Guild Wars 2

Ok as a disclaimer, I agree they are not the same and I am not saying that RtL should be at 15s CD as well, but definitely less than 40s. Obviously, Eles have a lot more skills that synergizes well with RtL but the point I am trying to make is that, is it still worth the 40s CD?

Considering how buggy RTL hit box is, it goes off at 40s instead of 20s even if you think you’d hit your target but somehow it misses. And the reason why RtL was nerfed in the first place was because of its mobility. It allowed eles to easily reset fights which made them “God-tier” in 2012 GW2 that resulted to a series of nerfs.

However, Druids got the very skill that people suggested in the past as a change to RtL. It doesn’t even have any kind of the bothersome mechanics of RtL.

Ride the Lightning got nerfed to 40s CD when it doesn’t hit because it gave too much mobility. However, Druids got the same skill except that it heals and it’s targeted on a 15s CD. Overall, it’s still about mobility and you can argue that Ancestral Grace is better. Why haven’t Anet done something about RTL? Discuss.

Alekt.5803:

posthumecaver.6473:

kuritsutian.2987:

posthumecaver.6473:

You will die 0.5s in this build, do I see correctly, you have only 2 cleanse in this build evasive arcana and water 5?

You will experience horrible deaths with this build, like rally robot bad.

You’ll cast water 5 whenever you dodge while attuned to water for both aoe heals and cleanse

One condition clean every 10s, you will be reckted….

It’s possible to beat a condi reaper on viper tempest. It’s mentally draining, but I once had a duel against a Reaper where the only thing that hit me was his Rune of Nightmare.

I’m in great doubt of the skill level of that condi reaper that you beat with just 1 condi cleanse every 10s…

Xillllix.3485:

Aggrostemma.1703:

I do not blame the Elementalists. This profession needs skill and positioning. You must be rewarded if played right.
I blame ANET!

Yeah it was to be expected as soon as they presented the rushed Tempest spec. It does nothing new, only has recycled might/auras and stacks more protection and more healing.

Since they destroyed zerk staff ele, then marauder staff ele (with nerfs intended for d/d and crazy interrupts buffs to other classes which makes the staff too slow to be reliable), both the air line for s/f and fire lines for d/d burning and staff/cantrips there is nothing left than go bunker.

I told them the day they came up with this new trait system and removed stat points from the trait lines: “Do you realize you’re removing built variety”
And they responded: “It’s too soon to see”.
Well kitten me I was right and they were wrong again. Even them recently had to admit it’s not the meta they wanted. Well kittening fail it’s not like we didn’t tell them.

I believe removing the stat from traits is the right thing to do and is the first step to creating build diversity. The second step would be consolidating related traits (Auras) and distributing boon access.

Here’s the reason real why Eles are forced into certain traits like Earth and Water:
• Eles belong to the lowest base Armor and HP Tier group
• To make up for that, Eles have good access to boons and high Up time
• Those boons that we rely on for survivability (Vigor, Protection, Regeneration) to make up for our low armor and HP are exclusive to certain traits
• Not going for either or both defensive trait lines is suicide

Here are the defensive traits as of now:

Fire
Burning Fire – Condi cleanse
Blinding Ashes – Blind 1 foe every 8s (As good as 1 blind everytime you swap to fire)

Air
Tempest Defense – Shocking Aura

Earth
Earth’s Embrace – Stability and Protection
Elemental Shielding – Protection
Rock Solid – Stability
Geomancer’s Training – Reduced soft CC duration
Stone Flesh – Bonus Toughness
Geomancer’s Defense – Fixed damage reduction
Diamond Skin – Condi Invulnerability
Stone Heart – Critical Direct Damage mitigation

Water
Soothing Mist – HP Regeneration
Soothing Ice – Frost Aura and Regeneration
Stop, drop, and roll – Burn and chill cleanse
Healing Ripple – Healing
Soothing Disruption – Cantrip CD reduction, regeneration and vigor
Cleansing Wave – Condition Cleanse
Cleansing Water – Condition Cleanse
Soothing Power – HP Regeneration

Arcane
Renewing Stamina – Vigor
Elemental Attunement – Protection and Regeneration
Elemental Contingency – Vigor and Protection
Final Shielding – Blocks
Evasive Arcana – Blind and Healing

Tempest
Every single Tempest trait is defensive

As you can see, Fire and Air are seriously lacking in defensive mechanisms. They both give Auras but those Auras are highly dependent on traits that we get from Earth.

