Guild Wars 2

first, a definition:
“A benefit, profit, or value of something that must be given up to acquire or achieve something else.

Read more: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/opportunity-cost.html#ixzz3iW41tZAt"

in the world of GW2, opportunity costs appear whenever you can potentially choose one option over others, in the form of the potential loss of the other options while you are doing the one you’ve chosen. this applies for skill usage, trait/traitline selection, equipment selection, as well as the topic at hand: Tempest overloads. using the concept of opportunity costs, i’m going to argue that the current Overload implementation is a design dead end, and should be scrapped.

so, for those who don’t know: Overloads currently are abilities that become available to a Tempest when they’ve camped in one attunement for 5 seconds. there are 4 Overloads, one for each attunement. all Overloads are long channeling abilities (5-6 seconds, IIRC). all Overloads have effects while being channeled, and and another set of effects that appear when they’re fully channeled. all Overloads are put on a 20 seconds (14 seconds traited) cooldown once they end, and this cooldown is shared with their respective attunements. this means that for example, if you channel fire overload and it ends, your fire attunement is placed on a 20 second cooldown, making it unavailable to you if you choose it leave it.

now, let’s consider the opportunity cost of using an Overload:

• you first need to stay in the respective attunement for 5 seconds. depending on the build, this attunement may or may not be the one that you should camp in the first place. there’s also the opportunity cost of potentially doing something else in the 5 seconds that you have to camp in this attunement, especially in cases where the skills you need are in ANOTHER attunement.
• then there’s the channeling itself. Overloads are long channeling abilities that stop channeling if you try to do any other action that isn’t an instant cast. the opportunity cost here is that this effectively locks you out of most of your weapon and utility skills while you are channeling
• lastly, there’s the shared 20 second cooldown after channeling. the opportunity cost here is on two fronts: 1) you are either forced to stay in the current attunement for 20 seconds because you don’t get to go back to it for 20 seconds, thereby costing you 3/4 of your weapon abilities, or 2) you are forced to leave the current attunement, thereby locking yourself out of that attunement and its skills. this becomes doubly bad if you are specced into Arcana, since you also lose your “on switch” effects like protection on earth, might on fire, etc.

and here’s the crux of my argument: by examining the various opportunity costs of Overloads, the times where using said Overloads vs their opportunity costs is… NEVER. the Overload effects simply aren’t powerful enough to be EVER worth using.

and it gets worse: Overloads also cannot be buffed so that they are worth the opportunity costs, because they’d be ridiculously overpowered. imagine a fire overload capable of out damaging a fire staff attack chain, one of the most damaging damage rotations in the game; and not only for the channel duration, but for the potential 20 seconds afterwards that you might be forced out of it, thus locking you out. or, how about a water overload having to AoE heal for over 12K health to compensate for the potential loss of the powerful water utility skills, or being forced to camp in water for 20 seconds a losing the other potential abilities in other attunements.

so basically, the Overloads are at a dead end. they aren’t worth the opportunity costs to cast them, so they’ll never get used, which is not good. if they are buffed, they become gamebreakingly overpowered, which is also not good. as such, it’s time to start over.

with all that said, here’s how i would fix Overloads:

• 1st, decouple Overload cooldown from attunements. i’d do this by adding a F5 key for Tempests that functions as the Overload button. every time you switch attunements, the Overload F5 button changes to match the attunement, and goes on its 5 second chargeup cooldown. once you finish channeling the Overload, F5 goes on its 20 second recovery cooldown, and your current attunement isn’t affected. this removes the opportunity cost of either losing 3/4 or 1/4 of your weapon skills, making Overloads capable of being balanced without having to compete with attunements.

• 2nd, make it so Overloads aren’t channeled abilities. instead, make them work similarly to Armor of Earth, or Arcane Shield, in that they are fire and forget abilities. their overall effects can stay as is, but will require tweaking since they won’t be competing with skill usage while they are active. ALTERNATIVELY: reduce their channel time by half. either way, this change is to either eliminate or reduce the opportunity cost of not being able to use other skills while the Overloads are channeling.

• 3rd, implement different cooldowns for each Overload. for example, water can have a 15 second cooldown, fire 30 seconds, earth 40 seconds, etc. this removes the need to balance all Overloads on a common cooldown, which allows for greater freedom when designing their effects.

by decoupling Overload cooldowns from attunements, Overloads can now be balanced on their own merits, and not having to compete with a ton of other things.

