Guild Wars 2

Hey, I recently tried out the free version of GW2 and enjoyed it so much that I picked up HoT. I’ve been playing MMOs for a long time and am more of a PvE focused player, with PvP more as a distraction. I’ve played a few professions to around 25-30, but so far, Ele has been my favorite by a pretty wide margin, but I am wondering about Tempest. I’ve heard many are underwhelmed with the elite spec, and from the videos and streams I’ve watched, I think it’s a playstyle I wouldn’t enjoy as much as vanilla Ele.

My question is, would vanilla ele be viable in PvE situations? Would it be able to hold it’s own when I venture into WvW and other PvP situations? Am I going to be missing out on an important part of the game by not utilizing elite specializations? And finally, would I be better suited to choose a different profession as my main?

Thanks a bunch guys/gals.

First question is what part of ele is it you like to play? vanilla ele is more then one thing. There is the PvE ones: staff (huge dmg). The lightninghammer one and the D7D one. If it is the staff one you already like, then you will love tempest (the traits that is), and the overload since this will make you do even more dmg.

If you are asking about the warhorn, then I dont know anyone using it, but people might just need to find a place for it.

But let us know what kiind of ele you like to play and it becomes easyer to help

I’ve experimented with Staff, D/F, and D/D and really like them all. I love the staff nuke damage, but I also really enjoy actively controlling and manipulating my toon with the Dagger builds. I feel like the skill cap is higher with the daggers, and as an experienced MMO’r that appeals to me as I enjoy playing a challenging playstyle, but really getting proficient with the staff priorities (ultilizing frost bow, swapping for glyph of storms, and anticipating mob movement with the placement of fire abilities) is also fun. I really enjoy the class as a whole, but I really just want to make sure that when I’m 80 I will be able to prove myself an asset in tough PvE content.

I still have a lot to learn as I feel I could do more to meld with a group, but for now getting good at pewpewing without being a liability (dead) is my focus.

Not really if you enjoy it. You don’t need the Elite spec to be optimal. The elite spec is something I’m not too fond of but vanilla Ele is more than viable in PvE situations and everything that Vanilla Ele does translates well into WvW. Staff mostly. As for PvP you go dagger dagger which is supposed to be a fast paced style but the damage is actually fairly low as most PvP eles will be trying to become as tanky as possible so they cannot be forced off of a point. Staff isn’t used there most of the time. The Elite spec of tempest helps with the tankiness but in terms of fun and actual viability I’d say it isn’t great. The only reason you would ever take it is not because you want overloads, you want heal on aura/regen/vigor on aura and run some shouts on your bar just to remain very hard to kill. But at the same time you will not be killing anybody.

Just stick with it. You have plenty of options with Vanilla Ele and if you are a PvE focused player all the things needed are available to you.

For pvp you can try scepter focus fresh air build. I have been using that for a time and feels perfectly fine. With marauder you can easily survive and burst down your opponent. Once you got the right reflexes it becomes pretty fun. Even with this dead-weight scepter nowadays. And no elite spec is needed either.

If you enjoy playing Ele, then by all means stick with it. You don’t have to play Tempest at 80 if you don’t enjoy it. If the naysayers are truthful and Tempest is no good, then you’re not missing anything by eschewing the elite spec.

Honestly if you’ve played D/F then you’ve played the Fresh Air build. The best two Tempest damage build right now are Fresh Air spam (all that changes is you stay in air for 6 seconds to wait and use OLA instead of switching back and forth to trigger the adapt minor trait lightning bolt) and the standard Staff build (all that changes is you switch out Water or Arcane for Tempest, whichever you were using. Overload Fire is a great DPS increase over just AA’íng with Fireball. Quite frankly, from a PvE perspective, nothing changed Ele playstyle. Tempest just added more choices and options for standard style gameplay. It also added the option to play as an Auramancer but if you don’t like that you don’t have to. Raids will prolly make even more new builds surface.

