Guild Wars 2

I’m the only one that think that Tempes will be good?
I’m the only one happy about the warhorn? (not the expected weapon but it will have very good AoE effects and visual effects)

Azel.4786:

Remedy.3429:

I want everyone claiming this elite spec “sucks” or “is completely useless” or “that its making them not even want to buy the expansion” to swear an oath that they will never play it. We are having a live stream today, and I bet it’s going to showcase some traits that are going to make this spec a lot better than you think it is. Mark my words, Tempest will return dagger/x to PvE.

Great, a PvE only specialization then? Boy so glad they really tried to give us something designed for a single game mode and not something that could be used in PvP and WvW, cause you know, there is no elementalist that plays those modes.

And also, in PvE anything works. I usually run D/D in PvE because I like the weapon pair, even if I know staff is far superior.

And as Kodiak said, we will see the math soon enough, but it is really digging it’s own grave when the specialization is offering most of its stuff for a single game mode.

I never said it was a PvE only spec? You guys sure do like to skim over things just to hate on something. I think the new spec is looking less solid on the pve side. We already know warhorn has a fire field, and shouts don’t look too bad depending on how the traits affect them. There’s also rune of the trooper, but I’m skeptical on that because it would hinder our damage too much.

Right now pvp has d/d cele, bunker staff, and d/f condi. D/d is obviously the go to, but for PvE it’s basically staff or nothing. I think if overloading in air is good we will see more daggers in PvE because of fresh air. It’d also be good for staff pvp because air is pretty pointless, so if we go to a fight with singularity ready, we can use it in air and not have to worry about being locked out of air.

I think people are going in to this with the wrong point of view. Elite specs aren’t supposed to make the class better (it can, but that isn’t the goal). It’s just there to make the class different. It would make sense if Tempest wasn’t as good as d/d cele because d/d cele is already so good it would be kind of crazy to get something better. It won’t take the place of d/d I think, but it might open a new role. We will just have to wait and see. You can’t please both sides of the traits aren’t adjusted for each game type. Just look at engi.

I think we can expect tempest to be stronger in PvE than in PvP just based off of Te current meta build’s dominance. I am optimistic that this will improve d/f (or d/w) for dungeons and fractals providing the new traitline has damage modifiers so that we can use fire/air/tempest.

Silv.9207:

I’m the only one that think that Tempes will be good?
I’m the only one happy about the warhorn? (not the expected weapon but it will have very good AoE effects and visual effects)

No, you’re not the only one.

Personally, I’m not unhappy. I’m just reserving any sort of final judgement until I can actually try it.

PlatinumMember.5274:

SapereAude.2748:

Argol Vazin.3061:

NayNay.7680:

So many people are complaining about the elite skill and claiming Elementalist doesn’t have any good elites at all…

I’m still happy with Tornado. And now we get FIRE tornado! We can even have swiftness and protection while channeling it?

Spin to win, my brothers. Spin to win.

You are part of the problem…unless being sarcastic. No one likes Tornado.

Since Patch Tornado is at least for PVP and WvW most valuable Elite Skill. Just trait Air and Water and you nuke everything with it, get healing and vigor etc. Tornado is since a long time pretty awesome if you know how 2 Play it.

Are you sure you are talking about tornado?

Ofc, compare to fgs and elemental glyph tornado is way more bether for pvp and wvw than the other 2.
Trait in Water Soothing disruption, cd of tornado ist reduce to 120 s, you gain vigor/reg. With tempest defense and lightning rod you increase the dmg of the tornado, because of the high amount of cc. (each cc additional lightning strike for 2k-4k). But yeah, if you want just play the crap posting on metabattle, tornado isn’t an option, but in my opinion tornado most underrated elite skill, because if you can us it you are able 2 decide the fight for your side.

Bryzy.2719:

Arobain.8274:

another elitist

I see wot u did ther m8

I don’t need to see the livestream or read about any more of the traits to know that I don’t wanna play an elementalist with a sodding warhorn and more support skills :’) GG not being given sword.

hmmm wheres the support? everything we’re getting is PURE damage lmfao, what the buff mechanic in the Elite? every proffession is getting some sorta Useful buff to help everyone out, not just elementalist.

Tempest is a Zerker built Specc, it’ll be used for our all in builds with alot less survivability as a trade off, im sorry but its ridiculous to look at Overload and Singularity and assume support, they have NOTHING but pure damage!

Kodiak.3281:

Remedy.3429:

Mark my words, Tempest will return dagger/x to PvE.

Oh I’m marking your words and rest assured there’s a very active speed clear community who will be doing the math on how actually useful it will be for PvE.

That said I don’t need to have a live stream presentation on a dog kitten to know it stinks and I shouldn’t pick it up. I have pre-existing knowledge and thought that tells me all I need to know about it.

The same is applied here. I don’t need a stream to explain to me why a front line Elementalist won’t work, I have game play knowledge that understands why current front line classes work and enough of a preview to know that we’re not getting anything that gives us those necessary front line tools.

