Guild Wars 2

I figured I’d start a thread for feedback regarding the Tempest as played by us in the beta.

So say anything you like, as long as it relates to being constructive or critical, and talk about what you like, and what you didn’t like, and how you would fix things!

1. Warhorn- Overall very good, I appreciate the cooldown reductions of some skills.

Water Globe moves a bit too fast when you’re snared, so I think it would be best to somehow make its speed scale with your current movement speed at that moment so you can follow it better. Better yet, maybe make it so the water field moves with you in that it goes wherever you go for its duration (sort of like the overload) so its a field that extends around you in a PbAoE that you can blast.

Cyclone-This skills needs to be drastically sped up, in its current form its too slow and telegraphed to hit most competent opponents.

Lighting Orb- This skill is pretty bad against single targets when you’re not chasing someone running away, so I think its damage or funcitonality should be reworked.

Sand Squall- Add a blast finisher to this skill, its pretty much absolutely necessary to have another blast given how field intensive tempest is compared to vanilla D/D ele.

2. Shouts

Wash the Pain Away-Cast time is way too long,make it 3/4 of a second.

Aftershock/Eye of the Storm- should be 30 seconds CD at max.

Rebound-Terrible, useless skill. Just delete it completely and make a longer cooldown arcane shout that combines all of the elements into some awesome avatar-state storm that CCs enemies AoE and does massive damage.

3. Overloads- The overloads are decent for what they do, but the risk/reward threshold is really poorly desgined.

Earth Overload is the only one with a breakbar, but it doesn’t really do enough excpet if you’re trying to run away, so I think a pulsing blinding sandstorm while casting it would help a lot with damage mitigation in a teamfight.

Its so easy to intterupt the non-Earth overloads, and the effect is generally not worthwhile. Tempest needs a reliable source of stability from shouts or traits in order to function better overall.

Ideas to fix this include:

1. Having lucid singularity also give all overloads a breakbar in addition to its movement impairing conditions immunity.

2. Rework imbued melodies to grant stability on WH skill use rather than break stun on allies.

3. Give a way of getting stability through shouts.

Also many of the traits are very underwhelming, latent stamina needs to restore much more enduarance (25% at least), tempestuous arias needs to grant shouts a 20% cooldown reduction, and the above issues with GM traits that I mention should be addressed.

Finally regarding traits in general, tempest as a whole feels too cluttered and unfocused, in part because so many traits are spread across different lines that tempest kind of needs. Do I focus on auras or shouts or overloads? Its just problematic trying to pick a focus to a tempest build that has its own unique identity, that doesn’t depend on several base ele traits (especially regarding aura support) to be effective at all. Its cool and can stack protection like crazy, but is the drop in damage from dropping the fire line worth it? So far no, but I need to explore it a bit more.

The last issue is that base elementalist is such a strong class that dropping the fire trait line in pvp to pick up temepst in a cele build isn’t really worth it, since you lose out on damage, and gain… well nothing useful.

You get 7% reduced damage some of the time, situational overloads, an autoproc stunbreak, and a warhorn that has some good skills, and some not good skills, but its really not worth giving up 17% damage modifiers, 150 power, tons of might from cantrips, and blind uptime from fire. Tempest may be better than D/D stone heart ele though, but only if it is buffed by a good amount.

1) Water Globe: I find we need to add a following skill to blast the watery orb before it move too far away. (Like guardian’s scepter skill)

2) Overload animation: Earth one look very awkward… Water one could use a bit of work too.

3) Rebound: Very bad design… either re-design this or seriously buff it. (I’ve suggest to make this skill a more Ice/Water theme elite in the other thread)

4) How about giving Elementalist a chance to deal chill damage? Can add that in one of the Tempest grandmaster spec.

Nikaido.6739:

4) How about giving Elementalist a chance to deal chill damage? Can add that in one of the Tempest grandmaster spec.

I disagree, the salty necros are already angry at us for getting “better” shouts than them. Also deathly chill on reaper is really underwhelming right now with its really poor scaling.

I think we should have at least one or two more combo fields seeing how we only have a fire field at the moment with warhorn

Maybe Eye of The Storm could drop combo field: lighting, no dmg combo field, but with loong duration. Blasting for swiftness in wvw that one would make things smoother.

How efficient is break bar on earth overload? I saw on stream like dinosaur destroyed it with one skill.

Maybe trait to make break bar a bit efficient.

Break bar for each overload would cause more rant.

Noticed that there isn’t trait to reduce shouts cd, put it somewhere.

Auras and trait, a bit about them, for example I would like to support with auras: water line for aura share+frost aura, 2 trait lines left, tempest for heal from auras, Frost aura and aura after overload, 1 trait line left.
Now choice is: air trait line for shocking aura and swiftness&fury whenever gets aura (it is also granted to allies if traited with bountiful aura) or earth line for protection whenever gets aura (it is also granted to allies if traited with bountiful aura) or fire for 2 might on getting fire aura (it is also granted to allies if traited with bountiful aura) and fire aura whenever go into fire attument (combat only< something I don’t get, dmg from sunspot is combat only cuz we would engage everything and get into fight, but why fire aura coming from this trait is also combat only?).
I understant spreading aura related traits to keep it thematical, I appreaciate it, but it have its other side, that we won’t squeeze all pontenatial from auras at once.

JustinFarfan.6840:

I think we should have at least one or two more combo fields seeing how we only have a fire field at the moment with warhorn

Water 5 is a water field and air overload leaves a brief lightning field.

The Warhorn fire field CD is a bit too long imo. 25s would be better.

Currently, I find everything about the Tempest underwhelming, but I will only be commenting about the shout set that the Tempest gets. The shouts are mediocre at best. I do think ‘Feel the Burn!’ will have uses over other skills, but the other shouts feel underwhelming.

