Guild Wars 2

Hey all,

After playing a lot of tempest in pvp these days I want to post on this forum several changes that could make tempest funnier to play. I won’t talk about the warhorn only traits and overloads.

First of all traits changes:

- Speedy conduit: it’s more a bug, it says 8 sec of swiftness but only gives 4 (the time of the overload). It’s the same for hardy conduit with boon duration.
- Hardy conduit: should be 4 seconds of protection instead of 3.
- Harmonious conduit: This trait should pusle one stack of 1 sec of stability every second because only one stability for 4 seconds is not enough in big teamfights and we lose so much if we get canceled.
- Lucid singularity: should give superspeed and a sustain mecanic because this trait is not worth compared to elemental bastion especially if you run with earth trait line.
- Tempestuous aria: should reduce shouts cooldowns by 20%

Now let’s talk about overload mecanics:

- Fire overload: Should work with persisting flames since it’s a firefield (this is more about pve). The aoe seems bigger on norn and charr and smaller on asura, normalize the aoe range for each race. Also giving it some projectile protection would be nice since others skills like this (warrior axe 5 and thief ult for example) gives projectil reflection.
- Air overload: The static charge bonus you get for fully overloading should crit (actually it never crit).
Water and earth seems ok to me.

The most important thing, for me, would be to be able to swap attunement while overloading and to dodge in water (wa will pop water overload if we are in a bad situation but at the same time we won’t be able to dodge without canceling it).
A good combo would be, for example, swap to earth while overloading fire or air and put the invul with the focus or get the stone heart buff.

There are only buffs here but it will gives more options and make the tempest gameplay funnier.
The tempest itself is good in pvp if you want to play with auras and be more supportive. It’s very strong in 3v3/4v4 but weak in 1v1 (with a team support build ofc). I also like new runes (radiance, durability, surging), we have now more option than before.

Agreed with most of these. Not sure what to do with lucid singularity though. Maybe add regeneration to it so it competes with elemental bastion? It is kind of hard to justify anything other than sustain when tempest is so vulnerable during the overload. One stack of stab isn’t enough, 3 seconds of protection isn’t enough, speedy conduit still doesn’t give 8 seconds of swiftness and only 5 seconds of it (would be fine if it was superspeed instead of swiftness) and so on.

Water overload isn’t fine imo since it isn’t even a water field and doesn’t heal much at all. Earth is alright but I think it lacks a bit of damage, the stability on it is perfect though.

Generally a lot of these suggestions are good for PvE, PvP, and WvW.

I was thinking lucid singularity should be resistance on overloads. So when you do overload you can have 1 stack of stab to deal with some counters and resistance to deal with other counts but at the end of the overload you full the full effect of what was on you. I think this is much more effect to game play then just saying your immune to a set of soft cc.

I agree, lucid singularity should give reistance while overloading, we don’t have that much condi cleanse while playing tempest (compare to oldschool cele DD).
I think we have too much aoe heal (elemental bastion and invigorating torrents heals for 2k4 on each auras).

I saw somebody drop from a cliff while in water overload – it wasn’t a big drop, but it got me thinking: you’re sitting in a bubble, hovering above the ground. It seems like the kind of thing that would keep you safe when falling off a cliff. What if the water overload actually cancelled out fall damage? That would be something interesting and unique.

Well i am mostly fine with overloads.
Only water OL seems not useful for me. It´s destroyed by 5s wait.
Zotars ideas is something i would love to see. Realy great use of water OL :-).
Of course there are some things i would like to see improoved.
Speedy conduit is meh and a filler. I would prefer basline speed like from corono or even druid. Best a bit diffrent like 25% speed and -30% falling damage or 10% condi duration.
Tempestious aria still crys for -20% shout cooldown reduction. After stab on overloads and regen/vigor it seems lost.
Rebound is weak. I go with FSG again. Make rebound instant cast and 60s CD (+ -20% for 48s). Then it would be useful.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

I saw somebody drop from a cliff while in water overload – it wasn’t a big drop, but it got me thinking: you’re sitting in a bubble, hovering above the ground. It seems like the kind of thing that would keep you safe when falling off a cliff. What if the water overload actually cancelled out fall damage? That would be something interesting and unique.