But stream in 3.5 hours! I can’t wait to be able to factually discuss the new Tempest skills/traits and this ridiculous, “Wait and see!” argument no longer can be used.

its not a “wait and see!” Argument, its simply the fact that 1) Numbers arnt balanced til its release, you only seeing what the specc will do, not Numbers etc etc, everything can be buffed, Look at rev, it Sucked now its prolly 500x More powerful after the beta weekend, this will take place with all the Elite specializations too, Taking the “balance” of the Proffessions elite is Stupid, U wont know the balance Meta or Strengths UNTIL the expansion.

this merely shows u what to expect gameplay wise, Animations Spell Effects and the Mechanics of the Proffession nothing to do with what metas or game modes it’ll fit or its balance….

A couple of things:

PvE in this game is so kitten easy, it honestly doesn’t matter what you bring in my eyes (outside of say level 30+ fractals, which I don’t do anymore, or speed runs if you’re into that) as long as you try to max out your damage output as much as you can with your playstyle. And honestly, as an ele, as long as you use icebows like every fight, no ones going to care if you don’t use staff.

As for pvp, I think it will work. I’m expecting something similar to old shoutbow in terms of support and tankiness, but with more damage and CC. I hate that so many of you are being overwhelmingly negative, its honestly so despair-inducing to read. The livestream is soon, and I’m excited for it, I think the warhorn skills in particular (and non channel related traits) will seal the deal for tempest.

Still, I don’t think it will be perfect, so I will be righting a detailed post with feedback about each skill and trait to find contructive ways the devs could improve it without making it overpowered.

Finally, I’d just like to say that whining about how much you think something will suck is totally pointless. If you want to help, its much better to give constructive feedback that will help the devs finalize the profession, instead of meaningless complaining. I know they do listen to feedback in some regard, they even changed the elite reaper shout to give stability instead of resistance based on community feedback, along with a ton of changes for the revenant that the community helped to suggest.

SapereAude.2748:

PlatinumMember.5274:

SapereAude.2748:

Argol Vazin.3061:

NayNay.7680:

So many people are complaining about the elite skill and claiming Elementalist doesn’t have any good elites at all…

I’m still happy with Tornado. And now we get FIRE tornado! We can even have swiftness and protection while channeling it?

Spin to win, my brothers. Spin to win.

You are part of the problem…unless being sarcastic. No one likes Tornado.

Since Patch Tornado is at least for PVP and WvW most valuable Elite Skill. Just trait Air and Water and you nuke everything with it, get healing and vigor etc. Tornado is since a long time pretty awesome if you know how 2 Play it.

Are you sure you are talking about tornado?

Ofc, compare to fgs and elemental glyph tornado is way more bether for pvp and wvw than the other 2.
Trait in Water Soothing disruption, cd of tornado ist reduce to 120 s, you gain vigor/reg. With tempest defense and lightning rod you increase the dmg of the tornado, because of the high amount of cc. (each cc additional lightning strike for 2k-4k). But yeah, if you want just play the crap posting on metabattle, tornado isn’t an option, but in my opinion tornado most underrated elite skill, because if you can us it you are able 2 decide the fight for your side.

Yeah, decide ultimate doom for yourself when you get focused and can’t heal.

Fgs escape > everything

Why people think that overcharges are a “must use” type of skill? As far as I can see, the overcharge will be a choice, that will reward map and situation awareness and strong CC presence on the battlefield was something the ele always lacked , skills like : a cyclone that pull enemies in from stealth, an area pulsing blind are what I’m looking for the most

Supreme.3164:

Why people think that overcharges are a “must use” type of skill? As far as I can see, the overcharge will be a choice, that will reward map and situation awareness and strong CC presence on the battlefield was something the ele always lacked , skills like : a cyclone that pull enemies in from stealth, an area pulsing blind are what I’m looking for the most

One thing is certain, if it uses the same F1-F4 keys it’s going to be really annoying, because everyone is mashing these keys multiple time when changing attunement in combat to change asap. It has to be F5.

Outside of healing, support is king in GW2. Some would say that it’s DPS that’s king but in fact there is no DPS without good support.

In this area, the elementalist is already pretty good and it feel like the Tempest will bring even more tools for this.

There is really 1 and only one thing that interest me in the POI. It’s what they’ve done with the cast time and cool down of the futur shouts since any shout with a cast time will be more or less useless in fast paced fight. (At the same time, if there is no cast time and short CD, the necromancer’s community will have a reason to complain… I’m so excited to see this!)

There is no way warhorn can be good.

inb4 ele OP

Xillllix.3485:

Supreme.3164:

Why people think that overcharges are a “must use” type of skill? As far as I can see, the overcharge will be a choice, that will reward map and situation awareness and strong CC presence on the battlefield was something the ele always lacked , skills like : a cyclone that pull enemies in from stealth, an area pulsing blind are what I’m looking for the most

One thing is certain, if it uses the same F1-F4 keys it’s going to be really annoying, because everyone is mashing these keys multiple time when changing attunement in combat to change asap. It has to be F5.

