Guild Wars 2

I’d like to start my Feedback by answering this Question:

Do the elite specializations feel like they are creating an entirely new role for your main profession?

In case of the Tempest: No, definetely not!

The Tempest lacks the survival for it’s short range, it’s casttime on the overloads is insane and hands down the only thing he has going for himself are the Warhorn Skills.

Profession Mechanic:
Seriously, nope. I’m not flaming or at least do not intend to, but as-is it feels REALLY bad for a variety of reasons.

1. If you play Ele in close range, committing yourself to a long cast-time followed by a rather long spell isn’t what you need.
2. The use of the Overloads is rather limited… damage wise etc. I just don’t see them as something THAT outstanding.
3. Even if they’d be good, it wouldn’t make the ele feel notably different… just like he got one more skill.

Warhorn Skills:
Could need a bit help in terms of CD (Trait?), but otherwise seem fine. I’d prefer giving Water Globe half the movespeed and twice the pulses, tough.

Shouts:
“Wash the Pain Away!” seems fine for Water Ele sup… but otherwise I think people will take other choices, since the Heal itself isn’t that high.

“Feel the Burn!” frankly… I don’t understand why it has 20s CD while the other’s are weaker but have longer CD…

Others: As mentioned, too long CD for the little use.

Elite:
Honestly, I think that it’s a joke.

Suggestions:

Profession Mechanic:
Only uses 1 Element, renews attunement every X (I suggest 5) seconds, grants the bonuses for switching attunements.
- this would make the Ele feel like he did in GW1 for the most time, specialized for one Element. AND it would actually fit in perfectly with the Trait-System (Element, Arcane, Tempest).

Warhorn Skills:
As said, mostly fine… just the Water Globe as mentioned and overall the CD could be a bit lower.

Shouts:
Really, I think a CD of ~30s for all would be OK.

Elite Shout:
“Overcharge!”
1s Casttime and makes the current Overcharge.

So, while it doesn’t take a lot of work, I think this would make the Tempest feel notably different without making him OP. And I’m sure many who’ve played Ele in GW1 will love it.

Edit: cleared some things that caused misunderstandings.

I played around with the Tempest and I would like to add this to the topic:

1. It most certainly didn’t feel like “playing an entirely new role” with my elementalist. It was more of the same with a different approach. Extremely disappointing in this aspect and my biggest issue with this elite spec.

2. Warhorn: Weapon animations were horrible. Seriously blowing the horn every time was really poor and only a few had interesting animations after the “blowing”. Guess new sound effect is still in the making as well…

However, the skills felt useful in Fire (but Fire 5 is so insanely slow it hurts), in Earth and in Water (but water globe was indeed too fast). Air was terribly weak, Air 5 specially isn’t even worth the effort of pressing the button.

3. Shouts: Too long CD and also still wasn’t able to feel good without my cantrips there. I could see uses in some, but nothing that contends with cantrips significantly.

Oh and I think shouts should be a traitable to be blasts, rather than just adding blasts to warhorn.

4. Elite: Delete all traces of its existence and design a completely new one. This elite makes zero sense for our class and is useless. Should never have been designed.

5. Traits: Terrible, you almost don’t want to pick the elite specialization due to how bad a lot of the traits are.

6. Overloads: Gigantic risk for mediocre / weak reward.

And IMHO, overloads should have their gigantic risk toned way down and offer only a modest / small reward. You should want to use it frequently and not have a class mechanic become a “table turner” high risk / high reward skill,.

Overloads should work as follow:

- You start charging the overload when in combat.
- Once it is charged you can immediately use it any attunement (you don’t need to sit in the attunement);
- Activate by pressing F5 button. Consumes your “charge” and thus you need to “recharge” the F5 skill again. It does not affect the cooldown of any attunement, only of the F5 skill. Once activated (1/2s cast time) creates a storm effect in the area that does the following:

All with a 3s duration and hitting up to 5 friendlies and 5 enemies:
- Fire: Burn and damage enemies every pulse. Applies might to allies (2 mights right of the bat and then 3 more during the duration);
- Water: Heal allies every pulse and cures up to 3 condis. Applies chill and 2 stacks vulnerability on enemies per pulse.
- Air: Damages (2 attacks per pulse) and applies stun on enemies (stun only once at beginning), damage is higher than fire’s. Applies swiftness and fury on allies.
- Earth: Bleed (2x stacks per pulse) and blind enemies. Applies protection on allies.

