Guild Wars 2

Oh man if Racials worked “Best Race” would 100% be a thing because of how useless/situational most of the utilities are and especially with Jalis.

Jski.6180:

D/d as an wepon set is all aoe but ele as an class is not for is main healing effect the signet. That an ele’s only real aoe healing is from water if your not in water then you have no aoe healing out put that where tempest is a step above ele due to it having the abitly to heal in all atuments not just water (aura heals and utility).

For tempest healing vs d/d ele healing its a question of when to use water overloads and when not to. So you do not want to simply use it as soon as it goes off cd unless its for the big heal effect. When build “right” it should heal your pt for about 9k hp? But the trick is to hold off on using it and keep the low cd on water atument. As for the other atuments you want to overload as much as you can but then swap back into water so in a way you will be just jumping from water to another atument then overloading in that atument then back to water.

Your main healing effect is not the Signet but rather water skills, water traits and arcane traits all of which is AOE.

Anytime you aren’t healing to the maximum on the Tempest you are lowering it’s healing output. The lower the Tempest’s healing output the more on par it is with D/D Elementalist.

Jski.6180:

PvE the only format that you need no healing atm but you need it in spvp and wvw. It sounds like you may start to need some healing in the new pve content though that not been seen. I come at things purely form wvw becuse that tends to be the only real dynamic game type in GW2.
They are ABLE to stay in melee range becuse of there healing effect they want to stay in melee ranges for a variety of reasons. Self healing is what d/d ele is all about and tempest uses a lot of that abitly to self heal to be able to stay in that melee ranges the trick is that tempest healing is not purely self its aoe.

No content requires dedicated healing at all currently. Many classes work just fine without healing and groups operate without players dedicated/spec’d into healing.

New content isn’t released yet so no one can properly say what is and isn’t required. Developers say a lot of things. They think EOTM is a WvW overflow even though most treat it like karma train/champ bag collector.

They are able to stay in melee range for a variety of reasons. None of that requires +Healing or to be healing focused. All of D/D’s healing is AOE, none of is it self only based.

Jski.6180:

You do if your a gurd or any type of melee lol what are you even saying. Healing is one of the most needed effect for melee to make it though ranged bombs with both water fields blasting and aoe heals / regs.
D/d ele stay in melee range due to there abitly to heal…you have played d/d ele before?

You don’t need any kind of healer present with you what so ever currently in melee regardless of game mode.

They stay in melee range because of a variety of reasons. I have played D/D Ele before and still do.

Jski.6180:

To stay in that melee ranges though healing is needed so by being a melee support tempest becomes a healer. Tempest is more on the lines of a gurd then a war.

You don’t need healing to stay in melee ranges.

Tempest is more on the lines of a D/D Elementalist than any other class.

Also always craft on a Thursday Evening or Friday before WvW reset. If the game releases on 10/23 and you can in the morning/afternoon before WvW server reset you usually have a few stacks of “Artisan” which which give you a huge boost towards crafting crits on top of the Booster.

Personally however I am waiting to see if the crafting XP contributes towards Masteries or not.

Jski.6180:

So aura heals from both wepon overloads and utility shouts on-top of the aoe heal skill only account for +20%? Are you sure your taking in account for playing d/x tempest as an d/d ele when you do not need that high burst heal becuse you do not need to overloaded if ppl are at full hp.

Correct, it’s only 20% better when you heal your maximum on each.

The less you need to heal just favors D/D more because if you can’t properly use your 20% then D/D Elementalist continues to be better.

Also as others indicated they never said Tempest was a healer. You can go watch the preview again and you can clearly hear Karl say that the Tempest is a “Front Line Support.” The tempest, by virtue of being an Elementalist, simply has access to Healing same as every other Elementalist weapon/tool set.

So basically what they need to do is dismantle Elementalist healing or reduce the amount of boon generation. The only way they can do that is bump is up to a Medium health pool to compensate for the new lack of survivability.

However instead of nutting up, ripping off the band-aid and making the changes they need to make to the Elementalist they’ve been pecking at and poking at the Elementalist for years now. They go after mobility (RTL), might (lol), celestial stats (lol), etc rather than just make the changes they need to make.

You play Elementalist long enough you just kinda get used to it.

D/D could solo heal a group. Tempest heals for roughly 20% more than a base D/D with far more time spent in water in order to use Overload.

There are many roles Elementalists lack. I encourage you to seek out any of the numerous threads on the topic as there are literally too many suggestions and ideas to list here.

Tempest is able to generate more auras, but without changes this doesn’t really mean much benefit as Aura traits are already spread across 4 separate lines in addition to Tempest.