You get a window of 5 seconds before you can start overloading, so that won’t be a problem at all! Its probably the best gap time they could give it.

Well would be nice to see it work against something else than golems :/

based on the ready up, tempest is bad.

I don’t care what negative material you guys come up with, tempest is awesome. That is all

Your argument is compelling.

I agree with you. i see Aura Share Tempest/Water/Air 1/2 shout 1/2 cantip being OP. Let the ele frontline chaos begin!

Tempest is looking pretty fun. Tossing elementy AoE all around with warhorn, shouting at allies, and Earth’s overload is pretty silly looking. I think eles who really think it’s terrible should just wash the pain away.

No invulnerability. No blocks. No evades. No movement skills. No teleports. But don’t worry you’ve got protection and a stunbreak on a 50 second cooldown!

Wash the pain away?

Finally ele is getting proper access..to auras!It took only 3 years

FrownyClown.8402:

based on the ready up, tempest is bad.

Hmm maybe I am missing something, but to me it looks like a much better focus.

The overcharge doesn’t look mandatory the trait is, but you aren’t forced to overload the attunement you have 5 seconds to get off what you need to in an attunement and switch if not then you will overload.

The biggest downside I saw was if you do get stunned in an attunement then you could overload if you didn’t want to, so your choices are to swap while stunned which has the down side of putting that attunement on the normal cooldown or to use a stun break, which if that GM trait applies to you then you can break stuns with regular warhorn skills.

Other than that my first impression is that it’s a much better focus.

Paying attention to karls damage with Carrion on against Svanir or Golems he was criting for 1k-1.2k on just about every skill that had a damage component except the Air 5 which didn’t seem that bad when he used it on Svanir he put 20 stacks of Vuln on him.

Shadowphazon.7529:

No invulnerability. No blocks. No evades. No movement skills. No teleports. But don’t worry you’ve got protection and a stunbreak on a 50 second cooldown!

The evade would be on your dagger with burning speed and it has a pulsing field blind. The GM trait gives break stun when you use a warhorn skill on a 10 sec cd, but they didn’t say if that applies to you also, but usually stuff like that does.

nearlight.3064:

A couple of things:

PvE in this game is so kitten easy, it honestly doesn’t matter what you bring in my eyes (outside of say level 30+ fractals, which I don’t do anymore, or speed runs if you’re into that) as long as you try to max out your damage output as much as you can with your playstyle. And honestly, as an ele, as long as you use icebows like every fight, no ones going to care if you don’t use staff.

Sure, if it’s easy they can design a spec that’s kitten because why not. And you really underestimate people’s kicking potential, ice bow gives you a spike damage while staff has more than 30% damage potential than dagger mainhand.

I stand by everything I said earlier.

1. PvE there’s no damage add. In the current PvE this is a death sentence outside of casual runs where literally any equipment you run doesn’t matter (no judgement, I run like this too). Other Elementalist builds using D/D or F or S/D or F are far better at building Might Stacks. It may have some life in 5v5 groups if the new PvE content offers unavoidable direct damage through healing and support however the Staff already excels at this as well and does more damage.

2. In PvP you’re still going to be forced into Water/Arcane to survive. This is on top of having to equip Tempest. Tempest’s lack of damage adds such as through Air or Fire make it a lackluster addition for easily interruptable overcharges, useless long duration shouts and otherwise.

3. In WvW the lack of short cool down mobility makes it useless on the front line. The leap meta can’t be ignored and a lack of a mobility skill makes it impractical on the front line. Even if it did have enough stability (it doens’t) to channel once Armor of Earth is gone you are left with nothing but massive cool downs and an inability to keep going with the rest of the front line. As a backline Staff Ele you have less need for survivability making the Tempest line compete with the Water line which essentially trades condition removal and lower Water field timers for little to no advantage.

Complete dud full of neat tricks and toys but still lacks any place in the functional game.

FrownyClown.8402:

based on the ready up, tempest is bad.

The art is well done as usual, except I wasn’t impressed by earth and water overcharge as well as the elite quick animation.

Skill-wise it seems that we are getting more of everything we already had, except blasts. Everyone will keep their current builds and use the overload in context. I don’t see why he would drop water for tempest. How can you survive in melee range without water? Water is still the better line.

The cooldown on the utility shouts are too long to replace any cantrips. And since Tempest is intended as a melee thing why are the shouts mostly offensive? Only cantrips can keep you alive in any sort of competitive environment, something we’ve been telling Anet for quite a while. And someone explain to me why 7% damage reduction on protection is suddenly going to make the squishiest class a melee class. We barely have any stab.

And since Staff is ranged but the overload are all on yourself, what is this new mechanic adding to staff players? Is it just intended for PvE people that stacks in a corner and dodge against walls?

Not sure what warhorn would add to scepter either.