Does it become lackluster? Yes, it is in no way “epic” and would remove a lot of the animations (but seriously, only fire and earth animation felt fun to me, water is bad and air is ridiculous), but I think this would make it “useful” rather than its terrible current state.

Azel.4786:

snip

Some words on my Suggestions maybe? :P

Mike.3460:

Azel.4786:

snip

Some words on my Suggestions maybe? :P

I agreed with most of them, but have a different concept for the overload mechanics.

Also, even if we keep the current mechanic for overload “high risk / high reward” I still think that elite you suggested is out of place.

The elite skill should be all about summoning a mighty storm, quite frankly I think it should be calling a storm that has all 4 elements in it – perhaps in some randomized / periodical way (one pulse is fire, other is water style, etc.) or all effects at the same time.

That, in my view, would be more “Tempest” rather than cooldown reduction mechanics which is more Chronomancer style of play.

Mike.3460:

1. If you play Ele in 600 range within the enemies, rooting yourself for a long cast-time isn’t what you need AT ALL.

None of the overloads root you. Unlike meteor shower and churning earth, you can keep moving while using an overload. You’re probably just talking about being stuck in the long cast, but I figured I’d mention it just in case.

Navzar.2938:

Mike.3460:

1. If you play Ele in 600 range within the enemies, rooting yourself for a long cast-time isn’t what you need AT ALL.

None of the overloads root you. Unlike meteor shower and churning earth, you can keep moving while using an overload. You’re probably just talking about being stuck in the long cast, but I figured I’d mention it just in case.

I should have worded it differently I guess…

What I meant was, that you have to commit to it, and can’t blow any (except Arcane) Utility or Weapon Skills if thinks don’t go as planned.

For example, with the Revenant’s “Grasping Shadow” you’re really taking some serious risks.

Mike.3460:

For example, with the Revenant’s “Grasping Shadow” you’re really taking some serious risks.

Yeah, you’re risking the fact you might get your one and only kill with tempest.

(revenant is even worse than tempest, it’s quite a big achievement)

Laraley.7695:

Mike.3460:

For example, with the Revenant’s “Grasping Shadow” you’re really taking some serious risks.

Yeah, you’re risking the fact you might get your one and only kill with tempest.

(revenant is even worse than tempest, it’s quite a big achievement)

I didn’t have the time to fully check out the Revenant yet, since he’s way more complex than i.E. the Tempest or Dragonhunter. But he did feel nice gameplay wise, altough some polishing is obviously needed. However, let’s not bring too much OT here.

I played a Tempest a bit and I LOVED it.

I did not touch the warhorn, no interest in that at all, but I played a dagger/dagger ele like I’m used to, but went Fire/Arcane/Tempest instead of Fire/Air/Arcane. I really wish we could still split Trait lines so I could go like two into Air and four into Tempest or something.

The Shout heal was a little weak maybe, but seemed to get the job done better than the Revenant or Reaper heals, at least. The other shouts felt great, solid and noticeable effects and easy to use. The Elite did nothing for me, I’m sure there are some highly efficient ways to use it but I just didn’t figure any out and swapped that out too.

But I loved the Overloading. Yes, it is usually risky, especially when it’s best to use it (when a ton of mobs are around), but it’s a lot of fun. I tried each of them but mostly just used fire and air a lot.

On the fire Overload, I do wish there was more of a graphic when charging it. I could often barely tell anything other than that I was spinning, until the firenado appears. With the Earth one, when it ends you “float” to the ground, which seems a bit off. For a big “earthy” power like that, you should SLAM into the ground, like at the same time the rock pile collapses, as if you’re the one slamming it.

Traits are kind of boring overall it’s different. I think this is how it will play out when HoTs launches.

Seasoned Ele players in WvW and sPvP will play it learn it in about a hour or two if it takes that long. May use it for a week and then be really bored with it.

I think it has a place even in it’s current state and is a slight switch in playstyle, but I think it’s just going to lose novelty fast.

I’ll probably be playing Revenant a lot it’s a lot of fun I haven’t seen great dps from it yet, but so far I am finding it a lot of fun it has complexity to it, which is what drew me to elementalist and engineer as my 1 and 2 respectively.

i like the idea of the tempest even though it is not at all another playstyle for the current ele. As mentioned before i feel like the shout cds are a bit too high to be anywhere competitive while i really like their effects.

The Grandmaster Traits are kind of disappointing.
Elemental Bastion, what i thought was a bit like the shout trait from warrior turned out to be useless due to the icd of 30 seconds

Lucid Singularity would be interesting if the overload cooldowns wouldnt be that high. An ele cant stay for 5 seconds in 1 attunement while being pressured, so u cant really benefit from any survivability effects those overloads might have.