TL;DR: Overloads need to have their cooldowns decoupled from their respective attunements in order to be properly balanced. also, F5 button for Overloads.

I like the thoughts listed here. I tried out the tempest a little bit over the weekend, and I don’t feel there was ever a point where I wanted to use an Overload. I was just using Tempest to get to the warhorn.

To me, the Warhorn represents the only thing that I was picking up Tempest for, and it was with a feeling of having to just quietly ignore the Overload mechanic. It feels tacked on, and not really integral to how Tempest functioned.

This is an interesting idea. I do think it might be possible to adjust the cost/benefit ratio with an analogue of the current system that could make sense, but you’re right that the benefits of Overloading would have to be ludicrously powerful to the point where they might be difficult for other professions to deal with in a PvP situation.

Alternately, the effects could be changed to incomparables: currently, Fire a) deals damage, b) applies Burning to foes, and c) applies Might to allies. These are all things that can be accessed with your standard Fire skills, so the Fire Overload is always going to be competing with them, so it’s never going to be worth using unless it gives you way more of those three things than your basic skills.

However, what if overloading Fire also caused you to destroy projectiles, burning them up before they hit anything? What if overloading Water also reduced allies’ healing skill cooldowns or pulsed Slow onto enemies? What if the Air attunement caused you to rise up into the sky, moving you out of range of melee abilities? What if Earth created temporary terrain behind you which opened up for allies but blocked enemy movement and dash abilities (or if that’s too difficult to code, maybe just leaves behind unstable terrain that does something similar)?

Then, Overloads are an interesting option because they give you new effects which were unavailable/difficult to access before, and they might actually be worth the time.

That said, I don’t mean to hijack your thread or anything, because I do think it makes a lot of sense to move Overloads to the F5 key as well and give them each separate cooldowns. I don’t think they should be fire-and-forget, though, since they’d have to be watered down rather significantly.

Good ideas, but like Blaine said, I think it would be MUCH better if Overloads weren’t competing with the attunements themselves.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Alternately, the effects could be changed to incomparables: currently, Fire a) deals damage, b) applies Burning to foes, and c) applies Might to allies. These are all things that can be accessed with your standard Fire skills, so the Fire Overload is always going to be competing with them, so it’s never going to be worth using unless it gives you way more of those three things than your basic skills.

However, what if overloading Fire also caused you to destroy projectiles, burning them up before they hit anything? What if overloading Water also reduced allies’ healing skill cooldowns or pulsed Slow onto enemies? What if the Air attunement caused you to rise up into the sky, moving you out of range of melee abilities? What if Earth created temporary terrain behind you which opened up for allies but blocked enemy movement and dash abilities (or if that’s too difficult to code, maybe just leaves behind unstable terrain that does something similar)?

Then, Overloads are an interesting option because they give you new effects which were unavailable/difficult to access before, and they might actually be worth the time.

Malchior.5732:

Good ideas, but like Blaine said, I think it would be MUCH better if Overloads weren’t competing with the attunements themselves.

these are good ideas, but if we do not decouple overload cooldowns from attunements, overloads will be competing with attunements no matter what effects we attach to overloads. think of it this way: we can completely reassign the current overloads onto different elements, like air to fire, earth to water, etc, and it still wouldn’t change the opportunity cost analysis.

until we decouple overload cooldowns from attunements, there’s no point in adjusting the overload effects themselves. they’re guaranteed to be either useless or overpowered.

moriz.5473:

Blaine Tog.8304:

Alternately, the effects could be changed to incomparables: currently, Fire a) deals damage, b) applies Burning to foes, and c) applies Might to allies. These are all things that can be accessed with your standard Fire skills, so the Fire Overload is always going to be competing with them, so it’s never going to be worth using unless it gives you way more of those three things than your basic skills.

However, what if overloading Fire also caused you to destroy projectiles, burning them up before they hit anything? What if overloading Water also reduced allies’ healing skill cooldowns or pulsed Slow onto enemies? What if the Air attunement caused you to rise up into the sky, moving you out of range of melee abilities? What if Earth created temporary terrain behind you which opened up for allies but blocked enemy movement and dash abilities (or if that’s too difficult to code, maybe just leaves behind unstable terrain that does something similar)?

