Guild Wars 2

From the beginning I was told to wait about judging the spec before I read about the skills, then till I can see them on stream and finally till I can play it myself. I wasn’t totally excited about it and frankly I was rather disappointed, but the more experience I have with the spec, the more disappointed I am.

So what are the main issues?

First of all, I would like to talk about pve a bit. Is tempest going to be viable in pve at all? In my opinion not at all with the current state. You have to give up so much and gain so little. If you want to just take one of the skills or just the weapon, you have to take the whole line and those traits are just horrible for pve. The lack of damage modifiers and just focusing on support means that elementalist in pve will be losing a lot of dps for what? Some auras maybe? Totally not worth taking tempest over water, eventually arcana. The damage from the skills isn’t completely bad, but losing the damage modifiers from water totally is. And you can’t even think about taking it over fire or air.

In general, I find it quite limiting that you cannot use any of the shouts, warhorn or anything if you do not take the tempest line. This is one of the biggest issues that will force people not to pick up tempest. I understand that they wanted some kind of drawback on gaining new skills, however I believe being locked out/in attunements is already huge for ele and adding this seems a bit too much.

For pvp I can imagine some sort of viable builds, however we have again the issue that you will be completely locked into three trait lines: Arcana, water and tempest. You will need arcana to make use of the boons and water is just way too important in any pvp build. You could possibly substitute Arcana with something else, but you will have even less synergy with the tempest line. Another thing is that it seems best to take Powerful arua in water, but you will be lacking condition removal.

Another issue is the fact you will be giving up a lot of blasts to be able to play warhorn, but the spec is sort of build on blasting (fire field, water field…) I’m not really sure I understand this much.

In my opinion, many of the traits are just bad, not thought through and having very little synergy with other stuff elementalist depend on. I definitely think they should work kitten trying to improve these traits and not focus only on support specs.

I don’t think the warhorn skills are completely terrible, some of them are okay, but some needs much more work. Lightning orb is one of the worst skills I’ve ever seen. It doesn’t even hit that much either. Same goes for shouts, the effects of those compared to the cooldowns are just ridiculous.

Some of the overloads are okay, some are not. However, I think the main issue is the fact they are trying to take the fact paced gameplay from ele and move it to some kind of casting bot. I really do not like that at all. I already have an issue with the fact the cooldowns on attunements are crazy if you overload and I think it ruins the fun gameplay ele has had so far.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think everything is horrible about the spec, but the fact you are forced to take the tempest line with bad traits just to be able to use one shout makes it not worth to pick up at all.

Keep in mind that this is what I think about the spec after a bit of playing it, I haven’t tried every single skill in every possible situation, but in all honesty after being able to play it, I’m just quite disappointed. Ele already had support, there was no need to bring another front line support spec. There’s a d/d ele that can do the job very well.

Also, there is a bug with Phoenix. It just won’t blast on the Wildfire fire field for some reason.

I know I’m going to be told I can just not play it. That is totally true, but I do care about the class and I wish there was something fun and viable to play for once. We have one spec in pve and one in pvp. It’s an issue that goes for every class, but I do believe they should be trying to increase the diversity rather than decrease it.

Btw having the same animations on all warhorn skills is pretty painful.

EDIT: I’m sure I forgot some stuff I wanted to say, it’s difficult for me to form my thoughts at the moment, so I will probably be editing this after playing it more and more.

tempest is horrible, the pressure is bad, the survivability is bad, warhorn is terrible compared to dagger or even focus and the overcharges are useless and not worth using. fire overcharge is supposed to be a whirl; it has a one time whirl finisher.

shouts are basically aoe auras with some side effect that you don’t care about.

It is really bad. I forgot i could overload since they are terrible and take too long to cast.

Well D/D Cele Ele will continue to be the go to spec for the class. They should have just given us main hand sword instead. Rather sad…..

I’m not trying to flame, but it is just horrible. There is nothing about it that makes me want to switch from either of my normal cantrip specs and leave either d/d or staff.

I still love my ele, but I won’t be using the specialization in its current state.

Well yeah, I understand all of you. I tried really really hard to make something out of the spec, but after some time I got so frustrated I switched to what I usually play, I couldn’t do it anymore.

Another issue that has been bugging me is the fact so many of the skills aren’t summoned on your opponent, they either summon around you or just move away. So tired of trying to blast water field while being forced to chase it all around.