Oh and a “tempest” trait line without any damage modifiers… seriously? Since when are storms a defensive thing in games.

oZii.2864:

Hmm maybe I am missing something, but to me it looks like a much better focus.

The overcharge doesn’t look mandatory the trait is, but you aren’t forced to overload the attunement you have 5 seconds to get off what you need to in an attunement and switch if not then you will overload.

The biggest downside I saw was if you do get stunned in an attunement then you could overload if you didn’t want to, so your choices are to swap while stunned which has the down side of putting that attunement on the normal cooldown or to use a stun break, which if that GM trait applies to you then you can break stuns with regular warhorn skills.

Other than that my first impression is that it’s a much better focus.

Paying attention to karls damage with Carrion on against Svanir or Golems he was criting for 1k-1.2k on just about every skill that had a damage component except the Air 5 which didn’t seem that bad when he used it on Svanir he put 20 stacks of Vuln on him.

Is it pvp you are talking about?

So tempest…

The Good:

+Overloads seem nice, with the traits to support them make them useful PBAOE’s, water healing is a little underwhelming, but the other 3 can be useful.
+Air and Earth Shout are useful, freeze and fire might also end up useful.
+Tempest Traits support good utility (might/weakness on shouts, auras on overloads, auto cc break, etc)

The Bad:

-Warhorn is confirmed to be underwhelming almost entirely.
With the exception of cyclone and dust storm I found the warhorn skills to be pretty bad, it hurts that since they’re offhand weapon skills they’re on 25s or longer cooldowns. The boons provided by fire 4 and earth 4 were rather low duration/stacks so any group using might stacking is going to stick to traditional methods and using earth4 to extend by 2s is just not even going to enter the equation. The moving water field could be okay but with enough latency I can see it’s usefulness being limited, especially in a WvW zerg where people will try to blast it and miss.
- The water bubble and self heal shout seem on the weaker side despite having longish cooldowns. I get that they’re aoe, but having aoe heals be decreased strength is one of the reasons healing as a support character is undervalued compared to everyone just relying on their self heals and dodges and going full dps. The only group heal that is of considerable value is blasting water fields, because you can blast the same field multiple times to actually get a decent heal out of it.
- The Rebound elite skill seems to follow a pattern of ele elites post FGS and Meteornado nerf of being underpowered, underwhelming for “elite” skills. 25% recharge on one skill on a 60s cd just isn’t “elite”. This is like a smiter’s booned version of Glyph of Renewal from GW1. If it was instant recharge of one skill, or affected multiple skills, maybe it might be worthy of being elite. Now? no.
- The trait line doesn’t really have any damage increases. Right now, for a dps build you’ll go fire/air/water, or fire/air/arcane depending on whether you think you’ll stay above 90% health more often or have more than 5 boons more often. I suppose it’ll come down to the math of whether or not the shouts and overloads make up for a 10% dps loss or not. I’m on the fence.
-
The Ugly:

Warhorn. Some of the particle effects look good but that doesn’t change the fact that you’re just tooting on a horn.

Oh I did miss that the Elite is real weak that is definitely a thumbs down for me. I’ll stick with FGS in WvW based on what I saw with that Elite and Signet heal.

rotten.9753:

oZii.2864:

Hmm maybe I am missing something, but to me it looks like a much better focus.

The overcharge doesn’t look mandatory the trait is, but you aren’t forced to overload the attunement you have 5 seconds to get off what you need to in an attunement and switch if not then you will overload.

The biggest downside I saw was if you do get stunned in an attunement then you could overload if you didn’t want to, so your choices are to swap while stunned which has the down side of putting that attunement on the normal cooldown or to use a stun break, which if that GM trait applies to you then you can break stuns with regular warhorn skills.

Other than that my first impression is that it’s a much better focus.

Paying attention to karls damage with Carrion on against Svanir or Golems he was criting for 1k-1.2k on just about every skill that had a damage component except the Air 5 which didn’t seem that bad when he used it on Svanir he put 20 stacks of Vuln on him.

Is it pvp you are talking about?

Yea strictly PvP/WvW I should have clarified I don’t PvE much at all except if I am making a legendary or bored.

tooting on the a horn, lol right, well anyways, understand that many things are subject to change before release, there will be beta tests, so they’ll get our feedback, remember the huge change with revenant after that beta test? yea, if feedback is strong enough, it could change entirely

Arobain.8274:

tooting on the a horn, lol right, well anyways, understand that many things are subject to change before release, there will be beta tests, so they’ll get our feedback, remember the huge change with revenant after that beta test? yea, if feedback is strong enough, it could change entirely

sure, that’s why it’s important to give initial impressions early while things are still being developed rather than “wait and see, it’s not even live yet!” and THEN making judgments, when it’s still in development they can make changes fast. When it’s gone live, it’ll be months before they can make changes because they’ve moved on and are working on something else.

The overload seems underwhelming because it acts like a giant INTERRUPT me.

Good:
Like the animations except for overload earth, seems kinda stupid, we need less spell pollution not more.
Auramancer is back.