Tempest/ele is still relevant except for raids (dont know how that will turn out but it isnt desired for vale guardian)

As much as I and others whine on the forums, both ele and tempest is still a great and fun and with hot actually rather versatile (build-wise) class. So if you enjoy the ele and tempest gameplay (I came to REALLY like overloads, really missing them whenever I have no tempest equipped) by all means stick to the class.

Maybe the reign of eles utterly dominating every part of the meta has ended (though I suspect tempest might see some light buffs before december) but we’ll never really be a really bad class, like necros who AFAIK weren’t really wanted in pve dungeons for example. Though of course the meta might be warped by Dragonhunters, Reapers and Heralds all probably doing (way) too much damage for the amount of sustain they still have in zerker specs.

Unless Ele or Tempest gets nerfed to hell in pvp (which I honestly doubt) I’d say it comes down to people always like having an ele/tempest on the team, with more than 1 being no real detriment, no matter what game type. No matter what spec you’ll always do respectable damage, support your team and other stuff.

After playing the game on and off since the original headstart launch, and having leveled various alts, ele/tempest is still the only class I really enjoy and can play without end. All other classes basically get boring after an hour of continued gameplay or so.

Oh and I’m not sure if you’re aware of this OP, but you can try tempest even below level 80 in pvp by slotting it into the third trait slot in the hearts of the mists.

Tempest ele is great at support. I’m currently running in full clerics gear and I am traited to not only heal a ton, but I can give my party infinite protection and share auras. It’s pretty sweet. Great for full DPS pugs where no one knows how to dodge.

SeriousSituation.3462:

Tempest ele is great at support. I’m currently running in full clerics gear and I am traited to not only heal a ton, but I can give my party infinite protection and share auras. It’s pretty sweet. Great for full DPS pugs where no one knows how to dodge.

At that point wouldn’t you just be better off running druid with full clerics? The only real benefit to that is protection not to mention you do no damage. Protection is great and all but if they don’t dodge they will still die even with protection. Protection just gives them slightly more leway on what they can get away with. Ideally people shouldn’t be getting hit if they are so squish they need protection from a buddy.

Elementalist is fantastic – if you enjoy it, by all means stick with it. Tempest is a lot of fun too.

I’m not saying that absolutely everything is perfect, but it never is for any class in gw2; and it’s all subject to potential change via patches anyway.

With elementalist you can be a traditional staff wielding ranged wizard, or a kitten scrapping battle wizard – or anything in-between. And on Tempest the auras and Overloads are a lot of fun. If being an awesome wizard appeals to you, I can recommend elementalist whole heartedly!

The long term meta is yet to be established since HoT’s launch if you’re looking for a ‘sure bet’ class, but elementalists are far from useless in groups at the moment in my experience.

Senario.2038:

SeriousSituation.3462:

Tempest ele is great at support. I’m currently running in full clerics gear and I am traited to not only heal a ton, but I can give my party infinite protection and share auras. It’s pretty sweet. Great for full DPS pugs where no one knows how to dodge.

At that point wouldn’t you just be better off running druid with full clerics? The only real benefit to that is protection not to mention you do no damage. Protection is great and all but if they don’t dodge they will still die even with protection. Protection just gives them slightly more leway on what they can get away with. Ideally people shouldn’t be getting hit if they are so squish they need protection from a buddy.

I mean this with all due respect, and I am only asking out of pure ignorance of this game’s community but is it common for folks to just say, “Well for this situation wouldn’t it be better if you had a different max level character with the HP to fully unlock it’s elite spec?”

I mean, it sounds like a druid might do certain things better, but obviously this guy like to be able to support and heal when the situation calls for it on his Ele.

Jayllyfish.3489:

Senario.2038:

SeriousSituation.3462:

Tempest ele is great at support. I’m currently running in full clerics gear and I am traited to not only heal a ton, but I can give my party infinite protection and share auras. It’s pretty sweet. Great for full DPS pugs where no one knows how to dodge.

At that point wouldn’t you just be better off running druid with full clerics? The only real benefit to that is protection not to mention you do no damage. Protection is great and all but if they don’t dodge they will still die even with protection. Protection just gives them slightly more leway on what they can get away with. Ideally people shouldn’t be getting hit if they are so squish they need protection from a buddy.