The picture is very simple. I suppose that’s on me because of the previous metaphor went over your head I should have expected this one as well.

No one plays healing D/D because healing based builds are terrible in current game play.

Yes, the D/D ele could full heal a group. The D/D actually heals more efficiently than Tempest passively because it can output all it’s healing in a shorter period and then move on to doing other productive things.

The idea of Specializations is to create a role that doesn’t already exist on the base class. A support role has existed since launch for the Elementalist and is one of the oldest Elementalist builds and roles. There are a number of Elementalist existing builds that provide boons, healing and damage. Please do not confuse pointing out how the Tempest is factually worse at everything the Base Elementalist already does as telling people how to play.

I also see that metaphor went over your head. Instead I will use a picture to maybe point things out.

Jski.6180:

My point is the tempest class to be effective you do not need to have perfidy swapping vs cd when it comes to healing of your group. Its not misinformation its just saying tempest is not ele.

And the point everyone else but you seems to get is that it’s more rewarding to play a base Elementalist that swaps constantly than the Tempest that doesn’t need to swap.

You keep focusing on healing. Okay, that’s great. Except you’re focusing on a single tree in a forest. Your healing is 20% higher (wow this tree is pretty great!), but you suddenly lost 80% of your damage (OH GOD THE REST OF THIS PLACE IS ON FIRE).

Different but equal is great. Different but worse is not.

People who are cheering the demise of the meta will find out in a month or two it will just be replaced with a different one. They nerf direct damage? It shifts to Condis. They introduce unavoidable damage? It shifts to classes that can best handle that damage while keeping up DPS or classes that can allow others to recover (such as 1 healer with 4 DPS being more DPS than 5 people who bring DPS and healing).

Blaming the developers and the content they design is pretty misleading. There’s (currently) no PvE worth being competitive about in GW2 yet it still exists and people still argue about best this or meta that.

It’s really a catch-22 for them because if they make it too hard players will create meta builds that are “required” to do the content at all and if they make it easy enough for any build to do it then people going to use maximum DPS to power through it fast as they can which people still then “require.” Metas are a creation of the player base.

The only way they are going to fix things is by creating a variable score system based on population.

What that means is is a system that looks at global WvW population, and scales score gains accordingly. This means if one server has 4 full maps queued with 200 pop and the other servers have say only 100 population and 75 population then the score gains are scaled down. This means there would still be gains for that server, but the impact of those gains wouldn’t be equal to all 3 servers full map queued at 200/200/200 (a full raging war). What this does is make “night” (or really any time of the day) capping have a lesser impact on end score compared to “prime time” (whenever that actually is).

There’s really two ways to do that. The first is to just make it a flat reduction based on total WvW population (IE: 200+100+75 = 62.5% of 600% so PPT’s are reduced to 62.5%). The more complex, and probably better, solution is put it on a curve where the highest WvW population replaces that 200 cap. So for example if there’s 100, 75, 40 for servers it would replace the 200 pop cap with 100 effectively giving you a new WvW max pop of 300 for calculations or 71.6% using the example numbers.

This is pretty much the only non-exploitable way to address the “night capping” issue.

Helps immensely.

Honestly there’s lots of good combinations of armor for each race/class/etc. Even humans with like Long Hair run into clipping issues for example. There’s enough armor out there to come up with some acceptable/good looking combination that doesn’t clip.

I’m all about animations.

Human/Sylvari/Norn are pretty much all the same animation wise. Charr have some great animations with the weapons we got. So from the get go I pretty much plan to have a Charr Revenant and a Human Revenant.

Sylvari doesn’t interest me much. Literally every character I have is going to be anti Sylvari

Jski.6180:

They are to some ppl. You still do not get it tempest is NOT made to replaces ele get that out of your head. Tempest is simply something different then ele. If you do not like it DONT play it and keep playing ele.

I have no ideal why this is so hard for ppl to understand.

There are also some people who get that the Tempest isn’t any different than the base Elementalist class. There is nothing you can do on a Tempest I wouldn’t rather bring a base Elementalist to. Literally nothing. Heal support? Base Elementalist. Damage? Base Elementalist. Tanky survivability? Base Elementalist.

What people are upset with is the fact we got a dud specialization that offers no new way to play the class. It doesn’t matter that the Elementalist is already one of the best classes in PvE, PvP and WvW. No one wants to get a dud specialization that only comes once per expansion. There were plenty of roles the Elementalist doesn’t fulfill or have and instead we were given a specialization that’s a worse version of everything we already do.