BAD

Agreed with all the bad in the OP.
Warhorn is a kittenty focus.
Ironically, the focus works better with tempest skills than the warhorn.
Overload except earth is a giant stun me you fools sign.
Realization that players are easily impress with skill effects.

PlatinumMember.5274:

The overload seems underwhelming because it acts like a giant INTERRUPT me.

Good:
Like the animations except for overload earth, seems kinda stupid, we need less spell pollution not more.
Auramancer is back.

BAD

Agreed with all the bad in the OP.
Warhorn is a kittenty focus.
Ironically, the focus works better with tempest skills than the warhorn.
Overload except earth is a giant stun me you fools sign.
Realization that players are easily impress with skill effects.

yeah I’m beginning to rethink my thoughts on the overload effects. The fact that they’re CHANNELED hurts their usefulness.

Okay so I just watched to livestream and I am overall pretty impressed with how tempest will be, but there are a few things that I would change to make it an overall better elite specializtion.

First off, the overloads: These look really powerful. You won’t always use them, but I’m glad that the the effect seems to be worth it. The 5 second window before the overload becomes active is honestly the perfect frame of time to balance it appropriately. I am now much much less concerned about being constantly interrupted when channeling, because the effects during the channel seem worth it (especially the damage from fire/air) to the point that being able to get the final damage effect off doesn’t seem vitally imperative. And I also like how being interrupted, or even finishing the channel doesn’t force you out of the attunement like we originally expected, so we can still use skills in that attunement or things like water dodge rolls even if we are interrupted. Overall the overloads look great, and I have no concerns about their implementation, since eles are actually able to cover their casts.

I will say that arcane CD reduction should continue to work with overload recharges to promote overall synergy between traitlines.

The warhorn skills: These are my favorite part of the elite specialization, and for good reason, the warhorn has easily carved its own niche out of the other offhands available, and I think that all of the skills are great, but lets go over them in detail.

Fire: These skills open up a new (and mesmerlike) ability of boon manipulation

Heat Sync- basically this skill is functionally the same to the mesmer signet of inspiration. The boonshare mesmer builds use it great effect to provide support, and with this skill, Eles have the potential to even outdo it, this skill is that great. I would make no changes, aside from maybe making the animation more flashy.

Wildfire- The firefield for the warhorn set, it looks like a powerful skill to. It removes 1 boon per pulse, while applying damage and burning. Its 40 second cooldown is a tad high, and seeing how ring of fire (the best d/d ele skill) is only 15 seconds untraited and applies so much burning, I think wildfire’s CD should be 30 or 35 seconds instead, although funcitonally it is very competitve with ring of fire since the boon removal is really powerful.

Water: These skills provide mobile offensive support, which water has kind of lacked before

Tidal Surge: AoE healing and knockback, This skill is very powerful and looks to be perfectly balanced, 8 seconds of regen is also very powerful and gives it synergy with cleansing water

Water Orb: I’m not sure why this skill is considered unblockable. This is a good skill since its the first water field that a D/X build has ever been able to use, and they have a low CD blast in that attunement to use with it. Great skill

Air: Damage and AoE control

Cyclone- AoE pull, 25 second cooldown, looks very strong, I’d say its well balanced. Unblockable, and will probably be really strong at interrupting rezzes and stomps since you won’t be able to cover it with aegis.

Lighting Orb- Damage skill, good cooldown. We didn’t really see its effectiveness against single targets in the livestream (they said it’d be strong though). It looks like retal will wreck you, so use it smartly, overvall it gives good extra damage in teamfights from the look of it.

Earth: More boon control and blind

Sand Squall: Extends all boon duration by 2 seconds, and gives protection which is pretty nice. You’ll be able to give an unreal amount of protection with earth now. 2 seconds seems pretty strong enough, but would a percentage, say 33% be more useful? This skill also looks like it should be a blast finisher, since the warhorn is lacking in blasts of its own.

Dust Storm: AoE pusling blind field. Looks like a great skill. I’d like to see it work as a smoke field though, which would give more combo field potential, and the ability to use it to blast stealth like an engi or thief could.

Overall the warhorn skills seem to be the strongest part of the spec, I’d really only want to see a lower CD on wildfire, and an extra blast finisher in there somewhere.

Shouts: The shouts aren’t very good for a few reasons. Cantrips, particularly armor of earth will be necessary for tempest to be successful. Most of the shouts suffer from having too high of a cooldown in general for the effect they bring. Even with trooper rune synergy, I’m a bit concerned. The trait synergies are also underwhelming as there is no way to reduce their somewhat high cooldowns, and it would be nice to trait them to remove condis or provide boons such as stability.

Wash the Pain Away- The signet heal is already great with dagger/X, so wash the pain away would a bit less useful. Raise the healing or lower the cooldown to make it better.

Eye of the Storm- Its cooldown should be 30 seconds, as right now it looks like taking cantrips and the warhorn trait will just outclass it for AoE stunbreaking. Also, it should provide electirc aura to be consistent with the other shouts.

