Guild Wars 2

Fixing forum bug

Ohoni.6057:

Im very concerned about the pve community possibly putting the idea into anets head that overloads are fine because they are definitely not. As much as I hate most of the tempest design, I can not deny a lot of it could potentially be viable with a little bit of additional balance. Overloads on the other hand need a lot of work done to them…

It’d be about time if the devs actually started to remember that the PvE side of the game exists when it comes to power design. Not every build needs to be about the sPvP meta. I could see how Overloads might not be useful in PvP, in whcih case, don’t run a Tempest in PvP, and maybe they could be improved too, but the basic concept is fun, and works quite well in PvE when there are plenty of mobs around to hit with them.

No, it works ok in open world PvE where you can run pretty much anything, it’s still lackluster for dungeons in comparison to the powerhouse that is staff. Of course if you don’t care about doing the best possible and just having fun, this means nothing of course.

Bearbows for everyone!

The issue is that:
Everything works in pve so you cant design for pve.
By the way, staff is meta in pve, DD works fine, DF is meta in high fractal … see what they did here ? every weapon set up can be used in pve

That’s not true at all (although it frightens me how much I believe ANet feels the same way you do). Many abilities that work great for various roles in PvP have no value in PvE. The clearest example of this are downed state abilities, many of which are specifically designed to frustrate players attempting to stomp you, but are completely worthless against PvE enemies that are just DPSing you down, barely slowing them for half a second. There are also a ton of classes that have at various points been considered “good enough” because they were doing fine in the PvP brackets, when they were vastly outperformed in PvE situations.

This is a PvE game, they should always be designing with PvE balance as much of a factor as PvP.

Ohoni.6057:

This is a PvE game, they should always be designing with PvE balance as much of a factor as PvP.

This is not a PvE game… it’s a game that has 3 game modes one of which is PvE. Without separating skills and how they function in each one they can’t balance in the name of PvE because mobs can take way more punishment than players and the way things affect the game modes are different.

Easiest thing to look at is Ride the Lightning. It got nerfed due to how “toxic” it was in sPvP and WvW, but in PvE there really was no need for it.

This is not a PvE game… it’s a game that has 3 game modes one of which is PvE.

Yeah, but given how often they have to bribe players into pleeeeeeeeease touching the PvP modes, it’s pretty safe to say that while the developers are really obsessed with them, the players really don’t care. If this game had to survive on PvPers alone it would be doing worse than Wildstar.

Without separating skills and how they function in each one they can’t balance in the name of PvE because mobs can take way more punishment than players and the way things affect the game modes are different.

If this is true, then they absolutely have to separate out more skills between modes, because balancing just for PvP is just not good enough.

Easiest thing to look at is Ride the Lightning. It got nerfed due to how “toxic” it was in sPvP and WvW, but in PvE there really was no need for it.

Exactly. They need to stop doing that.

can’t say I’m too surprised at the poor reviews tempest is getting – a close range spec with lightest armour & lowest HP channelling weak effects for 5sec at a time plus punitive attunement lockout on interrupt was never going to work.

the whole concept is so disappointing.

my suggestion? make overloads cast in 1sec with a GM that allows them to be cast as a long-range GT-AOE so there is some utility.

Ohoni.6057:

This is not a PvE game… it’s a game that has 3 game modes one of which is PvE.

Yeah, but given how often they have to bribe players into pleeeeeeeeease touching the PvP modes, it’s pretty safe to say that while the developers are really obsessed with them, the players really don’t care. If this game had to survive on PvPers alone it would be doing worse than Wildstar.

Without separating skills and how they function in each one they can’t balance in the name of PvE because mobs can take way more punishment than players and the way things affect the game modes are different.

If this is true, then they absolutely have to separate out more skills between modes, because balancing just for PvP is just not good enough.

Easiest thing to look at is Ride the Lightning. It got nerfed due to how “toxic” it was in sPvP and WvW, but in PvE there really was no need for it.

Exactly. They need to stop doing that.

While there are less players playing PvP than those who PvE, that is the game mode you should be balancing around unless you can split the skills. The reason for this is that it is the game mode where players directly interact with one another. Imagine if they buffed Lightning Strike to make scepter better, or Phoenix so that it can compete with Staff in PvE. If buffed too much, it would destroy people in PvP and players would have no counterplay to it whereas a boss in PvE can easily be made to have less armor or less health.

Whether this is the correct thing to do depends on resources as balancing 2 sets of skills is intensive as well as confusing to new players who do not notice their skills do different things. While you can say that this is something they should do, it’s actually a good point. New players who are used to having one skill function one way all of a sudden have it do something else is not something a ’casual" friendly game wants to have.

While I’d love it if they could split skill functionalities, I do completely understand why they don’t do it. It’s a lot of extra work and it can confuse new and existing players.

