Guild Wars 2

Yea thanks to this brand new ability we’re able to share 10 stacks of might to our allies!

Really seems like way too much!

4/5

Don’t see how any of it fits into actual game play that something else we have doesn’t already do it better.

People seem to forget that stunbreaks aren’t as useful as they seem. They clear things happening after they already happened. Typically speaking by the time you get to them, the effects are either over or close to being over as much of this game’s CCs are all only 1-2 seconds in duration by design with very few exceptions.

So even if Imbued Melodies’ effect occurs on self, it’s still never going to be as useful as Lightning Flash which repositions you, Mist Form which prevents damage and that effect, or Armor of Earth which provides a massive stack of Stability for you to either preemptively eat (IE: cast before) or recover (IE: cast after) and keep going. The fact you can trait all these and include Vigor/Regen and have Regen clear Conditions on top of that is just ridiculously crazy compared to any condition based shout effect.

PlatinumMember.5274:

That’s the main problem with discussions. People are arguing not based on facts, but based on “coolness.” one of the things I have noticed (I will admit I could be subconsciously ignoring the post that do) is that most of the people who are defending the tempest are not giving reasons why the tempest is good.

They only give vague answers or that my imaginary friends are doing a 180.

In b4 “Bro, wait till you can get your hands on it/they tweak the numbers!”

Xillllix.3485:

In PvE you dont need Water or Arcane, unlike PvP or WvW.

I agree that it sucks to lose the DPS boost from arcane, but the overload could make quite some damage on a pure zerk build. Lightning Storm Overload Air, Ice Bow, Meteor, Overload fire, etc.

This will come down to actual numbers, but it’s unlikely a 4-5 second channel will be that much of a DPS add to be worth removing an entire specialization line for considering how much damage you can already do in those 4-5 seconds. 10% damage add can be a lot.

Either way rest assured the speed clear boys will figure it out.

Fade.1743:

Except it isn’t. This is all crap for PvE. The two main builds: Fire-Air-Water and Fire-Air-Arcane all have plenty of damage modifiers that we lose going into this. Arcane gives more useful support as Auras really aren’t that reliable in PvE for support compared to boons. Focus just kicks the ever-living daylights out of Warhorn and OH Dagger would still be a better choice. AND STAFF would benefit WAY more from Overload and lower attunements than Dagger main hand as Dagger usually stays in Air and only cycles through the others to keep up huge might stacks and permafury. These two are already great in melee…this doesn’t change anything!

I think there’s a disconnect here going on.

See you got a bunch of people who are all like, “Woo Tempest this is so cool, it’s all so cool!” and then you have the more level headed people saying, “None of this stuff is practical.”

Is the Tempest stuff cool? Sure. New stuff. Neat. Any of it particularly useful? Not a bit. PvE players are guessing PvP and PvP is guessing WvW and WvW is guessing PvE cause no one can actually figure out where any of this cool stuff would actually be used over what we already got.

It’s definitely not for WvW.

WvW currently is basically ranged favored with a large Necro Well Bomb. This puts a lot of pressure on the front to be incredibly mobile. Unfortunately breaking stuns, while helpful, isn’t particular mobile because you get stunned…then you break it…then you can keep moving. However that whole “Stunned, then break it” part is where you usually get got which was the whole point to stability. Most melee (IE: Warriors, Guardians) have adapted to this by using leaps (sword leap, hammer leap, greatsword leap) to quickly get out of danger while riding on stability. Tempest has nothing like that and nor does any Elementalist for that matter which is why D/D fell out of favor on the front lines.

(Edit: To clarify, Elementalist does have stuff like that, but it’s all on terribly long cool downs making it ineffective compared to Warrior or Guardian options which are much quicker allowing them to zip around the field multiple times. We use Armor of Earth, and welcome to this massive cool down.)

As a backline, Tempest offers nothing you already weren’t getting and in fact having to waste a specialization on Tempest would be silly as you’d be trading damage (either Fire or Air spec) for basically more survivability which isn’t needed in the back.

So no, this isn’t for WvW either. As we’ve been saying for days (“OH BUT JUST WAIT FOR THE LIVE STREAM!”) Tempest has no place in the current game. Maybe PvE changes will warrant needing a support heal bot or something I dunno.

I stand by everything I said earlier.

