Guild Wars 2

The greatest flaw about Tempest is its lack of minor traits.

Every minor traits are about making the overload mechanic functional; technically, Tempest do not have minor traits. The protection lasts for the 3/4 of the overload and swiftness lasts 1 extra seconds. When we look at the minor traits from the other profession, we see some stuff that are useful outside of the new mechanic:

-Chronomancer: You move 25% faster. The duration of incoming movement-impairing conditions is reduced by 25%.

-Reaper: Whenever you inflict fear, you also chill.
Chill lasts longer, and chilled foes deal less damage to you.

And all other specializations except Tempest.

Tempest needs some minor traits, please.

My suggestions that I’ve thought out:

Speedy Conduits should give superspeed instead of swiftness for 4 seconds, like it was originally supposed to in the TTH.com interview that unveiled the spec.

The stack of stability on overload should be merged into hardy conduits while harmonious conduits keeps its 10% damage modifier and regains the overload cooldown function it originally had.

These changes would make overloads feel more complete in themselves, where we woulnd’t have to allocate our major trait options just to complete the mechanic.

nearlight.3064:

My suggestions that I’ve thought out:

Speedy Conduits should give superspeed instead of swiftness for 4 seconds, like it was originally supposed to in the TTH.com interview that unveiled the spec.

The stack of stability on overload should be merged into hardy conduits while harmonious conduits keeps its 10% damage modifier and regains the overload cooldown function it originally had.

These changes would make overloads feel more complete in themselves, where we woulnd’t have to allocate our major trait options just to complete the mechanic.

You are missing my point. Those minor traits are only there to complement with the overloading. There is no other elite specialization where the minors are about “helping” the new mechanic to function. None. Look at all the elite specializations.

Let me re-explain. Swiftness and Protection when overloading do not serve as some extra utilities; they are requirement for overloads to feel alright. Without them, there would be no overloads.

Yeah tempest minor traits (besides the adept one) REALLY need to be about something else besides overloads, with all the overload functionality packed into the minor adept one baseline.

While I think it is too late in the HoT development cycle for Anet to a minor trait overhaul, I know that they are still looking to overhaul Latent Stamina and Earthen Proxy, so with hope, I suggest the following:

-Merge Harmonious Conduit AND Speedy Conduit into Hardy Conduit as the new Master minor trait. Call it Harmonious Conduit.

-New Master Major Trait:

Intensity: Overload charge-up time reduced to 2.5 seconds.

-New Grandmaster minor trait:

-Tempestuous Escalation: Remaining in a single Attunement grants you a stacking bonus for each second you remain in that Attunement:

Fire: +1% Damage (10% cap)
Air: +2.5% Critical chance (25% cap)
Water: +2% Outgoing healing affecting other allies (20% cap)
Earth: +1% Condition damage (10% cap)

This trait’s Attunement-specific bonuses end when switching Attunements, but the trait is always active. For example, when you switch to Water after being in Fire for 10 seconds, you would lose the 10% damage bonus but immediately start accumulating the 1% outgoing heal bonus.

This synergizes well with the theme of each Attunement and each Overload. Plus, the bonuses are not boons, so they can’t be abused by boon duration/boon share, nor can they be stripped. Most importantly, it incentivizes remaining in a single Attunement, which is a major change from the Attunement dance of the base Ele.

Glenstorm.4059:

While I think it is too late in the HoT development cycle for Anet to a minor trait overhaul, I know that they are still looking to overhaul Latent Stamina and Earthen Proxy, so with hope, I suggest the following:

-Merge Harmonious Conduit AND Speedy Conduit into Hardy Conduit as the new Master minor trait. Call it Harmonious Conduit.

-New Master Major Trait:

Intensity: Overload charge-up time reduced to 2.5 seconds.

-New Grandmaster minor trait:

-Tempestuous Escalation: Remaining in a single Attunement grants you a stacking bonus for each second you remain in that Attunement:

Fire: +1% Damage (10% cap)
Air: +2.5% Critical chance (25% cap)
Water: +2% Outgoing healing affecting other allies (20% cap)
Earth: +1% Condition damage (10% cap)

This trait’s Attunement-specific bonuses end when switching Attunements, but the trait is always active. For example, when you switch to Water after being in Fire for 10 seconds, you would lose the 10% damage bonus but immediately start accumulating the 1% outgoing heal bonus.