TL;DR
The core mechanic of an Elementalist is to rely on boons and defensive traits to survive but those boons and defensive mechanisms are not accessible in all trait lines, hence Elementalists prioritize defensive trait lines. We need these boons to survive. Giving Eles higher HP/Armor would imbalance the class as cheesy people would still take full Defensive traits. The real solution is to spread defensive boon access and add more defensive traits across all Traits lines.

No brainer quick-fix?
Consolidate Zephyr’s Boon and Elemental Shielding to Powerful Auras. Replace Elemental Shielding slot with a Protection trait. This removes the reliance on Earth for Protection as we will now have access to Protection through Arcane, Water, and Earth trait lines. For the rest, we can figure it out

lucadiro.4519:

Well that was what I meaning when i was talking about best option with les effort, because we all know arenanet…
While water fire and earth overloads should have the animation changed to make them ground target, air overload is perfect ad it is.
Its not a big work do it

While I’d hate to defend Anet for their blunders, it ain’t easy as that for the devs lol. Definitely not easy.

The classic Celestial Ele/Tempest should still be fine. If you’re playing 3 vs More a lot, playing Base DD Ele might be easier since you will be focused more unless you have a thief or a very glass ally.

Looks too glassy for the current meta, random AoE stuff on a point will easily bring you down. Lack of stab (we will always lack stab though). Not enough condi cleanse as well. I’m not sure how useful how blinds will be given that the meta is dropping multi-hit AoE attacks on a point.

I’m still looking for a way to fit in Arcane trait line to Tempest. Tempest traitline and Shouts are heavily dependent on both Earth and Water lines and they’re pretty much very situational when untraited. How I wish Anet consolidated all Aura related traits to a single trait line.

This might sound broken to others but what if Anet combined Invigorating Torrents to Powerful Aura? Then combine and move Zephyr’s Boon and Elemental Shielding to Tempest Master Line (might need a few nerfs or something). That way, Tempests won’t be locked to Water and Earth and we’ll have more build diversity because people can now go for Air and Fire.

This is clearly just Crapnet being lazy. They could have just simply put a threshold on the boon duration that can be copied. Out of combat stacking? Didn’t it even come to their minds to just put a threshold instead of nerfing it to the ground?

Eg. Only 2s of Resistance and Quickness can be copied. Only 10s of might (limit 10 stacks), fury, protection and regeneration can be copied and whatnot.

I don’t even see stacking more protection as a problem given that Tempests are able to perma share it as long as people stay in range. It’s not like Heat Sync can cover the whole pvp maps. And as stated over and over again, Ele doesn’t even have access to Quickness and Resistance.

My WvW gear as a frontline Tempest is a mix of Marauder and Crusader Armors and mixed trinkets.

Jski.6180:

Kyon.9735:

My main gripe is how Tempests can still only play bunker support in high tier PvP. Well, sure it’s a lot better than Berserker or other “unplayable” or “out of meta” classes in PvP but the main problem is this can be solved or there are a lot of possible fixes (eg. Warhorn) to make the class better but Anet doesn’t seem care.

I think that is the point of tempest to be a tankly version of ele or an line that lets ele become more tankly. Much like going down earth line makes ele more tankly or fire line tends to be more dps aimed etc.. Tempest is made to be the tankly support or the bunker as ppl like to call it so trying to make it into an all in dmg dealing set up is going to not work as well.

As things stand ele dps lines are fire air and maybe arcain. The tankly lines are earth water tempest and maybe arcain. The support for ele is all over but the strongest lines for support is tempest and maybe arcain (note arcain fills a lot of rolls but its not good at any one roll.)

Elite spec should not be a must have to where the class needs it to stand.
As for ele dps elite spec may be the next set of them will bring that but tempest is simply not made for dmg like fire or air lines on ele.

Yeah, and that’s problem why people find it boring, not weak. So far Tempest is locked into 1 viable build in tPvP, the tanky support bunker, because Tempest was made to be only tanky.

So far Sinister will do the trick as Ele can easily get 100% burning duration without the use of Viper gears. However, if you have an idea that will make full use of bleeds without lowering the DPS as switching attunements has CD, better make sure it’s worth it or you’ll end up throwing away a lot of gold. Well, at least your Necro can use those Viper stuff just in case otherwise it’ll be a really bad investment.

