I’ll throw my two cents in. Forgive me if I repeat anything that’s been said, I haven’t read every post in this thread. I haven’t had a chance to completely dissect traits but here’s what I think about the mechanic and new skills.
Overload
Fun mechanic for sure, but like most people have said, the risk vs. reward does not match up at all. Easy to interrupt with effects that aren’t worth the wind up. Buffing the damage, adding another attunement-relevant effect, or both would probably fix their usefulness. Also, I know I wasn’t going to touch on traits, but Lucid Singularity should grant 2-3 stacks of Stability on overloading an attunement.
- Increase Fire’s damage.
- Add aoe vigor to the healing burst of Water.
- Increase range on Air’s lightning field and possibly add a blind.
- Add pulsing bleeds to Earth.
Warhorn Skills
Again, I felt like the skills were fun, but when I paid attention to what I was accomplishing with them…it didn’t feel like most of them were doing much of anything.
- Heat Sync is great, and having easy access to a boon share on ele just increases our already-great group utility.
- Wildfire is too slow and the lack of targeting makes the skill feel unresponsive. It should be a fast burst of flame that sticks around for a little longer…actually make it feel more wild and uncontrollable, like a real wildfire.
- Tidal Surge, again, feels too slow. Against a stationary npc, it works fine, but against any competent human player, the knockback is too slow and easily dodged. I didn’t try Tempest in wvw so I guess the only thing I could say is maybe in a zerg it would be more useful? I still think it should be sped up, and drop the CD to 30 seconds.
- Water Globe…cool concept, but honestly not very useful. The heal is too small on too large of a cooldown to make much of a difference in any game mode. Increase the heal slightly, make it chill foes it passes through, drop the CD by 5-10 seconds, and give us the ability to target its direction.
- Cyclone feels pretty decent, it’s supposed to synergize with Lightning Orb and does a good job of that. I think it could move a little bit faster, by the time I cast it to grant swiftness to my allies they’ve already ran out of its range. Other than that, no real complaints.
- Lightning Orb…I honestly don’t get this skill. The damage feels practically nonexistent. I would say increase the speed and range of the projectiles, and maybe add a burst of damage when it reaches its max range so it really feels punishing for foes that are running away.
- Sand Squall, like others have said, would function well with a blast finisher added to it. Tempest has access to quite a few fields but not very many finishers. Otherwise it’s good.
- Dust Storm feels fine, I don’t think it adds enough Vuln to distinguish it all that much from Dust Devil but it works fine for the CD it has.
Shouts
- Wash the Pain Away! is good for the group healing. Otherwise, I have a feeling Signet of Restoration and Ether Renewal will be more useful.
- Feel the Burn!, Flash-Freeze! and Eye of the Storm! all felt good in group settings. Against single enemies or without a group of allies around, not so much, but that’s the point of shouts.
- Shock and Aftershock! should be another blast finisher. I feel like the main utility in this skill comes from the aura and the immobilize, and neither of them are worth being on a 50 second cooldown. Decrease the CD to 40 seconds and add the blast finisher and I think it would be a lot better.
- Rebound…I won’t repeat everyone else’s sentiments on this one. Needs a rework completely.
Overall, the Tempest is a FUN spec. But fun and useful are two different things. With some buffs to usefulness overall, I think it could really compete with staff Ele in a group setting for support and utility…just not in its current iteration.