Imbued melodies feels okay i guess when ure in an organized group in wvw maybe.

The 5 seconds u have to wait for overload abilities just makes it not worth it to play a tempest in my opinion

I will do an in detail review by the end of the beta weekend, but if I had to put it short:
Tempest doesn’t work.

Overloads
The overload mechanic works against the class mechanic, it’s not just a ridiculously long cooldown issue and cast time. It should be something you can do while using other skills, like a tempest damage shield, to make it easier to keep your range with your target.

In the days where a necro does 6k auto attacks with lich, or a mesmer/guardian burst you down 15k hp in half a second, overloading is an extremly clunky mechanic for a class that depends on mobility to survive.

Otherwise if Anet wants to be lazy; the damage has to be about 300-400% greater to push enemies out of range, at the very least. But that will not make the concept more interesting. And where is the STABILITY on overloading trait?

Warhorn
If you are actually moving forward when using the skills they are actually landing behind you, because the animation for all of them is so slow. If the intent was to make this a melee weapon it’s a failure. Basically it only works if you stand still or dodge left and right. Doesn’t seem designed by someone that knows how the elementalist class works and it doesn’t provide half the thing an elementalist would need to be in melee range (leap, invul, evade, mobility, reflect, cleanse, etc).

Shouts
Only works with aura builds, again a second mobility skill would have had the potential to replace lightning flash. Can’t replace armor of earth either, because without stability overload wont even work. Cooldowns are too long.

New Elite Skill
The graphic and animation is nice, but the skill is so useless it’s almost insulting. Don’t forget we are paying for this expansion and expect improvements where the class is lacking (like a decent elite skill).

Gotta say lots of people called this. Its still the same obvious problems and feedback we gave when we first saw it before even playing it.

I’m more of a numbers guy myself. But, I do have one big, glaring issue with the tempest: The Traits. The other classes provide some versatility in their traits for different builds. But the Tempest seems hyper focused and doing very little at that, especially on the PVE side. So, in my patented arbitrary 1-10 scale, I’ll break it down.

Singularity: Not rated, because it is the gateway to the specialization as a whole.

Eye of the Storm
This trait is good. I’m a big fan of automatic stun breaks, and the AoE + superspeed aspect really make it nice. Synergizes with other shout traits, too.
7/10

Latent Stamina
This trait exists to try and get people out of water/arcane. Which is unfortunate, because water and arcane still do this much better. Not in the amount of endurance applied (after all, 10 endurance is equal to about 4 seconds of vigor), but in overall synergy. The tempest provides no additional on-swap benefits, whereas water and arcane are teeming with them. The short range makes it hard to use, too.
4/10

Unstable Conduit
I’ve always found Auras to be a bit lackluster, but this skill gives you an aura… on a 6 second delay. Now, normally an aura is something you want to use tactically: shocking aura to interrupt incoming burst, magnetic aura to reflect projectiles. On a 6 second delay during a time in which you are mostly helpless… not so much.
3/10

Speedy Conduit
Eles aren’t at a loss for speed or swiftness. Staff builds can already stack long durations of the stuff. For other builds, there’s already Signet of Air, Elemental Attunement, Zephyr’s Speed, Inscription, Glyph of Elemental Harmony, Updraft, Cyclone, Zephyr’s Boon… Yes this trait is redundant, and only serves as a minor aid for people who don’t want to be bothered to use one of the other dozen methods for getting speed.
2/10

Tempestuous Aria
Offensive and defensive in a large AoE. The problem being that shouts are meh, with many of their uses also performed by the arcane line. What is most notably missing is the “20% reduced cooldown” trait that would bump this up an extra notch. If it had that CD reduction, and if shouts were actually good, then this would be a great trait.
5/10

Earthen Proxy
The way this trait is written is deceptive, not showing how bad it really until you actually equip it. Normally, while under protection, you take 66% of the damage you would have. Under new protection, you take 60%. From an effective HP standpoint, this is a 9% increase, which isn’t that potent at all considering how low an Ele’s effective HP is.
3/10

Harmonist Conduit
This trait is basically a vastly inferior version of Elemental Enchantment, whereas instead of increasing boon duration and working always, it only works after an overload is used. This has use in PVE, however, as about half of an overlaod’kittens are after auto attacking, which makes t hem worthwhile to use whenever they are up.
5/10