This synergizes well with the theme of each Attunement and each Overload. Plus, the bonuses are not boons, so they can’t be abused by boon duration/boon share, nor can they be stripped. Most importantly, it incentivizes remaining in a single Attunement, which is a major change from the Attunement dance of the base Ele.

I like this idea, it’d open up crit subsitution builds and give us more incentive to stay in attunements for longer while improving build diversity all around.

There have been a countless ideas to improve minor and major traits yet Karl still ignores them. It’s quite a let down seeing how other devs are reacting to players’ feedback.

The lack of true minor traits is definitely one of the reasons why the tempest is not a competitive spec at the moment.

I believe that both hardy and speedy conduit minors should be removed. The 3s protection on overloads can become baseline while the swiftness should be replaced with 4s of baseline superspeed. Harmonious conduit should either decrease the cooldown of overloads or the initial charge-up instead of providing stability.

Two ideas for minor traits that I have are:

Tempestuous resilience: Protection applied to yourself decreases condition damage taken by 15%. This could help a little bit with the lack of condition cleanse.

Stable channeler: Gain 4 seconds stability(1) when you begin a skill with a channel time of at least 2 seconds. (Auto-attacks are not included. Original channel time is tracked, so quickness does not cancel this.) This affects overloads of course, but it can be used with a few other skills to gain some stability while in the front line.

I’m not sure if my ideas are good, but I would appreciate some feedback.

I really like it. Traiting to speed up overloads seems like a really obvious solution to lots of the problems of an overload heavy build. I also think that your proposed new trait Intensity should decrease the overload recharge time, while staying in the same attunement. 50% is probably too much, not sure what the right numbers are there.

Glenstorm.4059:

While I think it is too late in the HoT development cycle for Anet to a minor trait overhaul, I know that they are still looking to overhaul Latent Stamina and Earthen Proxy, so with hope, I suggest the following:

-Merge Harmonious Conduit AND Speedy Conduit into Hardy Conduit as the new Master minor trait. Call it Harmonious Conduit.

-New Master Major Trait:

Intensity: Overload charge-up time reduced to 2.5 seconds.

-New Grandmaster minor trait:

-Tempestuous Escalation: Remaining in a single Attunement grants you a stacking bonus for each second you remain in that Attunement:

Fire: +1% Damage (10% cap)
Air: +2.5% Critical chance (25% cap)
Water: +2% Outgoing healing affecting other allies (20% cap)
Earth: +1% Condition damage (10% cap)

This trait’s Attunement-specific bonuses end when switching Attunements, but the trait is always active. For example, when you switch to Water after being in Fire for 10 seconds, you would lose the 10% damage bonus but immediately start accumulating the 1% outgoing heal bonus.

This synergizes well with the theme of each Attunement and each Overload. Plus, the bonuses are not boons, so they can’t be abused by boon duration/boon share, nor can they be stripped. Most importantly, it incentivizes remaining in a single Attunement, which is a major change from the Attunement dance of the base Ele.

I would make it totally easy.
speedy conduit : 33% speed boost or like cronomancers baseline speed. Druid got one as well.
This would do it in the minors for me :-).

Can’t agree more, as I already said somewhere else. Something is wrong when you have to heavily trait a spec to make it barely functionnal. It just shows the mechanic is flawed by design.

Wolfric.9380:

I would make it totally easy.
speedy conduit : 33% speed boost or like cronomancers baseline speed. Druid got one as well.
This would do it in the minors for me :-).

That’s not a bad idea, but won’t it make Zephyr’s Speed completely obsolete if you run air?

That’s odd. When I opened my trait panel I saw three minor traits for the tempest. You must not have opened the trait panel.

Bacon.1835:

That’s odd. When I opened my trait panel I saw three minor traits for the tempest. You must not have opened the trait panel.

Assume that the first reaper minor only unlocked Reaper’s Shroud with ability 1, while abilities 2+3 where given from the second minor trait and abilities 4+5 were given from the third minor trait. Would you call that 3 minor traits?

