Guild Wars 2

I’m going to explain everything I think is wrong with the tempest specialization and give some suggestions on how I think it could be improved to be competitive with other ele builds in pvp. I chose the pvp perspective because tempest lacks damage modifiers, meaning it’s pretty suboptimal in pve. I’m not going to be looking at the warhorn weapon since that’s a topic for a whole other thread. Feel free to correct me if anything I say is wrong.

Overloads
The entire premise of overloading is that sometimes it should be better to stick with one attunement rather than rotate through them like elementalists currently do. However, the reason elementalists have always rotated is that sticking in one attunement long enough to start autoattacking is almost always a loss of dps, healing, and other utility. If Anet wants to make overloading viable, we need to get autoattacks that aren’t garbage. Seriously, I was trying to make a build that didn’t use water or arcana, and I thought it would be a good idea to try and heal myself with the water overload. However, sitting in water for 5 seconds it so brutal that I gave up on that concept completely.

This brings me to my second point. Reduce the 5 seconds of sitting in your attunement required to cast overloads. Up until now, there has been no reason to sit in water or earth attunement for longer than 3 seconds. If I’m sacrificing arcana to take the tempest line then that’s another second I won’t need to be in water or earth. We’re already sacrificing a lot by locking ourselves out of attunements for an entire 20 seconds. Don’t add even more unnecessary waiting to overloads.

Finally, it seems pretty clear to me that Overload radiuses are way too small. This is the sort of problem that arises when you’re testing out new mechanics against immobile golems rather than actual players. One of the greatest strengths of d/d ele imo is that we have slightly better than melee range. We can deal loads of damage to our enemies while staying just out of the range at which they can hit us back. Overloads work against this fact by forcing us to stand directly on top of the enemy that we’re fighting. If overloads like fire and air had somewhat higher radiuses, we’d be able to damage opponents without there being a guarantee of us getting stunned out of it.

Minor traits
The current minor traits are pretty terrible when compared against other lines. They should all be combined together into one minor trait that gives us overloads with protection and swiftness. I’m not entirely sure what they should do with the other two minor traits, though. Anet stated that they wanted the tempest to be a supportive class as well as a frontliner, so maybe make the increased protection strength into a minor trait? Another possibility would be something like the altruistic healing trait on guardians. Elementalists don’t give out as many boons as guardians, though, so idk how strong that would be. It might even end up being over powered. Hopefully you guys have better ideas for new minors than me.

Major Traits
Gale Song: Seems cool. I’m fine with it as it is. Although considering the fact that the other shouts all give auras, it seems weird that Eye of the storm doesn’t give you a shocking aura.
Latent Stamina: You’re giving us a mechanic that increases the cooldown on our attunement, and then punishing us for using that mechanic? This trait should just give us vigor on every attunement swap, with a 10 second cooldown. The amount of vigor should be increased so that this trait isn’t just plain worse than renewing stamina.
Unstable Conduit: We should get the aura at the start rather than at the end. Having a shocking aura would make it more plausible for me to actually finish casting the air attunement. Besides, even if we cancel the cast to keep the aura, we’re still on a 20 second cooldown for the whole attunement.

Earthen Proxy: This should really just be a minor trait. If Anet is determined to keep this a major trait, they should add something like 20% protection duration to it, or just combine it with the elemental shielding trait from Earth, since no one really uses the earth line anyway.
Harmonious Conduit: Overloads are already pretty terrible so I don’t feel incentivized to cast them in the first place. Can’t say how useful this will be until overloads get an overhaul.
Tempestuous Aria: This just seems weaker than earthen proxy. Maybe if it had longer weakness and reduced shout cooldowns it would be worth taking?

Elemental Bastion: This seems like the only reason to take the tempest line right now. I keep trying to make auramancer builds but the problem is that the aura traits are just so spread out that it’s impossible to get something that even comes close to the standard d/d cele build. I think Anet needs to fix the Powerful Auras trait in water so that you share auras you get by using combo fields. The only auras that shouldn’t be shared are ones that other eles give us with their own aura sharing trait. They should also make it so that all auras stack in duration, instead of just frost aura.
Imbued Melodies: This trait could be good so long as it only goes on cooldown when you actually break a stun, rather than every time you cast a warhorn skill.
Lucid Singularity: Again, overloads aren’t really worth casting right now, but it could be useful as an “Oh, crap!” skill. Still, I’d rather just use Elemental Bastion to stay out of trouble in the first place.

Shouts
I don’t care how good these are mechanically, I can’t bare yelling this cheesy crap. “Wash the pain away!” “Feel the burn!” Seriously, they may as well rename this specialization to Yoga Instructor. Jokes aside, they really need to remove all the annoying yelling from these skills.

Right now, elementalists exclusively use cantrips. The reason for that is that we have the lowest base health and lowest base armor of any class, meaning that we are trying to take as much selfish survivability as we can. Why do you think everyone takes Arcana and Water?

