Guild Wars 2

ive been playing d/f ele arcane /fire/lighting for awhile and recently switched from arcane to tempest fresh air build, the 5 sec cd on overload with fresh air is awsome but does it really do more dmg if i just auto atk air 1 with old build?

Air Overload does more damage than Dagger Air 1.

I’ve been playing d/f ele with the same traits going. The thing worries me most about this spec is survival,it seems incredibley squishy with absolutely no defense.
Can anyone share their experience with this?

d/f Tempest with air/fire/tempest is a weird build. You need to go air/water/tempest or probably better air/earth/tempest. Of course air/fire/tempest will be squishy.

Yeah, fire is sort of useless for you…definitely go air/earth/tempest if you are using D/F

Fire is most definitely not useless for D/F, it provides excellent DPS (the top D/F build is Air/Fire/x, where x is Water/Arcane/Tempest).

Tempest also has better survivability than Water, making Air/Fire/Tempest a more defensive option than the old Air/Fire/Water build (which was itself our most defensive DPS build). Let’s see why:

The classical D/F build with Air/Fire/Water (found at either metabattle, DEKeyz’s guide, or Dulfy’s guide) takes Piercing Shards, Aquamancer’s Training, and Powerful Auras from the Water traitline. None of these give you any additional survivability. In fact the only survivability from Water is Healing Ripple, which provides a heal when you attune to Water, which only happens once every ~30s when you are doing the D/F rotation.

Now you might say “Take Soothing Ice, Cleansing Wave, and Cleansing Water/Soothing Power!” but let’s be honest, those are pretty awful for PvE. Not only do they result in a huge DPS loss, they have very little survivability. Soothing Ice has an ICD of 20s, meaning it will generally only proc once during a solo fight and maybe two-three times against a fractal boss. Cleansing Wave and Cleansing Water are decent, but unnecessary for survivability seeing as we have plenty of condi removal without them. Soothing Power is near useless because a properly played D/F ele spends so little time in Water.

Meanwhile Tempest has a plethora of surviability traits. In the adept tier Gale Song gives you an AoE stunbreak/Superspeed proc, Latent Stamina gives you vigor and a small endurance regen if you are in a group, and Unstable Conduit causes your Overload Air to proc Shocking Aura, which not only stuns mobs but also has nice synergy with the grandmaster trait Elemental Bastion. This grandmaster trait causes all of your auras to heal yourself and allies. Without using shouts, D/F Tempest sustains an average of 1 aura every ~5s. These auras are:
- Fire Aura from attuning to Fire (every ~16s)
- Fire Aura from Magnetic Leap in a fire field (every ~28s)
- Shcoking Aura from Shocking Aura ability (every ~25s)
- Shocking Aura from Overload Air (every ~16s)

This does not include the Frost Aura you would gain upon dropping below 75% health (Elemental Bastion), the Shocking Aura you get when you are disabled (Tempest Defense), or the auras you have access to with shouts. Without healing power, each aura heals for 778, which gives you an average of 156 HPS just from doing your standard DPS rotation. Conversely, the healing from Healing Ripple provides 43 HPS.

Tempest also provides Hardy Conduit, which not only gives you protection while you are overloading, but also increases the effectiveness of all protection buffs by 20%.

For DPS builds (which is what this topic was created for), the Water traitline provides significantly less survivability than Tempest. Anyone who used to run the D/F Fresh Air build prior to HoT will actually have an easier time staying alive by using Tempest.

And for DPS builds, don’t drop Fire for Earth. For crying out loud, Fire provides so much more DPS.

I’m using Fire/Ai/Tempest, but that’s because I use staff as my main weapon.

Tempest dps is squishy yes, but Invigorating Torrents is awesome for healing up fast if you combine it with aura’s. <3 The only thing I haven’t figured out yet, is what to do with condi cleanse.

You type all that, and we still don’t know if the OP is talking PVE or PVP. If it’s PVP then I stand by the statement that air/fire/tempest is terrible. PVE, no idea.

grahf.7540:

You type all that, and we still don’t know if the OP is talking PVE or PVP. If it’s PVP then I stand by the statement that air/fire/tempest is terrible. PVE, no idea.

PvE tempest is alright if you go staff though I would stand by the statement that while the damage is “higher” you also put yourself at unreasonable amounts of risk due to how close you have to be for overloads to matter. In a PvE situation building tanky stats will always result in a loss of dps and as per usual you always want a high amount of dps. Tempest, having a lack of protection on the last second of overload and a lack of ways to get perma protection without running full shouts (which is not feasible in a PvE build without dropping damage.)