1. PvE there’s no damage add. In the current PvE this is a death sentence outside of casual runs where literally any equipment you run doesn’t matter (no judgement, I run like this too). Other Elementalist builds using D/D or F or S/D or F are far better at building Might Stacks. It may have some life in 5v5 groups if the new PvE content offers unavoidable direct damage through healing and support however the Staff already excels at this as well and does more damage.

2. In PvP you’re still going to be forced into Water/Arcane to survive. This is on top of having to equip Tempest. Tempest’s lack of damage adds such as through Air or Fire make it a lackluster addition for easily interruptable overcharges, useless long duration shouts and otherwise.

3. In WvW the lack of short cool down mobility makes it useless on the front line. The leap meta can’t be ignored and a lack of a mobility skill makes it impractical on the front line. Even if it did have enough stability (it doens’t) to channel once Armor of Earth is gone you are left with nothing but massive cool downs and an inability to keep going with the rest of the front line. As a backline Staff Ele you have less need for survivability making the Tempest line compete with the Water line which essentially trades condition removal and lower Water field timers for little to no advantage.

Complete dud full of neat tricks and toys but still lacks any place in the functional game.

There’s lots of ideas how to incorporate the Tempest.

Unfortunately none of them are practical to current game play.

Survivability: Cantrips.

Damage: Glyph of Storms, Conjure Frost Bow.

Honestly Utilities are one of the major reasons why I love playing my Elementalist.

I generally agree oZii but man when they merge the way they do, it’s like shuffling the deck based on post time so the whole thing becomes this jumbled list of cross conversations pretty much impossible to follow.

Remedy.3429:

Mark my words, Tempest will return dagger/x to PvE.

Oh I’m marking your words and rest assured there’s a very active speed clear community who will be doing the math on how actually useful it will be for PvE.

That said I don’t need to have a live stream presentation on a dog kitten to know it stinks and I shouldn’t pick it up. I have pre-existing knowledge and thought that tells me all I need to know about it.

The same is applied here. I don’t need a stream to explain to me why a front line Elementalist won’t work, I have game play knowledge that understands why current front line classes work and enough of a preview to know that we’re not getting anything that gives us those necessary front line tools.

But stream in 3.5 hours! I can’t wait to be able to factually discuss the new Tempest skills/traits and this ridiculous, “Wait and see!” argument no longer can be used.

Azel.4786:

Conceptually Tornado is cool, IMO.

But Laraley is right, the skill is very lackluster in its practical use.

Pretty much summed up the Tempest perfectly.

Bravo.

FrownyClown.8402:

stop moving all the posts to this forum. We all know the devs won’t read all this kittena.

IT’S MERGAGEDDON.

I don’t think I could follow this 30 different trains of posts and replies all put into this one mega thread if I had a week to sort it out.

arkealia.2713:

You’re locked out of the attunement when you switch after an overload (longer recharge time).
Overload seems like a risk/reward mechanic. It also has a great synergy with conjured weapons since you can just overload each attunement while using hammer for exemple (use your elite to reduce recharge on hammer too) and Fresh Air makes it even better.

The only game mode you can currently afford to sit in the same attunement as an Elementalist is PvE. The only attunement this is currently rewarded sufficiently in is in Fire because all other attunements offer lackluster DPS. So far, they haven’t announced any changes to any other DPS in other attunements. The few Horn mentioned Air abilities, Air being the primary DPS for Dagger/ are not large DPS adds but instead a CC move (pull) and a (piercing?) line DPS move. From a PvE stand point Tempest will only be relevant if it replaces the large % damage adds the class currently gets from Fire, Air and Water.

In PvP/WvW, being locked out of an attunement is a liability. As a front or backliner we or the groups we already support often rely on us to be able to do the abilities we have. Our entire class is designed around the concept that we can swap attunements and skills are balanced on that fact reinforcing this play style. The skills (so far) aren’t being rebalanced around that fact. For example there’s no stacking buff that increases skill damage or reduces cool downs the longer we are in an attunement (something that would actually make camping an attunement more viable). This means we’re still forced to put out the effects as needed. For example a Staff player might start in Air (Static Field) then use it’s water abilities such as Frozen Ground or Healing Rain, then swap to Fire to get some Meteors on but then need to swap back to Water for the Geyser refresh at the end. Locking a player out of these attunements is crippling as while the damage on Ice Spike is interesting (6-7k+) it’s certainly no stacked Fire damage.

