Guild Wars 2

Hiho, I’ve played quite a bit of tempest and theorycrafted a lot about builds, but with a scepter-based build, I can’t seem to find anything that works. There is absolutely no synergy between scepter and tempest and certain things you’d need for scepter to work, can’t be replaced by tempest:

1) Scepter/X has the least auras of any of the possible weapon-combinations, so element bastion isn’t too good.
2) Cele-based scepter build need quite a bit of Might (IMHO) and often fury to really get decent dmg. Fire help in both areas, tempest doesn’t. Even if you go for the mightstacks on shouts, you’ll have to live with the fact that your overloads just get instantly interrupted.
3) Warhorn isn’t too great with Scepter either, because of the fire-field which has such a long CD that you can’t effectively stack might, which was one of the advantages S/D for example had over other Ele-builds (1 more blast finisher than D/D).
4) For Marauder-based S/X-builds, tempest offers too less as well: Overloading is gonna be a pain since you can easily just get spiked down or get forced to cancel it.
5) All the builds that I think could work, need either fire or air, so you would have to run without arcane or water. Both are essentially just better than tempest IMHO, so why run it?

solutions:

1) I guess we’ll have to live with less auras.
2) make 1 stack of stability baseline for tempest during overload – it’s just absolutely curcial. This would allow the Ele to go for the shouts. So why wouldn’t this be a buff to D/D? D/D is best in 1v1’s, tempest makes him less so, but better in teamfights. If he also goes for shouts, he’d be even weaker in 1v1’s and if you want a teamfight-ele, you’d probably go with staff, or scepter (if there are some buffs for scepter). Also, scepter needs an alternative for the cantrips when he doesn’t go for the water traitline. Using shouts would also kinda make up for the lack of auras.
3) pretty simple fix: make the fire field have shorter CD, but deal less DMG.
4) 1 stabiility baseline would help.
5) with the above fixes, it could be easier to not run water without just being a flatout worse build than without tempest. It would more likely be more team-oriented and have a slightly different role, but it wouldn’t be inherently worse, which is IMHO a thing the balance-team should aspire.

I plan more testing in BW3 runing tempest instead of W/Ar.
The main problem is substituting the toolbar with shouts. And if you stay cantrips then water > tempest and not much room left.
To make that setup work i feel i will need the following:
Shouts instant. Not casting shouts while overloading oder chaneling sceper autos is a pain and can send whole shouts + tempest in the trash bin. Cantrips go on top again here.
Speed. To get the max out of traiting you can´t realy slot air sigil. Forcing traveler rune is bad and kills Sceper because you need every bit of rune power or condi. So it might force you to air traitline and no space left for fire again …

Far from useless. I was stress testing tempest for 12hours straight during BWE2 on every mode of gameplay. Scepter/tempest is fine for dungeon. You can spec fire/air/tempest and spec into fresh air. You will only need to swap between fire and air. The constant refresh on air overload boosts your dmg a lot. That being said, tempest is most optimal with dagger/warhorn. You have 2 fire field from overload and warhorn 5 to help stack might. Warhorn fire 4 cuts your required finisher number by half. D tooth + phoenix + arcane blast + arcane heal then X2 equates 8 blasts already.

and just in case, this spec is not meant for PVP to begin with. trying to have a discussion of why it doesn’t work on that game mode is a moot point to begin with.

It’s far from useless.

For my playstyle it seems to fit much better then water/arcane. Unfortunately arcane/cantrips as instant utilities are hard to come by. Even with traited shouts.

Tempest seems to work best with d/w

Tempest works best in the trash bin.

DavyMcB.1603:

and just in case, this spec is not meant for PVP to begin with. trying to have a discussion of why it doesn’t work on that game mode is a moot point to begin with.

It’s clearly not meant for WvW either… So what is the spec meant for? Don’t tell me PvE because anything goes there.

It’s perfectly fine to talk/discuss about tempest in PvP and look at benefits and shortcomings in the hopes to improve the spec.

Ah, to be precise, I’m talking about sPvP mainly.

