Guild Wars 2

Yeah, they should’ve nerfed Soothing Disruption’s vigor instead of Renewing Stamina.

Yeah, the aura traits need to be consolidated a bit. Auras should also be fixed to stack duration; right now, only Frost Aura stacks.

Looking forward to playing this, especially with the Scepter buffs coming

I will seriously need to redo my keybinds for this though lol.

Current consensus seems to be that Tempest doesn’t really open up any new roles for the Ele, since anything Tempest can do, baseline Ele can do (better.)

We will have to see if the changes they are making for BWE 3 will rectify this.

Ganathar.4956:

Markin.9167:

Probably in the next expansion ele will get a cond spec i hope so

That’s they best way to go about it imo. The best that we can get is a decent scepter rework this Tuesday that will make it a viable burst weapon and then get a condition based elite spec in the next expansion. This spec could introduce conditions that are now unavailable to the ele if the theme is right. All that it needs is some creativity.

Noxious fumes from a volcano inflicting poison is an idea that I have seen recently. It can come from the air near a volcano or even from the water. Torment can also fit in there somehow in the earth attunement, since it involves damage to the lower body which could be inflicted from earth spells. I don’t think that confusion would fit thematically though, but it’s ok since the addition of poison and torment is enough if the spec supports conditions and offers new ways to apply existing elementalist conditions.

Noxious Fumes: Attacks against a burning foe while in Earth Attunement inflict Poison and Torment.

Just an idea :p This would also let us take another Sigil besides Doom, which is kinda mandatory for condi Eles at the moment.

I was actually very surprised they decided to just outright remove the Might stacks; I was expecting them to shave it down to 2 or even 1 stack per Cantrip.

-Agreed, Churning Earth needs a rework. It’s a pretty useless skill.

I would LOVE for buffs to our condi options. I’m hoping that the incoming Scepter buffs help us maintain burns and especially bleeds better (buffs to Flamestrike and Stone Shards please.) Although I don’t think auto-attacks by themselves should be able to stack huge stacks of condis; too cheesy, spammy and lame. A middle ground needs to be found.

The Reaper damage-on-Chill trait I really feel should’ve been an Ele trait, but oh well. I would love to have a similar trait but for Burning; burns hit harder for example. I mean, we have an entire trait line called FIRE, so it would be fitting lol. But I feel like that would create a balancing nightmare and more QQ than even the recent CEle D/D QQ.

Also, I’d love for a Conjure rework to make Lava Axe more of a might stacking/burning-focused weapon and improve Earth Shield’s defensive/bleed-focused role.

Torment on Earth skills is an interesting idea, but I’d much rather prefer an Earth trait focused on condition damage. I like Strength of Stone, but it’s so boring…plus, it competes with Geomancer’s Training, which is such an awesome trait :/

Jski.6180:

Mem no Fushia.7604:

Jski.6180:

Mem no Fushia.7604:

They could give button on top of that skill to easily change between normal and ground targeted.

Best just to keep the LoS off in that you can dt in places you can see yet do not have LoS like gurd line of warding (though a lot of ppl seem not to know this trick).

If they could suprise us and actually keep the los turned off it would be good.

If they are working with non los effect i would not mind seeing Comet become the same way as DT and maybe WoF to give it that added kick that it seems to be missing.

Nah, I think Comet actually works better the way it is. Its cast time is so quick that you don’t really miss with it that often, and you can’t really use it for area denial. Besides, its primary effect (Daze) is not something you want to waste by risking a miss, considering the skill’s long cool down, so best to leave it in its current state (fire-and-forget.)

While I’m excited to try out the new Overloads, I still don’t think Tempest adequately addresses the opportunity cost of camping an Attunement. I’m hoping that the incoming Scepter buffs (hopefully buffs to auto-attacks) will help in this regard, but at the moment there is SO MUCH (damage, support, control) you can do in 5 seconds by swapping Attunements that camping a single Attunement isn’t worth it at all; the Overload would have to have a huge payoff to make it worth it. Like I said, I’m looking forward to seeing if the buffs to Overloads achieves this, but in the meantime, I’ll repeat my suggestion:

We need a minor trait that rewards staying in a single Attunement.

-Scrap Speedy Conduit.

-Replace Speedy Conduit with the current Hardy Conduit, and add the Stability functionality to it.

