Guild Wars 2

So last night I decided to play Tempest on a whim, to see if the changes had actually succeeded in making it better, and I was honestly pleasantly surprised, the marauder fresh air earth build I made that revolved around S/F usage with One with Air Repositioning was a TON of fun, and even felt like an improvement over standard S/F builds. But I’m not here to talk to you about that build, I’m hear to talk to you about a bruiser build I made.

I’ve spent the last 6 hours tweaking and refining this build to the point that I’m comfortable with.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAodnMMANOg1NAeOAcYilNAzdvGYPsErgMQFY4BEAugA-TJxHwACeAA/2fAwJAoYZAA

Basically the point of this build is to be a point holder in conquest that supports allies through auras, protection, and heals, while doing respectable AoE damage with overloads and cleaving dagger attacks. Compared to Fire/Water/Arcane D/D Ele, this build plays a lot more like bunker staff ele, but overall has better damage, support, and utility in comparison, however it can’t clear conditions on allies as easily, overload water is the only way. This build actually uses overloads, and attempts to use them as much as possible, in order to maximize healing and AoE protection. Every aura shared heals for 1.45K with elemental bastion due to monk runes, which is almost as much as a water swap, and it even has a better radius on the heal. In particular overloading air and earth are the most commonly used due to the strength of the auras, and the quite high damage/protection applied by the overload.

Ether Renewal is chosen in order to manage conditions better, as this build is unable to take cleansing water. Cleansing Fire and Lightning Flash are chosen for a similar utility and provide some nice regen/vigor uptime for personal sustain. The last utility slot is a toss up. I chose air signet for movement speed when rotating from point to point, but armor of earth, mist form, eye of the storm, and feel the burn (lowest CD shout that gives auras) can all work. I used rebound for the extra aura proc, but I didn’t really notice it stopping death except once when I was running away (surprise, I was still downed in the end after the heal, it should be a bit stronger).

In general I thought that it provided a great mix of support and damage and sustain, and overall its a very fun build to play. It can’t stack might very easily so its not godmode like D/D ele pre-fire nerf, but it does hold its own quite well and is very difficult to kill both 1v1 and in teamfights.

Variations: This template for the build can be varied in a few different ways that I haven’t had the time to fully test out and explore (I wish this was a beta week, not weekend lol).

For example, you can take warhorn over focus, and its not a bad choice, unless they go ahead and nerf heat sync, then its a bad choice. Sand Squall is a good skill, and overall it gives you more CC to deny rezzes. The main draw to warhorn is boon spam with sandsquall and heat sync. Using them both after an earth overload with a herald nearby can stack almost a minute of protection, without the herald, you can get a good 30 seconds or so. Warhorn is also better healing due to the better than focus water skills. The main draw for focus though are the air and earth skills for being simply amazing, especially in this build where you can use obisidian flesh every 33 seconds, and magnetic wave also helps with condi management.

Another variation that I haven’t been able to adequately test is using soldier runes, taking wash the pain away, and feel the burn and flash freeze over air signet and cleansing fire. The one game I played on it wasn’t bad, but it just doesn’t synergize well since you need harmonious conduits in order to be able to overload and deal damage with overloads, so you can’t take tempestuous arias, and even then that trait is lacking due to cooldown issues. Its probably viable, but I felt that cantrips gave me overall better sustain and pointholding power, at the cost most of my AoE cleanse.

So feel free to comment and let me know what you guys think! I’m very excited to revamp this build at launch of HoT, and I’ll maybe be tempted to include earthen proxy or tempestuous arias if they’re brought up to compete with harmonious conduits.

No source of stability other than 1 stab on overload, smart players will just rupt the daylight out of you other than that it’s a solid build and thank you for the the things you’ve mentioned like :

“It can’t stack might very easily so its not godmode like D/D ele pre-fire nerf”

“Its probably viable, but I felt that cantrips gave me overall better sustain and pointholding power, at the cost most of my AoE cleanse”

Every little help to keep fotm rerollers away from ele as they bring nothing but nerfs, I’m happy that tempest got some sort of skillcap out of reach for casuals, reason why I’m against major sustain buffs ( like vs condis ) as to avoid another influx of attunement/cantrip/RoF spammers

I’m not sure if thats a genuine compliment or not, but thanks?

Yeah I mean it needs some tweakning. clearly armor of earth is the logical choice to take over air signet, but I was in yolo-mode and wanted to move around the map faster
I mean theres traveler runes too, but I prefer stacking on the healing.