Then, Overloads are an interesting option because they give you new effects which were unavailable/difficult to access before, and they might actually be worth the time.

Malchior.5732:

Good ideas, but like Blaine said, I think it would be MUCH better if Overloads weren’t competing with the attunements themselves.

these are good ideas, but if we do not decouple overload cooldowns from attunements, overloads will be competing with attunements no matter what effects we attach to overloads. think of it this way: we can completely reassign the current overloads onto different elements, like air to fire, earth to water, etc, and it still wouldn’t change the opportunity cost analysis.

until we decouple overload cooldowns from attunements, there’s no point in adjusting the overload effects themselves. they’re guaranteed to be either useless or overpowered.

Ideally, they would do something the attunements could never do before in exchange for something else. Can’t make them a direct upgrade, but can’t leave them with the current drawbacks either.

Malchior.5732:

Ideally, they would do something the attunements could never do before in exchange for something else. Can’t make them a direct upgrade, but can’t leave them with the current drawbacks either.

my point is that it doesn’t change anything. without decoupling the cooldowns, the same opportunity costs will still apply, with the same results.

also, anet is missing a perfectly good opportunity to introduce something completely cool and awesome, and i can’t believe that they aren’t doing it: TRANSFORMS.

combine with my idea with decoupled cooldowns and F5, we can have something like this for air overload:

Air Overload: Transform into an Aspect of Storms, giving you and your allies 3 seconds of superspeed. While in this Form, all of your attacks inflict vulnerability

skill 1: Arc Lightning. strike your foe with a bolt of lightning, which then strikes up to 3 targets behind your target. 600 range, 0.75s cast time, 600 range per bounce, up to 2 bounces per target

skill 2: Backdraft. pull foes in front of you towards your location. foes that are successfully pulled are then dazed for 0.5 seconds afterwards. 600 range, 100 degrees spread, 1.25s cast time, 5 target limit

skill 3: Shocking Armor. you and your allies gain Shocking Aura for 2 seconds. for 5 seconds, foes near you are periodically struck by lightning

skill 4: Blinding Speed. charge forward and leave a trail of static behind you. foes struck by the trail takes damage and are blinded. 450 range, lightning field

skill 5: Nova. leave Aspect of Storms. Sends out a ring of lightning that stuns and damages foes. allies near you gain swiftness for 10 seconds.

just an idea. will require thorough balancing, but i think it sounds cool.

moriz.5473:

these are good ideas, but if we do not decouple overload cooldowns from attunements, overloads will be competing with attunements no matter what effects we attach to overloads. think of it this way: we can completely reassign the current overloads onto different elements, like air to fire, earth to water, etc, and it still wouldn’t change the opportunity cost analysis.

Everything you do in this game will constantly compete with everything else you could be doing at any given time. I should’ve made this clearer initially, but what I was trying to say was that we need to prevent Overloads from competing directly with their associated attunement. They each need to do something thematically appropriate to their element but not just the same thing with bigger numbers. “Buying” an Overload should get you something it couldn’t get by spending your opportunity budget on the base attunement. Then, we could balance the two out without hypercharging the Overload numbers beyond what the game is really capable of handling.

moriz.5473:

until we decouple overload cooldowns from attunements, there’s no point in adjusting the overload effects themselves. they’re guaranteed to be either useless or overpowered.

I disagree. The opportunity cost of locking yourself out of an attunement isn’t just an acceptable price to pay but one the Ele is accustomed to paying. Currently, if you’re in Fire, the cost of switching to Water is putting Fire on cooldown, and that’s a totally fair price because no matter how many Burn stacks you can apply by staying in Fire, if what you need right now is some healing and a Chill field then you’re willing to forgo those Burns for a little while whilst you heal up.

Overloads are comparable to Signets, in a sense, and they come with the same basic design constraint: if the signet active and passive have the same purpose then you’ll be able to math out which to use at any given time and there ceases to be any real decision-making involved. There’s a good decision and a bad decision, end of discussion. This is what happens in the case of badly-designed signets. On the other hand, if the active and passive have slightly different effects, then you can have good reasons for preferring to use or hold onto it. The Signet of Air, for example, is a well-designed signet: a useful passive effect, but popping it for the effects is useful in different circumstances as well.