The entire Tempest concept is based around being a front line support character. However from a WvW perspective if you look at existing frontline characters (Warriors, Guardians) they are largely built around the “Leap” concept. The Leap concept is where they use lowish cool down leaps to get in and out of combat scenarios. For example when the enemy team drops a Well Bomb on your location, you use a combination of Stability, Condition management and Mobility skills to get in and out of those scenarios. Examples of this are Savage Leap, Earthshaker, and Leap of Faith all of which have 8-15 second cool downs (base). Tempest, and Elementalist in general, lacks these kinds of short duration leap style abilities to keep base and instead is forced to rely on long cool down abilities like our Cantrips (40s – 75s) or long mobility moves like Ride the Lightning (40s). This will always leave the frontline Elementalist dragging behind the main force, and if you are separated out you take the full brunt of an offensive (melee frontline are required to stay together to spread damage out to live) which is why D/D “bruiser” Elementalists fell out of favor in group combat. This is not even considering that most front liners also run roughly 3000 armor (buffed of course) or so meaning the stats the Elementalist will need for frontline will basically neuter it’s damage output entirely.

The buzz about the shouts, such as the AOE stun Break, is rediculous. There are plenty of existing options that already are AOE stun breaks. Anything that gives AOE stability breaks stun. The most common examples are “Stand your Ground” on a Guardian or Mantra of Concentration (Power Break).

Simply put: it’s an interesting concept, but it’s wholly unrealistic of current game play and has no place that isn’t already currently being done by the Elementalist in a better fashion. There’s any number of other routes they could have taken, but they didn’t go those routes. If they had given Warhorn more mobility, it would have made it more viable for an Elementalist frontliner for WvW. Overcharging adding a channeling mechanic and locking you out of needed mechanics is just wholly ignorant of existing game play scenarios and how it would fit in there.

Frowny wait till we see the numbers tomorrow.

That way when we dissect all the bad mechanics and compare them to existing mechanics we have numbers to back up what why the new mechanics are terrible.

They should just cut up some video footage from existing elementalists with some overlapping footage of Necro Shouts and a Warrior blowing on a Warhorn and you’re set.

Thread so old it’s a new necromancer minion.

Silverkey.2078:

The thing is that while the first load of mantra is indeed pre-charged when we enter combat, we often have to go and hide in the terrain for 3s to reload them and being able to come back to the fight with them. I think the main problem is that the interrupt puts on full cooldown while an interrupted mantra does not (except if it was interrupted by a mean mesmer giving us 15s cooldown). I don’t know yet how strong the effect is, but that seems like a fairly high risk.

Must be nice being able to hide away and reload them.

I’m sure the mechanic where we’re forced to pile on top of other people in the middle of combat with a giant storm based effect building around us can’t possibly go wrong.

In PvP/WvW we use Cantrips to survive because our survivability is directly questioned out there. We need Flash to avoid circles, Mist to power through chokes and Armor of Earth to keep going when the CCs are rough.

In PvE we use Conjure Frostbow as a disposable AOE machine and huge stun to proc Tempest Defense. We also use Glyph of Storms offensively or Defensively with Blinds. We also might take a little bit of defense to go with it with a Cantrip or something to round it out.

Shouts have no place. Honestly anything they had to add has no place. They could of given us pet tornados or storm mantras or traps or whatever and it’ll just be added to the long list of other utilities that we never bother using because quite honestly we already have some of the best crap around.

Silverkey.2078:

The cast time of the overload is basically the charging time for mantras in mesmer, and I don’t think anyone will pretend it is does not work. We just have to see how easy and useful it is to prepare it somewhat away from the fight and then jump in the fight when the effect is ready. You may not benefit as much from the effect while loading but the final effect seems good on its own.

If they were like Mantras, and you could charge them up out of Combat and then carry them around with you and “unleash the storm” as you go like Mantras there could be a use there. In fact many people speculated that’s what our Utilities would be, charged up Storms that we unleash Mantra Style.

Instead they’re more like 5s cast Mass Invisibility except we pulse out Boons while we’re channeling the cast and at the end instead of going Invisible we have some other effect (a fire storm, a heal bubble, etc).

nearlight.3064:

But I’ll back off for now since you guys are pretty close minded about everything. Really the gw2 forum is just a haven for negativity. If you go anywhere else, Whether in game or reddit you’ll see that the people that are approving of tempest far out numbers those that reject it.

