Guild Wars 2

Why are we being punished for using overloads? Why cant we just use it instantly instead of 5seconds? Why do we get increased cooldown on attunements after its used? Why long cast times?

It doesnt make sense to me and is pretty much against what elementalist is supposed to be / currently is. Feels like there is no real reason to make everything so slow on tempest but somehow its still made like it.

Covis.6037:

Why are we being punished for using overloads? Why cant we just use it instantly instead of 5seconds? Why do we get increased cooldown on attunements after its used? Why long cast times?

It doesnt make sense to me and is pretty much against what elementalist is supposed to be / currently is.

Making the overloads insta cast wouldn’t make sense because you have to “accumulate” the natural energy of the element in other to physically manifest it. The cooldown though, seems really long (20secs really), despite it can be justified that it’ll take long to “accumulate and harness the deep powers of the elements” after you “exhausted” it…perhaps 20secs is way too long.

Why are we being punished for using overloads?

You aren’t. You’re paying a cost for using them, just as a thief pays Initiative, a Revenant pays energy, and everyone else pays with a cooldown. Using an Overload causes a cooldown, this is not a punishment, this is a cost.

Also, it is not a casting time, it is a channel, it is a benefit, not a cost.

Using overloads is the wrong move 99% of the time so punishment is an entirely valid description.

So many people trying to jautify overloading mechanics here LOL. Do you even play ele? Overloading mechanics are horrible atm. High cd is one thing, but the 5s cd when attuning to an element before you can overload is ridiculous. It makes tempest not worthwhile.

Can´t agree. Pulling one or two overloads per fight works well.
Like start the fight with air overload and when your wait for cooldowns pull one earth overlaod mid or end of fight. For packed guards/monsters i pull fire overload. This works pretty well so overloads are a useful addition to ele options and i can handle the 20sec CD. The 5sec wait is more handicap and kills water overload for me.
If you try more overloads you are lost …. So don´t focus to much on it. Its another ace you can pull out of your sleve.

I think the reason behind this is quite simple. Ele core mechanics revolves around attunement swapping and self comboing. Thus Fire/Air/Earth/Water/Arcane traitlines grant many boons/effects/advantages when you rotate and combo through your attunements. Tempest mechanics competes directly with this by forcing you to stay in one attunement, and keeping you from getting back in it. So by using overloads you lose what the entire class has been designed and balanced around. It would have been fine if weapon skills weren’t set up in fire for attack, water for healing, air for cc and earth for defense. Tempest could actually worth it if we had a weapon swap mechanic like others class do (stronger aa, skills with shorter cd, and better efficiency overall without having to rotate/combo, and no more themathically themed weapon set) and cycling through attunements just to linger to their passive effects and overload. This would limit our weapon skills to 10, but we could switch fighting style on the spot. And – that – would have been the new long awaited playstyle for eles, not a self conflicting one wich offers nothing more that what we can already do in a less efficient way.

I suggested that for tempest. Eiher a weapon swap instead of elemental swaping. So you coose your element and use two weapons. Or the following trait:
Dormant elements:
You loose the ability to swap untraited elements.
Gain the passive traits from untraited elements. (Or just a CD on weapon skills)
Example:
You trait air, earth,tempest.
So you loose fire + water but permanently gain 150 power, 10% damage against burning, soothing mist and the 15% outgoing heal.

MyPuppy.8970:

I think the reason behind this is quite simple. Ele core mechanics revolves around attunement swapping and self comboing. Thus Fire/Air/Earth/Water/Arcane traitlines grant many boons/effects/advantages when you rotate and combo through your attunements. Tempest mechanics competes directly with this by forcing you to stay in one attunement, and keeping you from getting back in it. So by using overloads you lose what the entire class has been designed and balanced around. It would have been fine if weapon skills weren’t set up in fire for attack, water for healing, air for cc and earth for defense. Tempest could actually worth it if we had a weapon swap mechanic like others class do (stronger aa, skills with shorter cd, and better efficiency overall without having to rotate/combo, and no more themathically themed weapon set) and cycling through attunements just to linger to their passive effects and overload. This would limit our weapon skills to 10, but we could switch fighting style on the spot.

Well said. Give this guy a cookie!
no matter how well you play, there’s a conflict in the mechanic for both core ele and tempest. if you really need to stay in 1 attunement, might as well just go with fire staff ele, this way you deal much more dps using the old traits than tempest. this is also the reason why so many ppl are raging, nerfing ice bow is just adding more oil to the fire. not saying it doesn’t deserve to be nerf but 50% straight nerf is just simply killing it…

Edit some spellings

A weapon swap insead of ele swaps would have been a completly diffrent ele. The swap time should be about 5sec. Many will enjoy that.
I would even go further:

You choose tempest. As result you have to pick the same element twice as traits. Thats your element. You can´t pick the same traits twice but you have double picks.
You have weapon swap on 5s CD.
That feels like it might work. Thoug it feels strange.

EvilHero.1248:

MyPuppy.8970:

I think the reason behind this is quite simple. Ele core mechanics revolves around attunement swapping and self comboing. Thus Fire/Air/Earth/Water/Arcane traitlines grant many boons/effects/advantages when you rotate and combo through your attunements. Tempest mechanics competes directly with this by forcing you to stay in one attunement, and keeping you from getting back in it. So by using overloads you lose what the entire class has been designed and balanced around. It would have been fine if weapon skills weren’t set up in fire for attack, water for healing, air for cc and earth for defense. Tempest could actually worth it if we had a weapon swap mechanic like others class do (stronger aa, skills with shorter cd, and better efficiency overall without having to rotate/combo, and no more themathically themed weapon set) and cycling through attunements just to linger to their passive effects and overload. This would limit our weapon skills to 10, but we could switch fighting style on the spot.