-Add a new Grandmaster minor trait:

Tempestuous Escalation

Remaining in a single Attunement grants you a stacking bonus for each second you remain in that Attunement:
Fire: +1% Damage (10% cap)
Air: +2% Critical chance (20% cap)
Water: +1% Outgoing healing affecting other allies (10% cap)
Earth: +1% Condition damage (10% cap)

This trait’s Attunement-specific bonuses end when switching Attunements, but the trait is always active. For example, when you switch to Water after being in Fire for 10 seconds, you would lose the 10% damage bonus but immediately start accumulating the 1% outgoing heal bonus.

This synergizes well with the theme of each Attunement and each Overload. Plus, the bonuses are not boons, so they can’t be abused by boon duration/boon share, nor can they be stripped. Most importantly, it incentivizes remaining in a single Attunement, which is a major change from the Attunement dance of the base Ele.

Poor Tempest

It’s ironic how they want to normalize the traits but left Renewing Stamina a Major.

I agree with your suggestion. That, or switch Arcane Fury with the nerfed Renewing Stamina (make RS a minor like the other traits.)

WhimsicalPacifist.2943:

Hmm, what happened to the Vigorous Scepter trait?

I seem to recall elementalist not having to rely on Water/Cantrips quite so much. This “normalization” reinforces the reliance upon Water Cantrips.

They scrapped all weapon-specific traits with the specialization update. Yet there’s a warhorn trait in the Tempest line, go figure…

Some people just won’t be happy until Ele is out of the meta again.

I don’t like how they said they want to “normalize” the vigor traits but failed to account for the fact that Renewing Stamina is a Major trait, while the others are Minors.

True, we have more access to Vigor with Soothing Disruption, but that just pushes us more into Water/Cantrips.

At the very least they could have switched Arcane Fury and Renewing Stamina. It’s not like anyone picks Arcane Precision or Arcane Abatement anyway.

Man, Tempest needs work…

1. Chronomancer
2. Reaper
3. Herald
4. Scrapper
5. Druid
6. Berserker
7. Dragonhunter
8. Daredevil
9. Tempest :/

Fair question. They could also have just switched Arcane Fury and Renewing Stamina and then “normalized” Renewing Stamina. It’s not like anyone would really pick Arcane Precision or Arcane Abatement over Arcane Fury anyway, much like how most people pick Renewing Stamina now.

This just pushes us more into Water/Cantrips.

It does suck that the damage nerf, though justified in PvE, also got rid of one of the only incentives to use FB in PvP.

We need a Conjure overhaul.

Nabuko Darayon.9645:

As an Ele I approve the Ice Bow nerf. If it was me I’d completely remove Conjures and replace them with Wards or something

Yeah, except keep FGS for the mobility :p

Seriously though, I really hope we get a Conjure overhaul. I love the concept behind them but they need to make them worth equipping.

Although, Wards would be AWESOME!

Agree with all 3 of your suggestions. The changes to the Fire and Earth auto-attacks would ALSO help our condi builds out a lot.

-Slight damage buff OR flight time decrease for the Water auto-attack.

-Rework Shatterstone. Either dramatically reduce the wind-up time, or add features like pulsing Chill while winding up, and a Blast finisher at the end.

-Reduced channel time for Hurl (rocks fly out faster.)

Jekkt.6045:

vigour icd from 5s to 10s

I’m gonna go ahead and say that this will probably be the biggest nerf we’ll get (from what I’ve seen so far.)

Hey look at the bright side, at least that one troll from the Rev forum won’t come here to cry about it :p (I can hope)

Anyway, this change was long overdue. One skill shouldn’t have had such a huge impact.

But now I do hope we get changes to make Conjures more worth slotting. Earth Shield stun break would be a good start, followed by AoE effect when a Conjure is summonmed.

Haha yeah the Ice Bow nerf was kinda expected. I hope now we get meaningful changes to Conjures to make them actually worth slotting (not just Ice Bow.)

From what I heard, Burning Fire no longer gives Might per Cantrip and Blinding Ashes had its ICD increased to 8s. Were there any other changes?

Also, Ring of Fire will now give:
-1 sec burn for 2 sec when crossing it
-2 sec burn for 4 sec initially
(Right now it’s 3 sec burn for 5 sec)

Woo hoo!