When I go to Reddit and read the Tempest reveal discussion thread I see a bunch of angry Necromancer players who are salty about anything and often times throw inaccurate statements around and a bunch of other people who don’t have actual Elementalist icons next to their name saying how cool the stuff is.

Super glad other people who don’t actually play our class thinks what we’re getting is pretty sweet.

nearlight.3064:

I feel the need to point out a direct contradiction in your argument. You say that the entire elite spec will be shut down by the mantra of distraction, but do you know what mantras are?

They’re skills that require a 2.75 second channel time by which to activate, before you can use the skill for its strong effects. If your argument is to be completely valid, then mantras must also be unviable too. Oh wait, they’re actually the crux of the most commonly seen mesmer build in high level tournaments right now.

Actually Mantras are largely charged before a fight and in between fights, not actively in the middle of a fight because anyone who actually plays a Mesmer will tell you trying to charge a Mantra in the middle of someone’s face doesn’t usually end well.

So your comparison is apples and oranges, which while they’re both fruit, aren’t at all the same thing.

Jhoul.6923:

I get you… I’m quite sad since in my mind my ele is dying (and I KNOW I’m overdramatic).

But I will wait till I use my ele with the tempest spec…. If it ends up being crap I will call for a massive Elementalist suicide where everyone records their Eles jumping to their death and puts the vids in the FB page of GW2.

Or…ya know…continue using the great character that the Elementalist already is or switch to another class if you’d prefer to do that.

It was bound to happen that some Specialization was going to be the runt or dud of the litter. Happens to turn out to be the Elementalist class. Just the way she goes.

If I have to put points into the new bad Specialization to use it then yea it’ll be a waste.

Otherwise it’s honestly not much worse than our existing Elites. FGS or Rebound…enh, whatever.

nearlight.3064:

I’ve said this many times before, but eles are the most versatile profession in the game by design, and aren’t majorly deficient in any one thing that an elite spec could offer. Necros got a GS because they had no cleave. Mesmers got wells since they had poor AoE. Elementalists have the tools for everything in one way or another, even if some tools, like scepter are less ideal than their other tools, you cannot argue that those tools aren’t there.

I like how its giving you the ability to have gamechangin support by making tactical decisions instead of just going though fire-earth-water-air as a constant rotation.

Actually there’s a few areas the Elementalist needs work in.

For example, after the recent Fresh Air and Bolt to the Heart nerf (where they’re both GM now) our burst spec is pretty much non-existent. It was already a hard sell before for PvP purposes (as mentioned elsewhere it saw very little representation) so offering up a new spec that offered Burst DPS play by reducing AOE and instead focusing more on hard hitting single target damage would make sense in an area that Elementalists currently lack.

Another example is that we lack high in combat mobility. This shouldn’t be confused with having out of combat mobility (Swiftness uptime) or saying we have zero in combat mobility (burning retreat, ride the lightning) however we have nothing really renown for it’s mobility in a fight either.

Another mechanic we lack that other classes have is similar to the “Mark” or “Trap” style setting something up in the world. Now you might rush and say the new Shouts handle that, but those are little more than AOEs that trigger soon as you cast and have a duration. What I’m talking about is where you inscribe something on the ground, and when the enemy walks over it then it becomes triggered.

There’s lots of new ideas to be had and always room for new ideas. Not only did we get basically a rehashed version of the same crap we already have (many cases visible so far already worse than what we can already do) but our Utility ideas aren’t even unique. They’re literally a rip off of the new Offensive Necro shouts.

I get it. You wanna be excited. Yay new stuff. But it’s a disappointment, and the were literally any number of other directions they could have gone that would have been far more exciting.

PlatinumMember.5274:

All I can say is: #believeinkarl. I think he has earned it.

I’m with you man! Karl’s reputation with the Elementalist community is 100% earned!

PlatinumMember.5274:

I am also excited about these changes. Anybody that isn’t excited is kitten fool. Arena net knows exactly what elementalist needed. The power of more team work is always great in my book.

Yeap Anet has their ears to the ground man. They got the vibe of what’s really core of Elementalist game play. I mean it’s a long time known fact ANet has it’s finger on the pulse of the Elementalist community. It’s not surprising at all they delivered some really solid and exciting changes. I mean when I think Elementalist right now, I think selfish player. Limited to no team support. Limited field generation for others to combo with. No utilities that can be shared with other people. Don’t even get me started on the small amount of boon sharing. Before Tempest we didn’t even have shouts to share boons!