You can get similar effects from going fire/air/water and playing well to stay above 90% hp. The only real benefits tempest does give you as a staff ele is easier ways to stack vulnerability and might which honestly should be a team effort as you are still way too squishy to use your overloads and if they are interrupted you are still locked out for the full duration.

Basically, your dps is ZERO when you are dead.

Being melee does not put you at unreasonable amounts of risk, that is a common propaganda message of bad players. Almost every fight in the game can be done completely safely while in melee, and you don’t even need to be a super pro player to do it.

Also, as illustrated above, Tempest has better survivability than Water, which makes it more ideal to use than the classic Fire/Air/Water build.

Also, the real benefit from tempest is not the might stacking, it’s the increased DPS (with better group support being a secondary bonus).

Being squishy in PvE is completely irrelevant because good (just good, don’t even have to be great) take almost no damage to begin with.

Overloads don’t get interrupted in PvE unless you are dumb enough to start channeling them right before a boss does a disable (which are all telegraphed and extremely predictable).

Sollinton.6842:

Being melee does not put you at unreasonable amounts of risk, that is a common propaganda message of bad players. Almost every fight in the game can be done completely safely while in melee, and you don’t even need to be a super pro player to do it.

Also, as illustrated above, Tempest has better survivability than Water, which makes it more ideal to use than the classic Fire/Air/Water build.

Also, the real benefit from tempest is not the might stacking, it’s the increased DPS (with better group support being a secondary bonus).

Being squishy in PvE is completely irrelevant because good (just good, don’t even have to be great) take almost no damage to begin with.

Overloads don’t get interrupted in PvE unless you are dumb enough to start channeling them right before a boss does a disable (which are all telegraphed and extremely predictable).

So your argument against the points made is that players who have a problem with the amount of risk you take for using tempest are bad. Well that totally clears it up, case closed, clearly all eles play exactly the same and definitely take almost no damage.

That really is all your argument boils down to, calling out players for being bad rather than focusing on what the spec is lacking and what it does right. Your experience may be “oh it is all so easy” but no matter what class you should not need to play 100% perfectly to get any sort of benefit out of your class.

So tell me, why should I take anything you say seriously since clearly you aren’t interested in addressing people’s concerns or teaching them “how not to be bad” as you put it. Considering that you attacked me for being bad and specifically pointed out my post for it I highly doubt you are doing anything to solve the problem if you think the spec is good and people don’t know how to play it. Are you teaching people how to do better? Or are you just calling out people for being bad if they disagree with you?

I figured you would come back with that argument, which is why I specifically stated twice that you don’t need to be a pro to survive in melee. You don’t need to “play 100% perfectly to get any sort of benefit out of your class” as you so ridiculously put it. You just need to know what you’re doing.

There is a difference between being an inexperienced player, being a good player, and being a great player. An inexperienced player will not know when to use defensive abilities, will not know when to step out of the boss’s range while using an ability with greater range in order to not lose DPS, will not know when to use their heal effectively, will not know which attacks should be dodged and which are okay to be facetanked, etc. etc. A good player will know some of these, but not others. A great player will know all of these.

An inexperienced player who does not know the above will die, regardless of their class or build. A good player, depending on specifically how good they are, will be able to survive in melee with mild to no difficulty.

Do you honestly think that inexperienced players should be able to do challenging content with ease? Or do you think that the game should require a modicum of skill in order to succeed?

And yes, I do help players who are actually interested in learning instead of just using the excuse “Well I died because my build is too squishy”, but thank you for assuming from a single post that I am a horrible person. A little quick on the draw there don’t you think?

Regardless, this is getting off topic. I’m not going to start a flame war with some random person I’ve never met before. If you want to keep crying because someone you’ve never met before disagreed with your point of view, then by all means go ahead. I’m done wasting my time.

The OP’s topic is about Tempest DPS, and the answer is that, in PvE at least, Tempest is both a DPS increase and a survivability increase.

ok from i tested in SW map, im basically losing around 15%~20%dps on normal atk dagger 1, since i switch from bolt to the heart to fresh air, plus if i use air overload with fresh air, theres not so much time or worth it to do might stacking rotation, u just overload air then fire 3 for crit then air 1 again, then 5 sec later overload air again and again. im just saying if u ignore all that protection which tempest gives u, does overload air every 5 sec( which u can not atk while overloading) really outcome regular dps +bolt to the heart +if arcane bountiful power (which gives u another 5%solo ~15% team) with 10~15 stacks of might auto atk?

Sollinton.6842:

I figured you would come back with that argument, which is why I specifically stated twice that you don’t need to be a pro to survive in melee. You don’t need to “play 100% perfectly to get any sort of benefit out of your class” as you so ridiculously put it. You just need to know what you’re doing.