Regardless of whether Overloads should be decoupled from Attunements (and I’m inclined to agree that they should be, if only to make it impossible to Overload multiple attunements in a row), they also must be given effects beyond what can be easily accomplished by the base attunement skills. Otherwise, they’ll always come down to a pure numbers game, which is much less interesting.

Here’s a Extra Credits episode about this issue in a wider context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lg8fVtKyYxY

moriz.5473:

first, a definition:
“A benefit, profit, or value of something that must be given up to acquire or achieve something else.

First of all, opportunity cost is more the other side of what you’re defining. I mean, what you say is also included in the context, but opportunity cost is, by definition, what you lose by choosing a specific alternative.

In the context of the thead, the opportunity cost is the things you sacrifice to have the option to/cast the overloads.

moriz.5473:

and it gets worse: Overloads also cannot be buffed so that they are worth the opportunity costs, because they’d be ridiculously overpowered. imagine a fire overload capable of out damaging a fire staff attack chain, one of the most damaging damage rotations in the game; and not only for the channel duration, but for the potential 20 seconds afterwards that you might be forced out of it, thus locking you out. or, how about a water overload having to AoE heal for over 12K health to compensate for the potential loss of the powerful water utility skills, or being forced to camp in water for 20 seconds a losing the other potential abilities in other attunements.

so basically, the Overloads are at a dead end. they aren’t worth the opportunity costs to cast them, so they’ll never get used, which is not good. if they are buffed, they become gamebreakingly overpowered, which is also not good. as such, it’s time to start over.

Which comes down to this portion of your post. While I can agree that the opportunity costs are very high for Tempest’s overload, I cannot agree that there could never be a time the opportunity cost is fair or that overloads would have to be overpowered in order to make the opportunity costs seem worthwhile.

The point you don’t touch on too much about opportunity cost is that, it changes from scenario to scenario and from person to person. What I may think isn’t worthwhile you might think is totally worth it. I may think it’s a rip off to pay $5 for a taxi to the store a few blocks away but feel it’s more worthwhile when it’s pouring rain and I need food for dinner. You might feel putting all stats up into offense to kill enemies quick and rely on blinds, dodges and utilities is worthwhile while I feel doing so isn’t when I just want to goof off and not need to concentrate fully or to be able to support allies in various other ways.

While I do find your idea for an F5 interesting (although it’s been suggested before when Tempest was revealed), I don’t think the current implementation is necessarily a dead end (heck, your suggestion partially proves that).

I also don’t think the overloads have to be decoupled from the attunements. It’s one way of improving the Tempest’s mechanic but I feel it’d be more in line with a straight upgrade (just giving Ele more skills to use) when this is suppose to be a different way to play the ele.

Blaine Tog.8304:

I disagree. The opportunity cost of locking yourself out of an attunement isn’t just an acceptable price to pay but one the Ele is accustomed to paying. Currently, if you’re in Fire, the cost of switching to Water is putting Fire on cooldown, and that’s a totally fair price because no matter how many Burn stacks you can apply by staying in Fire, if what you need right now is some healing and a Chill field then you’re willing to forgo those Burns for a little while whilst you heal up.

I think part of the problem is many Ele players are so used to taking traits to mitigate costs to the point of them being a non-factor to them. It’s min/maxing and the thing is people are trying to shove the concept of Tempest into the direction of min/maxing.

Lol but this is coming from someone who often plays without the Arcane line so I’m used to paying different costs for different builds. Players don’t see Arcane as a cost to use, only what costs it mitigates thus their view of opportunity costs are constantly skewed to include Arcane.

Leo G.4501:

moriz.5473:

first, a definition:
“A benefit, profit, or value of something that must be given up to acquire or achieve something else.

First of all, opportunity cost is more the other side of what you’re defining. I mean, what you say is also included in the context, but opportunity cost is, by definition, what you lose by choosing a specific alternative.

In the context of the thead, the opportunity cost is the things you sacrifice to have the option to/cast the overloads.

i think you’ve basically said the same thing using different words. opportunity cost is always about what you give up in order to use another option.

