Guild Wars 2

Since I guess the topic will show up at some point, what did you think of the boonshare abilities of the warhorn?
They have a boonshare skill with similar cooldown (although we can reduce our CD with traits) and maybe worse an additional skill which adds 2s to all current boons on allies. While this is weak for some boons like might which usually have long duration anyway, it may be very strong for quickness or other “rare” boons.

Also, elementalist have naturally very strong access to boons while we get random short duration boons on staff and then need to spec into chaos to get some decent boons from GM. (of course, we can send back boons we are given by, for example, an elementalist).

It feels like they have a somewhat stronger boonshare potential than we have while they were already amazing at giving boons in the first place.

On the other hand, a boon-share + elementalist combo can be fun!

You’re right about the combo being fun! Very powerful and long-lasting.

You actually raise an interesting question: Will Alacrity reduce the ICD of traits/abilities. That is, will the “Signet of Inspiration” proc from Illusionary Inspiration have a faster background cooldown? If so, that will be a VERY powerful boonshare support bruiser.

Elementalist will offer much more boonshare for protection, that much is certain, and will have better capacity to heal allies (and break stun for them as well)

I didn’t expect wildfire to offer AoE boonremoval tough, that is really strong.

Mesmers will still be a bit better at boonsharing overall (since they have the signet proc phant trait), but I feel as though elementalists will it in a more supporty way, while mesmers will do it in a more offensive way, while retaining good burst damage.

Uhhh, boonshare on an ele is all well and good, but you have to bring a smelly ele. Where’as a boonsharing Mesmer gets to come with, you know, MESMER class features. Why would you wan’t to give up the most amazing class for fantasies most generic slice of bread and butter right after the warrior? Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb.

I think that in PvE, elementalist won’t be doing much boon sharing. They’d have to take warhorn, which means they wouldn’t be taking staff, and so losing damage. That being said…there’s not really much need for boon sharing in PvE anyway, so it’s not much of an issue.

In PvP, I find it extremely hard to believe that elementalist won’t completely displace mesmer for boon sharing utility. With respect to boons, elementalists have the best of everything in this game. They stack might like crazy, have tons of protection, swiftness, fury, regen, and vigor. They even get massive stacks of stability with armor of earth. I think it’s absolutely inappropriate that the class able to stack patently absurd amounts of boons now gets access to sharing them as well. There’s no doubt in my mind that boon sharing mesmers will be absolutely useless if there’s an ele nearby.

Eles are definitely stepping on our toes quite a bit with tempest. Boon sharing, very significant boon removal (aoe field pulsing 8 times, seriously?), and aoe cooldown reduction. Not a trend that I’m a fan of, that’s for sure.

To be honest… Iunno.

When looking at the boons, all ele boons tend to be rather short duration. Same could be said for Mesmer, but we can double-share.

Mesmer have better access to:

• protection (chaotic dampening)
• fury (dueling)

And… Crap. We lost vigor. Thing is that sharing the boons just ONCE every 30s wasn’t enough for us, and I dunno how well it will work for Ele. However..

In terms of pure support, Tempest seems to take it by far. The boons actually aren’t what caught my eye so much as the sheer amount of support that comes with practically EVERYTHING a tempest does.

I don’t think we have to worry about boonsharing from their war horn competing with us because honestly Tempest’s all-around support just blows every other class out the water.

However, when Chronomancer rolls around, offering the possibility of sharing boons four-six times over in addition to alacrity and slow and wells and all that, Mesmers may be able to share the support spotlight.

Possibilities, man… Possibilities.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

To be honest… Iunno.

When looking at the boons, all ele boons tend to be rather short duration. Same could be said for Mesmer, but we can double-share.

Mesmer have better access to:

• protection (chaotic dampening)
• fury (dueling)

And… Crap. We lost vigor. Thing is that sharing the boons just ONCE every 30s wasn’t enough for us, and I dunno how well it will work for Ele. However..

In terms of pure support, Tempest seems to take it by far. The boons actually aren’t what caught my eye so much as the sheer amount of support that comes with practically EVERYTHING a tempest does.

I don’t think we have to worry about boonsharing from their war horn competing with us because honestly Tempest’s all-around support just blows every other class out the water.

However, when Chronomancer rolls around, offering the possibility of sharing boons four-six times over in addition to alacrity and slow and wells and all that, Mesmers may be able to share the support spotlight.

Possibilities, man… Possibilities.

