Guild Wars 2

Lightning Orb

Launch an orb of lightning that fires projectiles at nearby foes.

vs

Thunderclap

Ionize an area, bringing down the power of lightning to stun and damage enemies over its duration.

Raising your hammer, you call down lightning to stun your foes and leave a pulsing lightning field at the point of impact. This can be used as an interrupt and set up for both damage and dazing when coupled with other attacks like Rocket Charge.

Both skills are #5 skills of their respective weapons. That’s all I wanted to say

I think this is a big part of what puts me off the Tempest. Allot of our weapon skills are watered down because we have access to 4 sets. Having to sit in attunements so long with 3/4 of the auto attacks being pretty worthless and our 2-5 skills being weaker and or on longer cd than other classes kits. On top of that even If I’m not cc’d during the overload, have I really gained anything that I couldn’t have done better attunement dancing on vanilla ele?

The current Lightning Orb isn’t that useful, but after some tweaks it can become very powerful, and recent comments from Karl shows he IS able to really improve the spec. Also, you can’t blindly compare two skills from different classes with different mechanics and different focuses/purposes, specially considering this is one of the EIGHT skills we got solely from the weapon.

I’d be happy with Lightning Orb if, instead of being ground-targeted and attacking any and every enemy near it, it would:

1) Require a single target to execute
2) Unload all its damage on that target
3) The initial hit OR the final hit stuns that target

Air is supposed to be the spike damage Attunement, no? At the moment, this skill’s DPS potential is wasted if you have more than 1 target.

Glenstorm.4059:

At the moment, this skill’s DPS potential is wasted if you have more than 1 target.

This is the biggest issue with the skill. Another issue is that the damage is unreliable, noone will be standing still waiting for the orb to do its full damage, they will just sidestep it. And if there’s a wall or some other obstruction behind the target (which happens fairly often), it does very little.

Alternatively, the skill could launch all its projectiles at a single foe, and any foe who touches the Orb or through whom the Orb passes is stunned. That way it is a primarily single-target skill, but has a stun functionality (that is actually avoidable), thus justifying its long cooldown.

Glenstorm.4059:

Air is supposed to be the spike damage Attunement, no? At the moment, this skill’s DPS potential is wasted if you have more than 1 target.

The skill only works on flat surfaces. In WvW it doesn’t go down stairs or across a small hill incline. In my opinion Lightning Orb is still in beta and not ready (along with a lot of other skills).

I’ll just say in response to the OP that Warhorn gives you four skills in the 5 position and eight skills overall, whereas the Engineer only gets one skill in the 5 position and five skills overall.

That isn’t to say that the Tempest is in good shape, as it’s not, but the comparison being made is at its core invalid.