Guild Wars 2

I’m not certain of the final form of Tempest yet, but so far these are the builds I have felt to be most effective.

S/X builds
I’ve always felt one of the most restrictive aspects of Elementalist is its inability to change ranges. If you picked dagger/X, you were restricted to never being able to attack from a range while if you picked staff or scepter/X, fast enemies jumping around/kiting all around you, your projectiles would not hit the target/ground AoE would straight up miss. I’ve felt picking Scepter + Tempest overcame the issue of inability to swap ranges: Overload is your reliable melee skill, and your auto attacks are reliably mid-ranged, which is why I think Scepter builds will be most effective. So here they are:

S/D FA build 1 (PvE) – General Might Stacking, Berserker
Fire X/1/1
Air 3/2/2 You don’t need fury on aura because of fury on blasting fire
Tempest X/3/X
Rotations: Might stack then swap into Air before combat (otherwise roam in Air). Start off with Air 4 —> Air Overload + Air 2/3. Swap into water to cast Water 3, then swap back into air and use Air 1 + Air 2/3 and swap into Fire. ~2 seconds into Air 1, start casting Dragon’s Tooth as the Lightning Field should be vanishing, then use Fire 4, 3, and Fire 5 as you swap into Earth to use Earth 4, then Earth 5 as you swap back into Air and use Air 2/3. After a full channel of Air 1, Air Overload should be ready (and keep spamming that 2). Repeat. While Earth 4 and 5 on cd, simply use Fire 2,4,3,2 and then swap into air. Note you can also choose to take LH and cover for Air Overload with one or two auto attack chains.

S/D FA build 2 (For PvP/WvW Group Roaming), 90% Shocking Aura to 5 people uptime in combat; Marauder Amulet for pvp, Almost full Berserker otherwise
Water 1/1/2 Can replace Aurashare with Cleansing Water for sPvP
Air X/2/2 Can replace Aero’s Training for Tempest Defence in certain situations
Tempest 3/3/3
Similar rotations as before but abuse LoS with Air Overload here. Try to might stack on top of the enemy as before but feel free to stand behind walls or statues to Air Overload. (P.S. Air Overload +Sigil of Rage + Armor of Earth + Lightning flashing into the enemy cluster of 2/3 when they’re distracted is hilarious.) Always use Air 4 then 5 just before an Air Overload if you can.

S/D FA build 3 (For PvP, WvW roaming) – Marauder/Berserker
Earth 3/2/3 Protection on Aura, Rock Solid to cover Churning Earth
Air X/2/2
Tempest 3/3/3
Notes: Avoid using Earth to might stack, instead using it to cover incoming dps. Same rotations as before except because you have Rock Solid, you can go into Earth, Earth 4 + 5 and swap into air as soon kitten starts channeling (the stabi will cover 1.5~ seconds of CE). You can blind the enemy then to ensure you don’t get interrupted (or use Armor of Earth that will carry into the first few seconds of Air Overload).

S/F FA build (For PvP, WvW roaming) – Marauder/Berserker
Fire 3/1/3
Air X/2/2
Tempest 3/3/3
*Earth focus covers condi clear and being immune to damage: seriously take Sigil of Rage and Armor of Earth + Lightning Flash + Air Overload into their team and then swap into earth to obsi flesh while they DIE

But wait you say! Why so much focus on FA? It’s because the moment Air Overload (which I think is the strongest overload, Fire is good for condi builds but its range is toos hort) finishes, it lasts for 4 seconds which is about the time when your next overload is almost ready to be casted if you swap out of Air (let’s say to fire to RoF + Phoenix + swap to air while you Dragon’s Tooth). Air overload has ridiculous damage and I believe Scepter > Staff because you can Air 2/3 with Staff as you overload for more dps/blinding the enemy’s CC. Of course there are other builds such as:

Staff Tempest
Fire 1/1/1
Air 3/3/1 or Water 2/3/X
Tempest X/3/X
(Honestly I’d prefer people just playing Staff Ele because it’s better in 95% of situations)

D/D Tempest
Arcane 2/2/1
Earth X/X/3
Tempest X/3/X
(If you want to play D/D celestial, just stick with base Ele. D/D Tempest locks you even further to forever being in melee range and taking water/fire instead of Tempest is superior)

…I’ve been trying to make Tempest work and I feel the warhorn change (no more 20% cdr = raw dps loss) made dagger a much stronger alternative while the heal-on-aura should hopefully cover the healing lost from not taking Arcane + Water in most situations.

On Marauder, the Air Overload does less damage than a Mesmer Shatter burst. I have a hard time believing the theory crafting that you can Lighting Flash in and watch the opponents die. A warrior for sure will survive your Overload. But without Lightning Flash to get out, the Marauder Ele is already dead. Misform and Obsidian Flesh only delay the fate a few seconds.

Thinking for wvw the stander d/d armor set up will be best for roaming and dmg tempest play. For support tempest all in healing and tank you may want to go mostly power healing power and armor / hp.
For trate lines roaming / dmg builds tempest air earth or tempest air fire may be the best builds. For healing tempest water earth or tempest water air. If you want to get all the healing you can have tempest water arcain but you lose a lot of the def or earth or the dmg added from air.

As for pve or spvp i do not know not realy my aim of play.

Condition Staff Tempest (TPvP ; SPvP)
Tempest/Earth/Arcane
Tempest: 3; 2; 3
Earth: 1; 1 ; 1
Arcane: 2; 2; 3

Settler Undead : Geo /Doom
Signet of Resto, Signet of Earth or Feel the Burn, Conjure Earth Shield, Glyph of Elemental Power; Rebound

Not saying more.

in pvp you will run scepter/focus with earth air tempest. you can either run it with marauder and deal ridiculous amounts of aoe damage and will guarantee that you’ll be the priority target or you run a more sustained version of it using celestial and a couple of shouts.

what’s the difference between d/d celestial ele and s/f celestial tempest? less survivability?, more damage, a different kind of support. you can basically have perm 25 might stacks on it.

is it viable? hard to say. if d/d drops out then this build will most likely take its place, not for the same role but as an ele build.

is it fun? i would say so. you can’t carry too well on it though. you deal quite a bit of sustained damage on it but you’re not there for the clean up. if your team fails at that then you won’t make the difference.
i had a couple of games in which i had stupid amounts of damage dealt but we still lost most of the teamfights because nobody finished off low-health enemies and the tempest should be “next to the crowd” rather than chasing people. next to the crowd because you want to position yourself in a way that you don’t eat all the aoe.

Water/arcane tempest with cele works as a teamfight build and fire/water tempest with cele isn’t bad either.

Run earth instead of fire for your S/F build so you get earth cooldowns and written in stone to actually survive.