Rebound- The cooldown for this is perfect, I’d just buff the reduction to 33% or even 50% to make it a more gamechanging elite.

I’d also suggest adding a blast finisher to aftershock or flash freeze to make them more worthwhile.

Traits: Overall I liked what I say, but it can be improved

Minors: Overall good, just make hardy conduit last the full 5 seconds so its consistent with speedy conduit.

Adept: Probably the worst tier

Gale Song- This trait is fine

Latent Stamina- This trait is okay, but it needs to be more impactful, make it 25% endurance restored and make the vigor 5 seconds. Also does it apply to just allies? It was never specified, but it needs to apply to you as well.

Harmonious conduit- This trait is only good because of its synergy with other aura based traits in other lines

Master tier- Probably the best tier of this spec

Tempestuous Aria- This trait is decent, but it needs the weakness duration to be at least 5 seconds, and it needs to provide a way to reduce shout cooldowns, since with no trait to lower their gigantic cooldowns, a pure shout build looks lacking.

Earthen Proxy- Fine as is, good trait

Harmonious Conduit- Looks like a good trait, and offers a good choice between traits for this tier.

Grandmaster- Some interesting choices

Imbued Melodies- This trait looks really strong, and will make supporting engi/necro teammates very strong since they generally have poor stunbreak access. I’d also suggest making the trait add some sort of boon to yourself and/or allies when using a warhorn skill. A stack of stability would be ideal, since as before, you won’t want to give up cantrips to use as many shouts as you could, because the overlaods demand some form of stability.

Lucid Singularity- Looks decent but it already steps on the role of geomancer’s freedom. It needs more flavor, such as a single stack of stability for 3 seconds on overload, or resistance while channeling to make it a more competitive choice.

Edit: A more radical idea is to have the trait apply a breakbar to each of the channels, not just earth, but have earth not have a breakbar without lucid singularity. We already pay enough of a cost in terms of increased cooldown for elemental overloads, so I argue that a reliable way to cover channels without cantrips is needed for the ability to really be useful, considering how often interrupts can happen in pvp, and how the PbAoE nature of the overloads makes running out of a fight to channel them inefficient.

Elemental Bastion- This trait looks potentially powerful, I’d suggest raising the base heal slightly, but this could make aura (and shout) based builds really strong with the right trait synergy.

Edit: After thinking more, I’d suggest merging harmonious conduit and elemental bastion together as a GM trait, moving unstable conduit down to adept level, and filling the open spot in the master level with a damage modifier based trait, such as:

Tempest Offense: Overloaded attunements do 10% more damage, and the damage of each attunement overload channeled skill is boosted by 10%

This trait would give elementalists more reason to go into tempest in PvE with a damage modifier.

Overall I’d say tempest looks like it will be the king of support in GW2, just a few traits and shouts need to be buffed, especially to make them competitive with what the elementalist already has. The warhorn looks really strong and a new niche of boon control and breaking stun for allies looks very promising for the Tempest.

Please feel free to add feedback, however I only ask that you keep things constructive. Don’t complain about things, just say what you’d like to see changed.

Improve character model fluidity while channeling an overcharge. They all seem very cartoonish or cheesy right now.

There is already a thread for feedback. I gotta say I am impress, you are sticking to your guns. I am not sure whether you are indenial or you truly believe the tempest is good despite video proof that it really isn’t.

PlatinumMember.5274:

There is already a thread for feedback. I gotta say I am impress, you are sticking to your guns. I am not sure whether you are indenial or you truly believe the tempest is good despite video proof that it really isn’t.

I ask that this thread remains a place for constructive feedback and discussion, not like the other thread where you and Kodiak just spew about how bad you think it is without offering any suggestions on how to improve it.

Xillllix.3485:

FrownyClown.8402:

based on the ready up, tempest is bad.

The art is well done as usual, except I wasn’t impressed by earth and water overcharge as well as the elite quick animation.

I was actually really annoyed by the animations. I can’t imagine picking skills like that in pvp at all, since I need to be able to see my opponents and what’s happening. All the snow and fog around would make the very difficult imo.

Overall, I’m not really excited about the spec. It feels like we’re getting more of the stuff ele already has. I really don’t like the overload mechanics and just how you do nothing for the time of casting it. I also don’t understand why ele needs to have aoe stunbreak, it makes no sense to me.

Shouts feel quite lackluster with way too high cooldowns. Rebound is just horrible. 25% reduced cd for allies on 60 sec cd. Ele still doesn’t have any useful elite. I also don’t understand why ele needs to have aoe stunbreak, it makes no sense to me.

Some of the traits seems quite strong, but still nothing I would be excited about. It seems to be just another support spec, so nothing I really wanted from it. To me it seems like they’re trying to center ele about having might, burn, protection and lots support. I don’t see much variety in the skills they showed.