Well i would see the overloads as a nice addition rarely used if the traits offer me more than a bit aura boost…. A condi damage boost (10% from vit) in adept making Unstable Conduit baseline, a direct damage boost instead of Earthen Proxy like +10% damage against chill/criple/imob.
Or if no offence is wished some utility like 25% movement in the baseline + Unstable Conduit gives quickness on shouts.

1. Tempest (Overall): 3
2. Traits: 2
3. Warhorn: 3 – love some skills, not sold on others.
4. Overloads: 3 – Love the concept, and the water/earth one are fun. But under powered. If they weren’t channeled, that might make up for the cooldown, etc.
5. Healing Skill: 2
6. Utilities: 3 – i like the idea of shouts, but they could be more useful
7. Elite Skill: 1 -if the game keeps going down the zerg path for open world content, then this isn’t all that useful. It could be great in a 5-man dungeon to better affect. But, we don’t know if there even are dungeons.
8. Animations & sound effects: 4

I’m a PvE player so that’s just my opinion about it

1. Tempest (Overall) : 3 because I like the concept
2. Traits : 2 / It sucks, really. They are far too weak and lack of dmg modifiers to make them competitive with water/arcane
3. Warhorn : 3 / It needs some dmg boosts and are too slow overall
4. Overloads : 1 / Why the kitten would someone use them when weapon skills are a lot better ?
5. Healing Skill : 4 / I still prefer my blast finisher, but it’s not that bad imo
6. Utilities : 2 / Glyphs and Cantrips are far better for support/utility
7. Elite Skill : 1 / …Really ?
8. Animations & sound effects : 3 / I’d like to see more “powerful” aminations, it’s Tempest not Breeze…

Thanks for votes guys, updated up to Rahveiz.7461.

And as mentioned before, you have the right to have any opinion you want and express it freely in this topic. You may love it, you may hate it or be indifferent.

The goal of this topic is to check the overall receptiveness of the Tempest and what is most direly holding it back or what is pulling it forward and, hopefully, help ANET to identify critical areas to focus and then, perhaps, in the next Beta Weekend we be discussing polishing only few small stuff. (right now the ratings seem to indicate good number of fields that require a lot of attention and some who aren’t equally pressing).

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While there are less players playing PvP than those who PvE, that is the game mode you should be balancing around unless you can split the skills.

Whenever that even becomes an issue, the solution is NOT to not balance for PvE, it’s to ALWAYS split the skills. I agree that if you absolutely have to balance for one or the other, balancing for PvP has more of an impact, but that is never an excuse to not balance for PvE as best they possibly can.

New players who are used to having one skill function one way all of a sudden have it do something else is not something a ’casual" friendly game wants to have.

Maybe so, but UI can help with this, like have it explicitly say “This power works differently in PvP, here’s how. . .” Besides, even if the powers are the same between modes, as you note the way that they interact with the play can be very different, so an ability that a player has grown used to as “worthless” in PvE, might be very dominant in PvP without any actual differences to it. Players can adapt to such things.

Please note that I have not played it, I’m going on what I’ve fought against/with from a PvP perspective.

1. Tempest (Overall): 2

2. Traits: 1

I’m sorry but the traits are pitiful to say the least.

3. Warhorn: 3

There’s some good things on the set however I feel the cool downs to what they do are relatively high.

4. Overloads: 2

I only ever saw fire for might stacking and air for yolo dives, maybe water in a pinch which never ended well.

5. Healing Skill: 2

Wash the skill away and revamp it – every other heal outshines this in my opinion.

6. Utilities: 2

There’s like one good utility shout? (Didn’t see them used much, only the air shout.)

7. Elite Skill: 1

Too clunky to use, if you can co-ordinate I can see it’s use however FGS is just a better option. I guess it’s better than nado?

8. Animations & sound effects: 4

The animations are pretty, though I wouldn’t expect any less for the elementalist! However I will say I’m rather disappointed with earth overload.

As a tempest, I don’t feel strong. If it’s only a support spec, then I’ll pass it by.

1. Tempest (Overall): 1
Personally wasn’t fun or exciting to play. Same stuff I already do, just looks fancier.

2. Traits: 1
Boring, uninspired, and don’t help out the base class at all. Many traits seem very out of place as well(like Vigor when entering Water or Earthen Proxy). The Tempest is a CALLER OF STORMS, a destructive and unstoppable force of nature, not an auramancer, but if it’s going to be an auramancer, at least make it more interesting; rather than just applying auras via Shouts. Make the Auras(or Protection) apply Stability. That way we have far more options for applying AoE Stability and this can help out Guardians in the front-line.

3. Warhorn: 3
Some good skills, some not so great. I feel like a lot of the projectiles are too slow, like Air 4, while Air 5 does way too little damage in any realistic scenario. I find Earth 4 incredibly dull and weak and Fire 4 isn’t particularly fun to use as without a dedicated group, it’s just a buff to spam off cooldown or I have to waste my Armor of Earth early to really make use of it. Also, if this wants to be a Front-Line weapon, it’s going to need some sort of mobility.