My main gripe is how Tempests can still only play bunker support in high tier PvP. Well, sure it’s a lot better than Berserker or other “unplayable” or “out of meta” classes in PvP but the main problem is this can be solved or there are a lot of possible fixes (eg. Warhorn) to make the class better but Anet doesn’t seem care.

Looks like someone has a very low reading comprehension.

One thing that is fun for me is that now I can play in WvW frontlines as a Tempest. Well it’s still the same bunky aura/heal support build though but hey, at least we now have the choice of playing backline and frontline.

What makes Tempest boring (PvP) is that you are forced to play as a bunker that’s not even a real bunker. They can’t even really play DPS builds in top tier teams as Overloading as a Zerker/Marauder is suicide unless you outnumber the opponents. Top Tier PvP condi Tempest is non-existent. Overloads also killed the “Active” playstyle of Elementalists where they swap to an attunement when the situation calls for it. Now it’s more of a button and overload spamfest.

Diamond Skin: Completely useless in the Viper Amulet meta. As a pure condi, only a fool would even attempt to stay a second against a DS Tempest unless it’s to prevent cap/decap. Should be completely reworked.
Warhorn: Too clunky, Fire Warhorn skills are weak. Return boon rip on Fire #5, share and add boons on Fire #4 (share current boons, max 10s. Apply 3s Resistance). Fix Air #4 Radius and give Air #5 Weakness.
Tempest Shouts: Very weak when untraited. You are forced to take a Defensive Trait line to make it useful. Buff shouts so that they are useful even when untraited but not to the point it becomes OP when traited.
New Elite: Useless aside from an extra Shocking/Magnetic Aura. Needs a complete overhaul.
Overloads: Completely countered by the sheer amount of interrupts in the current meta. Otherwise, not too bad.

TL;DR – Tempest is not an OP Bunker, it’s not even a real bunker. It’s more of an off-point support/bunker that should only get on point when needed.

Tomiyou.3790:

Lol ppl, I make a post about how warhorn needs you to face your target with skills directly or they just fail (Lightning orb, Wildfire, Cyclone, also Tidal surge, since its hitbox is just weird??) and I get post about how it needs buffs. I doesn’t matter for me, as long as it is this clunky and buffs to it are not going to make me want to use the weapon.

Basically people are pointing out that Warhorn’s main issue is not the hitbox but rather how weak defensively against condition and kiting.

Maybe add some defensive boons on Imbued Melodies for a start?

Warhorn Skills grant boons based on Attunement:
Fire – Retaliation on self and allies 2s. Removes Chill.
Water – Vigor on self and allies 3s. Removes Burn.
Air – Weakness on foes 4s. Removes Cripple and Slow.
Earth – Resistance 2s.

Tempest in a Nutshell:

• Asking the class with lowest base HP and Armor to face tank damage while overloading because dodging/cancelling it will lead to a 20s CD where you don’t get half the benefits of completing an overload. On top of that, you have to be in semi-melee range to reap the full potential of overloads.

• You are based from Elementalist, the highest DPS class in most games. But no, you should play Celestial stats and try to play hybrid tank/support in competitive PvP to be viable.

• We were given new skills, the Aura shouts! But unlike other classes, we need to allot traits points into it for it to be somewhat useful.

• You have a new weapon! Look at those cool animations. Have fun looking at them while you’re idling in a town or something.

How to Improve Tempest:

• Allow dodging while Overloading Attunements.
• Change Diamond Skin into a more active skill like gaining resistance or something.
• Strengthen baseline effects of Tempest Shouts since Auras are pretty much accessible already by other classes by doing combos. Do not remove the current effects. These effects are exclusive to Auras generated by Shouts.
Flash Freeze! – Frost Aura reduces Incoming Damage by 15% and Applies 3s Resistance.
Feel the Burn! – Fire Aura Grants 2 Might (2s ICD per person) and apply 2 stacks of burning each time you are attacked.
Aftershock! – Magnetic Aura grants Retaliation and Reflected damage is increased by 50%.

Or… simply give certain condition immunity based Shout. Does not remove conditions already applied.
Feel the Burn! – Immune to Chill.
Flash-Freeze! – Immune to Burn.
Eye of the Storm! – Immune to Weakness and Blind.
After-shock! – Immune to Poison and Cripple.