There is a difference between being an inexperienced player, being a good player, and being a great player. An inexperienced player will not know when to use defensive abilities, will not know when to step out of the boss’s range while using an ability with greater range in order to not lose DPS, will not know when to use their heal effectively, will not know which attacks should be dodged and which are okay to be facetanked, etc. etc. A good player will know some of these, but not others. A great player will know all of these.

An inexperienced player who does not know the above will die, regardless of their class or build. A good player, depending on specifically how good they are, will be able to survive in melee with mild to no difficulty.

Do you honestly think that inexperienced players should be able to do challenging content with ease? Or do you think that the game should require a modicum of skill in order to succeed?

And yes, I do help players who are actually interested in learning instead of just using the excuse “Well I died because my build is too squishy”, but thank you for assuming from a single post that I am a horrible person. A little quick on the draw there don’t you think?

Regardless, this is getting off topic. I’m not going to start a flame war with some random person I’ve never met before. If you want to keep crying because someone you’ve never met before disagreed with your point of view, then by all means go ahead. I’m done wasting my time.

The OP’s topic is about Tempest DPS, and the answer is that, in PvE at least, Tempest is both a DPS increase and a survivability increase.

Coming from the person who called another bad because they disagreed? The topic is about tempest DPS and I do think that in terms of risk reward there is not enough reward for tempest. You are making assumptions that I want everything to be kitten easy when really that isn’t true. However I do want to be given a fair shot at something.

You are again falling into the whole “well you’re bad so you wouldn’t understand” idea which really is just false. It doesn’t matter if you said you just had to be “good” good is relative. It is not an objective point or line where you pass it and all of a sudden you are good.

Now, you still haven’t told me why your opinion is more valid. I highly doubt your claim of actually helping people as you can simply say that. That said I don’t see how blaming the so called people you consider “bad” is something that is productive to finding the problems with the class, finding the good things about the class, and adjusting based on those things.

As much as you would dislike to hear it, your argument is straight up being elitist and condescending and there is no real reason I or anybody should take you seriously when your first assumption about opposing views is that they are bad. And you not wanting to start a flame war is highly unbelievable because you could’ve just let it go instead of calling somebody out as “bad” in your opinion.

I consider myself an average player from maneuvering in combat.
I did a build that suits me and i combine close combat punch and range using scepter + tempest. First i thought my build would not stand a loss in condition damage when taking tempest. But the more i played and tried to get it beter the more i reduced it.
On paper i lost about 20% damage. But i added a lot condi duration and some HP.
And i don´t feel the DPS loss. I can handle fights much better then before using shouts, can fight well at range and have deadly PBAE burst. My ranged damage might not be great, but its the packet that makes it allowing tactical play not just jump close. But i can stand close range combat quite well and support teammates with shouts.
So direct DPS loss does not automatically mean your char is weaker. I would say i even got DPS increased when i get a fire overload off save. Also the 35% condi duration i built in with giver weapons feels amazing. I was quite unease doing this but i think it was a good move.

Sollinton.6842:

Fire is most definitely not useless for D/F, it provides excellent DPS (the top D/F build is Air/Fire/x, where x is Water/Arcane/Tempest).

Tempest also has better survivability than Water, making Air/Fire/Tempest a more defensive option than the old Air/Fire/Water build (which was itself our most defensive DPS build). Let’s see why:

The classical D/F build with Air/Fire/Water (found at either metabattle, DEKeyz’s guide, or Dulfy’s guide) takes Piercing Shards, Aquamancer’s Training, and Powerful Auras from the Water traitline. None of these give you any additional survivability. In fact the only survivability from Water is Healing Ripple, which provides a heal when you attune to Water, which only happens once every ~30s when you are doing the D/F rotation.

Now you might say “Take Soothing Ice, Cleansing Wave, and Cleansing Water/Soothing Power!” but let’s be honest, those are pretty awful for PvE. Not only do they result in a huge DPS loss, they have very little survivability. Soothing Ice has an ICD of 20s, meaning it will generally only proc once during a solo fight and maybe two-three times against a fractal boss. Cleansing Wave and Cleansing Water are decent, but unnecessary for survivability seeing as we have plenty of condi removal without them. Soothing Power is near useless because a properly played D/F ele spends so little time in Water.