4. Overloads: 1
As they are right now, they don’t provide you with ANYTHING worthwhile. This was a good chance to give Elementalists a more natural from of Healing and Damage so we might be able to skip the Water trait line, working sorta like Guardian Virtues, but instead we get incredibly risky and weak spells with gigantic cast times.

I feel like the Overloads should either be heavily buffed, the drawbacks toned down, or make them do something completely unique. Why is it that with this new spec that Ele didn’t receive a SINGLE new condition, let alone new ways to apply Bleed? Make them Ground-target-able with the existing big drawbacks in place, but these should be doing things we normally cannot do, for example, Air Overload could Strip Boons at a certain rate. This is something I would take the risk to do(still buff up the damage though; I can do more with auto-attacks almost) . Make Fire do something like apply Quickness or pull foes in or cleanse conditions(Giving us less reliance on Water). Make Water heal more or make it far more offensive to make Water less of an offensive downtime(Maelstrom maybe? hint hint). Make Earth apply large Bleeds or Torment stacks in contrast with its usual over-reliance on Defense; also, keep it character-based.

5. Healing Skill: 3
I actually liked the Heal. It heals for far more than the tooltip says, but I don’t think it’ll ever replace SoR. Buff up the range or make it cleanse a few conditions.

6. Utilities: 3
Feel the Burn should do at least 2-3 Stacks.
Shock and Aftershock should be renamed to just “Aftershock” and should have a MUCH lower Cooldown.
Flash-Freeze should do more damage, more comparable to Aftershock.
Eye of the Storm is rather dull and weak. It’s basically an AoE version of Signet of Air, but much weaker overall. Make it apply a Shocking Aura and/or reduce the CD.

Also, stop them from applying AoE auras. Make Powerful Auras more enticing(and combine it with Elemental Bastion) and lower the CD or raise the damage of the Shouts to compensate OR make it so all Auras stack properly so that allies can get a 10s Magnetic Aura as well from a Shout, instead of only Frost Aura stacking.

7. Elite Skill: 1
Never had a moment where this made any difference at all. The only moments where it’s somewhat useful are ruined by the cast time. I can’t cast Rebound and then use Armor of Earth; I need to use AoE IMMEDIATELY not 1s later.
It also doesn’t fit at all with the Tempest theme. To make it more interesting, scrap Rebound and make it a character-based pulsing AoE storm OR make it recharge all your attunements while applying some sort of effect based on your CURRENT attunement.

8. Animations & sound effects: 3

I think the spell animations looked good for the most part(Earth Overload is very buggy and/or stiff though)
My issue is with the CHARACTER animations. Spinning like a top or sticking your hand out into the air while chasing someone down looks incredibly silly for a Mage calling down a storm. Changing these to Ground-targettable skills(except Earth Overload, assuming it gets a proper animation fix) and giving a more “chanting” look ala Meteor Shower would make it really great IMO. The Warhorn character animations are also really dull; why not have the Elementalist cast a spell INTO the Warhorn and then it fires off the actual spell or something like that? Something more unique. I wont complain about the Sounds because you guys said the Warhorn would get different sounds later on.

1. Tempest (Overall): 3
2. Traits: 1
3. Warhorn: 3
4. Overloads: 2
5. Healing Skill: 4
6. Utilities: 2
7. Elite Skill: 1
8. Animations & Sound Effects: 3

The Overload cast times are way long for the effects they give. The shouts feel weak and have lengthy cooldowns. I actually liked the heal skill, mostly because it affected allies as well and I play a staff celestial build in PvP and like to support a bit. Maybe not useful in PvE, I don’t know. Traits just feel weak overall.

1. Tempest (Overall): 4
2. Traits: 2
3. Warhorn: 3
4: Overloads: 3
5. Healing Skill: 4
6. Utilities: 4
7. Elite Skill: 1
8. Animations & sound effects: 4

1. Tempest (Overall): 2

I think that a lot of consideration went into the development of the tempest but the presentation and how this consideration was converted into the game is just bad. I can’t see myself running around with tempest ever, as it is now. It’s mediocre at best, making absolutely not up for the huge damage loss (I know it’s supposed to be somewhat more supportive and tanky) and lack in almost every aspect.

2. Traits: 0

They are a joke.

3. Warhorn: 3

I think that it’s not that bad of a choice to have chosen the warhorn over our beloved
sword. It fits more to the GW1 lore – I suppose.