You’re not really right about those boons. Our fury is 5s duration, while eles can stack tons and tons of it. As far as protection go, eles have a trait that gives them protection when applying auras, aaaaaaaand all of those shouts apply auras, plus weaponskills apply auras….so yeah.

Fay.2357:

Chaos Archangel.5071:

To be honest… Iunno.

When looking at the boons, all ele boons tend to be rather short duration. Same could be said for Mesmer, but we can double-share.

Mesmer have better access to:

• protection (chaotic dampening)
• fury (dueling)

And… Crap. We lost vigor. Thing is that sharing the boons just ONCE every 30s wasn’t enough for us, and I dunno how well it will work for Ele. However..

In terms of pure support, Tempest seems to take it by far. The boons actually aren’t what caught my eye so much as the sheer amount of support that comes with practically EVERYTHING a tempest does.

I don’t think we have to worry about boonsharing from their war horn competing with us because honestly Tempest’s all-around support just blows every other class out the water.

However, when Chronomancer rolls around, offering the possibility of sharing boons four-six times over in addition to alacrity and slow and wells and all that, Mesmers may be able to share the support spotlight.

Possibilities, man… Possibilities.

You’re not really right about those boons. Our fury is 5s duration, while eles can stack tons and tons of it. As far as protection go, eles have a trait that gives them protection when applying auras, aaaaaaaand all of those shouts apply auras, plus weaponskills apply auras….so yeah.

You’re slacking pyro. You were supposed to tell me how I’m absolutely fundamentally irredeemably sanctimoniously unspeakably wrong and should feel terrible about myself at nights. =P

And unless I’m doing something wrong on Ele, they don’t come close to our Fury stacking. It isn’t uncommon for us to hold on to 45+ seconds of fury just from normal play.

And I think I have one of our testing vids recorded where rylock managed over a minute of protection. Though the protection amounts I’m less certain of since I can barely bang out 30s, I’ve no idea how he pulled that.

Edit: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sLvl5mVYB2Q example of fury stacking at 3:43. This isn’t uncommon either.

Overall I’m happy with the tempest, but I think some things can be improved on. Tempest needs more blast finishers on warhorn (it has none) and its shouts won’t get taken when cantrips are needed to cover some of the overload casts against interrupt heavy opponents. The traits are mostly good, but some of the traits just need to do more.

Also I think chronomancer will still be better for being able to share quickness with seize the moment and the signet, while elementalits will be able to share might stacks and arguably protection a bit more easily.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

And unless I’m doing something wrong on Ele, they don’t come close to our Fury stacking. It isn’t uncommon for us to hold on to 45+ seconds of fury just from normal play.

And I think I have one of our testing vids recorded where rylock managed over a minute of protection. Though the protection amounts I’m less certain of since I can barely bang out 30s, I’ve no idea how he pulled that.

Well, I got it pretty easily up to 58s of protection. I just traited glamours, took feedback, null field, sw/sw+ staff, traited sword, traited, staff, and took runes of the grove for protection uptime.

…but that means I’m taking an insane amount of stuff just to stack protection, when an ele could just spam down their bar to apply auras and protection to everything with no effort needed.

Also with BD, mesmer provides more stability uptime overtime than Elementalists can. Eles could share many stacks of it at once, but with lower uptime and they’ll probably want to use it to cover channel casts instead.

nearlight.3064:

Also with BD, mesmer provides more stability uptime overtime than Elementalists can. Eles could share many stacks of it at once, but with lower uptime and they’ll probably want to use it to cover channel casts instead.

While technically true, stability is a nonissue in PvE, and 1 stack for 5s every 15 seconds is still pretty pointless. On top of that, eles will have the ability to do an aoe stunbreak roughly once every 10 seconds by traiting their warhorn, so who needs stability?

Yeah I see your point. Especially since the grandmaster traits it competes with aren’t really quite as good as imbued melodies. Lucid singularity should apply stability during channel just to compete with the role of being the ultimate necro babysitter.

I think at the end it will just boil down to how viable is the warhorn for elementalist. The mesmer boon share does not sacrifice much, it is close to be the usual metashatter. Elementalist would have to give up off-hand dagger or focus, and while I haven’t played ele much, I did not feel “amazed” by the warhorn (except for the boon part).

Silverkey.2078:

I think at the end it will just boil down to how viable is the warhorn for elementalist. The mesmer boon share does not sacrifice much, it is close to be the usual metashatter. Elementalist would have to give up off-hand dagger or focus, and while I haven’t played ele much, I did not feel “amazed” by the warhorn (except for the boon part).