TBH if you set it up right D/D Ele can heal almost as good as Tempest and bring way more to the table. As Nike indicated, Elementalist is about being able to do more than one thing (hell you can still drop water fields full Zerker) and the base Elementalist (damage, heal, boons, etc) simply does everything better than the Tempest.

You don’t need a Druid to realize what an inferior creation Tempest is.

Here’s why Tempest is the last: It adds nothing new.

Now you could argue that the Dragon Hunter’s longbow is terrible, bad or even awful. That the skills are bad, the designs are bad, or otherwise and you could maybe not be wrong (I leave it more to the Guardians to pick that one apart). But a bow is a different kind of playstyle for the class. It’s a fast projectile based ranged weapon instead of a more slow one of Scepter.

Tempest on the other hand gets literally nothing new. The main idea is basically Auramancer. But in order to pull it off the Aura traits are still spread out between too many lines (Fire, Earth, Water, Air). It’s built to be a melee character but has no real toughness/health increases forcing you into full defensive lines (Water/Arcane or Water/Earth) with Tempest. In order to get Aura generation in any notable amount you’re forced to give up more defenses with Cantrips. So in almost every way it’s just an inferior version of the same D/D build we already got. No new role. No new way to play the class.

How? That’s already covered up above and all of that is taken into account in the posts showing a D/D is slightly below a D/W Tempest. Just because you don’t like the numbers doesn’t make them any less relevant or true. In a 37s period a Tempest heals for roughly 20% more than a D/D Elementalist (who, btw, only has to spend a few seconds in water and can continue to contribute the rest of the fight).

Druid start with Medium Armor and Medium Health Pool already. In addition to the staff, they also come with defensive weapons like Greatsword which provides an evade auto attack, a strong mobility leap, a strong block/counter, and a hard stun. So they’re actually not squishy at all.

In fact what you described was the Elementalist who either relies on all their tiny heals and boons in order to survive (cause they add up to impressive survivability) or the active defenses of Cantrips. Something, I might add, you give up with D/W which makes it’s survivability extremely suspect in the first place in any kind of competitive setting. This, again, is because the Auras you generate aren’t competitive with the Cantrip defenses you give up.

The big thing about Tempest? It’s bad. It’s just bad. It’s been said to death literally everywhere else with countless walls of text on Constructive Feedback showing why it’s bad. In order to survive in melee you require certain tools and stats that leave you with zero offense and in order to take the benefits of the Tempest (auras) you’re left with zero defense other than healing (which has never been enough in any competitive game mode).

Facts are facts. Unless you’re willing to prove a different route I think I’m going to go with the facts established in the game.

Azel.4786:

Tempest will just continue to be a pile of useless coding that will be put into the game to remain in oblivion.

A sad fact.

I honestly can’t fathom the reasoning behind the Tempest. We’ve all provided lots of strong, well reasoned constructive feedback on why the current Tempest doesn’t work nor provide a new role. All of it has pretty much been categorically and entirely ignored. It’s not that Karl ignores feedback because you can see with the Dragon Hunter and Daredevil he clearly reads feedback and works with it. However in the case of the Tempest there’s been literally none of the response to the feedback given like you see with every other class. Personally I’d love a little post or something just with Karl’s idea of how he thinks this class is going to actually fit in the game and what it might do differently than the base Elementalist can’t already do.

Don’t want to get all tinfoil hat or anything, but the almost blatant avoidance of countless constructive (and lets just conveniently ignore the other giant mound of not so constructive negative feedback posts) makes me really think delivering a dud was intentional due to the Elementalist’s presence in the rest of the existing game (top PvE, WvW and PvP class).

It’s a buff literally anywhere else but WvW.

morrolan.9608:

Well it could have been worse, ele elite could have been solely a heal class like Druid.

How could a class (Ranger) getting a new role they don’t have (Pure Healing support) be worse than a class (Elementalist) getting a role they already have (Aura/Boon support bot)?

The point:

1. Defensive Frost aura and Regeneration for self.
2. A heal on swapping to Water, even if we swap right out of it.
3. 10% damage boost while above 90% or super defensive Cantrips
4. Colossal condi management with Condi removal on Regen give our massive sources of Regen

Elementalists don’t sit in Water and just heal. None of that functionality changes because another class gains healing abilities. All this shows is when they want a class to be healing oriented, such as Druid, you will really see a proper healing setup.

Hopefully this will show people that Tempest is an Aura bot and nothing more.

Tempest’s healing is marginally better than existing options as people showed above with numbers. Earth/Water/Tempest D/W vs Earth/Water/Arcane D/D is pretty closely matched.