4: Overloads: 3

I don’t understand what would justify locking myself out of an attunement for such a ridiculously long time. For so little gain out of it. As they are now, they are just bad. Overloads need a whole rework. Let me not even start on the animation aspects of certain races. All in all earth NEEDS an animation rework / adjustment. The blast finisher at the end of the “whatever was going on, riding a rock” skill doesn’t work very reliable.
I personally don’t see what thad has to do with tempest but maybe I am just ignorant.
I am certainly no meteorologist but really what the kitten has riding a rock to do with tempest, seriously. A sandstorm would have been more fitting in EVERY aspect. This skill is just illogical.

5. Healing Skill: 3

I like the name. That’s all to it. As it is now, without any – XY-finsiher, it’s just meh.

6. Utilities: 2

They are bad. Okay, I understand that the tempest doesn’t want to go the super damage line but why do we get even more useless stuff?
Also it shouldn’t be called Flash Freeze if it isn’t instant cast. You should rename it to delayed freeze – more fitting.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Flash
I personally love “feel the burn”. It looks really nice. “Eye of the storm”. I don’t understand the urge of giving us super speed. 5 seconds. I have to say that I really feel op having this skill. Either increase the “super speed” or replace it with something that actually feels “super” – see what I did there. The cooldown is a joke. Why shouldn’t I take “armor of earth” – Protection + Stability?! and it procces nicely with water – and it’s also a stun breaker. Yeah, now super speed but why should I take it in the first place?

7. Elite Skill: 0

Wait, what? Why? This skill makes no sense. I personally could only see me using it – leaving Tempest line – thus reseting all shouts and changing to a a damage setup – taking my loved FGS – reducing its cooldown. (Only skill i can think of which does profit out of it – and it’s nice for mobility reasons)
I think that this skill should give eles the ability to reset a skill, granting a 100% cooldown reduction. I personally don’t get why it’s bad to give a class certain fortes. I know that ele already is top-notch damage wise but why shouldn’t it prosper in its current forte.

8. Animations & sound effects: 1

“Wash the pain away” and “feel the burn”

Maybe I am totally wrong and Tempest is the new best class around when HoT launches. Maybe the so called challanging group content will require a rock riding, no damage dealing, camping in one attuenemnt – because everything is on cooldown – jerk of all trades.

Thanks for the votes guys, updated up to Zention.1849.

1. Tempest (Overall): 3

I’ve tested Tempest out in PvE and PvP. While I love the animations (Water bubble and riding rocks!! <3) it felt a bit lackluster. Almost as if, I could be doing more. Warhorn is a niche, boon support weapon and offers very little in the form of direct DPS, or mitigation. I’d rather run my trusty staff! Only Tempest build that really impressed me was a full Cleric’s healing build with staff.

2. Traits: 3

Seems to go great with Auras and not so great with anything else. Wish we had a better source of stability in the traits though. If AoE is on cool-down and I want to overload… look, it gets frustrating when even in PvE I get constantly blown out of overload.

3. Warhorn: 2

Only my opinion. Felt like its use was extremely “narrow” and situational. In PvP when caught in 1 v 1, I missed my extra dagger, or even my focus. I hated being caught out in the open, all alone with warhorn that provided so little in the form of dps and defense.

4: Overloads: 3

I sorta get the idea behind overloads. Sadly my super evolved form of the elements didn’t feel all that powerful. I get better healing out of staff, in water with a blast than I did with water’s overload. The might on fire was pretty nice to spam. Air felt mediocre at best and the only really good use of earth’s overload was when I could hide between my team members and throw down okay-ish damage with it or when I needed to run away. The cool down’s weren’t as harsh as I first thought they’d be.

5. Healing Skill: 2

Situational at best. Some friends told me they were able to heal their entire party (easily) for 6k+, but I didn’t get the chance to verify this. If that’s true, then I’d probably change my vote to a 4.

6. Utilities: 3

Tried out the shouts and found that they didn’t offer anything new. Suppose that they could work. Besides, with Cantrips being the go-to line it would take something truly impressive to get me to switch away from cantrips.

7. Elite Skill: 0

REALLY situational, and even in a pre-made sPvP team my teammates barely saw much of a difference when I used this skill. Perhaps we weren’t coordinated enough, but if it was that difficult to setup for us, then imagine the usefulness of this skill in an ordinary PuG team. Just wish somebody could have said:
“Wow! Thanks for that amazing cd reduction!”
:( feels under appreciated

8. Animations & sound effects: 5

Love the animations and the sound! Sure warhorn still has a bit of an annoying “tin” to it, but the other effects. <3 Zen water bubble mounts for everybody!

Overall Tempest lacked hard DPS. Either I failed to get a build that could push the numbers without being too glassy, or this is an inherent problem with the spec. Support via healing and boon sharing was pretty amazing and in my opinion a definite redeeming quality. Even though this is something we have been doing for a long time without Tempest. As for weapons, I’d still much rather run with my trusty staff than warhorn though. If Tempest was meant to be a support spec then it did it’s job pretty well.