I really liked the warhorn skills. For pvp, it already outclassed focus on non glass cannon builds. Warhorn has more aoe cc and support than OH dagger. The main thing you lose with warhorn is ring of fire since that skill applies a broken amount of burning on a very low cooldown.

Warhorn only really needs a blast finisher or 2 and come cooldowns lowered to compre with dagger.

nearlight.3064:

Warhorn only really needs a blast finisher or 2 and come cooldowns lowered to compre with dagger.

Because ele needs more blast finishers /facepalm

Fay.2357:

nearlight.3064:

Warhorn only really needs a blast finisher or 2 and come cooldowns lowered to compre with dagger.

Because ele needs more blast finishers /facepalm

Well I understand your point of you from a multiclass perspective, its just a lot of people are bashing the warhorn because they view the offhand dagger as the holy seat of the Ele’s power and feel that without blast finishers no one will use warhorn. I’m biased though. Since I have howler I plan to use warhorn regardless.

With dagger/warhorn you get a blast only on water dagger 3. The blast heal sucks, arcane wave sucks. You’ll probably want the evasive arcana blast in earth anyway.

I think sand squall (earth 4) on WH should be a blast finisher, and then the weapon would be overall more competitive with offhand dagger.

I like tempest a lot so far, but compared to chronomancer, or reaper even, I feel as though the traitline needs to be buffed and cleaned up.

My personal list of suggestions are here if you want to read them.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Tempest-Constructive-Feedback/first#post5316414

Chaos Archangel.5071:

I don’t think we have to worry about boonsharing from their war horn competing with us because honestly Tempest’s all-around support just blows every other class out the water.

I mean, Eles spread around enough boons just by blasting combo fields that the Warhorn isn’t adding that much. But I do think Fay has kind of a point.

This seems to be why Chronomancer has Alacrity at all. We’re the only ones that can generate and share it, so there’s still a reason to let us hang around after we’ve had all of our other non-interrupt capabilities overshadowed by other classes. XD

Fay.2357:

Chaos Archangel.5071:

And unless I’m doing something wrong on Ele, they don’t come close to our Fury stacking. It isn’t uncommon for us to hold on to 45+ seconds of fury just from normal play.

And I think I have one of our testing vids recorded where rylock managed over a minute of protection. Though the protection amounts I’m less certain of since I can barely bang out 30s, I’ve no idea how he pulled that.

Well, I got it pretty easily up to 58s of protection. I just traited glamours, took feedback, null field, sw/sw+ staff, traited sword, traited, staff, and took runes of the grove for protection uptime.

…but that means I’m taking an insane amount of stuff just to stack protection, when an ele could just spam down their bar to apply auras and protection to everything with no effort needed.

Yeah, but you didn’t (or don’t) have to do that in the first place. Sharing 20s of protection every 15 or so seconds is enough. If the Mesmer can manage Perma protection on their team through regular rotations then all the extra prot isn’t needed.

Now this is from a PvP perspective, and I haven’t yet tested the average numbers a regular boonshare rotation will provide, but with that much fury and protection while sharing nearly twice the amount of boons build/absorbed (including boons Mesmer have better access to like aegis/retaliation .. though retal barely counts.) what is the ele providing that Mesmer couldn’t? Mostly just might.

Ele provides Might, Fury, Protection, and Swiftness. Mesmer provides all of the above along with Aegis. Swiftness is easily stackable with Sigil of Speed and shared way beyond what Ele could ( I’ve been able to share two minutes per signet. Around 50-60 seconds is more common)

Imo where Tempest takes it is in the fact that they still provide ridic boon output in addition to everything else they do.

yes ele can now share boons
yes ele have better access to aura now with trait and shouts

but i think the main difference is that ele now have less defense and aoe with no offhand dagger or focus thus they may play a defense role or bunker role which than become like a bunker guardian

mesmer can have both boonshare and dmg dealers

regarding boons duration
i guess ele can have better might stacking but protection is rather short duration which will make the ele blow his utilities and skills to gain more
ele need to use his 1 shout and 1 skill to get 6 sec protection and overload to get anther 3 sec . while mesmer just put chaos armor and with signet have perma protection

i usually run with perma protection , fury, vigor and 5 stacks of might
before sharing i use MW to gain 3 more might and stability and swap weapon to get 2 more with sigil so 10 might stacks
also in time warp i can share more important boon

so i dont think ele will become the boonsharing class rather the role of bunkering/healing role with side effect of boon share
also consider 1 ele and 1 mesmer sharing with each other

messiah.1908:

but i think the main difference is that ele now have less defense and aoe with no offhand dagger or focus thus they may play a defense role or bunker role which than become like a bunker guardian

Uhhhhhhhhh…did you even read any of the notes?