Aura support is mediocre at best. To start Auras last a pathetically small amount of time with no ways to increase them as they aren’t considered Boons. On top of this the sources of Auras are incredibly limited. For example there’s only one Frost Aura on demand with D/W and the other two are only Proc based (low HP, on Crit). The other auras are very situational in it’s usefulness.

Please show me the class that has +50% boon duration for their party. This is different than boon sharing and you might be confused with this. There’s always room for new things, but also different ways for classes to provide the same benefit. For example Front line parties are strangled by needing 2 Guardians for the stability Guardians can bring with Stand Your Ground and Indomitable Courage. If another class was to bring AOE group stability, you could remove a Guardian to potentially fill the same Stability role with other potential benefits of that class as well.

My stance is something has to bring something new and or powerful to the group. A great example was the Druid reveal a bit ago with -33% condition duration for party members. That’s not a new effect, but it’s new that it’s a shared party effect. If I had to choose between a Tempest’s crappy Aura share or a Druid’s -33% condi duration it’s no contest the Druid wins every time.

I respect you’re trying to find a role or niche for the Tempest, but WvW isn’kitten In any competitive environment things are going to be scrutinized and the weak benefits this class brings aren’t going to cut it over the vanilla model. As you say the Elementalist is already considered one of the best classes in existing game modes and likely will remain that way even after HOT but certainly not as a Tempest.

Actually that isn’t true. I can’t speak on Reaper, as I haven’t looked into them, but other specializations bringing aspects to raids that we currently don’t have or fill existing roles is entirely a possibility.

For example look at Revenant with Herald. Herald is a strong add because not only does it bring a copious amount of Boons (perma Fury for example) but it also brings a very unique aspect of +50% boon duration for all allies. That means all Guardians/Warriors in a group who cast boons, such as Stability, it lasts 50% longer which makes them go a little bit further. That’s a unique aspect that enhances the existing meta.

So things can change, but only when they have something to offer. Tempest has nothing to offer. Everything it can offer other existing solutions can offer today. It’s entirely possible to make a healer Elementalist in the current setup. It’s entirely possible to cover enough Protection for engagements in the current setup. Everything you’re suggesting the Tempest will bring to the table could already be brought in WvW groups but it’s not because it’s redundant with the way things are already done.

www.gw2legendary.com

Pretty much covers all the expenses of each legendary based on TP prices. Can usually get them a kitteneaper, but it’ll show you where the principle of the costs are for each one.

So for Kudzu you can see the bulk of the cost is in the Gift of Fortune and Precursor (about being equal). Meanwhile other legendaries, like Juggernaut, the Gift of Fortune, Gift of Juggernaut and Precursor are all roughly the same.

Jski.6180:

D/D for ele is very dead in wvw. Your way better going staff or scepter/x for ele in wvw.

Gurds lack perma up time of a lot of effects they have some healing but its mostly for them self then other ppl they cant give protection for a full fight often there fields get in the way they have very few good soft cc that are viable. Tempest has peram up times for a lot of effects and there healing is a lot more useful and there simply a lot more of it on the tempest bar. The tempest also has real soft cc from frost aura that is going to hit both the other side melee and back line due to non ranges limitations for the effect. Tempest dose not have a lot of non useful blasting fields such as no light fields that get in the way.

Just having something new for the newness dose not realty make tempest any weaker in the meta or not. Just becuse you can use a long bow dose not make you fit in the meta more it just means you can use a longbow yet your still going to be best in the melee group. Although tempest dose have new effects that work well in the melee tram meta.

You never see either in WvW because anything not staff has fallen out of the meta. That’s because a Staff Elementalist has damage rivaling a Necromancer bomb, superior control than any other class, the ability to place targeted water fields at range for blasting, and some of the best survivability with triple Cantrip.

Again the problem with your claims is you don’t explain how they are done in their full scenario. See often times in order to get something, you give up something else. For example you keep saying Permanent uptime on protection. My gut tells me that’s cause you’re relying on the Earth line in order to do that via Auras which means you don’t have Arcane which means your healing and boon efficiency just went into the toilet compared to a D/D running Water/Earth/Arcane.

Furthermore your attempt to criticize a Guardian Front Line member shows a real lack of understanding of Guardian mechanics and how they actually work. You seem to be woefully lacking in your knowledge of a Guardian, what they bring to the table, and how they’re actually used. For example fields should never be a concern for a Guardian, but you seem to think this is an issue.