I personally think that each shout should provide a blast finisher, especially when considering the combo fields that the warhorn provides and our lack of blast finishers. The only problem with each shout having a blast finisher is that with Wildfire (fire warhorn #5), this field can be blast several times and then Heat Sync (fire warhorn #4) can be used to provide the whole party with a lot of might. Tempestuous Aria (Tempest major trait #1) will further increase this might, providing 25 stacks of might without effort.

I also believe ‘Shock and Aftershock’ should be a chain skill, where you can cast ‘Shock!’ and activate ‘Aftershock!’ later. This would make hitting the secondary part of the shout much easier to hit and would also mean that the shout can be better timed too for when the shout is needed. Both parts of the shout could also provide a blast finisher. ‘Shock and Aftershock!’ also has a relatively high cooldown that isn’t in line with the other shouts without providing too much.

‘Wash the Pain Away!’ has a questionable use. This shout can be used really well to support a party and could provide a massive burst of healing when coupled with most of the water healing skills in the game at the moment. However, the cast time is completely unnecessary for a skill that heals for such a little amount without providing anything else.

‘Feel the Burn!’ and ‘Flash-Freeze!’ are both very good shouts, but I think ‘Flash-Freeze!’ needs a damage increase and the shout feels similar to Frozen Burst (water dagger #3) already except that ‘Flash-Freeze!’ provides a Frost Aura instead of a blast finisher. Other than that, these shouts are good.

‘Eye of the Storm!’ is also quite a questionable shout. For what it provides, an AoE stun breaker and AoE superspeed, the cooldown of the shout is reasonable, yet it still feels underwhelming. I also feel that the name of the shout does not suit the shout itself. The shout could provide a lingering lightning combo field after its animation, which would give it an effect more related to the skill name.

‘Rebound.’. This is definitely my least favourite skill that the Tempests get. It isn’t even classed as a shout in its description. Although it has a short cooldown, the ability has a delayed effect and gives the buff pretty late. The delayed effect does mean that people can time their abilities a lot better with ‘Rebound.’, but the delayed effect would mean that in more fast-paced environment, you could use ‘Rebound.’ on the wrong ability due to external forces forcing you to use another ability.

This is just the first beta, so I will continue to watch out for Tempest changes as I did initially like them when they were announced, but Tempest currently feels too underwhelming.

It’s very strong. Don’t ask for something even more OP

The fact you channel an Overload and can’t swap to another element needs to go. Currently if you channel Fire Overload > swap into air it’s interrupted.

Raif.9507:

The fact you channel an Overload and can’t swap to another element needs to go. Currently if you channel Fire Overload > swap into air it’s interrupted.

yeah thats true. It should be changed, then we could use rock solid to help cover the cast.

It is full of problems:

Overloads:
- Damage on fire overload is less than a lava font
- Other overloads are not worth the risk either and the healing/damage is just bad
- You need stability on overload else its just a bad class mechanic
- Having to camp an attunement for 5 seconds is too long, I generally stay in an attunement 3 seconds max. 2.5 seconds might work. Anyway we shouldn’t have to explain that to anet, basically if you dont swap attunement you lose your boons and that’s what the ele relies upon to stay alive.
- Cant use shouts or do anything while overloading. Can’t even dodge.

Shouts: they don’t do enough damage, only the auras are interesting, the cc pressure is too short (2 second immob only? Lava font doesn’t even tick damage before the immob is gone)
Air shout should do damage

Warhorn:
Should be a 1200 range weapon, fields should be longer, it has so many other flaws. It needs some blast, it needs damage on fire 4, recharge on skills is too long. The only cool skills are air 4-5. Water field is too short and moves too fast. I dont see why anyone would use it in any context. It has no advantages.

New elite:
Worse elite ever. Scrap it and make something interesting.

Traits:
Also terrible, need stability, 20% shout recharge, 7% extra protection is not noticable and not interesting, feels uninspiring overall.

Overall as an ele main I am quite disappointed with tempest. Because with Warhorn you had to at least do something that is deadly or interesting, but it’s just weak and puts you inside more damage than an elementalist can take. It will never be better than dagger offhand or focus.

Raif.9507:

The fact you channel an Overload and can’t swap to another element needs to go. Currently if you channel Fire Overload > swap into air it’s interrupted.

While it is contrary to all other Ele skills, I’m pretty sure that’s the intended behavior and I’m personally fine with it. You’re supposed to be overloading your current attunement, so logically swapping to a different one would mess up the overload. You can’t be overloading yourself with fire and then go into water partway through, then you’re not channeling fire any more.

The overloads overall just need to be more rewarding. Right now the only one that really feels like its a real boon to use is Fire.

Water is… I dunno. Water has some use, its a pretty huge burst heal, but the problem is that by the time you get into water, wait 5 seconds for the overload to become available, and then finish the channel (where the bulk of the heal comes in) you probably don’t need the heal any more, because you’re either dead or you’ve avoided the danger. You need to be a psychic in order to get the heal “when you need it” as the amount of pre-loading you have to do is so high (unless you’re just going to camp water so that you can jump straight into the overload). The persistent condition cleansing through the channel is nice, but it kind of suffers from the same issue where if you need cleansing right now then the time it takes to reach overload status is too long.

Air is WAY too weak. Damage is pathetic, range is lackluster, lightning field duration is an utter joke (the field is shorter than the channel to create it, and that’s just silly). I’d increase everything across the board, ESPECIALLY the field duration. That thing should last like 6 seconds at the bare minimum, IMO, maybe even make it a super long duration field in order to differentiate it a bit from fire. Especially since the “pulse boon” is swiftness, which is much less useful than the regen / might / protection pulses the other OL’s give (most of the time, anyway). The rest of the overload needs to be strong to make up for the less useful boon. I know they said during the Tempest POI that they were playing around with the idea of making it a larger AoE, but sadly it looks like that didn’t really happen in time for this beta.