Leo G.4501:

The point you don’t touch on too much about opportunity cost is that, it changes from scenario to scenario and from person to person. What I may think isn’t worthwhile you might think is totally worth it. I may think it’s a rip off to pay $5 for a taxi to the store a few blocks away but feel it’s more worthwhile when it’s pouring rain and I need food for dinner. You might feel putting all stats up into offense to kill enemies quick and rely on blinds, dodges and utilities is worthwhile while I feel doing so isn’t when I just want to goof off and not need to concentrate fully or to be able to support allies in various other ways.

again, this is basically what i’ve been saying all along, but coming from a different perspective. your examples have choices and consequences that are roughly equal and are all relatively mild. the choice of using an overload or not is by comparison gigantic. the loss of either 5 or 20 skills for the cost of one skill is NEVER worthwhile, unless that one skill is incredibly powerful. this reinforces my point, in that overload cooldowns need to be decoupled from attunement cooldowns.

Leo G.4501:

While I do find your idea for an F5 interesting (although it’s been suggested before when Tempest was revealed), I don’t think the current implementation is necessarily a dead end (heck, your suggestion partially proves that).

I also don’t think the overloads have to be decoupled from the attunements. It’s one way of improving the Tempest’s mechanic but I feel it’d be more in line with a straight upgrade (just giving Ele more skills to use) when this is suppose to be a different way to play the ele.

actually it won’t be a straight upgrade, because you’ll have to use the tempest traitline, a rather difficult decision, because the default elementalist traitlines are all incredibly useful, and the tempest traitline is relatively bad. the mere act of equipping tempest is a DPS loss to elementalist, not to mention the loss of various useful traits.

also, my suggestion (assuming you’re talking about the transforms one) doesn’t prove that the current implementation is of any use. it is actually an alternative that is better than the current implementation.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Overloads are comparable to Signets, in a sense, and they come with the same basic design constraint: if the signet active and passive have the same purpose then you’ll be able to math out which to use at any given time and there ceases to be any real decision-making involved. There’s a good decision and a bad decision, end of discussion. This is what happens in the case of badly-designed signets. On the other hand, if the active and passive have slightly different effects, then you can have good reasons for preferring to use or hold onto it. The Signet of Air, for example, is a well-designed signet: a useful passive effect, but popping it for the effects is useful in different circumstances as well.

this isn’t a good comparison, since overloads don’t have much in common with signets. signets for example, don’t lock out multiple skills on activation. overloads also don’t have passive effects, unless you want to count the attunement skills as their passive effects.

what your comparison did actually do, however, is illustrate just how powerful the overloads need to be. signets by and large have relatively mild passive and active effects, since the relative cost of using or not using them is also small. if we treat overloads as signets, and attach attunement skills as their passive effects, then the resulting active effects also needs to be really powerful, since the attunement skills are collectively powerful. would these active effects be powerful enough to be overpowered? i don’t know, but experience tells me that it’s more likely that they’d be overpowered than not.

also somewhat unrelated: overloads as transforms, yay/nay?

moriz.5473:

Leo G.4501:

moriz.5473:

first, a definition:
“A benefit, profit, or value of something that must be given up to acquire or achieve something else.

First of all, opportunity cost is more the other side of what you’re defining. I mean, what you say is also included in the context, but opportunity cost is, by definition, what you lose by choosing a specific alternative.

In the context of the thead, the opportunity cost is the things you sacrifice to have the option to/cast the overloads.

i think you’ve basically said the same thing using different words. opportunity cost is always about what you give up in order to use another option.

Right, I’m just trying to emphasize that point. From what I was reading, it felt like you were emphasizing the choice itself.

moriz.5473:

Leo G.4501:

The point you don’t touch on too much about opportunity cost is that, it changes from scenario to scenario and from person to person. What I may think isn’t worthwhile you might think is totally worth it. I may think it’s a rip off to pay $5 for a taxi to the store a few blocks away but feel it’s more worthwhile when it’s pouring rain and I need food for dinner. You might feel putting all stats up into offense to kill enemies quick and rely on blinds, dodges and utilities is worthwhile while I feel doing so isn’t when I just want to goof off and not need to concentrate fully or to be able to support allies in various other ways.

again, this is basically what i’ve been saying all along, but coming from a different perspective. your examples have choices and consequences that are roughly equal and are all relatively mild. the choice of using an overload or not is by comparison gigantic. the loss of either 5 or 20 skills for the cost of one skill is NEVER worthwhile, unless that one skill is incredibly powerful. this reinforces my point, in that overload cooldowns need to be decoupled from attunement cooldowns.