D/wh for group play and d/d for solo / small man. (Wvw point of view)
Spvp i guess d/wh and d/d though wh will be more support and dagger is more for dmg.
This is how ele and its sub classes work off hand is the type of class and main hand is at what ranged you play. So off hand weapons dagger is the dmg foces is the def and wh is the support. For main hand staff is the 1,200 ranges of max scpter is 1k-900 the mid ranges and dagger is the 600-300 or melee.

Retsuko.2035:

DavyMcB.1603:

and just in case, this spec is not meant for PVP to begin with. trying to have a discussion of why it doesn’t work on that game mode is a moot point to begin with.

It’s clearly not meant for WvW either… So what is the spec meant for? Don’t tell me PvE because anything goes there.

It’s perfectly fine to talk/discuss about tempest in PvP and look at benefits and shortcomings in the hopes to improve the spec.

It’s not for PVE either because it doesn’t have a single damage modifier.

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Retsuko.2035:

DavyMcB.1603:

and just in case, this spec is not meant for PVP to begin with. trying to have a discussion of why it doesn’t work on that game mode is a moot point to begin with.

It’s clearly not meant for WvW either… So what is the spec meant for? Don’t tell me PvE because anything goes there.

It’s perfectly fine to talk/discuss about tempest in PvP and look at benefits and shortcomings in the hopes to improve the spec.

It’s not for PVE either because it doesn’t have a single damage modifier.

If the “anything goes in pve” logic is true, we would see people running dungeons in magi. It’s quite a stretch, don’t you think? And tempest main strength, at least to my finding, is the endless access to auras that give heal, boon and aura specific defensive mechanism. And i dont know what you’re talking about how it does not have any dmg modifiers. Do you even math out how much dmg you get from the air overload every roughly less than ten seconds when compared to the situational modifiers? That on top of other dps skills that you still have like dtooth, phoenix and air scepter #2 and the just-as-much might stacking capability. I tested tempest in pvp, wvw, pve, fractals, all dungeons for at least 12 hours streak. It is most viable for small group contents like pve, dungeons and fractals. Looking forward to test it in raids which i think the spec will shine most.

DavyMcB.1603:

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Retsuko.2035:

DavyMcB.1603:

and just in case, this spec is not meant for PVP to begin with. trying to have a discussion of why it doesn’t work on that game mode is a moot point to begin with.

It’s clearly not meant for WvW either… So what is the spec meant for? Don’t tell me PvE because anything goes there.

It’s perfectly fine to talk/discuss about tempest in PvP and look at benefits and shortcomings in the hopes to improve the spec.

It’s not for PVE either because it doesn’t have a single damage modifier.

If the “anything goes in pve” logic is true, we would see people running dungeons in magi. It’s quite a stretch, don’t you think? And tempest main strength, at least to my finding, is the endless access to auras that give heal, boon and aura specific defensive mechanism. And i dont know what you’re talking about how it does not have any dmg modifiers. Do you even math out how much dmg you get from the air overload every roughly less than ten seconds when compared to the situational modifiers? That on top of other dps skills that you still have like dtooth, phoenix and air scepter #2 and the just-as-much might stacking capability. I tested tempest in pvp, wvw, pve, fractals, all dungeons for at least 12 hours streak. It is most viable for small group contents like pve, dungeons and fractals. Looking forward to test it in raids which i think the spec will shine most.

That modifier is a bit of a joke since it’s only for a couple seconds. And having to keep overloading to get that modifier working won’t exactly help you do much DPS. Other traitlines have modifiers as well, air + fire has better returns in DPS over tempest traitline and i’d rather go with at least water or arcana over tempest next to fire and air.

As for aura’s, the only real good one is magnetic aura (love using it on my staff). Others are relatively weak. I don’t say it’s wrong to use/have them, but I really hope tempest isn’t going to be mainly about aura’s because that would make it a very weak elite spec.

On D/D, aura’s are mostly relevant for me because of Zephyr’s Boon and Elemental Shielding and not for what the aura itself does.