Here is something good theoretically. If you run aura share and the frost shout and the extra protection effectiveness you can give your frontline 10s of frost aura which is -50% damage.

Temp is a waste of a character slot. 10/10 would rather play OP mesmer since they are the flavor of the month. A-net doesnt even care that they are OP AF.
Temp just failed me completely.

Well considering reaper GS is also absolutely horrible, I won’t have to worry about never using howler again..

I think the warhorn skills on ele are pretty good, aside from lightning orb and the lack of blasts. The traits are just terrible, but they can be realistically improved with our feedback. I’m going to test a weird trooper run aura share-esque shoutbow type of build using the lowst cooldown shouts and armor of earth, but I don’t expect any of it to outclass fire D/D ele in pvp, but I do think it (or a more normal cantrip tempest build) could easily outclass stoneheart earth D/D ele in pvp.

FrownyClown.8402:

Here is something good theoretically. If you run aura share and the frost shout and the extra protection effectiveness you can give your frontline 10s of frost aura which is -50% damage.

Is this true? I thought that earthen proxy only applied to protection applied onto you (but it really should be any protection that you apply).

nearlight.3064:

Well considering reaper GS is also absolutely horrible, I won’t have to worry about never using howler again..

I think the warhorn skills on ele are pretty good, aside from lightning orb and the lack of blasts. The traits are just terrible, but they can be realistically improved with our feedback. I’m going to test a weird trooper run aura share-esque shoutbow type of build using the lowst cooldown shouts and armor of earth, but I don’t expect any of it to outclass fire D/D ele in pvp, but I do think it (or a more normal cantrip tempest build) could easily outclass stoneheart earth D/D ele in pvp.

FrownyClown.8402:

Here is something good theoretically. If you run aura share and the frost shout and the extra protection effectiveness you can give your frontline 10s of frost aura which is -50% damage.

Is this true? I thought that earthen proxy only applied to protection applied onto you (but it really should be any protection that you apply).

And say goodbye to condition removal. You would have to run all shouts and get solider runes.

overloads are crap, the shouts too they are just way worse than current ones. Warhorn is pretty strong tho

Laraley.7695:

nearlight.3064:

Well considering reaper GS is also absolutely horrible, I won’t have to worry about never using howler again..

I think the warhorn skills on ele are pretty good, aside from lightning orb and the lack of blasts. The traits are just terrible, but they can be realistically improved with our feedback. I’m going to test a weird trooper run aura share-esque shoutbow type of build using the lowst cooldown shouts and armor of earth, but I don’t expect any of it to outclass fire D/D ele in pvp, but I do think it (or a more normal cantrip tempest build) could easily outclass stoneheart earth D/D ele in pvp.

FrownyClown.8402:

Here is something good theoretically. If you run aura share and the frost shout and the extra protection effectiveness you can give your frontline 10s of frost aura which is -50% damage.

Is this true? I thought that earthen proxy only applied to protection applied onto you (but it really should be any protection that you apply).

And say goodbye to condition removal. You would have to run all shouts and get solider runes.

I was running 4 shouts and cleansing wave (and evasive arcana but I may swap arcane to earth for this gimmick build), and it seems okay for condition removal, especially since it helps your allies with condi removal, the main issue is that without cleansing fire, you can’t really handle repeated condi bombs like base ele can reasonably well.

So yeah, trooper runes builds are a gimmick, but it seems fun so far. My other main complaint with tempest is that its too cluttered and unfocused, which shouts and auras essentially competing for trait slots and utility slots across many different traits, and the fact that shout support overlaps with aura support is also a bit problematic in that makes you run other trait choices to capitalize on it.

Anyway overall it seems a bit average and lots of the traits really need to be reworked, to get a build that has more focus and indivdual strenghts over the typical ele bruiser builds.

Ele will be fine. The tempest is a noobtrap, and for the first few months of HoT release dungeons are going to be hell. But the class itself is going to be fine. We have so much utility, and so many options. We can just as well pretend the spec doesn’t even exist and all will be good.

However, the elite spec did push me over the edge to the point of maining my warrior instead. I have more fun on my elementalist but, I decided to craft ascended heavy instead of light purely due to me strongly suspecting the warrior specs going to make the warrior a blast to play whereas the Ele, my build will remain the same.

Zera.8907:

Well D/D Cele Ele will continue to be the go to spec for the class. They should have just given us main hand sword instead. Rather sad…..