Hopefully they reworked Shatterstone and buffed the auto-attacks. DT being ground-targeted is AWESOME. Finally!

Also, has anyone gotten a compilation of all the Ele changes incoming? I know D/D and Fire line got nerfed, but I missed the details.

Alekt.5803:

Trident is so much better when you are in close range. And forcing a radical movement to an opponent while underwater might be a little bit too rough when it comes to coordination.

Yeah I agree, Trident is better close range, I’d just prefer not to always be pulled into a huge mob…but my primary issue is the self-daze.

I know no one cares about underwater combat but, why does Magnetic Current STILL disable your skills when you get pulled to your foe?

Also, why doesn’t it pull your foe to YOU?

Kirschsahne.2081:

Glenstorm.4059:

INB4: GLF Druid!

Seriously, this is what I’m afraid of. GW2 was supposed to avoid the situation where you’re stuck waiting for a healer. I liked that a lot.

I hope that doesn’t happen now.

And GLF experienced zerker is way better ??
People throwing you out because you are ranger or Necro is better ????

A-Net is absolutely right in stating that right now we are in a toxic meta that destroys the game.

Druid and Tank will totaly change the whole lazy game style…

Bravo A-Net

Just to clarify: I hate the zerker meta as much as anyone else; it’s stagnant and boring, and stifles creativity….but it’s more the fault of the enemy design than anything else.

Thing is, every bit of content in the game atm is able to be completed without a zerker meta party. Zerker is just the most efficient way of doing it.

All I was saying was I HOPE the content they’re making doesn’t obligate the use of Druid/dedicated healer, since that directly contradicts one of the core design philosophies of GW2 (and the reason they gave everyone a dedicated heal skill.)

INB4: GLF Druid!

Seriously, this is what I’m afraid of. GW2 was supposed to avoid the situation where you’re stuck waiting for a healer. I liked that a lot.

I hope that doesn’t happen now.

Well, buffing Scepter would certainly be buffing non-meta builds, since FA scepter builds aren’t really meta anymore.

I would also love for the Scepter to be our go-to condi option…I think just making much-needed QoL improvements to the auto-attacks would help in this regard. I think Scepter is already very fun to play with whacky condition setups; Rabid works okay and even Settler’s isn’t atrocious since you have Water Trident to help heal. It would be great to have builds like these become more viable.

Focus on the other hand I think is in a very good place, besides Fire Shield. That skill needs to be buffed, but the other skills are solid for the most part, with Air and Earth in particular being outstanding.

Can “Aftershock!” please get Blast finishers on each pulse? That would justify its long cool down.

Cele Ele is OP, but it should not be entirely killed off as a build. I get that people are (rightfully) frustrated with how much this build overperforms, but gutting it is not the answer.

Start with nerfs to burning as a general condition FIRST. That’s the simplest way of bringing this one build down without ruining other builds.

Next steps would be slightly toning down how much might you get from traits like Burning Fire.

Honestly, I feel like we need a minor trait that rewards staying in a single Attunement.

My thoughts:

-Scrap Speedy Conduit.

-Replace Speedy Conduit with the current Hardy Conduit and add the Stability functionality to it.

-Add a new Grandmaster minor trait:

Tempestuous Escalation:

Remaining in a single Attunement grants you a stacking bonus for each second you remain in that Attunement:
Fire: +1% Damage (10% cap)
Air: +2% Critical chance (20% cap)
Water: +1% Outgoing healing affecting other allies (10% cap)
Earth: +1% Condition damage (10% cap)

The trait’s Attunement-specific bonuses end when switching Attunements, but the trait is always active. For example, when you switch to Water after being in Fire for 10 seconds, you would lose the 10% damage bonus but immediately start accumulating the 1% outgoing heal bonus.

This synergizes well with the theme of each Attunement and each Overload. Plus, the bonuses are not boons, so they can’t be abused by boon duration/boon share, nor can they be stripped. It also incentivizes remaining in a single Attunement; the lack of such an incentive is a big reason why Overloads are meh atm.

The condition damage aspect of Earth (bleeds) really needs a buff, especially seeing as how burning will be (rightfully) nerfed, presumably soon.

Alternatively, the skill could launch all its projectiles at a single foe, and any foe who touches the Orb or through whom the Orb passes is stunned. That way it is a primarily single-target skill, but has a stun functionality (that is actually avoidable), thus justifying its long cooldown.