• Change Lucid Singularity GM Trait to make Shouts more offensive.
Flash Freeze! – Leaves a 4 second Frozen Ground that chills foes (2s per pulse).
Feel the Burn! – Leaves a 4 second Burning field that applies 2s burn per pulse on foes.
Aftershock! – Change cripple to 1.5s Daze/Stun and leaves an unsteady ground (4s) that pulses cripple (1s per pulse) and bleed (3s per pulse) and deals damage on the final pulse (similar but weaker damage to Churning Earth).
Eye of the Storm! – Leaves a 4 second Lightning Field that applies 4s fury (Not Pulse) to allies Weakness to foes (3s per pulse).
Wash Away The Pain – I feel that this shout is pretty good already.

Elite Overhaul
Rebound! – Change to 60s CD remove killing blow healing. Change it with 5s of Resistance. Removes your next attunement’s Overload wait-time (1 use only).

• Why add these effects to shouts?
- As I said before, baseline Shouts are pretty bad when untraited.

• Why change Lucid Singularity?
– Changing Lucid Singularity will make Warhorn Viable in terms of usage. Overloads, Shouts, Warhorn. Tempest, the master of control and PBAOE.

• Cons?
- Some shout effects from new trait might be pretty redundant with current Warhorn skills and/or similar to GoS effects.
- Effects are not too strong but not too weak. It’s an AoE circle so people can easily leave the area or just tank it. It’s not that punishing for completely ignoring a couple of the field effects but it’s balanced as auras can be traited for survivability.
- Does not completely solve the problem of having to go semi-melee range while having the lowest base HP and Armor. However, upgrading Auras obtained from Shouts will make people think more before attacking a Tempest.
- Does not make a new meta viable for Tempests. Still pretty much stuck to using Celestial Trinkets in PvP.

It’s very viable, in fact my team prefers tempest as healer more than druid. But IMO they’re both fine. It’s just that Tempests’ passive healing can make them lazy.

Build is easy, just go staff and mix magi/cleric armors and trinkets depending on how much Toughness your tank has. Go standard earth/water/tempest with Soothing Power, sit in Water most of the time and spam 1. Regen + Healing mist should do a total of 1k/tick combined paired with 1k Water Staff Auto Attack Heal.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Kyon.9735:

Anet is pushing GW2 to be a game where casual gamers won’t get left behind by the more active gamers in terms of item progression. Having a DPS meter contradicts their goal as it forces people to grind for Ascended items and play by the meta without exploring other possible builds.

I don’t support any kind of elitist. I don’t ever want to go back to when farming dungeons was all about stacking warriors and a guardian, requiring each and every party member to link their full Zerk gears or else you’ll get kicked.

You’ll be kicking out casual gamers in favor of hard core gamers by implementing this.

I won’t argue against the idea that ANet wants everyone to be one big, happy family… but adding raids is not going to promote that ideal.

Exclusion is going to happen in MMO’s. The only way to avoid such would be to have the content be so easy and the build options so the same that there is next-to-no difference between player skill and character builds. Raids are designed to be harder than any content seen in this game before. They also come with exclusive and desirable rewards. This virtually guarantees that large numbers of players will want to do the content. Some won’t have the skill. Others will want to play “their” build, not the best build. These players are going to be excluded from groups that care about such things.

Exclusion will get worse once players figure the bosses out and start farming the raid bosses for armor. Right now, some players are still feeling their way into this content. That will change as the content ages.

So, do meters cause this? No. Your mention of the exclusion around dungeons is all the proof you should need. No meters in use in GW2 dungeons. Players excluded based on gear pings, profession, and even AP.

Meters provide information. Well-designed meters provide information relevant to what is being measured. Discerning players will use the info to make decisions about what works. Will players use the info to exclude. Yep. However, if they don’t have accurate info, they’ll use something else. That’s human nature.

Seems like you missed out my entire explanation for my reasoning on my next post on purpose. And yes, it already happens and DPS meters are bound to worsen it.

IndigoSundown.5419:

So, do meters cause this? No. Your mention of the exclusion around dungeons is all the proof you should need. No meters in use in GW2 dungeons. Players excluded based on gear pings, profession, and even AP.

No, meters didn’t cause it. Elitists did. And that DPS meter of yours promotes elitism for an online game that strives to balance the progression of casuals and hard core players.

It seems like we’ll never get into any kind of agreement as you are hell bent on the idea of implementing a Digital Pen!s Meter DPS meter but this will pretty much destroy the player base population.