Less aoe? Literally all 8 of the skills on warhorn are aoe.

Less defense? They get an aoe pulsing blind field, an aoe pull for control, aoe protection (oh, and protection now can be traited to be 40% reduction), and they can trait to do an aoe stunbreak for every single warhorn skill, which is absolutely insane. On top of all that, their aurashare and/or aura boosting builds have been massively buffed due to the insane amounts of auras they’ll be able to apply with their shouts.

Basically tempest is what you get if you take an ele, you say ‘hmz, I don’t want to add anything unique or interesting, but since eles can’t strip boons or boon share, I’ll add that. Also, I think I’ll make them better at literally everything they already do’. It’s boring and horrifying power creep.

Post-HoT PvE teams will actually potentially be optimal with purely 5 eles. Speedruns will take 4 eles and a mesmer to shuttle them around with portals. Literally the only things eles can’t do now are aoe reflects (though they do have swirling winds) and portal. Just makes me sad that the devs are so blind that they can’t see what they’re doing do the game with this.

Looking at Heat Sync on its own, I personally like the skill. It is interesting and offers some nice gameplay options. It’s also a way to supply boons which is one of the core characteristics of Elementalists.

If you look at the skill in the context of the whole class I want to question if it is needed gameplaywise and if it is well thoughtout from a concept perspective. Gameplaywise Elementalists simply don’t need yet another way of supplying boons. They already got plenty options to apply boons directly or indirectly (e.g. Auras). I also feel that sharing boons isn’t something Elementalists do. They apply them and generate them on their own. I personally feel the skill is supposed to somewhat make up for the lack of blast finishers on WH so it can compete with OH Dagger. But it doesn’t feel fitting.

From a class comparison point of view the skill unneccessarily steps on the feet of Mesmers. As said earlier, it doesn’t add a new playstyle to Elementalists – just another way to apply boons – and is rather questionable conceptually. Eventually it just takes away uniqueness from the (only) way Mesmers can (sufficiently) apply boons to their allies.

compare cd on dagger to warhorn . fire aoe is on 40 cd versus 15 sec on dagger.
no condi cleanse on water
no blast finisher on earth so less might stacks combos

i guess ppl will take/try the trait line but offhand dagger with it

I really agree with Xaylin and that is what disturbs me the most: they already give AOE boons massively. Mesmer does not do that, mesmer is fairly selfish on its boons (except staff), so it is a mechanics made to compensate that. That may also be the pitfall for elementalists: they simply don’t need it

Fay.2357:

messiah.1908:

but i think the main difference is that ele now have less defense and aoe with no offhand dagger or focus thus they may play a defense role or bunker role which than become like a bunker guardian

Uhhhhhhhhh…did you even read any of the notes?

Less aoe? Literally all 8 of the skills on warhorn are aoe.

Less defense? They get an aoe pulsing blind field, an aoe pull for control, aoe protection (oh, and protection now can be traited to be 40% reduction), and they can trait to do an aoe stunbreak for every single warhorn skill, which is absolutely insane. On top of all that, their aurashare and/or aura boosting builds have been massively buffed due to the insane amounts of auras they’ll be able to apply with their shouts.

Basically tempest is what you get if you take an ele, you say ‘hmz, I don’t want to add anything unique or interesting, but since eles can’t strip boons or boon share, I’ll add that. Also, I think I’ll make them better at literally everything they already do’. It’s boring and horrifying power creep.

Post-HoT PvE teams will actually potentially be optimal with purely 5 eles. Speedruns will take 4 eles and a mesmer to shuttle them around with portals. Literally the only things eles can’t do now are aoe reflects (though they do have swirling winds) and portal. Just makes me sad that the devs are so blind that they can’t see what they’re doing do the game with this.

I feel like you should go to the elementalist forums and teach them how valuable their new tools will be. They won’t listen to me since I’ve supported warhorn from day 1, but it irks me that most eles on the forum seem against it.

I lie everything but I think it needs some twekas, epesicall in terms of traits. I want to make a trooper rune shout build, but without can trips I can’t cover overload casts, which is the main problem with tempest in my mind.