Well said. Give this guy a cookie!
no matter how well you play, there’s a conflict in the mechanic for both core ele and tempest. if you really need to stay in 1 attunement, might as well just go with fire staff ele, this way you deal much more dps using the old traits than tempest. this is also the reason why so many ppl are raging, nerfing ice bow is just adding more oil to the fire. not saying it doesn’t deserve to be nerf but 50% straight nerf is just simply killing it…

Edit some spellings

I already posted this early on in the tempest development. Nobody cared. Nobody seemed to grasp that the ele base class has high cooldowns and lower skill damage to accommodate speed switching attuments and firing off more skills faster. We’re now two weeks from release, this is not going to change. Our skills are going to become gravely underpowered from each element due to much slower attunement swapping and high cooldowns.

As previously stated by many people, overloads would have to be ridiculously overpowered in order to be functional and compensate for the lost damage, healing, and boons. This is not going to happen either.

What do we end up with? Well, for starters an awkward and unwieldy elite spec which is going to wind up being a backline boon/heal bot. This doesn’t really mesh with the whole “front line support” class that this was supposed to be.

Doesn’t matter at this point, tempest isn’t getting any better. Even hoping for actual minor traits that aren’t complete trash support to help ONLY overloads stand on their own (which they really don’t). Its a low end trash spec that will be used as a gimic for a while, and probably by people easily amused. It will never see high end pvp. It’ll be back of the pack in wvw. It’ll be ok, yet awkward in pve. I have absolutely zero expectations that anything will change to make tempest anything other than what it is.

For PvP, I found a couple builds that work, but are slightly held back by poor trait design of the Tempest traitline, which I believe is fixable, although I wish we had assurance that the devs will continually balance and revisit elite specs after launch, besides the obvious herald/chronomancer nerfs.

S/F fresh air benefits greatly from taking tempest over arcane since you can use air overload somewhat frequently for massive AoE damage. Additionally, celestial water/arcane/tempest can work, using overloads rarely, mainly as stunbreaks now that they break stun in order to counter pressure CC against them, and could potentially make use of traits like Earthen Proxy (or Harmonious Conduit for damage mod) pending traitline adjustments. Since the fire line is nerfed enough to be good, but not god-mode level, I think Tempest could be a fair substitute from it.

I also tried aura-heavy D/F earth builds with no arcane, and I was forced to run ether renewal and cleansing fire with the CDR trait to keep up with conditions, but a shout build with shout runes but lower damage could likely handle it better while being isolated to teamfights.

In general tempest is very strong in temfights when you’re not being focused, and my years of playing necromancer have taught me to play around that fact and still ultimately succeed with it.

had the same experience as nearlight playing S/F.
My main problems in building were lack of speed (no air) and condi removal (no water).

As a result i was left with the following options to build a shout tempest:

1.) You must take air or water with tempest.
2.) Cleansing flame or aether renewal on toolbar + traveler rune.
3.) Air signet + soldier rune.

I don´t like the limits :-). Of course you can say i don´t need 25% speed but when i tried this it felt unplayable.

The most annoying thing is how unreliable it can be because of its channeled nature. If you don’t have stability, it’s simply broken, and you got nothing in return, not even a cooldown reduction for having it interrupted. I feel OBLIGATED to use Armor of Earth, otherwise I just can’t use them properly, and even so I become prey for boon-stripper classes (thief, mesmer, necro, etc).

I agree that it does feel like punishment, because the cost in waittime before you can use them is to high and the cooldown is to high.

Besides this, you can become a punching back during the long channeling and you can become boonstripping food,
while you have nothing like reduced cooldown or something for having it interrupted/canceled.

Would being invulnerable during the overload be OP?
Maybe at least during fire and earth?
Lightning can have shocking aura.

It’s a mechanic that inherits all the drawbacks from Tornado/Lich/Rampage transformation mechanics, but with harsher consequences for using it in the first place, no stability per second or defensive bonuses which is what makes the transformation mechanics viable and sub par rewards for using it.

MadRabbit.3179:

It’s a mechanic that inherits all the drawbacks from Tornado/Lich/Rampage transformation mechanics, but with harsher consequences for using it in the first place, no stability per second or defensive bonuses which is what makes the transformation mechanics viable and sub par rewards for using it.

That not comply true you can dodge out of it if you want with out giving up an 90 sec + cd for it and you can still use utility. All though transformation you can dodges when using them with out losing the effect.

Waiting 5 sec in an atument is not punished for using overloads its the longer cd on the atument that is the “cost” for using an overload.
Just images with 0 wait time and the stun brakes stab and -100% movement cc how crazy would tempest be you would never be able to hard /soft cc them lol.

ReaperJr.5967:

So many people trying to jautify overloading mechanics here LOL. Do you even play ele? Overloading mechanics are horrible atm. High cd is one thing, but the 5s cd when attuning to an element before you can overload is ridiculous. It makes tempest not worthwhile.

When the first number on the cooldown is 5.9, it means that it’s a 6 seconds cooldown. It takes 6 seconds in the same attunement to be able to overload it.