I can’t wait till Friday to see all the exciting new stuff with Tempest that really finally gives us the ability to support our team.

nearlight.3064:

^^ hes right you know, Ele has everything, so there wasn’t really anything purely and totally new that an elite spec could offer, and its cool that its offering a way to be viable without being a skill rotation bot machine.

Except so far everything shown still shows that being a skill rotation bot machine is superior.

Avead.5760:

Omg you too salty ..we ll see in 2 days

Not all bro! I’m just so excited for all this new stuff exactly like all our other stuff!

Avead.5760:

There is NO REASON to be concered of viability of the spec right now..absolutely none!

You’re absolutely right!

It’s just as good as all the existing tools we have that do all the exact same things so it will be just as good as we already have! Yay! I’m so glad our new stuff is functionally identical to our existing stuff!

Hey guys! We can now overload Fire and pulse out 5 stacks of AOE Might and then be locked in/out of Fire Attunement for 20 seconds instead of creating a Fire Field and using multiple blast Finishers while rolling through multiple attunements and stacking 15-25 stacks of Might! Yaaaaaaaay!

Tempest is so cool and full of such new things!

PlatinumMember.5274:

I agree, the tempest is exactly what the elementalist needed. With the tempest, the ele will be one of the best team players in the game. It is such a great team player that the effectiveness of its class mechanics depends entirely on your team mates providing stability.

I totally get you man. Elementalist is just the worst team player out of every profession out there. I mean Engineers and Rangers and Thieves don’t even begin to understand our lack of team play as an Elementalist. I’m so glad they recognized this gap in our character design and how badly we were hurting to be able to support our team mates with Boons or Field generation that it’s really heartening to see them do this. And I mean the Singularity. Wow. When I leave an attunement I REALLY like the fact I can’t use it for 20 seconds. It really encourages me to try the other attunements like sitting in Water Attunement for a long time or Earth Attunement for a long time and really pushes me to enjoy those kinds of Attunements that I normally wouldn’t.

They pre-record all those videos of game play in action when showing off abilities so you already know from their teaser everything shown is going to be D/W.

If there’s more % damage add traits, it’ll be considered for use in PvE.

Any other game mode it’s basically a bad decision. Overloading Water then locking yourself into/out of water for 20 seconds is always going to be a bad decision on a class built around swapping.

Swim.6830:

PlatinumMember.5274:

Kodiak.3281:

atreyu.9624:

Can anyone explain how does this overload mechanic exactly work?

So you’re in Fire Attunement (F1). You press F1 again and it begins to channel while overloading. While overloading you pulse AOE Burn and Might around you. At the end of the channel, you explode leaving an AOE Firestorm on the ground. Fire Attunement now goes on a 20 second cool down so if you leave Fire Attunement you can’t return for 20 seconds.

Don’t forget if you get interupted full cd. Luckily interupts are hard to come by and are in no way easily spammable.

Yeaaaah…

Yea frontline Hammer Warriors, Hammer Guardians and hugely spammed CC’s to counter limited stability stacks just isn’t very common at all in WvW…I’m sure channeling on the front line will work out as great as overloading Fire to stack Might to your allies then be locked out of the Fire for the rest of the fight when you try to use 3/4ths of the rest of your character.

I for one am just glad they FINALLY added some AOE support to the Elementalist. I mean we’ve been asking for more AOE Support forever as a Elementalist. Sure glad Tempest is going to address that gap in character design.

atreyu.9624:

Can anyone explain how does this overload mechanic exactly work?

So you’re in Fire Attunement (F1). You press F1 again and it begins to channel while overloading. While overloading you pulse AOE Burn and Might around you. At the end of the channel, you explode leaving an AOE Firestorm on the ground. Fire Attunement now goes on a 20 second cool down so if you leave Fire Attunement you can’t return for 20 seconds.

Avead.5760:

Yea but all cantrips are selfish and so are their traits.Shouts might have good offencive or defencive potential that is shared (based on their numbers of course).Condi clear that is shared could be the icing on the cake
I for once would love to use a non selfish utility on my ele

Yea Elementalist is definitely one of the most selfish classes in the game.

I’m sure glad they addressed the lack of Support on an Elementalist.