Earth is kind of mixed. The Protection procs are great, and the break bar is nice to make it less interruptable than the other OL’s (which is a huge problem). But offensively, its very meh. I know its not meant to be super damaging, but it still needs a damage buff or some bleeds or something or else its basically just a skill you can sort of use to set up damage for your allies and nothing more (and even that depends on enemies standing around letting you cripple / immob them).

Warhorn overall seems pretty good, though a few of the skills could use some work.

Water Orb moves too fast to really use as a water field (especially for allies who have to react to the orb being spawned and act before it moves too far away, where at least the Tempest knows in advance when its being used), I’d probably slow it down to the speed of Air5.

And speaking of Air 5, I’d say it needs a sizeable increase in how far away from the orb enemies can be and still get shot at, because right now it just gets out of range of an enemy too fast to really do much (or make it even slower, I guess… either way gets the job done, though a range increase would allow it to chase enemies better which I imagine is part of the point of the skill since they mentioned it during the POI).

Air 4 just seems kind of wonky and doesn’t really seem to work properly half the time. I can use it on two enemies and visually hit both of them, but only one gets pulled, that sort of thing. Could use some looking at for functionality tweaks and perhaps a range increase to make it a bit more reliable (horizontal range / AoE that is, or in other words how far from the center it’ll pull enemies). I’d also appreciate an “arrow AoE” type activation like Air#5 has, as that would allow you to aim it between groups of enemies to pull them all into the center more easily.

First Impressions:

Overload needs some serious concideration, The current risk/reward is just not worth it in a long shot.
The cast time is very long with a rather weak effect until you fully casted it which is rather difficult with all the knockbacks/stuns in the game, both from players and npcs.

Wildfire: Biggest complaint about this spell is that it’s extremely slow to expand and makes it feel sluggish because of that.
In PVP it’s going to be hard to use this spell to great effect while in pve it wont matter as you usually stack the mobs anyways.

The same goes for Dust Storm, this spell is also very slow to expand and just feels very sluggish.

The rest of the warhorn spells I like the feel of, some could get minor adjustments but the general feel of them is nice.

The shouts themselves seems intresting but still not worth replacing the current cantrips/icebow with.

Rebound: Dont know what to say, Great effect I guess but still not fun to use as you just dont see or feel the results of giving people 25% CD on their next spell.

The only thing that speaks for me to use a warhorn/tempest is to share boons, which in it own is usually not to much fun.

Damage numbers obviously needs to be tweaked, Overloads needs to be reconcidered in damage and stability.

Just dipped into it for PvE, haven’t tried it in PvP yet.

First thoughts: It’s really strong for teamplay, especially with boonshare. Traiting fury and swiftness on aura share and spamming shouts give nearly permanent auras, with fury/swift. Since the other traitlines have built-in trait procs, you can really share tons of boons and auras on-demand. I can see myself using it in fractals over staff for support, but not for DPS.

The overloads seem weak. Why am I channeling this for so long? I’d rather swap into something else and keep casting rather than waste so much time with the windup and channel. Even with refreshing air, overloading the air attunement is rarely worth my time. The windup feels especially weird- both the cast start, and a timer for overload.

The moving water field is cool, but I can’t really blast it, and it can be hard for teammates to blast it.

The shouts seem awesome. I want to play with traits more; the aura comboing has some great potential.

Maybe make the overload based on number of spellcasts, or hitting an enemy with a spell in that attunement? It seems absurdly long to camp an attunement for 5s just to overload for 3s more, for the effects we get. A spellcasting counter/hit requirement would make it much harder to balance for the mainhands- scepter air could cast 3 instantly, while dagger would be much harder, and fire scepter much slower.

The elite just feels really niche, and entirely useless outside of highly organized team runs or organized sPvP. I wouldn’t bother slotting it 99% of the time.

Does it create a new role? Sort of, yeah. We’ve been a bit support-y with water, but tempest feels like it has massive frontline support potential, especially with shouts/auras/associated traits and the cc/boonsharing. But if we’re close range, stopping casting and DPSing to overload just seems strange. It should be much more impactful than it feels now for the time investment.

My first impressions after about a dozen PVP games with a few different builds (temp/air/fire or earth cele auramancer, and temp/arc/water cele mostly):

Warhorn is a fun weapon (and the best thing about tempest right now) but could use quite some tweaks.

Overall I like almost all the skills on warhorn, though it’s really hard to hit frantic enemies with air 4 (the pull-tornado) and air 5 does pitiful damage against both aoe and single targets. Fire skills are really nice though fire 5 is just a max-power focus firewall.

Overall what I liked most about focus is that basically all the skills have really low cooldowns for ele 4+5 skills. Nothing more than 35 seconds with the average probably around ~25 seconds. Though it really lacks a strong defensive skill when you’re focused, but I guess that’s the price for low cooldowns. Focus earth+air is just so much defense warhorn simply can’t compete.

I don’t see the point in using Overloads as they are right now.

Overloads, while looking cool, don’t really do much you can’t do without them anyway (and better even). Fire overload is nice for might stacking but that’s it, pretty boring. The heal from water overload is noticable if you’re out of heal cooldowns but you’ll mostly get CCed out of it ASAP. Both fire and air overloads do pityful damage for their insanely long channel times and both have pitiful ranges too (air should be straight up ranged). Earth is okay-ish I guess for the aoe protection, but switching to earth usually gives AOE protection anyway so it’s kinda pointless again.

I really think Overloads need to do something eles cannot do normally to ever find use. Something like this:

Fire Overload: grants aoe retaliation while channeling.
Water Overload: converts condition(s) into boons upon finishing it.
Air Overload: pulses aoe daze around you while channeling.
Earth Overload: grants aoe aegis upon finishing it.