When I think of a wildfire, I think of a blaze that spreads quickly and almost uncontrollably. So here’s a crazy idea for Wildfire:

Enemies burned by this skill spread burning to nearby foes (even foes who weren’t already burning.)

I’d be happy with Lightning Orb if, instead of being ground-targeted and attacking any and every enemy near it, it would:

1) Require a single target to execute
2) Unload all its damage on that target
3) The initial hit OR the final hit stuns that target

Air is supposed to be the spike damage Attunement, no? At the moment, this skill’s DPS potential is wasted if you have more than 1 target.

Karl McLain.5604:

We added two things to overloads today:
Overload Air will imbue allies with electricity, giving them the Static Charge buff. An ally with this buff will deliver a Lightning Jolt to the first enemy they strike.

Overload Earth will now leave behind a dust-nado (name ongoing) at the tempest’s location when complete, which delivers the same effects that occur while overloading (cripple, bleed, protection). Increased bleed duration to 9 seconds per strike.

Dust Storm – warhorn: Increased the velocity that each storm appears by 33%.

Nice!

Love how Overload Air will now provide offensive support to allies! I’m assuming Lightning Jolt stuns/dazes the target?

Especially love the dust-nado; more condi love is always nice.

I still have an issue with remaining in a single Attunement.

How about rolling Hardy Conduit into Speedy Conduit, and then replacing the Grandmaster Minor trait with the following:

Tempestuous Escalation (dramatic, no? :p)
Remaining in a single Attunement grants you a stacking bonus for each second you remain in that Attunement:
Fire: +1% Damage (10% cap)
Air: +2% Critical chance (20% cap)
Water: +1% Outgoing healing affecting other allies (10% cap)
Earth: +1% Condition damage (10% cap)

The trait’s Attunement-specific bonuses end when switching Attunements, but the trait is always active. For example, when you switch to Water after being in Fire for 10 seconds, you would lose the 10% damage bonus but immediately start accumulating the 1% outgoing heal bonus.

This synergizes well with the theme of each Attunement and each Overload. Plus, the bonuses are not boons, so they can’t be abused by boon duration/boon share, nor can they be stripped.

Neko.9021:

If the fear is that sharing Quickness and Resistance is too strong, I can somewhat understand. But the skill needs to at least be able to share the boons that Ele can already self-generate (Might, Swiftness, Regeneration, Protection, Vigor, and Fury).

Totally agree with this. If the patch goes through as currently announced, Heat Sync is about only as useful as a Blast Finisher.

EsarioOne.9840:

I’m not sure I’m seeing the same post as all these optimists. From what I gather, the overloads have become worse on average, the only saving grace for the warhorn (fire sync) is mutilated, and the elite is still unslottable.

Here’s some constructive feedback. The way to take the Tempest from the worst spec in the expansion to a marginally playable one is not a numbers game, especially not a downwards number game. Someone needs to take a hard look at what these traits and skills actually do, realize how narrow they are, and accept they need a full-scale shift into abilities that have generally useful effects in Guild Wars 2’s dimensions of play.

I agree somewhat, but I also feel like it’s too late now for such an overhaul, what with about ~5 weeks remaining till release.

Nice changes, steps in the right direction. The Stability trait immediately makes Overloads more worth using, but HOW many stacks does it grant, seeing as how Tempest is supposed to be a melee spec? Also, I’m afraid now that no one will really pick Earthen Proxy or Tempestuous Aria…perhaps the Stability functionality would have been better off rolled into a Minor trait…

Speaking of Shouts, why do we still not have a cool down reduction trait for them? “Feel the Burn!” is also a little underwhelming. “Aftershock!”’s recharge is way too long.

Why do we still have a weapon-specific trait for warhorn, while none of our other weapons have specific traits? Seems weird is all.

I’m still not sold on Overloads doing what they do better than our current builds (whether damage or support), but I am excited to try them out nevertheless. However, there is no justification for the 5-second charge-up time for Overloads. Because our auto-attacks suck outside of Lightning Whip and Fireball, we end up burning through our weapon skills and are then stuck, waiting to cast these situational Overloads; the opportunity cost is simply too high, whether for damage or support, and these changes are still not enough. Also, still hate the fact that swapping Attunements cancels the Overload.