Ragnarox.9601:

And shouts for ele…ahh….rune of trooper + cele gear (or even zerker) = true gods.

Cause we weren’t already doing it with Cantrips, Regen and Cleansing Water? lol…

Singularity – We’ll see usefulness. Channeled effect makes it very iffy. It’s clearly designed to support Frontline, but channeling stuff on the front line is usually suicide. Earth sounds like only thing you’d really want to do that with since it seems to have a “Break Bar” like they said. Considering how often you need your attunements in WvW I can’t really imagine this working out too well except for Earth because it’s the least useful attunement for WvW. But locking yourself out of Water when your team needs a refresh or Fire when you need to do damage seems counter productive.

Horn – Toot toot. Basically a field generator on 1h about what I expected. May work out better for D/x play in WvW but already plenty of field generation and blast generators in /Dagger and /Focus. Have to see what the actual ability numbers are. The mobile water field sounds pretty slick though can’t deny that.

Traits – Seems not bad, we’ll have to see how things are really setup. Elementalist really doesn’t have the same survivability to be a close-mid range fighter so without enough traits to reinforce that it won’t work. The 40% reduction with Protection seems a good start.

Shouts – What an ‘effin joke but again as expected. At least they ain’t Mantras. Cantrips still going to dominate a bar especially as a frontline fighter. Rebound is interesting at least, might be a decent one to go in especially if you don’t gotta spec Tempest to get it. If you do it’s a hard sell for one whole specialization choice for one finally decent Elite move.

nearlight.3064:

You can just walk out of the lava font….?

And besides meteor shower and sitting in lava font, the rest of staff eles kit has poor burst AoE damage, I think warhorn could supply powerful nuke damage in all attunements, just some would be more control or support oriented than others based on the attunement. And you’d also get access to high single target bursts from scepter or high sustained damage and PBAoEs from dagger too, so comparing staff to a potential role for an offhand is a little irrelevant in my opinion.

You can just walk out of most AOEs in the game and those that you can’t are not as powerful as the ones you can. Meteor Shower is slow and entirely random but you consider it as the “only real AOE nuke”? Your position just doesn’t make much sense.

As for the staff ele “kit” the rest of what you’re talking about clearly describes staff! Control oriented like Static Field, Frozen Ground or Unsteady Ground? Support Oriented like Geyser or Healing Rain? Do you really expect them to attach blasts of 4k nukes on top of healing everyone or snaring everyone to warhorn skills?

Want to talk about irrelevant lets talk about the Offhand Dagger. It does AOE burning ring and high burst Fire Grab. It does self defense Frost Aura and AOE Support Cleanse. It does Mobility with Ride the Lightning and AOE CC with Updraft. It does more AOE control with Earth Quake and strike damage with Churning Earth.

All these things…already exist…

Simply put none of it makes any kind of logical sense. As Neko pointed out our class is already in an amazing position as far as classes go. We already have many good roles in our particular game modes.

However introducing a new offhand weapon (regardless if it’s a horn or not) is tone deaf to the areas we actually can’t fulfill. Our offhands are already amazing. However after the Specialization changes, it leaves Dagger / Staff as the really only mainhand options so a new main hand would have been on point to fill the few gaps the Elementalist has.

Even if our Specialization is a dud that doesn’t mean the end of the Elementalist. Not sure I understand the quitting posts because it’s not like their already amazing character is getting less amazing. It just means we sit out this expansion as a class who gets a dud specialization which is naturally going to be disappointing to people who main an Elementalist.

sorrychief.2563:

4-6k meteor showers? those are dangerously low numbers.

Really depends on your target and what they got on them at the time. A 3k armor guy with Protection on ain’t gonna get hit very hard regardless what you throw at em.

nearlight.3064:

Exactly. I feel like it will be some sort of AoE nuking weapon, which hasn’t been done by previous warhorns and is a powerful niche that OH dagger and focus haven’t fulfilled. Even staff only has one skill (meteor shower) that I’d consider an AoE nuke, its has sustained rather than burst AoE pressure, and of course that varies on attunement.

lol what? Yea screw that Lava Font that can crit for 4k a pop while you auto attack for 4k a pop while Meteor Shower simultaneously also can hit for 4-6k a pop.

Sure glad they might give Elementalists some AOEs. Gosh we’re so starved for AOEs as a class! I would now insert a list mockingly all the AOE’s we have as a class on every single weapon as well as the countless AOEs we have as in our Utilities but quite honestly I don’t have the time to recount almost literally every skill we have.