I mean this with all due respect, and I am only asking out of pure ignorance of this game’s community but is it common for folks to just say, “Well for this situation wouldn’t it be better if you had a different max level character with the HP to fully unlock it’s elite spec?”

I mean, it sounds like a druid might do certain things better, but obviously this guy like to be able to support and heal when the situation calls for it on his Ele.

Druid also Isn’t particularly great (this isn’t BWE3 any more, Druid got nerfed. Hard.). It can do some small, very specific heals to a couple of allies in a spammy way, then some larger (but still relatively small) heals for a little bit after a relatively long cooldown. It has some very basic utility, but basically no boons.

It’s a healing bot, but without any huge clutch heals like ‘Wash the pain away’. Whereas Tempest, aside from that insanely powerful (8k on celestial with radiance runes) low recharge heal, also has the ability to spam out tons of decent AoE heals via auras along with permanent vigor/swiftness/regen/fury plus the benefits the auras provide. If you’re using your skills properly, perma protection is also easily done. Additionally the warhorn water skills are both potent sources of healing too. Finally, whilst doing all this, it can still deal fairly good damage (air overload by itself is an easy 8k DPS for 8 seconds without might that ends in an aura heal, and that can be recharged via fresh air – never mind all of the overlapping fields and attacks that go on alongside it), whereas druid just … can’t.

Not to say druid wont be useful. The spammy, precise nature of the heals means it can specifically target individuals from range, but you certainly wont want more than one of them in a raid party with how little they bring to the team aside from some healing.

Jayllyfish.3489:

My question is, would vanilla ele be viable in PvE situations?

Certainly! The Ele has been really strong in every game mode for a while now and a bad Elite Specialization isn’t going to change that. Elite Specs are intended to be balanced against the base profession (though we’re probably a few balance patches away from achieving that in practice) so you won’t be hurting yourself in a power sense by eschewing the Tempest.

Jayllyfish.3489:

Would it be able to hold it’s own when I venture into WvW and other PvP situations?

I don’t play too much PvP (though as I understand it, we’re pretty good there) but the Ele is one of the undisputed kings of WvW. Our D/D builds can roam pretty well and our Staff is fantastic in zerg situations.

Ele’s also have a unique trick we can pull in WvW: if you’re downed near the entrance to a friendly structure, you can pop Mist Form (downed skill #2) and waltz your way to safety by flying through the portal. As such, we can afford to make much riskier plays than anyone else.

Jayllyfish.3489:

Am I going to be missing out on an important part of the game by not utilizing elite specializations?

Nope! Elite Specs are a fun way to play your profession in a new way, but the Ele is flexible enough that I still really enjoy playing mine as he is.

And of course, there’s no reason you can’t make a character for another profession with an Elite spec that looks interesting! Once you unlock a couple Maguuma Masteries, unlocking Elite Specs for your alts becomes pretty easy.

Jayllyfish.3489:

And finally, would I be better suited to choose a different profession as my main?

That’s up to you to answer. If you like the Ele playstyle, then I say stick with it!

Tempest is far from weak, the thing is that most people are just so stuck with the old D/D playstyle that they didn’t adjust to tempest yet, or just don’t want to because they don’t like it. Personally I enjoy it far more than the old elementalist because now it’s not just attunement swap every other second just for boon stacking. Though you still stack a lot of boons as tempest but it definately is a different playstyle.

And as Blaine Tog says, if you like it, stick with it. That’s the reason why I always come back to ele, even if I played mesmer, revenant, or engineer for some time.

Stebene.9275:

Tempest is far from weak, the thing is that most people are just so stuck with the old D/D playstyle that they didn’t adjust to tempest yet, or just don’t want to because they don’t like it. Personally I enjoy it far more than the old elementalist because now it’s not just attunement swap every other second just for boon stacking. Though you still stack a lot of boons as tempest but it definately is a different playstyle.

And as Blaine Tog says, if you like it, stick with it. That’s the reason why I always come back to ele, even if I played mesmer, revenant, or engineer for some time.

A whole bunch of pvers is stuck with the old d/d.