Cancelling out falling damage lets you reach areas you are not supposed to reach (beneath Rata Sum, for example), so that’s a no-go.

Wolfric.9380:

Well i am mostly fine with overloads.
Only water OL seems not useful for me. It´s destroyed by 5s wait.
Zotars ideas is something i would love to see. Realy great use of water OL :-).
Of course there are some things i would like to see improoved.
Speedy conduit is meh and a filler. I would prefer basline speed like from corono or even druid. Best a bit diffrent like 25% speed and -30% falling damage or 10% condi duration.
Tempestious aria still crys for -20% shout cooldown reduction. After stab on overloads and regen/vigor it seems lost.
Rebound is weak. I go with FSG again. Make rebound instant cast and 60s CD (+ -20% for 48s). Then it would be useful.

I think what rebound really need is longer duration and higher heal.

I think it should work like this:

Rebound:
Allies within radius will get Rebound for 10 seconds.
If anyone take lethal damage during the period, they heal for 5000. If they didn’t take lethal damage, heal for 2000. Grant aura according to your attunement in both conditions after expiration.

korioaurel.3041:

Hey all,

After playing a lot of tempest in pvp these days I want to post on this forum several changes that could make tempest funnier to play. I won’t talk about the warhorn only traits and overloads.

First of all trait changes:
- Harmonious conduit: This trait should pusle one stack of 1 sec of stability every second because only one stability for 4 seconds is not enough in big teamfights and we lose so much if we get canceled.

While I’m all for increasing the stability from hardy conduit, 1 second of stability every second is just way too strong, it’d be really hard to ever interrupt unless you’re a DD with disrupting daggers or something. Make it 2 seconds of stability every 2 seconds and I can see it being reasonable. (Alternatively increase the duration of the 10% dmg modifier for a more offensively oriented trait).

+ Air and Earth overloads are amazing.
+ Fire Overload is good.

- Water Overload suffers extremely from the 5 second wait time. Doesn’t even leave water field. Maybe just 2 or 3 second charge time to make up for no lasting effect after the overload?

+ Wash the Pain away, Flash-Freeze, Aftershock and Feel the Burn are pretty great, mostly for the auras, though for their shortish cooldowns the damage isn’t too bad either.

- Eye of the Storm is basically useless. We have so much better stunbreakers. Signet of Air for example on almost half the cooldown. And AOE blind after a stunbreak is much better than just superspeed.

- Rebound still useless. 75 seconds cooldown for that amounts to “gain an aura after 5 seconds”. LOL. As it is now I could see it as a 45 second cooldown. Should really see a complete redesign.

- Warhorn is totally outclassed by our 2 other offhand weapons. Doesn’t offer the immense self-defense of focus or the extreme mobility, damage and versatility of offhand dagger. And we already have so much support and boons everywhere that we don’t really benefit from the few good warhorn skills.

- Traits are a mish-mash of good, bad, and ugly. Speedy Conduit really needs to do something else besides just bugged swiftness on overloads. The Vigor trait is still ultra bad. Stability should probably be minor because no one will ever take the other 2 traits, even with Invigorating Torrents being basically cantrip mastery on shorter cooldowns. The middle Grandmaster trait also really needs work, the top one should get better with warhorn buffs.

Scepter still a useless weapon overall. Needs buffs ASAP.

The thing is: Never overload anything exept earth if you are focused …

i would love the have a 1 sec daze at the moment when u finish casting the air overload – when that big thunder hit the ground =D but well… it would be to op on a elem (even if DH and druid have a lot of daze too… but they aren’t ele)

Wolfric.9380:

The thing is: Never overload anything exept earth if you are focused …

I don’t agree …. Overloading Air can scared some opponents chasing u

To be perfectly honest, Tempest pretty much needs a complete rework (or just shove it into the trash bin and give us a new elite specialization).