Something like this, anything, really to make casting, and even more, finishing them, worth it. Right now it can even be benefitial to cancel the overload by attunement swapping right after starting the channel – because you keep the 5+ seconds of protection and swiftness. And that can’t really be the point of the mechanic?

Shouts seem neat but lack a Cooldown trait.

The auras on shouts make them the best choice for auramancer utilities, though the trait for them really should give 20% CDR. And the frost aura grandmaster trait should probably straight up cast the frost shout (which is extremely weak btw).

Fire shout is really nice, 20 secs cooldown aoe burn + fire aura + condi removal from soldier runes.

Frost shout is, as above, pretty useless, chill is a rather weak condition for us because it’s always really short and doesn’t proc anything like damage.

Earth shout is neat but really really long cooldown for such a small effect. Keep the cooldown and give it some AOE bleed pulses please, bleed is totally unsupported on ele right now

Air shout should really give static aura, at least to yourself.

There’s no way I’m gonna drop signet heal for shout heal, Signet active even heals for about as much as the shout…

P.S. Rebound is such a joke. Best used with other elites or Armor of Earth. Such a boring elite. Please remake it completely, this is a mesmer elite…

I tried Tempest with a Condi setup. Overall, I like it. It has some burst potential with Burning in AoE pull, snare and chill. However the upkeep of Burning feels a bit underwhelming. Sometimes I wish Fire 5 (warhorn) applies more than 1 stack of Burning; 2 or 3 is good in my opinion. The shout utilities lacks lustre. It doesn’t give amazing support or DPS buff or condi buff. If left unchanged, it’s better to give the shouts shorter cool down.

The Blast finisher on Earth Overload doesn’t allow me to combo with anything. The fields are not long lasting and it takes time stay in Earth for me to be able to overload. I would prefer to move the Blast finisher into other weapon’s skill.

The mechanics of Rebound is ridiculous. Someone please tell me which skills of elementalist are affected by Rebound? So far, I have found none: no weapon skills or utilities. How am I supposed to use Rebound for myself?

I have tested tempest the whole evening in spvp. Different builds, traits, skills. Everything is worse than fire trait line with dagger or focus offhand. Heal is useless, elite skill is useless, shouts are useless, water/air/earth overload are useless. Warhorn is ok, but it has 8 defensive skills. It is focused on boons, does less damage than focus offhand but don’t have blocks/reflects/invuls like focus.
I found the only one valuable rotation. It is Air -> Fire 2, 3, 5 -> Overload Fire -> Fire 2, 4, Earth -> Water -> Air 11111 (Fire has ~4 sec cooldown). It could compensate might stacking loss and dps loss. But the first test in match completely failed. Ele can’t stay in fire for so long, you have to do protection/healing thing or you just die. For each five overloads four were itterupted. There is no sense to use overload without stability and there is no sense to waste AoE for it.

Ele is class that relies on boons. You gave ele weapon focused on boons and traits focused on boons. As a result ele lost dps. Overloads could compensate dps loss, but using overloads forces you to stuck in attument and stop your boon building/heals that results your death. And they can be easily itterupted.

The whole class design failed because tempest is designed to do two major things:
1) Build boons
2) Use overloads
But he can’t do it together. If you use overloads, you lose boons. If you build boons, you have no time for overloads.

I doubt that anyone will use tempest for spvp.

Raif.9507:

The fact you channel an Overload and can’t swap to another element needs to go. Currently if you channel Fire Overload > swap into air it’s interrupted.

To me that makes sense, because overloading is supposed to be about going elementally ‘super-saiyan’, going all in to one element, even all in to one attack.

What totally breaks that fantasy though is the huge aftercast cost and tiny charge time as compared to the spell effect, the ridiculous 20 second attunement lockout and piddly 5 second charge time. I mean, I supposed the after cast could work, sort of that pause that comes after a heroic character uses their ‘ultimate technique’. But it just doesn’t feel that powerful, and I doubt it could be balanced if they made it that powerful . In my opinion the overload should not affect your attunement recharge at all, but instead require more time in an attunement to light off.

(EDIT: I completely misinterpreted what you were saying at first, if anyone saw that first post before the edit please ignore it, I’m tired, cut me some slack XD )

Some of the traits feel lacklustre and some of them (Latent Stamina, Earthen Proxy and Element Bastion) feel like they should be part of other trait/spec lines i.e Latent Stamina, Element Bastion = Water, Earthen Proxy = Earth. Shouldn’t the Elite specialization traits revolver around the new stuff that you get with the spec?

IMHO:

Overloads

PvE:
Fire: Its the best, but tornado should linger longer, because you risked yourself in close combat with a full charged overload and actually Meteor Shower deals almost the same damage with far less risk.
Air: My problem with AIR is that its exactly the same as FIRE but less damaging and interesting: instead of a raging tornado that offers area control you get a combo field. I think that the overload should feel / be totally different: maybe focusing the damage in only 1 target within a huge range (sniping skill?) or having 2-3 strong attacks to the enemy’s (5?) but in a huge area around you?
Water: As I expected from the videos it needs to heal FAR more in my opinion.
Earth: Bleeding would be a nice addition as people said.

PvP:
They don´t work as they are…
The low area range and the things considered in the PvE part makes them work only on specific situations (initiating with earth overload + lightning flash), abusing fire dmg when people are crowded in some points or some enemy is downed etc… But the thing that totally ruins them is the specific need of stability: without stability 4/4 times when I tried to use them (and I wasn’t even focused) the enemy players interrupted me. I may had bad luck or good opponents, but even if I test it in far more games I doubt the % would be even near to 50%.

Shouts:

Feel the burn: Perfect. I feel it can be used on all game modes.
Flash freeze: I can see it used on PvP, WvW but Im not sure how it fits the PvE environment that its not for casuals
Eye of the Storm: I think that reducing the CD can make it very strong & viable.
Shock and Aftershock: Feels really underwhelming, and the CD makes it only worse. I’m not sure how to fix it.