The Heat Sync nerf is way too harsh. Seriously, a blast finisher is almost as good as this skill now. If Stability, Resistance and Quickness were the issues, fine, just exclude those boons from the boons that Heat Sync can share. At the very least, it needs to share Fury, Protection and Swiftness in addition to Might. Maybe Regen too, since these are all boons that Eles can produce themselves.

Why no changes to Wildfire? The full Fire field needs to be available a lot more quickly.

Why wasn’t the knockback on Tidal Surge improved to be at the very start of the skill? It’s clunky as is.

Why wasn’t Lightning Orb’s damage improved, or extra functionality added to the skill?

What happened to the Magnetic Aura on Sand Squall???

Why no Shocking Aura on “Eye of the Storm”?

Why don’t all other Auras besides Frost Aura stack?!

Speedy Conduit is extremely, even with the buff to Swiftness.

Now for something less constructive, though I still think it’s a valid point to bring up:

After the pages and pages of feedback that were compiled on the BWE2 feedback thread, I can’t help feeling…that’s it? Look at the Reaper and Daredevil changes. Tempest was the most in need of help and we got barely anything in the way of changes. Especially with the nerfs that baseline Ele is sure to get soon, I am not at all optimistic about the future of this spec and this profession.

Yep, all scepter auto-attacks are in serious need of buffs.

All of them need to have their cast times reduced, and their base damage values improved.

Ice Shards and Stone Shards need faster projectile speed and lower projectile flight arcs. YOU CAN OUTRUN THESE WITH JUST SWIFTNESS! It’s inexcusable.

Shatterstone needs to be completely reworked. It simply does not have a payoff that comes anywhere close to justifying its long windup. It could pulse Chill while winding up, and be a Blast finisher.

The beautiful thing is, with just an auto attack QoL pass, Scepter could become much more viable as either a burst weapon, or as a condi weapon.

And while we’re at it, we could use a change to Churning Earth too…it’s pretty useless in PvP.

So, after playing a Tempest for a few hours in SW and Verdant Brink, here are my thoughts. Caveat: I only tested the spec in PvE, with Zerker weapons/armor/trinkets and the default rune and sigil sets.

WARHORN: Really like the weapon; it has good synergy with a variety of traits like Lightning Rod and Arcane in general (boon sharing.) I think it’s a good middle ground between /D’s offensive support (outside of Water Attunement) and /F’s defensive support. It will only become better with the improvement to Sand Squall.

-Imbued Melodies: Really weird trait. All of our other weapon-specific traits were either scrapped (Enduring Scepter, Windborne Dagger) or made baseline (Blasting Staff.) Why is Warhorn getting its own trait, and a cool down reduction at that? I’m not complaining, since it does stack with the Training traits, but it is a little inconsistent. I’d like to see this trait reworked to something more original. Suggestion: Shouts now affect up to 10 allies, and have an increased radius of 800 (Raid-oriented?)

-Wildfire: Needs to have its cast time reduced (0.25-0.5 secs), and the fire field needs to “spread out” faster.

-Tidal Surge: Needs to have its cast time decreased and/or the wave needs to move much faster. It’s pretty easy to avoid this CC ability.

-Water Globe: Needs to move a little bit slower to allow for more efficient healing and more time to blast the field.

-Cyclone: needs to have a 0.5-0.75 sec cast time. The speed of the cyclones could improve slightly, and the cone could be a little wider.

-Lightning Orb: Needs to NOT be ground-targeted; it feels awkward with this skill. Needs a further damage buff. Alternatively, it could do something like “Enemies it passes through are stunned” or “Deals double damage to vulnerable enemies”, or “The final projectile stuns its target."

-Dust Storm: The windup is insanely long. I think you can dodge this by walking backwards…not cool.

SHOUTS:

- These need a cool down reduction trait! Probably best rolled into Tempestuous Aria.

-Shout Auras need to work with ALL Aura traits (Zephyr’s Boon, Elemental Shielding, Powerful Aura, Element Bastion) AND with all Aura runes (Radiance/Trooper’s/Soldier’s.)!!! I cannot stress how critical this is for the Auramancer play style that Tempest seems to be pushing.

-“Wash the Pain Away!”: Decent, but maybe the final pulse could remove a condition as well?

