Guild Wars 2

I haven’t played beta but I heard multiple times that the tempest is the worst of the new specs. As I’m trying to figure out which class I want to main in HoT I’m curious why is this? On a side note what kind of gear do you think would work well with tempest?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Tempest-Thoughts/first#post5547908

This may help you understand a part of why tempest is bad.

So the length of the spell is the only issue you had with the class? Like I said I haven’t played beta but going tempest means you can only use shouts? What are the other perks of switching to tempest? How is the warhorn? These are the things I was looking to get explained.

Overloads are weak and greatly lengthen attunement cooldowns, punishing you heavily for using it with little reward.

Shouts have underwhelming effects.

The warhorn has underwhelming effects.

The tempest offers no new role (still group support), while almost every other elite spec does.

The tempest lacks good personal stability and bulkiness, making it unfit for the proposed front-line role.

So yeah, the tempest feels poorly designed and not unique at all.

Also, to answer your second question, my guess is that celestial gear would work the best in PvP/WvW roaming, while berserker would be best in classic PvE (not sure about HoT PvE though).

Thank you for the detailed response. I’m still figuring out what to main for HoT. Was going to go Druid but it looks like everyone else is as well. Maybe I’ll stick with my necro.

Tempest is bad and the worst elite specialization because it:

A) Offers nothing new to the class.

Sure overloads are a new skill, but they offer nothing different than what can be done. It is more of the same, different way, but still pretty much the same.

B) People were expecting Tempest to be a side grade and not an upgrade or downgrade to what elementalists can do.

The elite specialization, however, does not try to be a side grade. It tries to be an upgrade, but fails at it horribly and is a downgrade instead. Playing as a Tempest is handicapping yourself.

C) The “new” mechanic is absolutely flawed.

The idea of Overload was to have an impressive high cost high reward skill. – A very flawed concept when the Tempest brings nothing to motivate you to stay those 9s you need in a single element.

Overloads not only basically reproduce what the elementalist already does, in a weaker form than what can already be done, but the costs are outrageous and the reward is terribly weak.

Overload’s concept also carries a big issue in that a gigantic payload with a single button press – the premises behind the Overload – is never going to work in this game. Because it is too easy for you to get this one-shot out safely (e.g., armor of earth + Lightning Flash) so you would basically be handing the elementalist a nuke in a sword fight, or you will forever have a mediocre skill that using it is kittened (what we currently have).

Overloads would have worked better if they were more passive buffs (with effects far different than what they do now) that helped the party out and were always on or worked like Guardian’s virtues (with weaker effects than what they have now), but without blocking you from standard attunement swap. The first option might be more interesting, the second would be “meh”.

D) Tempest tries to push Auramancer builds, but fails at not resolving core aura issues such as:

- Auras are generally very weak. This could have been addressed with a trait that made auras better, e.g.,:

Fire Auras now improve the effect of boons on you and allies (variable % buff to boons effects);

Frost Aura now works as a HP shielding, e.g., when you get Frost Aura you gain 5 stacks of Frost Armor that absorb 2000 damage each, helping you to stay in melee longer;

Lightning Aura in addition to stun effect now also reflects part of damage done to you (more than retaliation) or perhaps a cooldown reduction to skills while under its effects.

Magnetic Aura now also steals boons from enemies when applied (2 boons).

- Aura traits are also incredibly spread out and need consolidation. Tempest traitline could do this, but does not.

E) Warhorn is a very clunky and undefined weapon.

Skills in the Warhorn feel very clunky;
cast times are too long;
animation blocks you from doing quick casting;
cooldowns are far too high for too little gain;
Weapon should have a purpose different than Focus (defensive) and Dagger (offensive). It’s skills should be centered on area denial and group support (e.g., calling big tempests/storms that made staying in that area bad for enemies and good for allies).

F) Shouts are unimpressive.

Most shouts produce weak effects (e.g., flash freeze, feel the burn) or are plain weird (Rebound). What tries to be their largest selling point is the Aura integration, but see aura comments above.

Tl/dr Tempest lacks purpose, lacks synergy, lacks meaningful effects and, most important of all, adds nothing new. It is just bad in all aspects and will be bad at release and in the future.

It feels bad to play it, and feels even worse to know you paid to be able play it.