Warhorn: The best of the class.

Some things that people already said:
- Wildfire: So slow that sometimes I feel I didn’t pressed the button
- Sand Squall: Could have a blast finisher before the other effects
- Lightning Orb: I like the concept, but both in PvE and PvP I felt it underwhelming. Im not sure if its the damage or the mechanic itself.

Finally, rebound has the problems I have already said: 1) It can really only be usefull in coordinated teams 2) On most situations feels totally without impact and 3) Even if it would full reset a ele skill it would still feel a chronomancer ability.

Most people have said what I’ve already felt. Overloads are cool, but not worth the time to cast them.

Rebound also has a bunch of bugs. If you use Tempestuous Aria, it doesn’t reduce the cooldowns of shouts at all. It also procs on skill 1 of our weapon skills (i.e. with 0 cooldown), which, while I understand WHY it does, it shouldn’t.

Rebound also just feels weird. It doesn’t suit the spec. I’d prefer a redesign in all honesty, but if that can’t be done, buffing it in some way would be better.

Tempest is better than I thought it would be. Overloads need a serious buff, Warhorn is perfect for close range combat, I can see myself using it in high fractals, 51+. the traits are so so, need work. Shouts are excellent especially with auras. Auramancer will be the main reason to go tempest

tempest warhorn ability in a nutshell:

bad:
range of air ‘4’ key ability much too short to be of use
‘4’ key ability of fire and earth of dubious value
water tempest ability useful, but out of place with overall tempest design of sit still and hope
the overloads are ridiculous; less dmg than normal attacks and easy to interrupt – either from self swap or other attacking

good:
not too far off – improve the damage and range, make the ‘4’ skill worth casting, and allow swapping atunement in overload and you’d have something

overall:
makes me wonder if the tempest designer actually plays an ele irl… entire build out of place with how an ele stays alive in pvp

Overall I was disappointed with the tempest for reasons many already pointed, but I think that instead of giving blasts to the warhorn as some suggested it would be fun if the blasts came to the shout, it would give a lot of variety with having warhorn creating a ton of fields and we having a lot of shouts to give versatility on blasts.

Plus with this shouts would also become interesting for other weapons as they would allow you to blast some of our fields.

And just two other points:

- Elite skill is absurd. How could this elite have been conceived baffles me. It must go away and be replaced with something that actually makes sense and actually feels “elite”.

- Overloads. I would suggest to tone way down on the risk and tone a bit down on the reward. Overloads will not work as a high risk high reward mechanic.

Their warhorn air skills are very readable, as in if you were to pvp it’s like flashing a big sign that says “LOOK WHAT IM ABOUT TO DO” in slow motion.
The overloads need a buff.

(IMO you should be able to float in a water bubble always c:<)
Also, the air overcharge lightning animation doesn’t always show.

Tempest is okay. It doesn’t really enhance them in anyway except another way to stack & an extra offhand. Warhorn does for eles as it does for condi clear warhorn warriors, Only you see the animations too clearly for eles.

The elite skill needs to go for tempest. Or be made better. Maybe another Storm elite? like an ultimate storm or something, I don’t see anyone using the tempests elite. It’s nothing special & 99 out of 100 tempest eles will use FGS/Glyph of elementals over Rebound. It’s just another disappointment for eles.

Tempest shouts are great for aura eles.

After getting my hands on it, my feedback:

Warhorn
- This is the best part of Tempest, and it is lack-luster.
- Water: This is the sole reason focus is worth taking. The CC + healing on 4 is great, and water field on 5 (which can be double-blasted with dagger W3 and earth dodge) gives a huge heal.
- Fire: Fire is ok, but the cooldowns feel too long. The 4 is boring as mostly a “fire and forget” skill, as you are already a boon factory and just use this mostly on CD to spread more. The 5 is basically what focus 4 SHOULD be, but with a cooldown that is too long.
- Air: Overall, air is pretty bad. The 4 skill is decent, and has decent synergy with things like burning speed, but has too great of a cast time given the slow projectile speed. The 5 is just pathetic in every way.
- Earth: Earth is the worst. The 4 skill, like fire 4, is just something you fire off just because, but it doesn’t provide a clutch play. Increasing the duration of boons on allies by a bit isn’t a huge support, and is way less than things you can do with focus. The 5 skill is a worse version of dust devil, if that is possible, and is basically a dead-skill.

Overloads:
- These are pathetic. Overloads will NEVER be used nor balanced while carrying a triple penalty of 5s precharge, long attunement recharge, AND long channel. The damage during every channel is less than an auto-attack (which is really saying something given how crappy ele auto-attacks are), you are forced into melee range, and the payoff for completing a channel is basically nothing.

Shouts
- These are pretty bad, and the only useful ones are those that give auras. Ironically, it already shares these auras AOE, breaking potential synergy with aurashare.
- Part of the issue with shouts is the heavy competition to provide strong effects to compete with the wealth of weapon skills. None of the shouts really do the things eles need (huge damage for pve, instant defense for pvp)
- Fire: this is basically a fire aura on 20s CD. One stack of burn is pathetic. This should also be a stunbreak.
- Air: the one with the most potential, as an instant, defensive skill. However, given the cooldown nobody will ever use it. I am not sure it would even see play at 25s CD when competing with signet of air. The effect it provides (simple stunbreak + superspeed) isn’t that great.
- Earth: way too long of a CD to be useful in a shout build, and is way too long given the effect.
- Water: This should NEVER be used, EVER, in ANY build.

