Guild Wars 2

Since I didn’t find any similar build on metabattle or the forums I decided to post my tempest build here. It’s quite difficult to play since you’re a glass cannon that’s not allowed to dodge most of the time, so positioning and moving out of attacks without dodging becomes crutial. I’ve had a lot of fun testing and getting used to this build (and dieing a lot in the process).

Build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAoYnMIClNgNNAGQAcYilBAzN1GbrtBBgIQBQoSWBmhA-ThRBABXt/o8r8TIAe6JA4BBQp6PmpEkUARMGA-e

How to play
The idea behind this build is to use fresh air to switch out of air attunement after overloading and switching right back to reduce the cooldown to 5 seconds. That’s one air overload every 9 seconds, or in other words: you’re 4 out of 9 seconds busy overloading air. The time in between is spent with using glyph of storms, LH 4 or auto attacking with the LH.

At the beginning of a fight it’s ok to overload fire for a fire-field and some might stacks. Immediately switch to air afterwards and start beating the kitten out of that fire field with arcane brilliance and LH. Make sure that you’re always holding a LH while overloading as this increases your stats and thus the overload’s dps. Also LH has the highest dps auto attack chain of all weapons an elementalist can use.

Rotation:
1. Cast LH (Always recast it as soon as possible)
2. Overload Fire
3. Switch to Air
4. Cast Arcane Brilliance
5. Auto Attack until step 6 is possible
6. Overload Air
7. Switch to Water
7.1. If Water is unavailable switch to Earth
8. Switch back to Air (Your Overload is still dealing damage and one critical hit should reset the cooldown on Air immediately)
8.1. If you’re unable to reset Air, switch to fire, try to do something useful and start from 2
9. Cast Glyph of Storms (If you didn’t use it for Sandstorm and it’s off cooldown)
9.1. Cast LH 4
10. Repeat from step 5

The Pros and Cons
+ Extremely high, sustained dps (From my tests even higher than the meta staff build)
+ High Vulnerability output
+ High resistance to movement impeding conditions
+ High mobility infight
o Glassy as hell (but you already knew this when picking ele)
- No constant Fire Field and Fury uptime
- Lightning Field that could overwrite other, more useful Fields
- No ranged option for fights that would require it
- Dodging is not allowed while overcharging

Alternations
Equipment:
- For Fractals, short Dungeons or if you’re dieing a lot, change Superior Sigil of Cruelty for something else. Stacking sigils only work if you can hold the stacks.
- If you need survivability change some of the equipment for Knight(Toughness, Power, Precision) stats.
- Pick Focus over Dagger if projectiles are a problem.

Skills:
- In situations where you need to dodge an enemy while waiting for a damage window (Mai Trin) change LH for Earth Shield.
- Change the elite skill to anything you like anytime. I chose Rebound because it makes you survive something that would otherwise have killed you in one hit, but depending on the situation there are better picks.

Rotation:
- If you need to wreck a break bar use LH 3, Air 5, Earth 3, 3, 4, Water 3

Food:
- Bowl of Seaweed Salad is actually better, but I didn’t find it in the build editor.

*LH = Lightning Hammer

Edit:
After some optimisation I decided to change the weapons and one trinket to Assassin’s to reach 100% critchance with Fury, LH and a Banner of Discipline. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAoYnMIClNgNNAGQAcYilBAzN1GbrtBBgIQBQoSWBmhA-TxRBABXt/o8p8TIQh6JITJEAPIAKV/xMlgkCIixAA-e

This sounds like a really interesting build! Unfortunately I’m still an elementalist novice and I have trouble with survivability. Would it be possible to provide a video demonstration in HoT or in other open world instances of how I can stay mobile while maintaining the rotation? Thanks!

Yup, very similar to a build I posted few days ago!
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFEQJBLhdSfJ00A2fJYABwhJWGAM3Vbrd2GEAiANAhMQF4EA-TxRBABU8AAuS5He6BqZ/BAOBAUq+jZKBDAcA8bfDglXe5lXe5+93f/93fDA-e
I would recommend you to use harhorn instead of offhand dagger for only two reasons raw dps of lightning orb, and might stacking on fire atonement (fire field+overload fire and heat sync).

Lightning whip is 1.26/s, lightning hammer auto is 3.5/2.85s.

That’s coefficient/s. Which makes lightning whip better dps than lightning hammer.

Difference is about 3%. That’s not counting dps gain from burning speed, or dps loss from casting lightning hammer, added dps/utility from having an extra free utility skill slot. Besides, lightning whip has a much larger range. In the end you’ll end up behind d/x in pretty much every way.

Gokil.2543:

Lightning whip is 1.26/s, lightning hammer auto is 3.5/2.85s.

That’s coefficient/s. Which makes lightning whip better dps than lightning hammer.

Difference is about 3%. That’s not counting dps gain from burning speed, or dps loss from casting lightning hammer, added dps/utility from having an extra free utility skill slot. Besides, lightning whip has a much larger range. In the end you’ll end up behind d/x in pretty much every way.

Hammer comes with other nice skills besides 1 tho, the lightning storm alone is high dps + stats increased by just holding the hammer.

kuritsutian.2987:

Yup, very similar to a build I posted few days ago!
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFEQJBLhdSfJ00A2fJYABwhJWGAM3Vbrd2GEAiANAhMQF4EA-TxRBABU8AAuS5He6BqZ/BAOBAUq+jZKBDAcA8bfDglXe5lXe5+93f/93fDA-e
I would recommend you to use harhorn instead of offhand dagger for only two reasons raw dps of lightning orb, and might stacking on fire atonement (fire field+overload fire and heat sync).

I think our builds are very different. The very core of this build is using fresh air to be able to overload air with only 5 seconds cooldown instead of 20 (or 25 if you switch out of air after overloading). That’s the major source of damage in this build.

I’ll think about the Warhorn since I’m currently only using the dagger offhand for mobility and occasionally breaking a break-bar. Since I’m constantly holding a LH while infight I don’t expect much of a dps difference from this. That’s why I’m even considering switching to staff, so I have a ranged alternative when needed. Because of LH the equipped weapon really is this irrelevant.

Gokil.2543:

Lightning whip is 1.26/s, lightning hammer auto is 3.5/2.85s.

That’s coefficient/s. Which makes lightning whip better dps than lightning hammer.

Difference is about 3%. That’s not counting dps gain from burning speed, or dps loss from casting lightning hammer, added dps/utility from having an extra free utility skill slot. Besides, lightning whip has a much larger range. In the end you’ll end up behind d/x in pretty much every way.

When evaluating the dps I just looked at the dps as calculated from the damage log against the indestructible golem in the PvP Lobby. Lightning Whip was around 1.8k to 2k dps while LH was around 4k to 4.2k dps. Of course the gap that’s caused by the added stats from LH is a lot bigger in PvP than in PvE, but the dps in PvE should still be higher for the LH. Also the added stats add a huge damage boost to the overloads, which is the main reason I’m picking LH.

BTW: This build’s dps is around 6k using a rotation that overloads fire on every 3rd overload since I don’t get might or fury from external sources.

As for videos: If you can recommend a video capturing tool I might consider it. Though I’d need to update my YouTube account to a Google account, which I was avoiding up to now.