Guild Wars 2

no mention of a change here, this is one of the most terrible things of tempest, it makes you sit in an attunement.

as i have stated during the beta weekend, let us overload the attunement. during the channel we switch attunement, so the element goes on cooldown but the overcharge will still channel until it is finished.

fresh air will never be useful if you cannot do this and overloading + swap to air for shocking aura or fury is also not possible.

karl, make it happen, it won’t hurt anybody but it will help making it more fluid and immersive.

the way it should be:

overload air attunement
switch attunement during channel
air goes on cooldown but channel keeps going
fresh air resets air
you go back to air
channel ends somewhen and in a few seconds the next overcharge will be ready.
repeat

this is the only way i can ever see this work for a marauder fresh air ele, other than that it will be completely useless and ele will have, again and still, no viable dps build (for pvp) and we will be sitting on d/d ele eternally.

You can even go further with your approach. I think overcharge, from a very general aspect, is a nice idea. You are a tempest, you are an elementalist, so you unleash a fiery storm upon foes or whatever attunement you’re currently in. The implementation of the idea, however, shows so much lack in understanding of the mechanics of this game that Captain Picard’s epic double facepalm wouldn’t be enough to describe this epic fail of a specialization feature. Sitting in a channeled skill which is suicide for an elementalist EVEN WITH STABILITY and that comes at the price of locking yourself out of an attunement… no words.

But with some slight changes, we could keep the idea of an overcharging elementalist AND make it worth using. Here’s my suggestion:

Let us overcharge an attunement to gain some damage/support effects in close combat at the price of locking ourselves out of an attunement, but make it passive so we can use all our skills and attunement swaps.

This could be balanced by simply adjusting numbers/effects and adds a new level to elementalist gameplay which could also be countered. Now before anyone screams “OP” I just want to make clear that I don’t expect to be a firestorm that casts meteorshower while doing 4k ticks of burn. When we are still allowed to use all our skills, the overcharge effects must not be too big of a deal. They should, however, give enough benefits to make them worth using in the right situation because locking yourself out of an attunement is a big price.

There would also be a counter to this: Players in PVP will see the overcharge animation and the proper reaction would be to kite and stay away. After the overcharge effect is gone, the elementalist’s rotation will be crippled so there will be a weak phase to strike back.

This change to overcharges would make them useful in potentially all game modes, pvp and pve.