-“Eye of the Storm!”: Needs Shocking Aura.

-“Aftershock!”: Why is this not a Blast finisher?! It’s jut begging to be one. Please This would also justify its long cool down. If it isn’t made a Blast finisher, it definitely needs a shorter cool down. It would also be super cool if it did double damage to knocked-down foes like Aftershock in GW1! This would give it additional synergy with /D and /F.

-“Rebound.”: What I find awkward about it is the slight, almost 1 second delay between when the first half of the animation finishes and the actual effect is placed on the player(s.) If this is to become a fatality-negating skill, it NEEDS an instant or near-instant cast time. I don’t like that iteration from the sound of it though, but I guess I’ll have to play it to pass judgement.

TRAITS:

-In general, I find that the trait line has poor synergy with the core specializations.

-The way I see it, this trait line tries to push 3 distinct play styles: 1) Overloads (Unstable Conduit, Harmonious Conduit and Lucid Singularity), 2) Shouts/Warhorn (Gale Song, Tempestuous Aria and Imbued Melodies) and 3) Auras/support (Latent Stamina/Unstable Conduit, Earthen Proxy and Element Bastion.) Of these, the only one that I see immediately “working” is the Aura play style, only because it has decent synergy with traits in other lines (Zephyr’s Boon, Elemental Shielding and especially Powerful Aura.) Overloads don’t work well because Overloads themselves aren’t rewarding enough to cast; the traits don’t help that problem much. The other support traits are just…random, and inferior to other options in Arcane and Water. The Shout/Warhorn traits are obviously good for those specific skills, but offer little synergy with other lines.

-Latent Stamina has a nice effect, but feels really out of place where it currently is.

-Speedy Conduit and Hardy Conduit really need to just be merged. Hardy Conduit can then be replaced with another minor. I suggest a trait that gives you 1 stack of Stability while Overloading.

OVERLOADS

The meat of the spec, and, IMO, the most disappointing aspect of the Tempest. The main problem is their risk:reward ratio is skewed way too much towards the risk. Suggestions:

-Make Overloads available to be cast immediately. I get that they are meant to offer a radically different alternative to the rapid Attunement-swap dance that we have done since day one, but the reality is that this is just not practical. Why?

1) Our auto attacks suck, which means that once we’ve used our weapon cool downs, staying and auto-attacking is counterproductive in most cases. This is especially true with Scepter, with its ABYSMAL auto-attacks.

2) We depend on intra-weapon-skill combos to be truly effective, which means we NEED to swap to get full mileage out of our weapon skills via Fields and Finishers.

All this means that we are rarely in one Attunement for longer than 3-4 seconds. While playing in Verdant Brink, I very often found myself stuck in one Attunement, with most of my non-auto attacks on cool down, WAITING for the Overload to become available to cast, thinking “This sucks.” I actually WANT to cast the Overloads, but waiting to cast them totally threw me off. This would’ve been okay if I had something to do while waiting for the Overload, like auto-attack, but because those suck so much, it just ended up feeling very clunky and useless.

-Overloads are easily interrupted by enemies AND your own actions: I was being fairly consistently being interrupted by trying to Overload on Arid Devourers, Mordrem, Beetles and Juvenile Wyverns. I’d imagine it would be pretty much impossible to pull off a full channel in PvP, regardless of how good your positioning is, especially with the plethora of CC that Mesmers, Thieves and Warriors now have access to. I don’t see the logic in making the main gimmick of a frontline spec long channels with no inherent CC mitigation. Not to mention that swapping Attunements and dodging cancel the channel. I see the reason for that, but it feels bad to have the channel that you waited so long to cast canceled by your own swap or dodge. Even Overload Earth’s break bar is easily broken with just a few soft CCs. We NEED reliable Stability or better break bars for ALL Overloads, whether as baseline mechanisms or via Traits. I do not want to be pigeonholed into running Armor of Earth every time I want to use Overloads.

-Overload Fire: My favorite Overload. Feels, looks and sounds great to cast. Should create a mobile Fire field around you while spinning.

-Overload Water: Should create a mobile Water field around you.

-Overload Air: Could use a slight damage increase.

-Overload Earth*: Feels the most underwhelming. Should pulse mobile Blast finishers around you while charging up, and should knock down enemies around you when it ends.