So I can say that I’m disappointed with Tempest, quite a lot. I expected something else completely and sadly I don’t think this will get me to play the game again, only making me regret more I bought the xpack.

Kodiak.3281:

PlatinumMember.5274:

There is already a thread for feedback. I gotta say I am impress, you are sticking to your guns. I am not sure whether you are indenial or you truly believe the tempest is good despite video proof that it really isn’t.

I’m waiting for all these split posts to be merged into the one giant abomination thread personally.

Also it’s not our job to come up with solutions, Nearlight. It is literally the job of the game developer to come up with solutions. Our job is to provide feedback as to why things will or won’t work. In many ways showing the flaws of something is more important the a fluff post where pretending to the Developers job is in any way helpful. Pretending things are okay now means months and months of waiting for them to actually get fixed post release if they ever do.

I disagree, the point of constructive feedback is to show both why things are weak and how you would correct them. I believe that player driven solutions to problems are a more valuable and productive form of feedback than simply complaining.

The purpose of this thread is to offer ideas on how to fix things so that the developer’s will both see where things lack and what the players think would good solutions. Yes they make those decisions internally, but there have been many cases in the past where player feedback was instrumental in providing the developer’s with ideas for changes. I stand by my beliefs and I encourage you to stick to the more general feedback/impressions thread if you are unable to come up with any ways you would change something to make the Tempest, the elite specialization for a class you care about, an overall better specialization.

Also, I am in no way fanboying the devs in this post, so that part of your argument is just wrong, on top of being pointless towards discrediting my ideas.

Tempest looks flashy, though some of the overload animations are a bit too stiff (Earth).

I think I know what they wanted to do with Tempest, however I can tell there will probably need to adjust quite a few numbers and potentially even effects to make the Tempest work, even I can see the overloads value will rely on effectively pulling off many of the channels in full.

Of course, if there is enough feedback, as Arenanet showed with the updated Revenant changes, it is possible the current incarnation of Tempest can get tuned up to a better degree.

Just saw the Points of Interest, couldn’t see it because of work.

But I will say that the specialization is really really lackluster. It offers no new “play style”, in fact, at the start he says “we want you to be more of a brawler / group support style”, this is pretty much what we have today with D/D Celestial ele.

And if when thinking what to expand upon that the class couldn’t do before, that was certainly not the role we can’t do today – quite contrarily, it is the role we MOST do today.

I also really liked when asked “but eles die a lot in melee” his answer “yeah, well, you know, you have low health pool and armor, so yeah you have utilities for that right?”.

People also need to stop thinking OMG this adds so much to us. And to think about what it removes from you!

Remember, you only have 3 trait lines and to get Overload you need to throw 1 of the standard Cele ele D/D build and this new trait line offers nothing that surpasses Fire/Air in damage potential, maybe it offers something to surpass Earth but I need to think on that.

Warhorn skills are horrible, they do not give the needed support, in fact they are worst at supporting your group than D/D or D/F. I really can’t picture someone taking a warhorn over D or F under the argument of efficiency.

Shouts are also not that good either, cantrips will still reign supreme. The heal, lol, that one is not even worth the hero points.

The elite is well, like all other elementalist elites – terrible.

Overall, not impressed.

I agree with most things, but you are splitting the effect into two parts: when channeling, and after channeling. I don’t feel comfortable having to channel around to get the maximum out of the overloads, you can get interrupted a hell lot of times!

Main things I’m looking for in fixes/changes to Tempest:

- Blast finisher on Sand Squall. This would cement the overall use of warhorn for me. The other skills in this set are amazing, but Sand Squall feels a bit lacking. I would say the same for Heat Sync, but I think if they just upped the might gain on it slightly it would function well.
- Traits. They are all mostly terrible. I mean really. Most noticeable thing I took away from the trait line… heals with aura sharing and breaking stun when CCed with the air shout. They just feel so lack luster. Like it feels like going down that tempest line is pretty much solely for being able to use warhorn and attunement overloads, or some water aura sharing build and that’s about it. What happened to the whole choosing three themes through the traits like with the reaper or chronomancer traits? These just kind of feel all over the place.

Actually the traits feel a lot like what the traits were before the change. Like you had one trait for 20% reduced cooldown on air attunement skills, and now in this line you have 20% reduced cooldown on JUST overloads.

I feel like the traits mostly need to be reworked a lot. Like why not do a ‘Elemental’ Conduit. That provides a boon while channeling an overload based on the attunement you are overloading. Swiftness with air, protection with earth, etc. Then put unstable conduit as the replacement minor from combining the swiftness/protection with overloading.

With latent stamina… why only water? This seems like a water attunement skill. I mean its the only trait in the entire tree that specifically references a single attunement. Why not apply vigor in a radius when attuning to an element? Keep the 10 sec cooldown.

Add a 20% reduction to shouts cooldown to temp aria.

Earthen Proxy, change to something like 20% effectiveness to all boons applied to you. Heck considering the builds and boon sharing in this set, why not make it all boons you apply are 10% more effective? Just protection, on myself it really really lame.