Wash the Pain Away!: Throw an aura onto this. Maybe a light aura? Just as long as it triggers the aura traits it could be useful.
Feel the burn!: This trait seems kind of weak in the damage department. Maybe change it to two stacks?
Eye of the Storm!: Seems like a niche ability. They should add a shocking aura to it to make it align with the rest of the shout utilities.
Shock and Aftershock!: We don’t need this offensive utility. The cooldown is wayyy too long for the effect it provides anyway. I’d rather see an instant cast shout with a 3 second cooldown that grants 3 seconds of stability. This could go a long way in helping teammates secure safe stomps. It might also help during a push in wvw, if there are enough stacks of stability. Idk much about zerg warfare, though.
Flash Freeze!: This trait overall seemed pretty boring. I’d honestly rather see this replaced with wash the pain away as a utility skill. That might be a bit overpowered in the healing department though.
Rebound. First of all, why does this skill get a period when all the other shouts have exclamation points? I guess it just shows that not even Anet is excited about it. I’d much rather see a skill that reduces the cooldowns of all skills by 5 seconds. I don’t even want it to be AoE. It’s just that having a way to reduce our cooldowns every once in awhile might make it worth casting an overload or two on occasion.

Final Thoughts
In order to make the tempest work, we need to see some serious fixes to mechanics that are already in place. Almost all of our autoattacks are terrible, making it a pain to sit in an attunement long enough to reach elemental singularity. There are also tons of other mediocre skills on our weapons like Focus 4 and 5 in fire attunement and about half the skills on scepter. Also, there’s very little consolidation in our aura traits. Fixing powerful auras and merging elemental shielding into Earthen proxy might alleviate that.

I really hope Anet devs start responding to posts in the elementalist forum because playing a supportive auramancer build looks like a lot of fun, but right now it’s just mediocre.

So basically to clarify
;
Everything we all claimed when we heard the announcement – We were then told to wait for the reveal.
Everything we said after the reveal – We were then told to wait and play it.
And everything is still the same after playing it.

Anet you need to be public about what you plan to do. This spec is in a horrible place and just number tweaking will not solve the problem. Traits need a rework (especially 2 new minors to make up for the 1 that takes 3 spots) Shouts need buffs. The Elite would be better if it just was an icon that said “LOL” and causes your character to make a rude remark at your current target, seriously the mind games of a taunt would be better than this elite. Its a joke how bad it is.

RyanThomas.4182:

Up until now, there has been no reason to sit in water or earth attunement for longer than 3 seconds.

This is a problem with getting an offhand weapon. This class is supposed to be for group support, yet scepter and MH dagger are both only really useful in air and fire, and neither of those weapon/element combinations have anything to do with group support, or any synergy at all with the tempest traits or WH.

OneKlicKill.4285:

So basically to clarify
;
Everything we all claimed when we heard the announcement – We were then told to wait for the reveal.
Everything we said after the reveal – We were then told to wait and play it.
And everything is still the same after playing it.

Anet you need to be public about what you plan to do. This spec is in a horrible place and just number tweaking will not solve the problem. Traits need a rework (especially 2 new minors to make up for the 1 that takes 3 spots) Shouts need buffs. The Elite would be better if it just was an icon that said “LOL” and causes your character to make a rude remark at your current target, seriously the mind games of a taunt would be better than this elite. Its a joke how bad it is.

My guess is that they didn’t have enough time between the livestream and now to make major changes in skill/trait functionality, like they did with reaper/chrono (lots of things changed for them). All that they changed since the livestream was reducing the cooldowns of wildfire and water globe.

nearlight.3064:

OneKlicKill.4285:

So basically to clarify
;
Everything we all claimed when we heard the announcement – We were then told to wait for the reveal.
Everything we said after the reveal – We were then told to wait and play it.
And everything is still the same after playing it.

Anet you need to be public about what you plan to do. This spec is in a horrible place and just number tweaking will not solve the problem. Traits need a rework (especially 2 new minors to make up for the 1 that takes 3 spots) Shouts need buffs. The Elite would be better if it just was an icon that said “LOL” and causes your character to make a rude remark at your current target, seriously the mind games of a taunt would be better than this elite. Its a joke how bad it is.

My guess is that they didn’t have enough time between the livestream and now to make major changes in skill/trait functionality, like they did with reaper/chrono (lots of things changed for them). All that they changed since the livestream was reducing the cooldowns of wildfire and water globe.

This is true, completely starting from scratch will take some time. THe sword animations will take a bit more time than WH.

I just want to point out that anet intended for tempest to be frontline support. Of course its not optimal in pvp

so if tempest sucks, is there any reason for main eles (pvp only) to buy the expansion?

Marcos.3690:

so if tempest sucks, is there any reason for main eles (pvp only) to buy the expansion?

Odds are yes and if you spvp only then you must get bored only playing one class or your like most spvp players and play more then one class.

Tempest is support that is the point of the class dmg is not.

OP and 2nd poster are on point, the rest I’m pretty sure don’t even have an ele.

You should post this in the HoT forum. Not sure they look here for beta feedback.

OneKlicKill.4285:

So basically to clarify
;
Everything we all claimed when we heard the announcement – We were then told to wait for the reveal.
Everything we said after the reveal – We were then told to wait and play it.
And everything is still the same after playing it.

Anet you need to be public about what you plan to do. This spec is in a horrible place and just number tweaking will not solve the problem. Traits need a rework (especially 2 new minors to make up for the 1 that takes 3 spots) Shouts need buffs. The Elite would be better if it just was an icon that said “LOL” and causes your character to make a rude remark at your current target, seriously the mind games of a taunt would be better than this elite. Its a joke how bad it is.

Please give me this skill. I would trade fgs for it. Plus I could trait to gain 2 might on use. Please Anet, I need this.