And this is the part I’m replying to the thread to. Normally I can just critique an idea like the one you present but you’re reinforcing a basis for your idea which is the point I don’t agree with.

You keep saying you lose 5 or 20 skills but that is a false claim, at least in this context. At any given time, so long as the skills in question aren’t instant, you lose access to every other skill. To pin that particular cost on Tempest or Overloads is just sensationalizing the issue.

It can be argued how long you lose access to them being a factor but even then, you can’t pin that on overloads since at any time you swap out of an attunement, you no longer have access to those skills.

To bring the argument around (since I’m not trying to uproot your stance, just make you consider other perspectives), the whole ‘NEVER or overpowered’ point can’t be true either since the duration you’re locked out is left in the choice of the player (to overload or not, to swap or not, to use certain traits to mitigate the cooldowns or not) so said cost is in flux.

So I’d conclude that there can be ways to adjust the spec outside of how you suggest, it just requires more planning and input.

moriz.5473:

actually it won’t be a straight upgrade, because you’ll have to use the tempest traitline, a rather difficult decision, because the default elementalist traitlines are all incredibly useful, and the tempest traitline is relatively bad. the mere act of equipping tempest is a DPS loss to elementalist, not to mention the loss of various useful traits.

also, my suggestion (assuming you’re talking about the transforms one) doesn’t prove that the current implementation is of any use. it is actually an alternative that is better than the current implementation.

I didn’t see the transform idea until now (you posted it while I was drinking my coffee and writing my first post).

As for the use of the trait line being a cost as well, you’re not wrong but I’m sure that can be something to improve as well. I hear a lot of people saying the swiftness on overload and protection on overload should be combined along with other trait improvements. You can’t rule out that the trait line be improved as well as the mechanics being adjusted too. So while using the Tempest line is a cost, so is using any other trait line so I wouldn’t add that to the factors against the opportunity of overloads until we know the line is going live as is.

moriz.5473:

this isn’t a good comparison, since overloads don’t have much in common with signets. signets for example, don’t lock out multiple skills on activation. overloads also don’t have passive effects, unless you want to count the attunement skills as their passive effects.

The comparison is apt since I’m making a very specific point. The “passive” is the ability to freely/mostly-freely swap between attunements (which Eles have as a baseline without using Overloads — much like how Signets have a passive bonus until they are used).

moriz.5473:

what your comparison did actually do, however, is illustrate just how powerful the overloads need to be. signets by and large have relatively mild passive and active effects, since the relative cost of using or not using them is also small. if we treat overloads as signets, and attach attunement skills as their passive effects, then the resulting active effects also needs to be really powerful, since the attunement skills are collectively powerful. would these active effects be powerful enough to be overpowered? i don’t know, but experience tells me that it’s more likely that they’d be overpowered than not.

Which is why their power needs to be shunted into incomparable effects rather than bigger numbers. I don’t want to give up Burns for more Burns; that’s not an interesting choice. I want to give up Burns for a stun, or some Invulnerability frames, or projectile destruction, or something else I can’t otherwise readily access. It’s ok if this new Fire Overload isn’t as good as dishing out damage as standard stance dancing if it does something you need more than straight damage, and the privilege of such new versatility will help soak up some of the power budget so the final Overload effect isn’t ridiculously OP.

moriz.5473:

also somewhat unrelated: overloads as transforms, yay/nay?

Eles already have way too many transforms.

Leo G.4501:

Blaine Tog.8304:

I disagree. The opportunity cost of locking yourself out of an attunement isn’t just an acceptable price to pay but one the Ele is accustomed to paying. Currently, if you’re in Fire, the cost of switching to Water is putting Fire on cooldown, and that’s a totally fair price because no matter how many Burn stacks you can apply by staying in Fire, if what you need right now is some healing and a Chill field then you’re willing to forgo those Burns for a little while whilst you heal up.

I think part of the problem is many Ele players are so used to taking traits to mitigate costs to the point of them being a non-factor to them. It’s min/maxing and the thing is people are trying to shove the concept of Tempest into the direction of min/maxing.