Harmonius conduit is… okay. I don’t know what to recommend for this one. It’s not great but its not completely terrible.

Imbued melodies, even with an aoe around you, is absurd in PVP and relatively boring and blah anywhere else. Generally in close quarters if your allies got stunned, you probably did too, which means you can’t take advantage of this unless you took the air shout trait, and by taking the air shout trait you have already cleared the stun for everyone else too… so this seems pointless.

Where is the boon aspect for traits? You give us two skills on warhorn that interact with boons on allies but then NO TRAITS that interact in the same way? More like the apply vigor to allies when attuning to water and gaining endurance when applying vigor to allies.

Why not something like apply might when attuning to fire, and protection when attuning to earth to nearby allies. What about when you apply an aura to an ally you extend the boons on that ally by 2 seconds or 20% or something like that?

Overall, I love the overloads, and I love the warhorn skills. The traits need work and the shouts are kinda blah but not terrible like the reaper shouts so it works. I can already see a really strong aura sharing disable build with air/water/tempest lines.

If anything, I’d imagine they’d take numbers and ideas from those pitching suggestions of balancing and apply them in some test runs to see what seems fairish and what seems under/overwhelming. It doesn’t hurt if they’re looking for community support, as balancing is a painful and tedious process for most any kind of game, let alone an MMORPG with a bunch of designers in a team and a juberilogram of possible combinations of traits/actions/effects of thingies. Cheers to anyone who does give some attempt at feedback for whatever they see and trying to find a sweet spot.

PlatinumMember.5274:

There is already a thread for feedback. I gotta say I am impress, you are sticking to your guns. I am not sure whether you are indenial or you truly believe the tempest is good despite video proof that it really isn’t.

good feedback/10 now tempest can be good

Sykper.6583:

Tempest looks flashy,

That’s the thing I hate most about the specs.

It’s like they focus more on animations than actually functionality. Or another reason I won’t really say, because I’m not interested in getting banned yet.

I completely agree with the blast finisher on sand squall. I mean out of all the off hand weapons you would think warhorn would get a blast finisher and yet there are none? It just seems appropriate to put it on sand squall. A whirl finisher would also be cool like on the air skill cyclone. That way over all you are looking at a water field, a fire field, a blast finisher and a whirl finisher all in a different attunement each.

Also feel like the trait line needs a lot of improvement. Some of it is either super powerful or utterly useless. Its weird. Tempest reveal makes me feel the opposite of chronomancer reveal. I LOVE the trait line of chronomancer, but don’t care for the shield skills at all. I hate the trait line of tempest, but LOVE the warhorn skills. I have been wanting more offensive offhand air skills for so long, and even the water warhorn skills look fun to use!

Laraley.7695:

Shouts feel quite lackluster with way too high cooldowns. Rebound is just horrible. 25% reduced cd for allies on 60 sec cd. Ele still doesn’t have any useful elite. I also don’t understand why ele needs to have aoe stunbreak, it makes no sense to me.

I think they didn’t have any idea what to do. The Elite seems like something cheap they came up with in 5 minutes after doing the super cool Mesmer version using Alacrity. AoE stunbreak because they are under the illusion that eles will tank as a melee in WvW… Which is the whole problem with Tempest, it’s made for melee, but the Elementalist is a range class and will always be too squishy for melee. 7% of protection wont change that.

Xillllix.3485:

Laraley.7695:

Shouts feel quite lackluster with way too high cooldowns. Rebound is just horrible. 25% reduced cd for allies on 60 sec cd. Ele still doesn’t have any useful elite. I also don’t understand why ele needs to have aoe stunbreak, it makes no sense to me.

I think they didn’t have any idea what to do. The Elite seems like something cheap they came up with in 5 minutes after doing the super cool Mesmer version using Alacrity. AoE stunbreak because they are under the illusion that eles will tank as a melee in WvW… Which is the whole problem with Tempest, it’s made for melee, but the Elementalist is a range class and will always be too squishy for melee. 7% of protection wont change that.

I’m actually trying to figure out where they tried to put this spec. If you look at Reaper, you get the idea what they had in mind, but Tempest has everything, but nothing. It’s about support a lot, but mixing up with damage and cc. It feels like they’re trying to push ele into the celestial amulet even more.

I honestly don’t know, but I don’t feel like ele is mainly a support class, so not sure why they’re putting it everywhere. Imo, they wanted to make a spec that would be like a support guardian for pvp, but they felt some damage is needed so they added some here and there. Then something like this compes up and no one knows what to do with it.

I mean, it all looks cool and flashy, but I can’t see much practical use for the spec.

Azel.4786:

Just saw the Points of Interest, couldn’t see it because of work.

But I will say that the specialization is really really lackluster. It offers no new “play style”, in fact, at the start he says “we want you to be more of a brawler / group support style”, this is pretty much what we have today with D/D Celestial ele.

Why do they want that? I play ele to play a a mage type.