People need to stop trying to justify the crappy Warhorn as a selection by claiming it’s going to be something different. It doesn’t matter that it’s a Warhorn, it matters that it’s an offhand weapon. An offhand sword or offhand shield or whatever would be just as bad.

/Dagger is an amazing weapon already full of AOEs, mobilty, defenses and CCs as well as many blast finishers. Focus is also an amazing weapon full of ranged CCs, AOEs, defenses and blast finishers. Between the two of these there’s no additional roles to fulfill because they’re already so amazing at what they do. That is the problem.

Ryld.1340:

Kodiak.3281:

Guardian = Ranger

Guardians get Traps

One could almost say they get Traps like a Ranger.

It all depends what class we’re supposed to be model after.

Mesmer = Necro
Guardian = Ranger
Necro = Warrior
Ranger = Elementalist (speculative)
Thief = Engineer (speculative)
Engineer = Guardian (speculative)

So if we’re a Thief, then I imagine storms will be largely stealth/mobility based. If we’re a Mesmer we’ll likely get a twist on Mantras (charged storm you can use after charge to release the storm on target).

One of two things is going to happen with Warhorn:

1. It’s going to be wildly OP and will eclipse the Dagger/Focus offhands and become mandatory for 1h based builds.

2. It’s going to not be wildly OP and Dagger/Focus offhands will still be the preferred choice regardless because they’re both already crazy good options.

Utilities are in the same boat basically. From a survivability perspective it’s incredibly, incredibly difficult to be better than Cantrips. Teleport, invuln, huge stacks of stability it’s a tough crowd. From a DPS perspective its’ hard to match things like Conjure Frostbow or Glyph of Storms. Probably the biggest thing to be excited for is the Ultimate since the rest of our Ultimates are pretty lackluster.

Tempest mechanic itself is counter intuitive with the rest of the class design and would make more sense with a new 2h weapon. Most current weapons (dagger, scepter) are balanced around the idea of having various defenses on other attunements. For example there’s really no defensive moves in Fire outside of Burning Retreat and maybe Fire Aura (but it’s defensive add is largely irrelevant). In order to get the boons and defensive moves we need to survive we have to swap attunements. A whole new 2h option could resolve this by allowing each attunement set to work better if you camp it the entire time via skills.

Essentially the problem is we already drive a Ferrari. Anything less than a Ferrari and it’s like “Why?”

yhvh.8703:

It’s actually funny seeing people reacting to this weapon with “I quit the game!” without even knowing what the hell the elite spec does and how it does. I’m actually very hyped because anet can pull out an amazing spec based on the most bland weapon. Of course I might be wrong, yeah, but why don’t we wait until the end of the week so we can ACTUALLY SEE what is coming for Elementalists?

If I remember correctly mesmer players were just like this with the incoming shield “Wth, sheild no mh pistol!?”, yet after the reveal apparently the Chronomancer is one of the most hyped elite specs.

I mean simply put, they had an opportunity. The hype for Elementalist Sword was really high and instead they let down a huge number of people. I’m sure there’s some people out there who wouldn’t like the sword too but those are a fraction compared to the number of people let down by the lack of it. Elementalists get amazing offhands as is so adding another is either going to be wildly OP and overshadow the existing great options or simply be inferior and never get used.

When you look at things from a calm and rational perspective you begin to realize that ideas like a partial weapon (offhand only) and camping a single attunement when the rest of the character and weapons are built around rapid swapping it just doesn’t make sense.

The saving grace is the Elementalist is in such a good place it doesn’t matter if the Tempest is bad cause the base class is just that good.

No, you aren’t missing out.

Elementalist has access to four weapon sets via Attunements and a full rack of Utilities.

Revenant had access to one weapon set and two Utility sets they couldn’t (and still can’t) change the utilities in each set.

Yea I sure hope it has AOE like Ring of Fire, Fire Wall, Fire Grab, Comet, Updraft, Earthquake or Churning Earth. Maybe it’ll have some defensive cool downs like Frost Aura, Cleansing Wave, Magnetic Wave or Obsidian Flesh. Or it could have some boon stacking like Area Might and Fury with a bunch of blast Finishers? Ooo oo maybe even some mobility like Ride the Lightning!

/eyeroll

I hope the Utilities are Mantras.