Dunno what Karl was doing all these years, but putting a elite specialization into the expansion that suffers from the very same design flaws the base class has for YEARS is kinda beyond me.

The two main issues with Ele ever since release have been:
a) 2 Traitlines (Water + Arcana) have been pretty much mandatory in a competitive setting
b) Cantrips are effectively the only viable utilities.

This results in the most viable build heavily relying on sustainy / defensive traits & utilities + high uptime of various boons.

Now taking a look at Tempest, the sole reason it may be considered viable is Fresh Air. This locks Tempest into 2 mandatory traitlines as well, Air and, quite obviously, Tempest.
The build that can be considered the most viable utilizes Shout utilities for their auras and their respective synergies with certain traits (Zephyr’s Boon, Elemental Shielding, Elemental Bastion, possibly Invigorating Torrents).
All this ends up in a elite specialization that is locked into certain traitlines, has only 1 viable set of utilities and relies on high boon uptime via aruas. Does that sound familiar?

Congrats Karl, you just re-released the base ele, but at least you managed to swap offhand dagger for offhand focus and replaced cantrips with shouts.

And this rant doesn’t even include the super hilarious concept of putting yourself in the frontline without any option of active defensive for 4s straight while running on the lowest base hp + lowest base armor in the entire game. Or that new ‘elite’ skill being a good candidate for the worst-skill-in-the-game award.

i wonder if karl was already in charge of the ele’s developpement at the start of the game… cause the ele was amazing that time

PS : it’s a serious question (not a troll)

korioaurel.3041:

The most important thing, for me, would be to be able to swap attunement while overloading

This one hundred times this.

makku.2508:

Now taking a look at Tempest, the sole reason it may be considered viable is Fresh Air.

I don’t agree with this, in pvp ofc. If you watch last monthly finals you will see in each team a tempest running earth/water/tempest. In fact the combo fresh air + air overload is weak because it’s not instant burst and you can get interupt all the time. Air trait line is weaker than earth and it’s sad.
I think anet decided to add team healing mecanics (tempest, druid and also revenant with ventari even if it’s not worth for the moment) because they also increase the damage output of some classes. None of the pre-HOT builds has the same damage than DH and reaper. We have now, bigger teamfights with more damage/condi/CC and if you remove support build (tempest and druid atm) fights will only last a few seconds.
To be honnest I really enjoy playing the heal/prot bot in team. The main issue I have with tempest are about damages, I tried tons of builds to have some decent damages with all weapons but I didn’t find anything. And it’s frustrating because if you compare tempest to druid you will find that druid can win almost every 1v1 but tempest can’t. We can sustain and never die in 1v1 vs burst class (DH for example) but against a reaper it’s just impossibe to stay on node and keep it and of course you will never kill anyone in 1v1 with a support tempest.
Tempest lacks of damage and solo plays, you need to stay with your team to be very strong.
Of couse we still have the oldschool cele DD but what about scepter? what about burst? What about a viable condi build? Anet gives new mecanics to everyclass, new gameplay, more options but for us it’s still celestial and sustain and it’s event worst than before. I tried my SF fresh air build and it was really painfull. I litteraly dealt no damage, couldn’t win any 1v1 get chase forever by reapers (chill forever) and it was just frustrating.
I also hope for a rework of tempest like instant cast overload (no more channeling) less support but more damage options and of course a scepter rework (a real one this time).
I think people will come and QQ on spvp forum about how strong tempest is, because it is in term of healing (2k5 aoe heal for every aura) and if anet nerf it I hope we will get something nice in exchange.

Thanks guys for your replies, hopefully someone in Anet will read this and give us an answer.

Nath Forge Tempete.1645:

i wonder if karl was already in charge of the ele’s developpement at the start of the game… cause the ele was amazing that time

PS : it’s a serious question (not a troll)

Karl not only worked on ele, but he set the standard of play for many eles.