You are almost 100% right! Just because you have something new, it doesn’t mean it’s going to fit into the meta. Just like Guardian Longbow doesn’t really change the fact that Guardians are still preferred in the melee group having access to Tempest doesn’t mean Elementalists are going to be wanted in the melee group. That’s because Tempest doesn’t have anything that works well in the melee train meta nor anything to justify it’s two slots. Adding healing when Healing isn’t needed is unnecessary and adds nothing. The new Revenant Herald specialization does 1000x better at spreading boons to their party and even increases the duration of existing boons with Facet of Nature.

Again: what would front line want with a Tempest that we can’t already get?

Jski.6180:

Something even an d/d ele cant pull off this is why d/d ele is dead in wvw.

D/D is not dead in WvW because it lacked survivability it’s fallen out of the meta because it doesn’t offer anything that the existing combination of classes don’t already provide. There’s no scenario where a Front Line Guardian (either Staff/GS or GS/Hammer) doesn’t already perform better.

The Tempest is no different and people have yet to explain what new thing the Tempest can do that isn’t already sorted by the existing combination of classes/meta.

One could argue this is a bit unfair because we already know that the Tempest doesn’t bring anything new table so the question is more rhetorical to point out the uselessness of the Tempest.

Also the reason why you have to go Arcane with Tempest is the minute you don’t the D/D base Elementalist gets very competitive support wise in terms of boon output and healing. Elemental Attunement is an incredibly powerful source of boons, specifically Protection. Also Evasive Arcana also pretty much is one of the best sources of healing in the game.

Again, this just points out that the base Elementalist is many ways on par with or superior to the Tempest in many existing scenarios. You simply don’t see them doing things like Healing roles because, simply put, it’s considered a poor use of an Elementalist.

I figure this would be a pleasant but largely unexpected.

Basically how it works is you can’t skip reward tiers. So there’s a reward chest for:

1-10
11-20
21-30
31-40
41-50

So if your personal reward is 20, and you do a level 50 Fractal, you will gain the reward chest for 11-20 because that’s your highest reward tier. If you then go on to do a level 11 fractal you will get no reward because you already received your 11-20 chest when you completed the 50 fractal.

However lets continue and say you do a level 40 Fractal. You will gain no reward because you already gained a level 11-20 reward but now you’re personal reward 21 at the end. If you were to do a 21-30 Fractal you will gain a reward because your Personal reward is now in this tier as well and because you just got there you shouldn’t have gotten a reward for that tier yet.

(Example of this: Yesterday I was 39. I did a level 40 Fractal, got nothing because I already gained a reward for 31-40 but my personal reward was then 40. I then did another 40 Fractal and again got no reward chest. However now I was Personal Reward 41, hopped into a level 50 Fractal and got my 41-50 reward chest)

So basically there’s no point in doing higher level Fractals outside of your personal reward tiers. If you’re 21 now, best to stick to 21-30 fractals until you’re 31 and then start including the 31-40 bracket. That is unless you’re grinding Fractal ranks to unlock new brackets then do as high as you are reasonably capable of but grinding 50’s when you only need 20’s seems pretty inefficient.

I learned this lesson hard while working on grinding up towards level 50 for the Fractal Skins with HOT (I want them for my Revenant )

Jski.6180:

I cant make a video i am not that type of person and i never intend to be like that. Take or leave my point of view with what i say and numbers from even the main op.

Let me make it simple: In a few worlds why cant a tempest heal a pt?

I explained above why a Tempest healer won’t be effective over the current WvW model up above. Hell Azel crushed it why Tempest is awful for this. It’s still there if you want to read it. You continue to insist that it can work and is very effective and comes with a number of benefits. I’m challenging you to prove it. You seem to now say you can’t, or won’t prove your theory on a Tempest WvW healer.

So in the end you have made it very simple. You have a lot of ideas how a Tempest healer would work but you have no proof to it’s actual viability.

I said next BWE you should prove all your theories by showing us in a video how well it works such as showing us a zerg that never has to stop moving with Tempest support.

You know instead of saying how things “should” work you show us how they actually work. Think of it like a science experiment. You have a theory on how a healing tempest would work and what it brings to the table but until proven it remains entirely theoretical.

P2W implies there’s some sort of something you have to buy in the cash shop in order to win competitively. A great example is like in World of Tanks after a certain level you have to buy cash shop ammo in order to stay competitive. There is none of that here in GW2. You could, very well, compete with any base classes against any Specialization even with HOT.

