Guild Wars 2

The Sand Squall is a Tempest build that focuses on maximizing personal survival, sustain, and condition damage to contribute offense while managing the positioning of the boss at all times to best suit the raid’s goals.

The goal of the Sand Squall elementalist is to:

• Position the Boss at all times, focusing on keeping the boss as stationary as possible, while avoiding mechanics that would interfere with this (e.g. the forced teleport)
• Maintain permanent Protection on them-self (enhanced to 40% mitigation with trait), and on any nearby melee allies who can be in range behind the boss.
• Provide enough self-sustain to need minimal healing from anyone else if possible. A healing-specialized Revenant’s Regeneration should suffice.
• Maintain as many Bleed and Burning stacks as possible without sacrificing any of the above.

Traits, Weapons, and Utilities can be adjusted as needed to account for the unique aspects of each raid fight, so long as the above goals are met. Use your personal judgement!

Here is the Build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJBLhFyxgiIW2A/GQHxiGg52XDsFWiWwKINOEAWAVAA-TxRAABdq+DAnAgA1DYmyPm2fI6HAgjKBJFwiSjA-e

This particular variant seeks to maximize Toughness as the primary stat, while still achieving as much condition damage and sustained healing as possible.

Warhorn is ideal for situations in which the raid boss will not require an invulnerability, else Focus would be idea. Dagger offhand does not suit this build’s goals. Focus’s Flame Wall is also handy for keeping up burn and offering a fire field if needed, but again, not really required as Warhorn fire also has a long lasting fire field.

Primarily, we would be camping Earth, only occasionally swapping to fire if we’re already high on health and wish to fire off extra burn and might stacking skills, overload fire, then return to earth to continue taking very, very little damage.

Earth Scepter’s auto attack is wonderful for maintaining bleeds, even in the event that you need to reposition the boss. It doesn’t trigger Signet of Renewal as fast as I’d like, but it serves its purpose. Swapping into water for additional healing sustain is very strong, and overload water could be used to heal yourself or nearby allies to full very quickly.

Additionally, Writ in Stone allows us to activate our signets on cool-down to reap the benefits at no cost. This wonderful trait would only be changed if the boss fight has any heavy condition or Critical Hit elements, in which case Diamond Skin or Stone Heart would be used for maximum protection.

The source of this build’s amazing defense is mixing Settles armor and Apothecary Jewelry to have a very high toughness and HP value, along with additional sources of Toughness, such as Earth trait-line, Signet of Earth, and a maintained Scepter Earth #2. All of this is supported by the raw healing of Signet of Renewal, and the healing from Water abilities, the Water Elemental Elite, and the very strong healing over time of Soothing Mist and burst healing of Water Overload.

This makes this build incredibly self-sufficient in terms of tanking the boss, and provided no one else in the raid is running a similar set up, you should almost be certain to have the highest total armor in the raid, allowing you to be the boss’s primary focus.

I was able to test a similar build out in the BWE3 raid preview, but it was focused on a Dire stat set up. Even with this inferior set up, I was only being hit by the boss for less than 2,000 damage per hit, which I suspect will be far lower with the above build. My condition damage will be slightly less, but my ability to self-sustain will be far greater, and thus my ability to keep the boss precisely where I want him and as IMMOBILE as I want him, will be amazing.

With the first boss, the only situations in which you should have to move even an inch is:

a.) When he summons the blue lightning aoe under himself, in which case you move back or dodge, then return to your position or move him slightly.
b.) When the lightning aoe that raid members need to stand in spawns more then 1,200 range away, in which case you reposition him to be in range of your ranged damage team.

Even with my inferior set up, I was able to keep the boss completely still for maybe 80% of the time.

Lastly, during the Split phase, this build transitions into a condi damage team member for Red boss very easily, while offering them some healing sustain and protection up-time and might stacking if needed, and revives like a champ.

I firmly believe that this build will be one of the top meta Tank builds in GW2, depending on future content, and will have the flexibility to adapt to almost any tanking scenario I can imagine.

Love to hear your thoughts!

How often did you go into water?

Axialbloom.8109:

How often did you go into water?

I went into water occasionally to heal up a bit, but in the build i was using at the time i had no healing power, but still had heal on auras, which was around 1kish if i recall, and i was running full shout-auras and Wash the Pain Away.

With my above build it will be far superior at healing to full with a water swap, and using water overload for emergency healing for self or allies, then a quick swap through fire to mightstack, then back to earth to keep up the bleeds and protection. It plays like a looooong rotation swap, in which you sit in each attunement long enough to overload fully then on to the next as needed.

Hmmmn. I wonder if that would mean too much time out of Earth. I guess it depends on the fight and how often you can safely Attunement swap, or whether you need DPS or healing.

I was thinking about going an Earth condition tank as well, but maybe Arcane over Water. I wonder if a Water tank would also work…

If doing a full hard core no damage at all tank you could do staff clerics or nomad and camp water with soothing mist triat water 1 spam with signet of regen and practically afk save for having to dodge occasionally

Expecting tempest to be somewhat offensive spec judging by its name and getting a condi tank. I’m crying inside.

Swiftwynd.1685:

If doing a full hard core no damage at all tank you could do staff clerics or nomad and camp water with soothing mist triat water 1 spam with signet of regen and practically afk save for having to dodge occasionally

+1 Staff Water is a much better tank.

Sunshine.5014:

Swiftwynd.1685:

If doing a full hard core no damage at all tank you could do staff clerics or nomad and camp water with soothing mist triat water 1 spam with signet of regen and practically afk save for having to dodge occasionally

+1 Staff Water is a much better tank.

Yea but it deals no damage. The nice thing of the above build is it still contributes damage while being surficently durable and self sustaining.

Hi, i have sugestion (im not a pro but theres my 2 cents) if you use Sigil of the Smoldering on the warhorn instead of Agony sigil, you can pretty much spam signet of fire because the fire duration becomes 16s and the cooldown is 16s too, so you can perma burning all the time just from that skill and burning is stronger than bleeding, but maybe that depends on one’s preference :P

joaosequeira.2184:

Hi, i have sugestion (im not a pro but theres my 2 cents) if you use Sigil of the Smoldering on the warhorn instead of Agony sigil, you can pretty much spam signet of fire because the fire duration becomes 16s and the cooldown is 16s too, so you can perma burning all the time just from that skill and burning is stronger than bleeding, but maybe that depends on one’s preference :P

Definitely depends on how long you camp earth vs swaping through fire but yea the weapon sigils are definitely not set in stone