Comparing anything to D/D cele ele isn’t a fair comparison. D/D cele is currently the strongest spec in the entire game.

I love tempest, it’s pretty cool. Makes my ele feel more powerful. I also like the shouts, especially when all traited to do +2 might, fire overload does +10 overtime. I don’t like that the effect ends early if you switch attunement or dodge, it should finish no matter what.

Rivindor.7258:

We can just as well pretend the spec doesn’t even exist and all will be good.

This isn’t the point. After three years of the same weapons and skills, it would be nice to have something new for a change that is usable.

YtseJam.9784:

I love tempest, it’s pretty cool. Makes my ele feel more powerful. I also like the shouts, especially when all traited to do +2 might, fire overload does +10 overtime. I don’t like that the effect ends early if you switch attunement or dodge, it should finish no matter what.

Wait wut?

I don’t understand how ele can feel more powerful. Zergs in WvW literally already depend on eles to live. PvP they’re in a league of their own in terms of just sheer power and PvE the only thing that can come close to ele is thief and not just about the DPS either.

Mik am I missing something?

Black Perception.1639:

Temp is a waste of a character slot. 10/10 would rather play OP mesmer since they are the flavor of the month. A-net doesnt even care that they are OP AF.
Temp just failed me completely.

lolololololol

staff ele is #1 in PvE

d/d and staff ele are #1 in WvW.

d/d ele is used in every spvp team, sometimes two of them.

But mesmer is “OP”.

I am going to go ahead and try to be the optimist. Yes the overloads are weak, and in their current state will be completely outclassed by pretty much everything. The good news is that is largely an issue of number tweaking (though more on demand stability will likely be necessary, to not be complete interrupt fodder) and therefore it doesn’t necessarily need to stay under-powered. For instance we could just give them 10x more damage and then they will be overpowered so it is not a hopeless case (of course still waiting on scepter and glyphs to be made ok).
It does have two things going for it, the first is the effects for the spells are pretty cool looking and they generally have unique effects and feels to them. Animations generally are much harder to change than simple number tweaks so if they look terrible at the start, they likely won’t ever look any better. With these pretty nice animations, the skills generally are quite unique in their behavior compared to other skills in the game particularly the air and water warhorn skills.
The other big thing that tempest has going for it is that it will force you to completely change your play style to make it work. Some may see this as bad since “change is the devil” and it may ultimately not be as fun as a standard attunement dancer. However it is always nice to have a change of pace and something new to learn even if just for messing around with. Being forced to spend 5 seconds in an attunement to get the overload (assuming they balance overloads to the point where they are worth using) completely breaks the standard rotations, and forces you to change. Perhaps a new standard rotation will be learned, perhaps it won’t be very rotationaly based at all, or perhaps tempest will be forever nonviable, regardless eles will have to play quite differently with tempest then they traditionally have.

ArthurDent.9538:

I am going to go ahead and try to be the optimist. Yes the overloads are weak, and in their current state will be completely outclassed by pretty much everything. The good news is that is largely an issue of number tweaking (though more on demand stability will likely be necessary, to not be complete interrupt fodder) and therefore it doesn’t necessarily need to stay under-powered. For instance we could just give them 10x more damage and then they will be overpowered so it is not a hopeless case (of course still waiting on scepter and glyphs to be made ok).
It does have two things going for it, the first is the effects for the spells are pretty cool looking and they generally have unique effects and feels to them. Animations generally are much harder to change than simple number tweaks so if they look terrible at the start, they likely won’t ever look any better. With these pretty nice animations, the skills generally are quite unique in their behavior compared to other skills in the game particularly the air and water warhorn skills.
The other big thing that tempest has going for it is that it will force you to completely change your play style to make it work. Some may see this as bad since “change is the devil” and it may ultimately not be as fun as a standard attunement dancer. However it is always nice to have a change of pace and something new to learn even if just for messing around with. Being forced to spend 5 seconds in an attunement to get the overload (assuming they balance overloads to the point where they are worth using) completely breaks the standard rotations, and forces you to change. Perhaps a new standard rotation will be learned, perhaps it won’t be very rotationaly based at all, or perhaps tempest will be forever nonviable, regardless eles will have to play quite differently with tempest then they traditionally have.

problem with fire overcharge: the whirl on it is bad, it gives you 1 whirl finisher. the skill would be great if it kept producing bolts from whirling through fields even when the fire tornado is a standalone.