Expansion prices have been normal since the start of MMO gaming. You either pay or you get left behind. If the expansion model doesn’t work for you, you’re probably in the wrong genre of game.

apharma.3741:

As someone who has made The Juggernaut you do not know pain till you’ve had to make a vial of quicksilver. Knowing full well that every single one of those silver doubloons is only worth that ludicrous amount of gold because of the juggernaut, otherwise it would be a couple of silver and junk.

Hearing about that pain makes me appreciate never wanting to run around with a giant thermometer. I’m just hoping on a dream the new Legendary Hammer when released is actually a Hammer and not a Rainbow /fingerscrossed

Condi is great at smaller scale encounters because targets, generally, lack enough Condi cleanse to deal with the amount of Conditions that can be pumped out. However once you scale the numbers up, the amount of Condition Removal outscales the amount of Condis generated. There are a few exceptions to this, and it’s usually “Rat Wells” (Necromancer Well + Venom Share Thief).

To put it another way, after hours of running with -60 Condi duration (Hoelbrak + Food) in WvW in Front Line parties on the class with the absolute worst Condi management tools in the game I still never noticed Conditions at all on my Revenant.

You will likely get way more mileage either taking that build solo/roam or switch it up for large scale.

To answer your questions I usually like to aim for 3k armor with buffs and 20k Hp with Guard stacks.

My idea of Zerg vs Zerg is based on Tier 1 WvW experience facing down large, organized forces that established the GWEN meta in the first place. In most cases, in fact, I am used to dealing with two 10-25 man groups working side by side in a coordinated fashion against an opponent also doing the same with their own multiple 10-25 man forces.

In fact, I’m actually challenging you to show where your Tempest would fit into the existing meta or expand upon it. Such as talking about standard Front line groups, which are built around Guardian/Guardian/Warrior/X/X. That’s 2 slots. What does the Tempest offer for one of those two slots? You have yet to make a compelling argument why someone would take a Tempest and bump a Necromancer out of access to Stability.

So far the only reasons offered are healing, which is already handled through existing means (engage → refresh). What else does it offer? In order to offer the same benefits as existing D/D builds (Boons and Boon Share) it would require Tempest/Arcane/Water which means it will have no damage as well. It can share Auras, but Auras are arguably bad with the few good Auras being on relatively long cool downs or are proc based (IE: Get Crit, etc). In fact in every case everything that a Tempest can bring, an existing Guardian build can not only bring but also bring additional benefits as well.

GvG is entirely different from normal WvW and completely different from 40v40 scenarios. It’s scale can vary greatly (10 v 10 or 25 v 25 etc) and is a far cry from different tactics. Even the best 10 man group these days will get run over 40 people in most cases due to the stability changes (there’s too much CC for existing Stability options to cover) which is why most of them moved out of T1/T2 and down into T3 to have more smaller, coordinated fights instead of zerg action.

But please, do go on how I’m only talking about 40 random people vs 40 random people…lol

Roaming isn’t the same scale as zerg vs zerg.

Again, when you can, please feel free to show the rest of us a video of how a Tempest kept the zerg rolling without never needing to stop to refresh.

You clearly have no idea how Stability functionally works in WvW. See you have some effects like Static Field that will only affect you once with a cool down but then there’s others that will continuously strip stability off you like Unyielding Earth. This means if a wall is placed directly on top of you, you will lose a stack of Stability and if another is placed right beyond that you will lose another one. Now when you use your Elementalists properly as Staff Elementalists, plus Spectral Walls, plus Lines of Warding you can strip off 5-10 stacks of Stability in no time flat and in fact double Guardian at times with 10 stacks together can not seem like enough.

The “Engage → Refresh” model has been a staple model for a long time. You also blast as you go, of course, but Healing Rain has been and pretty much always will be the staple way to do that given the area is so large that it’s pretty much impossible to miss when placed properly.

Tempest doesn’t do anything to keep the group moving. The water field is just as static because it only goes one direction. You play WvW at all and you will see that directions can change in an instant and you’re going to send that mobile Water field floating off into the middle of no where. Tempest also only heals 5 people which in a group of 10-20 people isn’t sufficient and forces you to still drop waters to be blasted to heal the others. So the Tempest doesn’t change a thing in how the model works.

You’re 100% right! Classes shouldn’t stand on their own, and each class should be bringing something to the table. Unfortunately Tempest in it’s current design brings nothing to the table in WvW. The only thing it has to offer is Auras, which generally speaking, are fairly lackluster in light of the cost it takes to bring said auras. The amount of support you claim to bring is already being being brought today in WvW, right now, without Tempest even being released.