Meanwhile Tempest has a plethora of surviability traits. In the adept tier Gale Song gives you an AoE stunbreak/Superspeed proc, Latent Stamina gives you vigor and a small endurance regen if you are in a group, and Unstable Conduit causes your Overload Air to proc Shocking Aura, which not only stuns mobs but also has nice synergy with the grandmaster trait Elemental Bastion. This grandmaster trait causes all of your auras to heal yourself and allies. Without using shouts, D/F Tempest sustains an average of 1 aura every ~5s. These auras are:
- Fire Aura from attuning to Fire (every ~16s)
- Fire Aura from Magnetic Leap in a fire field (every ~28s)
- Shcoking Aura from Shocking Aura ability (every ~25s)
- Shocking Aura from Overload Air (every ~16s)

This does not include the Frost Aura you would gain upon dropping below 75% health (Elemental Bastion), the Shocking Aura you get when you are disabled (Tempest Defense), or the auras you have access to with shouts. Without healing power, each aura heals for 778, which gives you an average of 156 HPS just from doing your standard DPS rotation. Conversely, the healing from Healing Ripple provides 43 HPS.

Tempest also provides Hardy Conduit, which not only gives you protection while you are overloading, but also increases the effectiveness of all protection buffs by 20%.

For DPS builds (which is what this topic was created for), the Water traitline provides significantly less survivability than Tempest. Anyone who used to run the D/F Fresh Air build prior to HoT will actually have an easier time staying alive by using Tempest.

And for DPS builds, don’t drop Fire for Earth. For crying out loud, Fire provides so much more DPS.

Op was talking about the arcana variant, and arcana did provide more defense. Not sue If more than tempest though

Anyhow, you’re forgetting HoT is just generally harder than previous content, I just want someone who has played with it a little in HoT to share his experience

Sollinton.6842:

Now you might say “Take Soothing Ice, Cleansing Wave, and Cleansing Water/Soothing Power!” but let’s be honest, those are pretty awful for PvE. Not only do they result in a huge DPS loss, they have very little survivability. Soothing Ice has an ICD of 20s, meaning it will generally only proc once during a solo fight and maybe two-three times against a fractal boss. Cleansing Wave and Cleansing Water are decent, but unnecessary for survivability seeing as we have plenty of condi removal without them. Soothing Power is near useless because a properly played D/F ele spends so little time in Water.

Bosses have 0% crit chance, only mobs are able to crit.

grahf.7540:

You type all that, and we still don’t know if the OP is talking PVE or PVP. If it’s PVP then I stand by the statement that air/fire/tempest is terrible. PVE, no idea.

Ever seen a topic about lost dps for ele in regards to pvp?

Hi my weight into this conversation would be based only on DD builds since that is all I have experience with. DD Cele Ele has constantly been a melee survival based spec.
In general it used Fire Water and Arcane. Fire for Might and Water for Cleanse and Arcane for Damage while Surviving.

The Key aspect to Cantrip based play is Permanent Regen and Vigor, and Cleanse on Regen. This means dodging a lot to avoid Power damage, Regening consistently whatever damage you take, and cleaning Condi damage every few seconds.
This spec had 3 condi removal on 3 Cantrips, +3 from Cleansing Fire + Not counting Cleanse from Left side bar.

Now If we take Tempest we get the Option to grant Regen and Vigor on Aura/Shout.
This means again Perma Regen and Vigor, meaning the gameplay is almost identical.
However the Bonus of this spec is that the Regen, Vigor and Aura itself is all AOE to all allies, making everyone as tanky as a Cele Ele. (ohh the fear of those days)

Now to tackle the condi clense Problem. I see 2 Options, Soldier Rune or Water traitline(+Radiance rune is good with that), or both.
I like keeping Water trait line and, This is imo the mistake most Tempests make:
Not taking Powerful Aura instead taking Cleansing Water.
Powerful Aura is greedy, Shouts grant AOE auras anyway, so start Cleansing instead.

That gives Tempest 3-5(up to 8 ) cleanse on utility + 4 if you finish an overload + weapon skills + larger heals + access to high levels of strong Prot + more cleanse from non Cantrip based water traits such as Soothing Ice double condi removal every 10 seconds, or Dodge to remove burn if you recognize a burn guard, or cleanse on water attunement.

About damage, I have personally not noticed a loss in Dps except when I focus on team healing of which I have a lot more options. I believe Arcane might be the odd one out and there could be more play with Tempest, Water, Fire that I am missing.

Finally I would like to bring to attention a nice Combo I have found with FGS on Tempest. I have not enjoyed Rebound, so I reslotted FGS and find the gameplay there a lot more interesting since you can play with overloads while maintaining high damage Weapon skills, and your overloads get boosted with the extra stats from FGS very high.

PS. Sure you get interrupted a fair amount during overloads but just keep going to next attunement and overload.