isn’t really of any valuable. And if they aren’t going to make any such changes, then a massive amount of the elementalist community needs to find another class to play, as ANet is apparently never going to support how they would like to play this one.

I can see in your viewpoint it being a problem, but for me, it’s not. It’s actually the point of my suggestion. I am not in that group that wants game mechanics that support less attunement swapping.

I find it to be counter-productive. We have no extra class ability like stealing or adrenaline, because we have the attunements and access to 20 different weapon abilities.

Mechanics that lock us into using one or two attunements pretty much makes us a weapon swap class with no extra class ability.

So I don’t want it to be this way. You and everyone else can disagree, but I would like to see an overload skill that encourages us to stay in an attunement longer for potential benefits, but doesn’t prevent us from attunement dancing.

Like the buff idea I have above. Another one I mentioned in a thread is the overload mechanic slowly charges up a storm based on the attunement you are in, growing in power the longer you stay in the attunement and then releasing around the elementalist when he swaps attunements. Imagine that: a tempest making storms. That would also bring a new element to the class. The tempest trait line can focus on providing offensive benefits to swapping attunements like arcane provides support benefits for swapping attunements.

But, of course, just my two cents. I absolutely love attunement dancing so my personal feedback is I want to see it encouraged.

MadRabbit.3179:

Conncept.7638:

The problem with this suggestion is that the whole idea behind the tempest is being the opposite of arcane, something which rewards you for swapping less and dedicating yourself to fewer elements. And its a design goal that no small amount of the community wishes for, people have begged for less attunment-centric and more elementally themed builds since launch and ANet hasn’t accommodated such requests to any degree until the tempest.

The problem with THAT however is that we have one single trait in the entire base class that supports dedication to fewer elements and attuning less often that actually holds any value in any game mode, Pyromancer’s Puissance.

Honestly I HOPE, but doubt, that they reason for this is that we’re due for major trait changes which will reward and support less swapping.

And I wish they would just tell us whether they are going to make such changes are not, because if they are, we need to withhold judgement on the tempest until those changes are made, because any feedback prior to those changes isn’t really of any valuable. And if they aren’t going to make any such changes, then a massive amount of the elementalist community needs to find another class to play, as ANet is apparently never going to support how they would like to play this one.

I can see in your viewpoint it being a problem, but for me, it’s not. It’s actually the point of my suggestion. I am not in that group that wants game mechanics that support less attunement swapping.

I find it to be counter-productive. We have no extra class ability like stealing or adrenaline, because we have the attunements and access to 20 different weapon abilities.

Mechanics that lock us into using one or two attunements pretty much makes us a weapon swap class with no extra class ability.

So I don’t want it to be this way. You and everyone else can disagree, but I would like to see an overload skill that encourages us to stay in an attunement longer for potential benefits, but doesn’t prevent us from attunement dancing.

Like the buff idea I have above. Another one I mentioned in a thread is the overload mechanic slowly charges up a storm based on the attunement you are in, growing in power the longer you stay in the attunement and then releasing around the elementalist when he swaps attunements. Imagine that: a tempest making storms. That would also bring a new element to the class. The tempest trait line can focus on providing offensive benefits to swapping attunements like arcane provides support benefits for swapping attunements.

But, of course, just my two cents. I absolutely love attunement dancing so my personal feedback is I want to see it encouraged.

Well its not like its a contest between the two. There’s no reason whatsoever that supporting swap-light builds has to hurt swap-heavy builds in any way, shape, or form. I myself have designed two trait revamps that would add swap-less builds without even affecting a single trait of the swap-heavy builds, including the arcane/water bunker build that everyone is so defensive about these days.

And I see what you’re saying about our class mechanics, but class mechanics are relative to build for any other class, no class is dependent on them, they’re just always available. And not even always available in one case, engineers basically don’t have a class mechanic, just a set of five abilities to cover that they don’t get a second weapon. People play necro builds that never use shroud, ranger builds that totally ignore their pet (let it die for all I care, going to happen anyway…) , guardian builds that never activate their virtues, thief builds that never steal, mesmer builds that never shatter, the list goes on and on. No reason elementalists can’t have the same build diversity with their class mechanic.

And that’s the key problem with making the class swap-only, what about build diversity?

Maximum swapping lends itself to one dominant build, always has and always will unless they make just as big of changes to the base class as would be needed for less swap-centric builds. Basically they would have to overload the class with choices that affect swapping so that builds would become about how you swap, rather than how much, and doing so would also totally nullify the swap cooldown mechanic found in the arcane tree.

So honestly, either way the developers go, the elementalist needs a lot of work so far as build diversity goes. But the difference is, swap builds are already supported, they’re not going away and thanks to specializations, they can be added to ad infinitum without any change to the base class. Swap light builds on the other hand, pretty much don’t exist, and won’t without changes to the base class, changes which would in no way harm current or future swap heavy builds.

You raise a lot of good points that I can’t really argue, but my viewpoint is still different.

The key difference between our class mechanic and others is it’s a fundamental mechanic; it’s built into how we play. It’s not like steal, virtues or adrenaline that serve as an additional ability beyond their standard weapon swap mechanic.

So when you are start to mess around with that and alter that mechanic, it is going to have a bigger impact on the class as a whole as opposed to just trading out some virtues for some new virtues. Going from a four attunement play style to a two attunement play style is a huge downgrade and you have to provide something to compensate for that. I just don’t you can provide enough compensation to make an elementalist want to have less access to their 20 weapon skills and still be as viable. At least, not with the current overload mechanic. It’s just a lose lose.

I also think Tempest does very little in actual build diversity. It just provides an alternate way to fulfill roles we already fulfill, but in a different way. Outside of boon share, it doesn’t bring anything really new to the table. There is this talk of it being the “front line elementalist” spec, but there has been very long threads showing how out of touch the tempest abilities are with how WvW battles are actually fought. At least, with my suggestions, it’s adding a more offensive aspect to the attunement swapping mechanic where currently the arcane spec only provides mostly defensive and support benefits.

And if we really want more build diversity, the new elite specialization provided a prime opportunity to make a condition based elementalist viable which makes the addition of Tempest all the more disappointing.

Im not shure if the condition ele target is completly missed.
Tempest gives some defence and with weakness a def/cover condition. A shout/condi build might be possible and i will test further in BW3. At least for WvW roming. Maybe it won´t work in PvP. As i already wrote to make it work i feel i need the shouts instant and baseline speed to make it work well. My exerience wir a S/F condi ele is not so bad and i did test it with tempest. What i somehow have to get without changing rune to soldiers is condi removal.