Azel.4786:

Tl/dr Tempest lacks purpose, lacks synergy, lacks meaningful effects and, most important of all, adds nothing new. It is just bad in all aspects and will be bad at release and in the future.

It feels bad to play it, and feels even worse to know you paid to be able play it.

Can’t agree more.

There you have the whole tempest specialization in a nutshell.

For me, tempest is just an other support thing on ele. We already have staff and also DD which are pretty much support wapons. Overloads are just weak it’s like high risk but no reward skills. Traits are also weak, compare to other trait line. War horn is just slow and doing nothing good except boon share (probably nerf).
But the most important: I think the ele community wanted a burst elite spek. Adding something new to the ele gameplay. For the moment, in spvp, if you want to do damage you go fresh air. This build got lots of weaknesses and this is why it’s out of the meta but it’s very fun to play because it’s totally different of the others ele gameplay. Elementalist is a very strong class because of it mecanics but tempest doesn’t bring anything new. It’s just an other melee support build doing less damage than the cele DD we have now.

It’s bad at the moment because:
• “Melee-range support” for the squishiest class can’t work (lacks blocks/evades/invul/stability…)
• Elite was unusable and has to be replaced
• Traits aren’t really versatile (only defense, no offense)
• Warhorn skills are slow, clunky and do not combo together
• The only new thing “Boon sharing” was removed
• Has no new boons or conditions
• Doesn’t work well with staff or scepter
• No synergy with other trait lines (arcane and air specially)
• New mechanic goes against the class mechanic of changing attunements fast
• Overloads take longer than a churning earth to cast and are less rewarding at the end
• Doesn’t have anything to do with storms, even the elite
• It presents itself as an auramancer spec, but auras aren’t strong and there isn’t any new auras

Hopefully it will get better before the release. The new guild halls really gave me hope.

Personally I found several problems with it.

#1: The trait line is sub-par. This is the big one, because you have to take the trait line to be a tempest. The traits are extremely focused, in that they deal with a handful of specific things. This means that they don’t have good synergy with other specs, and aren’t any QoL upgrades as a whole. With how good fire/air/water/arcane are, there is a lot to sacrifice without a lot to gain by going into the tempest line.

#2: The warhorn lacks the necessary tools for the ele. Sure it has some nice buffing effects, but what keeps the ele alive is high movement speed, high control, and high blocks. Dagger off-hand has mobility and control, focus has control and blocks. Warhorn has just buffs, which leaves the ele relatively helpless. This creates the rare “glass buffer” situation. It is rare because it doesn’t work.

#3: The shouts are average. Many of the things they try to do are already accomplished by the arcane line in PVE and the cantrip line in PVP. They work to spread auras around, but auras aren’t that good.

#4:Overloads are tricky to use and are situational. In PVP frequent attunement swapping is how the elementalists exists, and it goes contrary to that nature. In PVE overloads aren’t as bad, but will still be frequently interrupted.

End result, the only thing in the tempest line that I want to use is Fire Overload in PVE, and that is it. I don’t want the traits, weapon, utilities, or the mechanic.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Personally I found several problems with it.

#1: The trait line is sub-par. This is the big one, because you have to take the trait line to be a tempest. The traits are extremely focused, in that they deal with a handful of specific things. This means that they don’t have good synergy with other specs, and aren’t any QoL upgrades as a whole. With how good fire/air/water/arcane are, there is a lot to sacrifice without a lot to gain by going into the tempest line.

#2: The warhorn lacks the necessary tools for the ele. Sure it has some nice buffing effects, but what keeps the ele alive is high movement speed, high control, and high blocks. Dagger off-hand has mobility and control, focus has control and blocks. Warhorn has just buffs, which leaves the ele relatively helpless. This creates the rare “glass buffer” situation. It is rare because it doesn’t work.

#3: The shouts are average. Many of the things they try to do are already accomplished by the arcane line in PVE and the cantrip line in PVP. They work to spread auras around, but auras aren’t that good.

#4:Overloads are tricky to use and are situational. In PVP frequent attunement swapping is how the elementalists exists, and it goes contrary to that nature. In PVE overloads aren’t as bad, but will still be frequently interrupted.

End result, the only thing in the tempest line that I want to use is Fire Overload in PVE, and that is it. I don’t want the traits, weapon, utilities, or the mechanic.

Your post is spot on. It is especially #1 that hurts a lot, because even if everything else was as good as current options, I wouldn’t be able to justify taking a half-effective trait line for it.