Might on cantrip can be tuned down, but I sure hope they don’t nerf Fire any more. That will hurt other builds. I remember when Fire was the joke trait line, and I do not want to return to that time.

I seriously hope that they also give Scepter much-needed QoL adjustments (auto-attack animation speed-up and damage increases, rework to Shatterstone.)

Our burst build (Fresh Air) has been pushed out of the meta due to the dominance of Mesmer and to a lesser extent Thief…it’d be nice for Scepter burst builds to additionally get some love in terms of defense, so that you don’t die when a Mesmer so much as looks at you.

And, of course, my perennial gripes: Gylph buffs/cool down reductions/additional trait interactions, Conjure reworks (instant cast, AoE effect on cast, stun break on Earth Shield), more options other than Water/Arcane, and Tempest Overload buffs (stability/break bar during channel.)

RevanCorana.8942:

Nothing would be more healthy to the game than nerfing ele to the ground

If what you’re suggesting is nuking Ele to the point of uselessness again, man, I’m glad you’re not on the balance team.

Ele needs to be brought down to a reasonable level, not outright nuked to uselessness. I get that you might be understandably frustrated with how ONE Ele spec is outperforming in PvP, but that is no excuse to call for the profession as a whole, especially one so sensitive to small balance changes, to be nerfed to the ground.

I think Anet should start simply by fixing Ring of Fire (3—>2 stacks) and fixing its bugs, and then bringing down Burning damage slightly. I think that should in itself fix a lot of the problems with the cele DD Ele. If there are still issues, they can move on to make incremental nerfs to Burning Fire, etc.

I’m not going to stop playing if Tempest ends up sucking, but I certainly won’t buy HoT. Tempest is, FOR ME, literally the only reason to buy/play HoT, as silly as that may seem to others. It isn’t living up to my expectations at the moment. I hope it gets some good changes.

I agree that D/D ele definitely needs to be nerfed, but I’m scared that Anet will overnerf and we will be back at the bottom of the barrel again…

Pulsing blast finisher on Overload Earth sounds awesome. It would definitely encourage team play, and the fact that you have to wait to overload means you can’t abuse your own combo fields with it.

It’s convinced me to hold off on buying HoT. :P

No joke though, Tempest was 90% of the reason why I was excited about the expansion. I don’t like playing any other profession, and I was really excited to play Ele in a new way after three years of the same stale builds.

At the moment though, Tempest isn’t living up to the stated goal of opening up new playstyles for the Ele IMO. So, I will continue to hold off on purchasing HoT.

Ohoni.6057:

The reason people are complaining is because Tempest does not, in their minds, provide a NEW and/or distinct enough role for Ele to play. Whether or not Ele is “the best class in the game” has NOTHING to do with the fact that Tempest isn’t living up the proposed goal (opening up new playstyles.)

What playstyle did people want? Personally, I find the D/D playstyle to be a lot of fun, and the Tempest brought a bunch of cool new functions to that. I hear that the Warhorn can be used to bring more support to structured squad-play, but that isn’t really my style, and if it doesn’t live up to that role, then they can tweak some numbers until it does.

I much prefer a “more and better” elite spec like Tempest over a “let’s turn the Guardian into a Ranger” spec like Dragon Hunter.

From what I see, ANet seems to be pushing a frontline support/damage role with the Tempest. Personally, I’m actually on board with that idea, since D/D can’t really deal well on the frontlines, and Thieves do the get in-burst-get out thing better.

As they stand, I’m happy with the Warhorn skills (especially so with the buffs) and I look forward to using the shouts, but I just don’t see how Overloads (the meat of the spec) help us do frontline combat better. They don’t seem to have enough of a payoff for their long channels (easily interrupted, outside the Earth overload, and opportunity cost: aren’t you better off casting something else?) Also, I don’t like that overloads are canceled when swapping attunements; I see the reason for it, but it feels crappy. However, these issues are easily fixed with minor tweaks, so I’m optimistic.

-I don’t like Rebound. It’s all well and good to have an Elite that rewards coordinated play, but let’s face it, such play is only seen in very limited instances (speedclears, TPvP.) It would have been okay if our other Elites were more “tide-turning” in general play, but they’re not.

-We need a shout CD reduction trait, probably rolled into Tempestuous Aria.

-Aura traits are now too spread out.