problem with water overcharge: the heal is lol, not worth using at all

problem with air overcharge: i would never even consider using this. air auto attack does the job just as well and doesn’t ask for an interrupt or a focus.

problem with earth overcharge: this skill is a gtfo skill, no real use except disengaging because of the break bar. even for a spike setup its bad because it’s impossible not to foresee it.

apharma.3741:

YtseJam.9784:

I love tempest, it’s pretty cool. Makes my ele feel more powerful. I also like the shouts, especially when all traited to do +2 might, fire overload does +10 overtime. I don’t like that the effect ends early if you switch attunement or dodge, it should finish no matter what.

Wait wut?

I don’t understand how ele can feel more powerful. Zergs in WvW literally already depend on eles to live. PvP they’re in a league of their own in terms of just sheer power and PvE the only thing that can come close to ele is thief and not just about the DPS either.

Mik am I missing something?

Well, I still think this is due to the fact some people focus rather on how stuff look instead of actual numbers and functionality. Tempest is definitely not more powerful than the current specs we have, at least not in terms of damage. I do not think the survability with tempest would be higher than a normal d/d ele either.

However, due to the fact my pc decided to commit a suicide tonight, I can’t really test it more. :/ But I was thinking that the biggest issue I have with the spec if the fact that it removes the reactive play from ele. If I need to heal someone, I go water and do it, If I need protection, I switch to earth. Stuff like this. With tempest it’s completely different. ’’Oh hold on for about 7 seconds before I can finish my water overload and then you can get some heals!" How would this ever be viable in pvp?

Jekkt.6045:

ArthurDent.9538:

I am going to go ahead and try to be the optimist. Yes the overloads are weak, and in their current state will be completely outclassed by pretty much everything. The good news is that is largely an issue of number tweaking (though more on demand stability will likely be necessary, to not be complete interrupt fodder) and therefore it doesn’t necessarily need to stay under-powered. For instance we could just give them 10x more damage and then they will be overpowered so it is not a hopeless case (of course still waiting on scepter and glyphs to be made ok).
It does have two things going for it, the first is the effects for the spells are pretty cool looking and they generally have unique effects and feels to them. Animations generally are much harder to change than simple number tweaks so if they look terrible at the start, they likely won’t ever look any better. With these pretty nice animations, the skills generally are quite unique in their behavior compared to other skills in the game particularly the air and water warhorn skills.
The other big thing that tempest has going for it is that it will force you to completely change your play style to make it work. Some may see this as bad since “change is the devil” and it may ultimately not be as fun as a standard attunement dancer. However it is always nice to have a change of pace and something new to learn even if just for messing around with. Being forced to spend 5 seconds in an attunement to get the overload (assuming they balance overloads to the point where they are worth using) completely breaks the standard rotations, and forces you to change. Perhaps a new standard rotation will be learned, perhaps it won’t be very rotationaly based at all, or perhaps tempest will be forever nonviable, regardless eles will have to play quite differently with tempest then they traditionally have.

problem with fire overcharge: the whirl on it is bad, it gives you 1 whirl finisher. the skill would be great if it kept producing bolts from whirling through fields even when the fire tornado is a standalone.

problem with water overcharge: the heal is lol, not worth using at all

problem with air overcharge: i would never even consider using this. air auto attack does the job just as well and doesn’t ask for an interrupt or a focus.

problem with earth overcharge: this skill is a gtfo skill, no real use except disengaging because of the break bar. even for a spike setup its bad because it’s impossible not to foresee it.

Yes, I realize the overloads are all really weak now, the point being is that is easy to fix, just tweak a few numbers and we could have something balanced and worth using (or even horribly op, it is just a matter of numbers really aside from being so susceptible to interrupts).

it works for some overcharges like water and air but it’s different for fire and earth. while fire just needs that whirl, earth is basically just an annoying aoe cripple with an immob and no real damage output. if earth at least pulsed aoe protection or stability.

Earth Overload really should pulse aoe bleeding. Eles have almost no bleeding support anymore (just a single 20% more duration trait, lol). Just burn, no bleed

The problem with the water overload is that if I need a big heal/cleanse, then I need it now…not 5-10 seconds from now

The Great Al.2546:

The problem with the water overload is that if I need a big heal/cleanse, then I need it now…not 5-10 seconds from now

but its not even a big heal, its like 2,5k lol