Hardy Conduit
At least when you’re almost completely unprotected while using an overload, now you’ll have some protection. This trait is decent, in that it is trying to fix a gigantic flaw with the overload system. The long channels effectively mean you’re defenseless, and an Ele’s defenses are in their controls, evades, and heals. Even when used in combat, it just doesn’t feel like enough. Maybe if the protection was 5 seconds long, this would be good.
5/10

Imbued Melodies
Unfortunately, I do not have the expertise to comment fully on this trait. I immediately see a problem at first glance: Warhorn skills aren’t fast. They are slow moving and average-cast speed environmental effects. Still, though, the ability to to stun duration for allies is good, and doing it as frequently and automatically as the warhorn kills puts this into a “useful until proven otherwise” category.
7/10

Lucid Singularity
See, this is what Speedy Conduit should have been. This give Overload’s a much needed utility and actually stops a weakness instead of mildly numbing it. This trait is good, and I’d argue that it should be merged with Speedy Conduits, a nigh useless trait.
7/10. 8/10 if it gets merged with speedy conduits.

Elemental Bastion
Elementalists are good at healing, largely because of the ability to generate and blast water fields. Now this is a rather strange way of healing that is introduced. Is it good? Not really. Unless you’re already running water attunement, the only group auras you’ll be giving out are with the distinctly average shouts. This trait does not make those shouts above average. Even in cleric gear it heals less than a blast finisher in zerker gear. Unless there’s some unknown aura spamming setup that would make use of this, and not in a gimmicky manner, this trait isn’t that good.
4/10

Mightybird.6034:

Gotta say lots of people called this. Its still the same obvious problems and feedback we gave when we first saw it before even playing it.

Of course. When you know a system well enough you don’t have to actually use new stuff to make educated guesses about it. So of course every elite class turned out basically exactly how good players thought it would.

Overall: the trait line consists of a bunch of subpar overload support traits for the mediocre overloads, spots of obscure and strange buffs for mediocre shouts. So, for my suggestions:

#1: Merge Lucid Singularity and Speedy Conduit as the adept master trait. This leaves an open spot in the master tier.
#2: Add a 20% cooldown trait to Tempestuous Aria.
#3: Increase the protection duration of Hardy Conduit by 2 seconds to 5 seconds base.
#4: Unstable Conduit needs to use 2 auras. First when the channel is started. Second when the channel ends. That way, the ele has 10 seconds of continuous Aura.
#5: Double the base healing and scaling healing of Elemental Bastion.

That’s all for now. Still not sure what to do with Earthen Proxy or Latent Stamina.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Overall: the trait line consists of a bunch of subpar overload support traits for the mediocre overloads, spots of obscure and strange buffs for mediocre shouts. So, for my suggestions:

#1: Merge Lucid Singularity and Speedy Conduit as the adept master trait. This leaves an open spot in the master tier.
#2: Add a 20% cooldown trait to Tempestuous Aria.
#3: Increase the protection duration of Hardy Conduit by 2 seconds to 5 seconds base.
#4: Unstable Conduit needs to use 2 auras. First when the channel is started. Second when the channel ends. That way, the ele has 10 seconds of continuous Aura.
#5: Double the base healing and scaling healing of Elemental Bastion.

That’s all for now. Still not sure what to do with Earthen Proxy or Latent Stamina.

Elemental Bastion should also cast the frost shout instead of just giving frost aura to give it a bit more synergy with other traits.

Tempest Feedback

Overall Impressions
The tempest is underwhelming to say the least which is greatly disappointing for me. I neither provides a significant advantage over other Elementalist specializations in the area of support or damage, rendering for the most part – useless as currently implemented.

Warhorn
The warhorn skills for the most part are alright.
Fire: Heat Sync is OK the ability to give some might and share boons is interesting, but in the thick of it I felt like I had a useless buff skill taking up a slot on my bar. Wildfire is excellent – though I wish it did some periodic damage on top of just burning.
Water: The utility here is fantastic – Healing with a knockback is pure defensiveness, and Water globe is great for backing up your allies from a distance.
Air: Cyclone and Lightning orb are probably the two most interesting to ue in both PvP and PvE. They have good interaction and need thoughtful use to be effective.
Earth: Sand Squall suffers from the same fate that Heat Sync does, though it is interesting in concept in practice I didn’t find it that useful. Again, it felt like another buff skill hogging a slot on my bar. Dust storm was useful in PvP and smaller PvE encounters.

