Guild Wars 2

This skill is useless! Like what are you thinking A-Net? Please remember to buff this skill next time you do a balance pass. Make it reflect projectiles, BAM, an okayish skill finally. As it stands, you are vulnerable to melee (with stab) and vulnerable to range, to aoe, to everything. Here is how our elite skills should breakdown:
Glyph: Utility + 1v1 potential
FGs: Mobility (feel free to increase this) + some damage (hybrid)
Rebound: Support
Tornado: Defensive cooldown. (Currently, this is simply turn into a giant target and knock a few players back before you die)

Give Tornado its purpose. Once you nerfed the ability to cancel ability buffing, this skill has had no purpose.

Lastly, the mobility of FGs was greatly nerfed following the movement skills change. Could you also look into increasing the distance traveled by a couple hundred yards? Also, give Rebound a 1s invul on proc. With those simple changes, our elites would be up to par.

Hell, tornado doesn’t even need to reflect, just let it block projectiles. Like Swirling winds is a peaceful looking wind movement and it blocks kitten, what could possibly be more “swirling winds” than a TORNADO?

What the heck is Tornado?

Tornado is the 50% risk you take when you run Elixir X on engineer that you won’t get rampage and instead expose yourself hideously for a moment until you swap back out to humanoid form.

Edit: For a laugh, it’s also a pure skill you can slot on elementalist.

As an engi I hope tornado gets buffed a little cuz its super weak when compared to rampage. (10k less extra health, no leaps, weak damage, cant ress, cant stomp, no damage reduction, no cripple chill immob duration reduction, ect…).

Why doesn’t it suck enemies in? This would make perfect sense…

suck then knockback in the air …. it would be great as kitten =D and funny too — like a real tornado uhuhuh

I’m glad to see how ridiculous some people consider this ability. Hopefully if we keep this thread alive long enough, a dev will take interest in buffing the ability to what it deserves.

It’s a shockingly horrible skill. It has desperately needed a rework for a long time.

A couple of things I’ve noticed about tornado that might actually make it even worse than you think. It doesn’t fire off a skill till 3 seconds into the trasform. It also doesn’t fire at the 15 second mark of the skill, the transfom seems to end before the pusle goes off.

Devs and players comment how tornado is a situational elite. I’m still trying to find that situation. You would think it would be stability stripping but even in this tornado falls short. Since both the targeted attack and the auto knock back fire at 3 second intervals, most stabs will expire before you can strip them. The exceptions being single stack of stab that last more then 3 seconds or 3 stacks at 6 plus seconds.

Tornado is kept bad because it is meant to give engineer’s elite, Elixir X a 1/2 chance to fail.

Yes this skill is so bad without any purpose. It is worse than most racial skills. I like the energy here everyone. Keep it up. It is sad that the best reason I’ve heard about this skill being so lackluster is so that engineers don’t get stronger due to elixir X. Which is supposed to fail half the time.

Make it throw cowz, like in the movie Twister.

In a perfect world, this is what I would have Tornado do:

Tornado: This skill no longer transforms and now instead is a ground targeted skill that summons a tornado for 12 seconds.

• Summon a Tornado at targeted location that lasts for 12 seconds and pulses conditions. You can still command the Tornado after summoning.
• Pulse every second: Bleed(1)
• Pulse every 2 seconds: Chill
• Pulse every 3 seconds: Burning(1)
• Radius: 240
• Range: 1200
• Casttime: 1.5 seconds
• Cooldown: 150 seconds

Summon the Storm:

• Command the Tornado to slowly move to your current position.
• Casttime: Instant
• Cooldown: 2 seconds

slingblade.1437:

Make it throw cowz, like in the movie Twister.

It already can if you keep spamming the #3, sometimes it will throw a cow instead of a rock.

Another “buff tornado” thread…

I lost count of how many I’ve seen in three years as a ele.

Its funny how they nerfed the tornado+storm a long time ago and left the skill to be forgotten again anyway ANY change to it is long overdue.

Tornado needs to be another AoE to drop. I like the idea that it drops a tornado that does damage (I prefer regular dmg over conditions since ele doesn’t have significant condition builds) and you can move it using the skill again. Assuming it moves slowly/cast time is instant/and it is still a cantrip. No long cast times either so I don’t want to be seeing anything beyond 2 seconds cast time.

It may seem like a lot but Ele has crap for elites. Look at other classes such as guard, they have an elite that makes them fully invulnerable while they channel and refreshes all of their virtues (meaning they just use all of them during the channel and there is no cooldown), or Mesmer’s Mass Invis/Time/chronomancer well/MOA all of which are amazing Elites.

The casting tornado on a AOE (not a transformation anymore) is a great idea. even if it’s not mobile but then they have to reduce the CC duration cause it wouldn’t be balance on a point in pvp.

Explanation : “hey i’m ccing U every 3 sec and i can still use my skill” the idea is great but could be too OP if they don’t reduce the cc duration. Cause the knockback is kitten long to be honest.

I’m totally in.