Traits:
- Traits are overall just bad, and much of this is driven by how bad overloads and shouts are. All of the minor traits and things related to overloads are basically dead traits.
- It is pathetic that all 3 minor traits are dedicated to the class mechanic (which is bad). Every other profession gets interesting traits that are synergistic with the theme but not directly influencing the new mechanic.
- The only good traits are: the vigor trait, the protection trait, and the aura-healing trait, and all of these honestly belong in water, earth, and water. In fact, powerful auras just can’t compete with cleansing water in any spec, but it would be closer if it were merged with the aura-healing capability.

Verdict:
- In the end, the implementation of the tempest doesn’t provide any truly new way to play the class. It is melee range that provides some cc and some support via only boons. Eles already provide support via heals and boons. The hard defenses provided by effects such as swirling winds or invulnerability to secure a res far exceed supportive capabilities of focus. Overloads are melee-range effects that barely do more than auto-attack while incurring crazy costs. Shouts are very uninspired – they aren’t particularly good either offensively or defensively, even if traited for shouts and auras. The whole spec just offers the same play capabilities with a slightly different twist, compared to completely new play-styles (different range, different way of doing damage, different defensive mechanic, etc.)

Important side note:
- Auras do not stack in duration, but simply over-write. This is VERY BAD for an aura-mentalist, and NEEDS to be fixed. You should be able to have perma-fire aura (whoop-de-do!) between fire-swaps, the fire shout, and leaping fire-fields, but even that doesn’t work.

There is absolutely nothing beneficial about going tempest. The fact that you lose access to Warhorn and Shouts by not having the Tempest soul equipped has basically made the entire expansion worthless to me outside of whatever PvP map they may add.

The elementalist has been “balanced” (nerfed) over the ages around the fact that they would ALWAYS have Arcane / Water. Without those two the class breaks down badly and Tempest/Arcane/Water isn’t anything more than a buff bot for other classes to enjoy themselves. I also attempted FArT (Fitting) , FET, AWT , AArT, and AET … the survivability is dismal.

Warhorn is inferior to both Dagger and Focus in addition to being exclusive to having the Tempest soul equipped.

I really don’t know what the devs were thinking when they said that Tempest + Warhorn was going to allow Elementalists to be front line … F/W/Ar + Dagger/Focus does it WAY better.

A couple of the shouts are decent, but Cantrips are so much better overall and get way more out of Water than Tempest offers Shouts.

From my brief time playing with the tempest elementalist, it is my personal opinion that I enjoy it, however it probably still needs some tuning to make it better. I think the shouts for water, earth, and fire work well, while the arcane, heals, and air need some work to improve their usability.
The overload is fun and makes and interesting play, although I do agree with others in the forum it does not really change how the elementalist functions on whole. If you mastered the previous version, then you’ve essentially mastered the elite.
The warhorn skills are a bit lackluster although they could prove to be useful in certain circumstances, but I found that in some cases the effects that they gave were often times redundant or essentially remakes of previous skills. For example the 3rd skill for scepter (which I primarily use) while attuned to earth is Dust Devil, it causes some damage (258 while standing in Rata Sum) and some blind (11s) for 5 targets at a range 900. The warhorn 5 is Dust Storm and effectively does the same thing to a lesser degree (damage output is only 174 and blind is 2.25s) the only real difference is it adds some vulnerability. In short, the warhorn skills already are taken care of by weapons we already have, making them useless.
The best feature right now for the tempest ele is the overload which I find useful for some quick extra damage when I find myself in a bind.

1. Anyone notice that Wildfire is not affected by the persisting flames trait, so the fire duration is not extended, is this intended?

2. Secondly the elite skill needs to be somewhere between 30-40 seconds for cooldown, 60 is way too high for a 25% reduction. If the reduction was 100% then maybe it could stay at 60 seconds.

Lyger.5429:

1. Anyone notice that Wildfire is not affected by the persisting flames trait, so the fire duration is not extended, is this intended?

There are quite a lot of bugs with the spec atm. I’ve noticed both Dragon’s tooth and Phoenix will many times not blast the field for some reason. I have no clue why this happens since the field is large enough, probably some weird areas you need to aim at to get the blast.

It is true the Tempest is pretty much useless… It doesn’t do too much damage but when you are in D/W or in D/D with the overload you can go near the enemy… If you go Staff it is difficult to use it, the only ones that can be useful are Water and Air.
Fire has very low damage but i have to tweak a little with my traits.
But at least i’m enjoying it for now (I’m enjoying the new mechanics)

And also if you use a skill just to do a little bit more damage while using overload the overload stops… This is not so good. We are sittings ducks if we are not able to at least do that. The overloads feels very weak.

If anyone wants here is the thread on Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3g5zc1/feedback_elementalisttempest_bwe1_thread/

kinda cool, pre fight were stacking 30 seconds of protection, then might then fury with tempest in party before boon share. really awesome; it def needs some work more than chrono and company does, but its awesome.

Laraley.7695:

Lyger.5429:

1. Anyone notice that Wildfire is not affected by the persisting flames trait, so the fire duration is not extended, is this intended?

There are quite a lot of bugs with the spec atm. I’ve noticed both Dragon’s tooth and Phoenix will many times not blast the field for some reason. I have no clue why this happens since the field is large enough, probably some weird areas you need to aim at to get the blast.

Yea that’s really odd, hope they look into it.

Rebound should have restriction: next weapon skill #4 or #5 or healing skill or utility or elite for you and your allies recharge 33% faster. Up to 10 allies. Maybe random aura should be granted.

Of course if you wanna keep rebound in that theme seeing how people are upset about it.

IrisTheCasual.3742:

The mechanics of Rebound is ridiculous. Someone please tell me which skills of elementalist are affected by Rebound? So far, I have found none: no weapon skills or utilities. How am I supposed to use Rebound for myself?

It works perfectly okay with autoattacks.

How can you be disappointed with the strongest Elite spec in the game? Go try Dragonhunter lol.