There’s a video on youtube of him wrecking in a clocktower dev match, around the second/third beta (2012).

Vinteros Asteano.1209:

Nath Forge Tempete.1645:

i wonder if karl was already in charge of the ele’s developpement at the start of the game… cause the ele was amazing that time

PS : it’s a serious question (not a troll)

Karl not only worked on ele, but he set the standard of play for many eles.

There’s a video on youtube of him wrecking in a clocktower dev match, around the second/third beta (2012).

You mean this one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNAITjKJusw

He mostly just stands still and casts his spells… and wins because ele was so insanely OP in pre-launch betas not even the meta-crushing D/D specs after launch came close. Ele Damage was basically cut in half shortly before launch and even then they still defined the meta from the start.

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Vinteros Asteano.1209:

Nath Forge Tempete.1645:

i wonder if karl was already in charge of the ele’s developpement at the start of the game… cause the ele was amazing that time

PS : it’s a serious question (not a troll)

Karl not only worked on ele, but he set the standard of play for many eles.

There’s a video on youtube of him wrecking in a clocktower dev match, around the second/third beta (2012).

You mean this one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNAITjKJusw

He mostly just stands still and casts his spells… and wins because ele was so insanely OP in pre-launch betas not even the meta-crushing D/D specs after launch came close. Ele Damage was basically cut in half shortly before launch and even then they still defined the meta from the start.

iirc, the video was in 2012, so I’m not sure.

While the standard of play has increased, it did set the standard at the time to play ele.

roelvanesch.2817:

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

I saw somebody drop from a cliff while in water overload – it wasn’t a big drop, but it got me thinking: you’re sitting in a bubble, hovering above the ground. It seems like the kind of thing that would keep you safe when falling off a cliff. What if the water overload actually cancelled out fall damage? That would be something interesting and unique.

Cancelling out falling damage lets you reach areas you are not supposed to reach (beneath Rata Sum, for example), so that’s a no-go.

So, not cancelled but reduced ala arcane abatement.

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

+ Air and Earth overloads are amazing.
+ Fire Overload is good.

- Water Overload suffers extremely from the 5 second wait time. Doesn’t even leave water field. Maybe just 2 or 3 second charge time to make up for no lasting effect after the overload?

+ Wash the Pain away, Flash-Freeze, Aftershock and Feel the Burn are pretty great, mostly for the auras, though for their shortish cooldowns the damage isn’t too bad either.

- Eye of the Storm is basically useless. We have so much better stunbreakers. Signet of Air for example on almost half the cooldown. And AOE blind after a stunbreak is much better than just superspeed.

- Rebound still useless. 75 seconds cooldown for that amounts to “gain an aura after 5 seconds”. LOL. As it is now I could see it as a 45 second cooldown. Should really see a complete redesign.

- Warhorn is totally outclassed by our 2 other offhand weapons. Doesn’t offer the immense self-defense of focus or the extreme mobility, damage and versatility of offhand dagger. And we already have so much support and boons everywhere that we don’t really benefit from the few good warhorn skills.

- Traits are a mish-mash of good, bad, and ugly. Speedy Conduit really needs to do something else besides just bugged swiftness on overloads. The Vigor trait is still ultra bad. Stability should probably be minor because no one will ever take the other 2 traits, even with Invigorating Torrents being basically cantrip mastery on shorter cooldowns. The middle Grandmaster trait also really needs work, the top one should get better with warhorn buffs.

---

Scepter still a useless weapon overall. Needs buffs ASAP.

“Warhorn is totally outclassed by our 2 other offhand weapons.”

“Scepter still a useless weapon overall.”

Ouch. My two favourite weapons. Hehe. :p

I really hope Anet is actually paying attention to the plethora of suggestions and ideas floating around for elementalist rather than just looking at sPvP and saying “WELL WE DID OUR JOB GUYS.”