But problem —> what about the elixir X for engi? no transformation anymore…

Nath Forge Tempete.1645:

The casting tornado on a AOE (not a transformation anymore) is a great idea. even if it’s not mobile but then they have to reduce the CC duration cause it wouldn’t be balance on a point in pvp.

Explanation : “hey i’m ccing U every 3 sec and i can still use my skill” the idea is great but could be too OP if they don’t reduce the cc duration. Cause the knockback is kitten long to be honest.

I’m totally in.

But problem —> what about the elixir X for engi? no transformation anymore…

Fornicate engis though.

To be fair, chronomancer well does heavy CC and you can drop it on a point. If Tornado did a good amount of CC and damage I would be fine with it because it is an Elite skill…in the ele world Elite skills are extremely lackluster so having one good one would be great.

It’s an extra stab+regen+vigor cantrip, that’s it. The knockback is terrible. Don’t even try to use this without the cantrip cleanse setup. Perhaps it’s an extra blind, but good luck hitting anything.

Senario.2038:

It may seem like a lot but Ele has crap for elites. Look at other classes such as guard, they have an elite that makes them fully invulnerable while they channel and refreshes all of their virtues (meaning they just use all of them during the channel and there is no cooldown), or Mesmer’s Mass Invis/Time/chronomancer well/MOA all of which are amazing Elites.

I could not agree more. When leveling an ele, you get the sucky Tornado as an initial elite you could get before the whole hero points change. ZERO under water elites for EVER until you got/get enough skill/hero points for Glyph … etc etc.

We are literally stuck with ONE skill underwater and practically one and a half decent skills in general. I have complained about this for ever lol.

Also being a real life storm chaser, Tornado is soooooo underwhelming :P.

I love the suggestion above at making it ground targetable!!!!

Humblekain.5418:

What the heck is Tornado?

Tornado is the 50% risk you take when you run Elixir X on engineer that you won’t get rampage and instead expose yourself hideously for a moment until you swap back out to humanoid form.

Edit: For a laugh, it’s also a pure skill you can slot on elementalist.

This. All of this.

For a long time I actually thought I was having fun with it until someone pointed this out and I realized how horribly bad it is. How can they justify leaving an ELITE skill exactly as it appears as an un-wanted effect from a bad coin flip on a different profession.

We just really need at least one good elite, even if it is mostly going to be a staff thing. If things such as meteor are not a problem in any game mode there is really no reason Tornado will be unbalanced as it would all be numbers if it was ground targeted.

It is surprising to me that even after all of our Elites are lackluster the new elite spec added another elite skill that is really bad. Rebound sounds good on paper but the numbers make it just not worth it. And even if it was worth it…it would be a very situational elite as it is supposed to save you from death rather than giving a benefit to you when you decide to use it.

the problem with buffing tornado … is that we speak about the ele … and ppl will whine again about how OP it is … then (in their logic) it doesn’t deserve a nerf

(NB: i’ m an ele player )

SongOfDestruction.2984:

Hell, tornado doesn’t even need to reflect, just let it block projectiles. Like Swirling winds is a peaceful looking wind movement and it blocks kitten, what could possibly be more “swirling winds” than a TORNADO?

I fully agree.

Tornado would finally be a good elite if you could use all your normal abilities when taking that form.

It’s funny really, its underwater version (Whirlpool) is lovely.

Towren.1745:

It’s funny really, its underwater version (Whirlpool) is lovely.

As great as Whirlwind is under water, it’s still a transform. Mesmers underwater have a whirlwind that they can leave at a point on one of their underwater weapon skills… and it does only a bit less damage than our long cooldown transform elite. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vortex

I think the reason it works better underwater is how clunky the combat is. So having an ability that lets you simply walk into enemies and damage them is useful. On land, the agility of players makes the current skill completely worthless as a damage control skill.

Loboling.5293:

I think the reason it works better underwater is how clunky the combat is. So having an ability that lets you simply walk into enemies and damage them is useful. On land, the agility of players makes the current skill completely worthless as a damage control skill.

It also procs quicker, deals more damage, and pulls instead of launching. Along with the underwater environment where some people are so bad in.

It works very well at keeping mordrem off NPCs in Silverwastes.

I like the skill, but it has little all round use beyond the (admittedly great) fun of flinging things around mindlessly…

Alekt.5803:

Loboling.5293:

I think the reason it works better underwater is how clunky the combat is. So having an ability that lets you simply walk into enemies and damage them is useful. On land, the agility of players makes the current skill completely worthless as a damage control skill.

It also procs quicker, deals more damage, and pulls instead of launching. Along with the underwater environment where some people are so bad in.

Thanks for clarifying. This exemplifies well how bad the skill is on land, even when compared to its aquatic version… Tornado desperately needs some improvements. It should leave some aftermath as well depending on how long an area was affected. This way if you stand on a point for the whole channel successfully, it becomes very hard for enemies to stay on point for 5-6 seconds. However, as you move over areas, a stacking pulsing damage is layed down. Combine this with projectile destruction, and possibly change the kockback into a pull (like the water version) and I think you have a solid skill that has niche uses.

Tornado is something you immediately regret pressing because it puts you into a transformation that doesn’t do a lot of CC, doesn’t do all that much dmg, and you can take full damage in it.