Lol but this is coming from someone who often plays without the Arcane line so I’m used to paying different costs for different builds. Players don’t see Arcane as a cost to use, only what costs it mitigates thus their view of opportunity costs are constantly skewed to include Arcane.

Min/maxing is going to happen, though. It isn’t a problem so much as it is a reality. It’s kinda (kiiiiiiiiiinda) ok for a build to be a bit weaker in a PvE setting as long as it’s still somewhat functional because PvE is pretty easy in general, but this is also a PvP game and PvP is almost entirely about min/maxing. If a given spec is poor, it’ll almost never see use in a PvP setting and that’s a problem.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Leo G.4501:

Blaine Tog.8304:

I disagree. The opportunity cost of locking yourself out of an attunement isn’t just an acceptable price to pay but one the Ele is accustomed to paying. Currently, if you’re in Fire, the cost of switching to Water is putting Fire on cooldown, and that’s a totally fair price because no matter how many Burn stacks you can apply by staying in Fire, if what you need right now is some healing and a Chill field then you’re willing to forgo those Burns for a little while whilst you heal up.

I think part of the problem is many Ele players are so used to taking traits to mitigate costs to the point of them being a non-factor to them. It’s min/maxing and the thing is people are trying to shove the concept of Tempest into the direction of min/maxing.

Lol but this is coming from someone who often plays without the Arcane line so I’m used to paying different costs for different builds. Players don’t see Arcane as a cost to use, only what costs it mitigates thus their view of opportunity costs are constantly skewed to include Arcane.

Min/maxing is going to happen, though. It isn’t a problem so much as it is a reality. It’s kinda (kiiiiiiiiiinda) ok for a build to be a bit weaker in a PvE setting as long as it’s still somewhat functional because PvE is pretty easy in general, but this is also a PvP game and PvP is almost entirely about min/maxing. If a given spec is poor, it’ll almost never see use in a PvP setting and that’s a problem.

Yeah I realize min/maxing will happen, I bought it up because it feels like players want to min/max Tempest INTO Elementalist. Basically, they want to play it exactly like ele and want it to be an upgrade. It’s hard to condense a lot of the feedback on the forums into suggestions to improve Tempest because most suggestions just want overlaods to be spammable add-ons that players can do while dancing through all their attunements unimpeded.

To min/max Tempest should require playing and building differently from Elementalist!

As for the transformation idea, OP, can you flesh out the idea? I think it could be intriguing. My only fault with the idea is that coming up with more skills for every transformation would be a LOT of skills added to ele. May not be a direct problem (just my pet peeve) but might be rather unfair to other professions who get fewer with their spec.

Leo G.4501:

Yeah I realize min/maxing will happen, I bought it up because it feels like players want to min/max Tempest INTO Elementalist. Basically, they want to play it exactly like ele and want it to be an upgrade. It’s hard to condense a lot of the feedback on the forums into suggestions to improve Tempest because most suggestions just want overlaods to be spammable add-ons that players can do while dancing through all their attunements unimpeded.

To min/max Tempest should require playing and building differently from Elementalist!

I disagree, the Chronomancer is an amazing upgrade to the mesmer, it gives them new skills and mechanics they can integrate perfectly into their current build. It doesn’t require them to play against their class mechanic and the shield works with all their main-hand weapons.

The tempest is just something that is unusable by the elementalist class as it is currently played. It doesn’t work with scepter well, the overloads make no sense at staff range, and warhorn doesn’t have what it requires to fulfill its function of a melee weapon. Overall in my opinion Tempest has either been rushed or it is a badly conceived elite profession.

If tempest would do just 1 new thing that we cannot already do, like a smoke field we can blast, alacrity, float, aegis, anything, then it would be interesting potentially. But right now it’s just the contrary, it doesn’t integrate well with the class and is even ineffective in what it is meant to do.

Xillllix.3485:

Leo G.4501:

Yeah I realize min/maxing will happen, I bought it up because it feels like players want to min/max Tempest INTO Elementalist. Basically, they want to play it exactly like ele and want it to be an upgrade. It’s hard to condense a lot of the feedback on the forums into suggestions to improve Tempest because most suggestions just want overlaods to be spammable add-ons that players can do while dancing through all their attunements unimpeded.

To min/max Tempest should require playing and building differently from Elementalist!