And personally I find that 1 stack of stability is enough to get overloads off 95% percet of the time. You just have to be wise enough to not overload into obvious CC or use overloads other than earth when the entire enemy team if focusing you in a teamfight, which they won’t do that much since logic dictates that squishies get focused down first before the tanky eles.

For Bunker, I’d actually go Air spec instead of Earth – which sounds crazy at first right?

In PVP I find that Weakness is a far more valuable commodity than Protection, and Air just so happens to have a Grandmaster trait that applies Weakness whenever the Elementalist applies any sort of CC – including the stun from Shocking Aura, the Daze from Comet, the Knockdown from Gale, etc. Complimenting this would be a full bar of five Shouts – each of which apply Might, Weakness, and condition removal (Tempestuous Aria + Soldier Runes).

Harmonious Conduit is not that great in my opinion – mostly because it’s only 1 stack of Stability. Getting an Overload interrupted is no big deal – it just means that you are less likely to get the rest of your skills interrupted. Plus your Earth Overload innately possesses 3 stacks of Stability.

Here is my Bunker + Support Tempest: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAodn0XCNYi9XCWYCcYilHAzdyWZ/sEDhXQLQIAcAahA-TJxHwACOBA62fAwDAoYZAA

Performed quite exceptionally in the few matches I played. Just don’t duel – a Tempest’s greatest strength is in sharing stuff with nearby allies.

Iohanna.4863:

For Bunker, I’d actually go Air spec instead of Earth – which sounds crazy at first right?

In PVP I find that Weakness is a far more valuable commodity than Protection, and Air just so happens to have a Grandmaster trait that applies Weakness whenever the Elementalist applies any sort of CC – including the stun from Shocking Aura, the Daze from Comet, the Knockdown from Gale, etc. Complimenting this would be a full bar of five Shouts – each of which apply Might, Weakness, and condition removal (Tempestuous Aria + Soldier Runes).

Harmonious Conduit is not that great in my opinion – mostly because it’s only 1 stack of Stability. Getting an Overload interrupted is no big deal – it just means that you are less likely to get the rest of your skills interrupted. Plus your Earth Overload innately possesses 3 stacks of Stability.

Here is my Bunker + Support Tempest: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAodn0XCNYi9XCWYCcYilHAzdyWZ/sEDhXQLQIAcAahA-TJxHwACOBA62fAwDAoYZAA

Performed quite exceptionally in the few matches I played. Just don’t duel – a Tempest’s greatest strength is in sharing stuff with nearby allies.

Sometimes in pvp you’ll have to 1v1. I don’t think a build is worth playing in conquest unless its good in both teamfights and in 1v1s. Even if you can’t kill anything in 1v1s, just being able to hold a point against someone is invaluably important.

Regarding Air, I tried a similar setup with fresh air but I didn’t like it. Earth is superior for giving protection uptime, and protection is better than weakness in my opinion, and besides, necromancers and revenants spam weakness much better than we can, but we can spam protection a lot better. The main driving point of earth on this build is that each aura, and each overload gives 4 seconds of -43% damage reduction allies, in addition to the 1.45K heal. With air, I can only pulse out -10% reduction from the aura, and the fury from the auras isn’t as strong.

Regarding harmonious conduits, I found it absolutely necessary. With harmonious conduits, and air/earth/fire overload could be completed 95% of the time, there were only a few situations where they broke through both the stack to interrupt it, and the level of counterplay felt mostly fair. With earth, it only got interrupted if a signet necro got luck with a corruption to convert the stability stacks to fear, which wasn’t very common either. I mean I’d like to experiment with shouts and tempestuous arias for sure, but without a 20% cooldown reduction I’m not really incentivized to give up stability to do so. I also feel as though the stack of stability on overload should be a minor trait, since playing tempest without it is way too punishing.

Thanks for your comments though. I might have an hour after I get back from class in which case I can do a bit more testing on beta characters. I’m going to try to revisit shoutrune builds for the AoE cleanse, but I’m afraid I might need arcane in order to handle conditions with evasive arcana. I wash the pain away was buffed to remove a condition each pulse I’d consider it with earth. And even then cantrips are still a bit better utility when holding a point in 1v1. Warhorn actually works mostly fine with these types of builds for heat sync alone, but focus helps with survivng spikes and rezzing people more than anything warhorn can do.