Utilities
Overall the shouts have a lot of potential. The biggest problem is the fact that cantrips are SO useful for Elementalists and are the heart of their survival in PvP and WvW – Though the shouts were useful in PvE situations, I felt that I could only take maybe one at most in WvW and PvP while sacrificing some of my overall defensiveness. For the most part too I felt like the cool downs on the shouts are just a little too long, In a 30 second PvP or WvW fight for what I am getting I would like to be able to use them twice at the least, so maybe a 15 second cool down would be better.

“Feel the Burn!” – Good overall offensive shout. Would like to see it maybe apply 2 or 3 stacks of burning, or do some more initial damage on cast – right now Cleansing Fire is better than this for days.
“Shock and Aftershock” – The most well tuned of the shouts in my opinion in this build and the one I used the most. The utility this skill has is great. It also does the most damage right now which is disappointing because one would that would be the fire shout.
“Eye of the Storm” – This to me was the most undertuned of all the new shouts. The super speed is ok, and the stun break nice – but the skill lacks and utility level the others do. I would love to see this almost be a mini static field and issue a 1 second stun on use in addition to its current set up.
“Flash-Freeze” – I think if the changes I mention above are made this skill is useful and good. Its a middle of the road damage and utility skill that does a little bit of everything, which I like.

Elite Skill: “Rebound”: WTF!?
I’m sorry, but are you serious? Elementalist Elites are the most useless and undertuned Elite skills in the game, and you give us this crap? It has a channel, that makes it useless because I really only ever want to use it on my healing skills so now it essentially makes my healing skill take just as long because I have to channel rebound before I heal (Which could result in my death) just to get a negligible cool down reduction… crap, total crap. I would honestly prefer this in the slot of Sand Squall on Warhorn earth 4. It might actually see play there….

Overloading Attunements:
This was the thing I was the most excited for, and the most disappointed with. The fundamental problem for me was the initial cool down. I always felt like I had to rotate attunements before the initial cool down and channel leaving me feeling like these are more for small scale and PvP. Additionally – while traited for the extra defensiveness I felt as though I was still too squishy to be riding the front line using these to help our team out in WvW. The cost of an initial cool down AND channel is just too much right now. Maybe a 3 second initial CD would be better. I was ok with the longer cool down after overload, that seemed fine to me. I also felt like the overload skills were a little underwhelming for the cost and really need to be a game changer for the current cost, which they are not.

Trait Line
I agree with most of the feedback presented here on the Traits. I think more experimentation and play testing is needed for em to really give feedback on this element of the tempest at this time.

Most of the previous posters have covered my feelings on the Tempest, so I’ll just add one thing (unless I just missed someone else saying it) :

I feel like the overloads are a visual disappointment. They sound like they should be a really big move in your bag of tricks (because the stupid filter won’t let me use the word I wanted), but aren’t any more visually stunning than any other attack. I tried them all out and I was just thinking “that’s it?”.

The basic animations are cool, but there is still a lot of room for improvement, to make them look like you’re actually overloading your power.

My suggestions:

Overloads and their traits:
- Before balancing the related traits, overloads themselves need to be drastically reworked into something usable. They need to reduce the huge penalties with overloads, as buffing them to be on-par with the costs (5s pre-charge, 5s channel to complete, 20s recharge on attunement) would require them to be incredibly OP (basically 1-shot people, full-heal, go invuln).
- The options for overload recharge to ever be viable:
1. Overloads can be used instantly, but using them exhausts you and attunement CD’s are increased. This basically functions like signets: using them becomes situational, where you give up long-term benefits for something right now.
2. Overloads are not available until 5s after swapping, but carry no additional penalty. This turns overloads into something you hold out for sometimes to benefit from, or supports camping in individual attunements longer.
- The options for cast-times to be acceptable
1. The cast times are short and the effect is above average in power given the cost to access.
2. The channels are relatively long but give very strong effects during the duration (much stronger than auto-attacks).
3. The channels are medium-length and do little during, but have a HUGE payoff at the end (like churning earth).

Shouts:
- These honestly need shorter cooldowns and need to be tweaked to do a little more.

Warhorn:
- Fields should be stationary, moving is awkward.
- Slow-moving projectiles (air 5, earth 5) need to be COMPLETELY reworked. Either make it a field or make it a faster projectile.
- CC – either increase the speed at which they hit, or decrease the cast time. CC’s need to be relatively fast to respond, but not suffer from long cast times (as long as 1s) AND slow to reach their target. 1 OR the other.