I disagree, the Chronomancer is an amazing upgrade to the mesmer, it gives them new skills and mechanics they can integrate perfectly into their current build. It doesn’t require them to play against their class mechanic and the shield works with all their main-hand weapons.

The tempest is just something that is unusable by the elementalist class as it is currently played. It doesn’t work with scepter well, the overloads make no sense at staff range, and warhorn doesn’t have what it requires to fulfill its function of a melee weapon. Overall in my opinion Tempest has either been rushed or it is a badly conceived elite profession.

This. Look at Guard/necro as well. Both modified their class mechanics to change abilites and it effects the playstyle BUT it still is playble with previous builds as well as allowing room for new ones.

Tempest however doesn’t do this. It was lazily slapping on 4 abilities to the attuns. They don’t synergize with A: a new play-style or B: an old one.

If they wanted it to be effective it needed to work with all weapon sets and trait lines. It doesn’t work with staff or scepter. It also doesn’t synergize with trait lines as ALL trait-lines have on swap effects AND not only this but all of our weapons were designed in mind with constant swapping of atune, as shown by horrible autos long CDs and specific utility/control/healing/damage placed exclusively in separate lines. Our weapons are literally balanced around this and then they thought we’d think it was okay to stay in an attunement for 10-20 seconds???

If they wanted us to stay in atune they would have given us a new mainhand to allow for auto attack chains. Or an overload that modifys the current weapon such as reducing CDs, Upgrading the auto chains, new abilites (like an internal atune wep swap)

Alternatively they could have made the overload an actual overload that bursts high amounts of that atune for significant damage/heals/cleanse/controls/mobility etc that would be a risk to blow your atune for 20 sec but a great reward if used properly, this would have to be instantaneous after swap because otherwise there’s no skilled play and decision making involved.

They could have added a synergy bar where the longer you stay in an atune the more it raises. Each teir it goes up you gain benifits such as bonus stats, move speed, regen. At the end you can enter full synergy which gives you acces to abilites or great benifits for staying in a line (again maybe an internal weapon swap or transform to compinstate for the weakness of staying in one atune)

These are new playstyles that could still work with the current ele. If you modify for on attune effects to be On atune and overload it would also help the concept a lot.

The current tempest is just a trash attempt of doing the same thing we can already do

Blaine Tog.8304:

Which is why their power needs to be shunted into incomparable effects rather than bigger numbers. I don’t want to give up Burns for more Burns; that’s not an interesting choice. I want to give up Burns for a stun, or some Invulnerability frames, or projectile destruction, or something else I can’t otherwise readily access. It’s ok if this new Fire Overload isn’t as good as dishing out damage as standard stance dancing if it does something you need more than straight damage, and the privilege of such new versatility will help soak up some of the power budget so the final Overload effect isn’t ridiculously OP.

I agree with this completely. For overloads to ever be balanced AND usable they must either:
1. Offer NEW functionality so that they aren’t competing in an apples:apples competition where it is either strictly better or completely worthless.

OR

2. Offer a time/payback period option by modifying costs over time. In other words, if you could immediately overload an attunement to get a burst effect as soon as you swapped in, but then had to suffer the longer CD, it offers an interesting choice: Do I get the payoff NOW (because I need it), or can I hold on to be in a better position over time. As an example, if I could swap into water, EA-dodge heal, use 1 or 2 skills (maybe) and immediately overload to get a quick burst heal, there are times when that would be preferable. However, if I do that overload, after about 10s or maybe 20s being able to swap without overloading would provide greater net benefit.

Regardless of which option they pursue, the rediculous costs of overloading now will never make them worthwhile unless they are game-breakingly OP (to justify their associated risks).

Leo G.4501:

Yeah I realize min/maxing will happen, I bought it up because it feels like players want to min/max Tempest INTO Elementalist. Basically, they want to play it exactly like ele and want it to be an upgrade. It’s hard to condense a lot of the feedback on the forums into suggestions to improve Tempest because most suggestions just want overlaods to be spammable add-ons that players can do while dancing through all their attunements unimpeded.

To min/max Tempest should require playing and building differently from Elementalist!

Sure, but it still has to measure up to stance-dancing in power level if it’s going to see serious play. I would be totally on-board with a spec that let you stay in one attunement for longer, but given how powerful switching around is, you would need one tremendously impactful spec to be worth it.