@Ganathar
It would take a bit out of air. But ait is already the best option for tempest after water. The speed in baseline helps non air builds, that need a buff by freeing toolbar or rune.
I struggle to make a shout build out of air and this means you spec for overloads ot drop tempest completely. For me the speed allows more build options.
I testet it and the only working shout build without air i could make was with traveler rune. I testet a bit without speed but it was nearly unplayable for me. I could do a soldiers bunker build, but this kind of thing is something i don´t want to do.
I don´t see a viable ele build for me without speed. (Traveler rune, Air Signet or Air traitline). And this limits me into the ground building tempest.

Wolfric.9380:

@Ganathar
It would take a bit out of air. But ait is already the best option for tempest after water. The speed in baseline helps non air builds, that need a buff by freeing toolbar or rune.
I struggle to make a shout build out of air and this means you spec for overloads ot drop tempest completely. For me the speed allows more build options.
I testet it and the only working shout build without air i could make was with traveler rune. I testet a bit without speed but it was nearly unplayable for me. I could do a soldiers bunker build, but this kind of thing is something i don´t want to do.
I don´t see a viable ele build for me without speed. (Traveler rune, Air Signet or Air traitline). And this limits me into the ground building tempest.

I see what you mean. In this case I would probably prefer Zephyr’s Speed to be reworked eventually, because it would be pretty worthless in both tempest and arcane builds. Arcane builds already give swiftness on attuning to air and builds that utilize arcane tend to swap attunements a lot, which means that Zephyr’s Speed doesn’t get used there either.

My ele uses arcane. Arcane is the line i want to replace with tempest :-). But even with swiftness on swap i run air signet. Maybe i am kind of a rebel avoiding water/cantrips and trying to build diffrent. But it gives me the most fun and also success.
Tempest lacks at some traits and minor is only a stretched tempest base. Adding something that helps the weaker builds is usually best.
It would be better then the current swiftness thats all.

A trait that gives quickness while overloading could be nice, to speed it up. Maybe one of adept or master tier? Give a choice between overload fast or overload with stability or protection?

I completely agree with this subject – it’s one of the problems I have with tempest, and trying to make it work for ele.

Overloads carry heavy risk to go with the risk vs reward concept behind them (long channel time vulnerable to interrupts, increases attunement recharge to 20s, 17.5 with arcane…), and due to this heavy risk and penalty if you succeed in overloading, it is not practical to cast overloads as often as you can. This puts us in a position which as you highlighted, the minor traits of our elite specialisation are doing nothing when we are not actively channeling an overload. Furthermore they lack synergy with any other aspect of the base elementalist as we know it.

This adds up to the minor traits purely making overloads more viable, which is disappointing.

Perhaps it is asking a lot, but I feel that the minors as they currently stand should be baseline for overloads, with new minors added to encourage elementalists to spec Tempest over other options. Perhaps a cleanse option of some kind to encourage dropping water, or a damage/utility minor, to encourage dropping arcane. This is speaking from a pvp perspective.

Obviously we’re very late into the development cycle and so I don’t hold any hope of seeing changes like this before HoT launch, if ever at all, but those are my thoughts all the same.

It dose have minor traits but you can only play tempest at level 80 so they are more of an hold over from the base system when you leveled up and you would only get to minor traits when not at level 80.

Jski.6180:

It dose have minor traits but you can only play tempest at level 80 so they are more of an hold over from the base system when you leveled up and you would only get to minor traits when not at level 80.

Of course there is some minor traits. It would be very stupid for me to say it literally. Only they are so weak and only serve on the functionability of the Tempest. Minor traits which are not necessary on the other elite specialization I must add.

Like some put it, it’s very similar to a 1. You have reaper shroud (adept) 2. You can gain life force (master) 3. You can spend life force (grandmaster).

The swiftness trait makes absolutely no sense. I have no idea why you would want this. The stability on overload needs to replace that one.

The Great Al.2546:

The swiftness trait makes absolutely no sense. I have no idea why you would want this. The stability on overload needs to replace that one.

Well, you can’t do it without swiftness.