Bean Muncher.5197:

Overloads are weak and greatly lengthen attunement cooldowns, punishing you heavily for using it with little reward.

Shouts have underwhelming effects.

The warhorn has underwhelming effects.

The tempest offers no new role (still group support), while almost every other elite spec does.

The tempest lacks good personal stability and bulkiness, making it unfit for the proposed front-line role.

So yeah, the tempest feels poorly designed and not unique at all.

Also, to answer your second question, my guess is that celestial gear would work the best in PvP/WvW roaming, while berserker would be best in classic PvE (not sure about HoT PvE though).

This and the new trait lines just doesn’t have solid synergy with other trait lines.

You need like traits from Tempest and like 3 other trait lines to make a decent build.

It is SLOWSLOWSLOWSLOWSLOWSLOWSLOWSLOWSLOWSLOWSLOWSLOW. Shouts with cast time?!?!? Every skill with SLOW animation. Every skill with 1s cast time (feels more like 3seconds because slow animations). Overload is overall terrible mechanism and i still wonder why is it out there…

I feel like complete trash when u compare it to other specs. Might aswell reroll fire spec nerfs and call it new specialization.

The biggest culprit is that it adds nothing to the class.

It’s essentially an Elementalist specialization for the Elementalist.

They’d need to completely overhaul it at this point to a different purpose, but it’s too late in the game for that. HOT is 3 weeks away. Devs are each managing multiple classes. Just not going to happen.

There’s a few routes forward they could change to make things viable. Unfortunately feedback has been ignored at the universal dislike of the Tempest. It sucks, but just looking like we’re going to have to take this as the dud of the expansion.

At least it gives us something to respond with when someone goes, “Ele is God Tier #1 Dev favored class!” and we can just quietly say, “But…Tempest.”

As somebody that plays to maximise efficiency in PvE, tempest is basically worthless.

It’s low DPS, garbage support unless you go for a full healing build or something like that (which wouldn’t even be that good anyways, and besides when is this ever even needed?), and slow + not fun to play. That’s the general conclusion I’ve come up with after playtesting it.

It just brings nothing valuable to groups at all and doesn’t surpass or excel at anything.

It seems like a roleplayer-eque type elite specialization that’s intended to appeal to people who are really into the elemental archetypes of things or liked that show Avatar: The Last Airbender or whatever.

I’m quite disappointed. I still can’t get over the fact that we didn’t end up getting sword tbh… was really hoping for a solid melee option.

Dragonhunter has a dragon icon. Tempest should have a trashcan icon.

I am just glad that the Main Hand Sword was not wasted on this mess. At least now we can hope for a proper Spellsword spec in the future.

katniss.6735:

Dragonhunter has a dragon icon. Tempest should have a trashcan icon.

LOL!! I love you

katniss.6735:

Dragonhunter has a dragon icon. Tempest should have a trashcan icon.

Actually Herald has the dragon icon. Dragonhunter’s have an arrowhead.

xarallei.4279:

katniss.6735:

Dragonhunter has a dragon icon. Tempest should have a trashcan icon.

Actually Herald has the dragon icon. Dragonhunter’s have an arrowhead.

came here just to say this

Overall after a few hours of testing: It’s getting much better, but it’s still not quite there yet.

The might stacking and weakness application are the best things out of it. I really like it. To truly enjoy tempest I find you need to trait Fire-Air-Tempest, and if you use the new healing skill you will be really low on damaging condi cleanse. You simply can’t fight a burn guard with tempest.

I don’t really see why anyone would use warhorn beside for Heat sync. The air skills are terrible to use, they feel slow. So does the water skills, fire 5 and earth 5.

Fire shouts is good but not the other ones, basically not all auras are equal and everyone will just take fire because it can be used while overloading since it has no cast time. It also has the potential to give you double the might since its a fire aura.

Traits are getting good there is a few ones that are unsatisfying but int general its a big step forward.

With a few important improvement I may well play tempest after all.

The most important aspects to improve for me would be to:
1- Improve the warhorn skills, make them more dynamic
2- reduce the waiting time before overloading by 1 second (or add it to a trait)
3- reduce the penalty for overloading by 3 seconds
4- remove the penalty for overloading if the overload fails
5- Improve the viability of frost aura, perhaps make it a 20% damage reduction instead of 10%

A Fresh-Air equivalent for one of the other attunements should be considered in my opinion since the overloaded attunements take so long to be used again.