But hey, don’t take my word for it. Lets prepose a challenge for you Jski. T2 has started to stabilize now that us T1 servers are done ravaging your bracket and TC has started to implode. Why not during next BWE up here in a few weeks you create a video of a Tempest doing all the things you’re talking about! I mean we should never see your group stop moving right? That Tempest will just enable that zerg to never need to stop and refresh right? Lets see it in action! You have a lot of ideas and theories, lets see if they work the way you think they will.

I dunno man. For one fights tend to go on longer than 5 seconds. Another point is that Rite is 50 energy. If you swap to Jalis, pop Rite, you have zero energy for Hammers even at a -1 drain you’d need to give it at least a bit if you want to do any other ability.

Regardless if it’s addative or multiplicative it is impressive damage mitigation, but a very short duration. You can give it a shot, and I know popping Jalis works amazing for Backline survivability (cause you often times need short bursts which is why Jalis pairs nicely with Shiro) but just feels really sketchy on the front line.

Enrif.7359:

I go with the Honor of the Waves dungeon armor for torso and legs, human t2 for shoulder and human t3 for feet. still thinking about the gloves,, i planned to use also human t3, but if they don’t remove the glow i have to take something that covers the glow if its possible

They do not. Can still see it.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

My revenant is soooo ready! Got lvl 30 scroll, tomes, ascended sets, bags, infinite harvesting, food/utility buffs, etc. I do want to craft another legendary before HoT though, but not sure which.

I want to as well but not sure which or wait to see what new legendaries are coming out. I really like Fractal skins (very “Mists” looking) and have been driving towards Fractal 50 to be able to purchase the skins I don’t get with HOT.

Dislike Juggernaut, big thermometer just doesn’t do it for me.
Bolt is solid, but bit out of the range I’m willing to pay pre-precusor crafting.
Moot is rainbow nightmare like the others.
Frostfang is solid and would pair pretty sweet with a Corrupted Blade.
Flameseeker Prophecies is neat, but seems a bit small in previews where the Fractal Shield is huge

Probably end up making Frostfang, especially because the stat switch functionality will be great for Condi or Power.

Jski.6180:

If you could ground target with water 1 staff and soothing mist had a bigger aoe on it and if swap boons had bigger aoe on them too then yes staff is a good healing support tool but sadly this is not the way staff works. For boon and or healing builds you got to be right on-top of who you want to support. That is what going to make tempest good at support its abitly to stay with melee by its added stab from earth overloades its dagger main hand with some mobility and wh healing effect. On-top of aura heals / boons stronger def.

In wvw an ranges healer i do not think will work due to have mobility every one is and the aoe effect having very small windows of aoe. Your way better off using casters as cc and field support.

A single stack of stability is gone in literally a second in WvW. That’s a Staff’s Static Field. Soon as you run into the follow up Unyielding Earth it’s game over during overload. Oh Armor of Earth? Okay, fair enough, you can do that once every 60-75 seconds. What mobility? It gets one leap in Fire. You just keep saying random things but aren’t putting them into context. The only way Tempest will function on the front line is if it’s in a front line group and we’re still waiting to hear why you’d bring a Tempest in the limited slots. The only unique aspect a Tempest brings is Auras, and it does so at the cost of everything else, and they aren’t very good!

Also, in WvW ranged healing works fantastic because it’s all blast/field based. I can instantaneously drop a Water field on the commander tag and everyone can blast it for massive AOE healing. 4 Guardians, 3 Warriors and etc doing blast finishers on a Staff Ele’s water field is going to kick out more AOE healing than you can possibly do as an Elementalist as Staff or Tempest. This is how it has worked for literally years at this point.

See you’re looking at this like it’s a bicycle race where you’re looking at 1 person racing against others. It isn’t. It’s a freaking car race where you have access to a whole pit crew to keep you going faster than a bicycle ever could.

MadRabbit.3179:

I mean don’t get me wrong; the numbers here show that tempest has a lot of healing potential. The problem is the game just doesn’t have a place for a full healing build.

Exactly. Couldn’t have said it better myself. It’s all very impressive, but Elementalist healing has always been very impressive even with a Staff. The problem is there’s no game mode currently that would ever require such healing. The new raids might. The new fractal difficulties might. But WvW definitely won’t because it’s really not changing that much.

Same activation time basically. Doesn’t activate till the road is complete.

I dunno man that seems pretty shakey with that low armor. Also Sword and Shield are basically useless in WvW large scale. Guess it really depends on what Tier you are in and what scale you are fighting in (solo, small, havoc, zerg).