Ele was already insanely strong, and Tempest is a nice topping.

I forgot the traits:

Minors:
As others have said: minor master & grandmaster traits directly related to the elite spec mechanic feel wrong. The fact that you cant really select or change them shouts that they are some kind of balancing aspects that should be core/base because they are needed for the mechanic to work. Compare that to the minor traits of the other elites, that help both the core mechanic + other builds / aspects of the class.
For example: The grandmaster trait could make auras stack in time (to a limit ofc) instead of replacing them. That would help the shouts builds, the auramancers and even the overloads if traited.

The other traits that imho should be better:

Latent Stamina: With 2 more people the endurance gained is almost inexistent. Maybe increasing the amount a bit would make it a really good trait?
Unstable conduit: Interrupts totally ruin this in PvP, maybe applying one aura at the beginning and if the overload is finished giving other at the end?

Tempestuous Aria: The weakness is fine,but more might? I dont really think that more might is needed. Maybe self stability?

Kidel.2057:

How can you be disappointed with the strongest Elite spec in the game? Go try Dragonhunter lol.

Ele was already insanely strong, and Tempest is a nice topping.

Have you even tried to play it? Do you understand the class at all? Because it really doesn’t seem so. Tempest is one of the weakest elite specs, actually.

I really dislike tempest as a spec line. Not because it’s bad, in fact it’s amazing, but because it’s basically a no brainer spec.

Why would you ever not use this? The current spec lines for the elementalist are so haphazard and unimpressive that for the most part you’re just picking traits because they don’t suck, not because they unlock some kind of interesting internal synergy that runs through your entire build. The one thing that makes the elementalist good is having obscenely powerful base abilities, and the Tempest line just adds even more powerful abilities at the cost of what? A few lame traits that were never playstyle defining in the first place?

It simply doesn’t make sense to have a spec that all by itself makes every single element more powerful than it becomes when you augment it with its own spec line. A lot of the biggest reasons to rapidly switch elements even become obsolete by it.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love the stuff the Tempest does, and I don’t want them to nerf it. It just feels like the Tempest shouldn’t even be a spec because of how natural it feels as an extention to the Elementalist core gameplay, while the spec lines the Elementalist currently has have never felt particularly satisfying or gameplay defining.

I agree with those who posted before me at least with the points of the incredible weakness and awkwardness of tempest.

First of all, I highly doubt, that it is clever to develop warhorn around the use with dagger, since it can’t give a new feeling to this elite specialization. We already have dagger in mainhand dominating pvp and the offhand doesn’t add much difference to the play style of dagger mainhand. The current version of tempest feels just like another dagger/focus specc, especially since one grandmaster talent aims for the already implemented aura share build (nothing new here too).
This is by far the biggest flaw of Tempest. It is nothing new and with dagger it feels inferior to the other offhand choices (focus and dagger).
Why not develop it with scepter in mind? It gives scepter specs a completely new play style, namely more supportive one (scepter dagger is full burst, scepter focus is egoistic defense, and scepter warhorn seems already very supportive while preserving the nature of scepter mainhand).
The earth shout already fits nice in the scepter/warhorn build. Sadly the other shouts, especially I wonder why the fire one, do half the damage of earth, which makes them useless for this build. So at least fire should make the same damage as the Earth shout.

I agree with the need of having a trait which reduces the CD of shouts, maybe it should replace the useless aura grandmaster trait (which has a far too long CD to be good).

The Master Traitline of Tempest is just really awful, you don’t want to choose any of them. Maybe make the third one remove the 5 sec. need to wait for being able to overcharge attunements (which makes them useless beyond the use of them as escape mechanism).

The overcharging attunements in general are a huge problem, since it should be the reason to pick tempest, yet they are useless and bad besides ridiculous animations. Why do you want to give yourself a longer CD on water while on top of that you have to stay in water (which loses a lot of sustain)? I mean I can’t imaging what the wateroverload needs to do, to justify these drawbacks??? In general it doesn’t fit the play style of elementalist (attunement swapping), you normally don’t stay long enough in an attunement until you get the ability to fire of those overcharges (especially with dagger mainhand builds). HUGE ISSUE right here.

Air overload feels too weak, but can be tuned with damage increase. However Fire overload is just awkward (why is it not a kind of meteor shower).

With the Tempest specialization comes a new potential to give an alternative for staff in WvW zerg builds:
make the water overcharge a water field and the fire overcharge a kind of meteor shower. Also decrease at least the movement speed of the water field you get with warhorn, it is just awkward if the regroup has to run after their water field to blast it… I don’t see any useful aspect about it moving anyway.

Th next reason and last reason to design it around scepter mainhand is PvE. You don’t use dagger mainhand builds in PvE since they do less damage and you don’t need their sustain and support. While support is not bad in general, going into melee range without reason makes no sense. You normally play either Staff or Scepter builds. For making the Tempest more interesting for PvE, you could for example let the fire shout give up to 5 allies 3 stack might (and increase its damage like mentioned above).
Since in PvE you tend to stay more in one attainment the overloads should really shine here, which sadly (and I think that says it all) is not the case: You need to channel them while casting and thus you can’t do anything else and its damage is so far away from compensating that.
At the moment, the only good thing about the overloads is the movement speed increase, which makes them a very good disengage mechanism. This again fits very well the scepter mainhand!!!!

Conclusion: While actually not designed to play with scepter, I enjoyed it only with it, since it really felt new. Normally Scepter builds don’t give support, but with tempest they do and your mobility is really really good (so fun to play ). The build was not very strong in the current tpvp meta, but thats not the point. It could use some damage increase of the warhorn air abilities but actually everything else was pretty fine (except only the earth shout seemed worth taking.)

The elite is a joke. Give it a very low CD (5 sec) and it might be a new mechanic. But otherwise it is the most garbage I ever seen.