Fresh-Fire: Recharges your fire attunement if all attunements are on recharge.

Xillllix.3485:

Overall after a few hours of testing: It’s getting much better, but it’s still not quite there yet.

The might stacking and weakness application are the best things out of it. I really like it. To truly enjoy tempest I find you need to trait Fire-Air-Tempest, and if you use the new healing skill you will be really low on damaging condi cleanse. You simply can’t fight a burn guard with tempest.

I don’t really see why anyone would use warhorn beside for Heat sync. The air skills are terrible to use, they feel slow. So does the water skills, fire 5 and earth 5.

Fire shouts is good but not the other ones, basically not all auras are equal and everyone will just take fire because it can be used while overloading since it has no cast time. It also has the potential to give you double the might since its a fire aura.

Traits are getting good there is a few ones that are unsatisfying but int general its a big step forward.

With a few important improvement I may well play tempest after all.

The most important aspects to improve for me would be to:
1- Improve the warhorn skills, make them more dynamic
2- reduce the waiting time before overloading by 1 second (or add it to a trait)
3- reduce the penalty for overloading by 3 seconds
4- remove the penalty for overloading if the overload fails
5- Improve the viability of frost aura, perhaps make it a 20% damage reduction instead of 10%

A Fresh-Air equivalent for one of the other attunements should be considered in my opinion since the overloaded attunements take so long to be used again.

Fresh-Fire: Recharges your fire attunement if all attunements are on recharge.

I just want everyone to know, that if THIS GUY says the tempest is getting better, its getting MUCH better. trust me.

nerou.4571:

Azel.4786:

Tempest is bad and the worst elite specialization because it:
Tl/dr Tempest lacks purpose, lacks synergy, lacks meaningful effects and, most important of all, adds nothing new. It is just bad in all aspects and will be bad at release and in the future.

It feels bad to play it, and feels even worse to know you paid to be able play it.

I really wanted to disagree but can’t. I agree with every point.
Now it’s going beyond receiving the short end of the stick.

pretty sure tempest is better than berserker

Azure.8670:

pretty sure tempest is better than berserker

Does berserker just repeat the same thing base warrior can do, only worse? Maybe the numbers are a bit off, or there is a missing piece to the puzzle, but berserker can really change you play-style and has some powerful inter-line synergies (Cleansing Ire + Berserker mode = condi cleanse machine). Plus, with the clear burning theme, Berserker is a great trait-line for any condi warrior.

Tempest is just like a bad version of water and arcana, and no aspect of it really works well.

nerou.4571:

BlackBeard.2873:

Azure.8670:

pretty sure tempest is better than berserker

Does berserker just repeat the same thing base warrior can do, only worse? Maybe the numbers are a bit off, or there is a missing piece to the puzzle, but berserker can really change you play-style and has some powerful inter-line synergies (Cleansing Ire + Berserker mode = condi cleanse machine). Plus, with the clear burning theme, Berserker is a great trait-line for any condi warrior.

Tempest is just like a bad version of water and arcana, and no aspect of it really works well.

Couldn’t have said it better myself. It’s not about which is better or not, it’s just that it adds nothing new to the table. A promise made a thousand times. I feel like I’m being forced into kitten I do NOT want to play without any alternatives. Every week increases the feeling that we are being punished for their incompetence to balance professions.

actually no, berserker adds nothing to the table. If you take it, you lose out on the ability to take any kind of punishment. Berserker is strictly for dps and it barely boosts dps, just for condi. Our condi traitline is in Arms, so now if we take Arms AND berserker, we lose out on support or defense, or both. Its a mess because Warrior traits are spread out and berserker sadly has little synergy. Berserker, in itself, is good, but to use it you lose dps AND any ability to live. Yes, it can burst people down with condis, but as of right now thats all it can do. With axe remaining power, and GS now a power weapon, you lose both of those in a condi or hybrid build for the most part and berserker doesnt support power builds well yet.

Also, look how many berserkers you see running around this weekend, its very few because warriors are moving onto necro for now

katniss.6735:

Dragonhunter has a dragon icon. Tempest should have a trashcan icon.

I think I found a more appropriate icon for the Tempest.

“Wash the Pain Away…”