I got you covered:

(from BWE1)

Can clearly see the delayed activation cause you don’t get the first stack of stability until you’re at the very end of it. This is the same whether you run at +25% runspeed (Travelers) or with 0%. It’s also entirely possible to miss it if you veer slightly off or angle it wrong.

In other video I took (but apparently misplaced) I even had a scenario where I dropped the Road (for stability) but then got CC’d right before it formed and was knocked out of it with zero stability. Kinda crappy you can use an ability but not get the benefit…

Never played Warrior/Guardian so stocking up on skins myself cause every other character I seriously played was Light Armor.

For now I got a default look, but it’s pretty clear there’s going to be some new stuff coming with HOT so going to wait for that for a final look. As much as I like the Herald shoulder piece…I’m pretty stuck on the HOTW shoulders.

Fashion Mage.3712:

Why is this a fair comparison? You can’t seriously expect one healer to out-heal four people. It’s not their job to keep every person alive, it’s their job to keep some people alive. Do you think one glass cannon would be able to out-damage four healers?

You are 100% correct! It is entirely impractical for 1 person to out heal 4 people doing DPS. That was literally my entire point. In a 40 man zerg raid you maybe, might have 8 Elementalists which is only a 1:5 ratio of potential full support players. However, to be clear, one of the reason you see such a high ratio of Elementalists compared to other classes is the fact that Elementalists already bring some of the highest damage (rivaling Well necros) in addition to strong CC (Static, Unyielding) on top of also being one of the primary sources of Water fields for refreshes.

Fashion Mage.3712:

The warhorn definitely offers far better boon support (is this even debatable?), and in this regard, an off-hand dagger only offers an extra blast finisher on a 45 second cooldown. The warhorn also offers a water field, which is a pretty big plus in WvW.

Actually it’s completely debatable because you’re looking at it from the perspective of D/D vs D/W. The way you should be viewing it what can Tempest bring vs other classes? In a front line party you already have 2 Guardians (minimum) for stability plus a Warrior. That leaves 2 slots.

A moving water field is not helpful in an area where there’s already countless fields being dropped. How fields work is the first one placed gets priority for blasts, so if your frield gets dropped on a well bomb that’s just useless cause you’re going to get Area Weakness blasted. This is why Healing Rain is so clutch for WvW fights since the area is so massive it’s easy to find a side in and out of the bomb to ensure Waters get blasted mid-fight. Again, Staff just does it better.

The biggest issue continues to be a total and complete lack of damage. You’re forced into Tempest line by default. You’re also going to need to bring Arcane cause if you don’t then I could get the same boon generation/healing from Arcane with EA and EA. Then there’s the fact you also have to bring Water or your entire healing plan is done for.

With all this in mind, why wouldn’t I bring another Guardian? It would bring 12 stacks of Might. It’d bring Quickness and Fury. It’d bring AOE protection/regen. It’d bring even more stability. It’d bring even more blast finishers for refreshes. Healing Tempest might fit somewhere, I’m wagering raids, but WvW just isn’kitten

It’s like any game mode really. You only want to go as defensive as you have to go in order for you to survive. When you first start out, the more defensive you are the more lazy/forgiving you will want to be to learn the content, in this case what you’ll be facing roaming wise. Over time and experience you will learn you can phase gear out in more optimized but riskier options like Berserker. Maybe shave off 100 armor here and gain power/ferocity there (IE: Knight → Zerker). A lot of cases I find it depends on the night and who is out. Some groups out there I have to put in more defensive gear cause it’s super spikey and other nights I got the “B” crew out and I can just run over them. This really applies to any setting, be it solo roam, small scale roam, or even zerg v zerg fighting.

What is going to work best for you will ultimately be determined by your ability to play the class and the opponents you are facing.

Misguided.5139:

I think that would be terrific, honestly. Reliable. Decent duration, but removing the pulse keeps it from stacking to crazy amounts.

I like the animation and flavor of the skill, but it seems like it is getting in the way of making it a skill we actually want to use.

The part I am hesitant to bring up, but I will cause eventually someone else will, is that with Enhanced Bulwark as a Herald you basically get the old Inspiring Reinforcements for yourself. With 65% boon duration you net around 8s of stability a pulse.

Giving us a stack of 3 stability for 5 seconds solves many problems. It’s less over all stability which is a trade off for getting 3 stacks at once instead of 5 pulses of 1 second allowing you to move out of it if you have to. It also addresses the Enhanced Bulwark Grandmaster trait without reducing it’s power as a Grandmaster trait. It also maintains the base 50% stability up time of the current skill. It also allows them to keep the idea of the road building, which is a great concept, but still give us the stability we need when we need it.