The Heal shout is too weak. Besides that it needs to remove (lets say 2) conditions, the tempest has really nothing against conditions ;((((

I would Wash The Brain Away! Daze 5foes around when using Healing Shout. Give us trait like that. Then that shout will be nice.
I would Wash The Retaliation Away! Gives retaliation to 5allies.
I would Wash The Shield Away! Gives one chargé of block of Arcana Shield.
Probably I would wash many things away.

Edit: I would Wash The Stream Away! In your location and affected allies from ground sprouts stream of heat steam that grants stealth. Try that one.

Since this seems to be where everyone is posting their feedback ill move my thoughts into this one.

Overload
They are weak, take too long to cast, and get canceled when you switch attunements.
Overload Fire, Overload Air- Right now tempest is competing with staff ele for support. These skills don’t do enough damage. They have to compete with the utility and damage a staff provides.
Overload water, Overload Earth- Earth seems to be the only okay overload. Water attunement is lackluster. It cleanses some condis, but needs to heal more to be worth sitting in water for an extra 3 seconds.
All the overloads need a cast time reduction.
They also need to not cancel when attunements are switched.
Warhorn
It appears warhorn is great at sharing boons, but not much else. Both the skills in air are slow and rarely hit targets.
The water and earth skills seem fine. The water field moves a little too slowly and I’d like to see the aoe blind skill in earth move with you as well. This makes a tempest much more appealing since it can buff frontline on the move and they don’t have to stop to blast waters and what not.
Shouts
The only 2 i’d consider taking are Eye of the Storm and Flash-Freeze.
Flash-Freeze is my favorite since it gives a frost aura to allies. Pair that with aura share and protection on aura and you have given 6s of protection and 10s o frost aura to the frontline.
The other shouts I didn’t mention are pretty cool, but the cooldowns are way too long to justify using. Simply reducing the cooldowns to match Flash-Freeze would make the tempest a valuable asset in any frontline.
In conclusion, if we look at what the tempest can bring to the table that a staff ele cannot, it is fluidity in the fight. They make it possible, in theory, to never have to stop for water fields or empower. GvG guilds know the importance of not having to regroup and it could become a valuable tool for them.
If Anet can focus on ways to make tempest improve upon that concept, I think most ele’s would be satisfied.

My feedback: Tempest seems too good. Too strong. Of all the Elite specs plus the Revenant we have to toy with in the beta, Tempest is head and shoulder beyond all of them.
Right now my shouts apply might, weakness, auras, decent damage, in a decent area on a tiny CD. No other class gets to simultaneously be so outrageously supportive and destructive to groups of enemies at the same time. Few abilities on other classes do triple-duty as big offensive and defensive CDs and supportive abilities all in one 20s-30s CD button.

I was effortlessly handing out 25 stacks of might with heat sync, as well as tons of other buffs, with no fancy moves or rotations or stacking. Just mashing abilities then hitting Warhorn 4.

Tasao.4623:

My feedback: Tempest seems too good. Too strong. Of all the Elite specs plus the Revenant we have to toy with in the beta, Tempest is head and shoulder beyond all of them.

Wat.

Like seriously. Wat.

Laraley.7695:

Tasao.4623:

My feedback: Tempest seems too good. Too strong. Of all the Elite specs plus the Revenant we have to toy with in the beta, Tempest is head and shoulder beyond all of them.

Wat.

Like seriously. Wat.

Lol, he’s right.
Only that magnetic aura shout alone is enough to kill any ranged enemy.

You may say that overloads are not that much, but horn and shouts are amazing.

Kidel.2057:

Laraley.7695:

Tasao.4623:

My feedback: Tempest seems too good. Too strong. Of all the Elite specs plus the Revenant we have to toy with in the beta, Tempest is head and shoulder beyond all of them.

Wat.

Like seriously. Wat.

Lol, he’s right.
Only that magnetic aura shout alone is enough to kill any ranged enemy.

You may say that overloads are not that much, but horn and shouts are amazing.

Ye, best elite specs ever, totally worth playing. Take your trolling somewhere else. And if you are indeed not trolling, then you have absolutely zero knowledge about the class.

Kidel.2057:

Laraley.7695:

Tasao.4623:

My feedback: Tempest seems too good. Too strong. Of all the Elite specs plus the Revenant we have to toy with in the beta, Tempest is head and shoulder beyond all of them.

Wat.

Like seriously. Wat.

Lol, he’s right.
Only that magnetic aura shout alone is enough to kill any ranged enemy.

You may say that overloads are not that much, but horn and shouts are amazing.

Quite a stretch of the imagination, infact you stretch it to razor thin lines, to say the shouts are amazing. Hyperbole: Plain and Simple.

IMHO. We are waiting for Overloads far to long. It should be max 1 second delay before we can use it and max of 3 seconds cast. Recharge times set at base 20s are fine.
Shouts:
“Wash the Pain Away!” – far to long cast time for it heal ratio, Arcane Briliance is still far better.
“Feel the Burn!” – fine as it is.
“Eye of the Storm!” – as AoE stune break it cooldown is good but Super Speed should be repleced with Shocking Aura to be more thematic oriented.
“Shock and Aftershock!” – Rework this skill, make it a chain skill.
Shocks – 30s cooldown, no cast time, grant Magnetic Aura, cripple foes for 4s, deal 10% of damage as of current version.
Aftershock – +20s cooldown added to the base cd if used, 1s cast time Immobilize for 2s, deal 90% of damage as of current version.
“Flash-Freeze!” – fine as it is. remove cast time and then it will be fine.
“Rebound.” – delete it and we will forget that ele can use elite skill. Do not create usless elite like this.

Dorid.1793:

“Rebound.” – delete it and we will forget that ele can use elite skill. Do not create usless elite like this.

How many times can we repeat this?
I really hope Anet give us a proper elite.