Fay.2357:

Exactly. The only thing that massive gripe proved is that exclusion happens regardless of meters. Meters happen to be a convenient thing for that type of player to point at, but it’s not like they’re going to stop doing what they do just because there’s no meter available.

“Illegal loggers will always find a way so just let them do it”.
“Drug Pushers cannot be stopped so just let them do it”.
“Police shooting and violence cannot be stopped so just let them do it”.
Your logic is really flawed.

Have the last laugh, I’ve made my point and you guys understood it yet you still support toxic exclusion in the game. No more point in arguing.

Fay.2357:

Kyon.9735:

Anet is pushing GW2 to be a game where casual gamers won’t get left behind by the more active gamers in terms of item progression. Having a DPS meter contradicts their goal as it forces people to grind for Ascended items and play by the meta without exploring other possible builds.

I don’t support any kind of elitist. I don’t ever want to go back to when farming dungeons was all about stacking warriors and a guardian, requiring each and every party member to link their full Zerk gears or else you’ll get kicked.

You’ll be kicking out casual gamers in favor of hard core gamers by implementing this.

No, you’re confusing casual with bad and lazy. Casual players can still be good, can still strive towards excellence and be the best that they can be. Players like that want a dps meter so that they can effectively monitor themselves to try and improve.

Now am I? Please listen to my side of story.

I consider myself a casual gamer as I can only allot 1~2 hours at most every night because of work and other IRL stuff.

Let’s say the DPS meter was implemented and meta builds came out. Believe me, PEOPLE WILL WANT TO ONLY PLAY WITH META BUILD USERS UNLESS YOU ARE IN A GOOD GUILD. If for example a full Sinister/Viper set completely becomes the meta, this will require people to finish living stories and do achievements because you can’t just buy them from TP or from laurel vendor. While casuals are busy wasting their limited time doing living stories, they are getting left behind with raids.

Fay.2357:

Lazy and bad players don’t want to be questioned. They don’t want to be questioned on their build, on their gear, on how they play, on the rotations they use. They want people to just ignore whether or not they’re contributing, and be carried by everyone else that does care. These players don’t want a DPS meter because it exposes how bad they are.

Now this is a story at GW2 release when a Zerk Guardians, Warriors, and mesmers were the meta for every single dungeon speed clear. My initial class was an Engineer but I had to spend all my time farming Orr which was less efficient than doing dungeons because of a simple reason, I was not a meta class.

I was not lazy. I ran full Exotic Zerk and I have practiced and learned every single rotation to at least be comparable to a warrior’s DPS, nobody would take me in. Believe me or not, I was confident that my rotations were good enough especially because FT #2 (Flame Blast) was bugged at the moment wherein it hits your enemies 3x instead of 2 and I could stack might for all those warriors and stack vulnerability as well. But no, nobody wanted me because I wasn’t a meta class. I even experience getting kicked out of parties 12 consecutive times as soon as they saw that I wasn’t a warrior/guardian/mesmer multiple times.

Not everyone has time to get get all classes to lvl 80 and gear them up accordingly. Getting full ascended is even harder especially if they require you to do specific PVE content. You know a game is bad when it requires specific classes for specific contents.

Anet is pushing GW2 to be a game where casual gamers won’t get left behind by the more active gamers in terms of item progression. Having a DPS meter contradicts their goal as it forces people to grind for Ascended items and play by the meta without exploring other possible builds.

I don’t support any kind of elitist. I don’t ever want to go back to when farming dungeons was all about stacking warriors and a guardian, requiring each and every party member to link their full Zerk gears or else you’ll get kicked.

You’ll be kicking out casual gamers in favor of hard core gamers by implementing this.

I doubt they would make a single good Elite as literally every ele/tempest would be using that and ignoring all other elites. They would need to buff all elites to avoid that.

Meanwhile, Anet’s busy throwing visual noise nerfs. Seriously, Ring of Earth looks scarier than Churning Earth now what the actul kitten?

From Voldemort level of wizardry to Ron Weasley wizardry.

For all its risks, why not addan AoE Knockdown/stun effect with it and maybe apply torment depending on how long you channel it? I don’t think it should be a fire and forget spell like what shadowflare said.

1s channel – no torment
2s channel – 1.5s KD/stun + 2 stacks torment
Full channel – 2s KD/stun + 4 stacks torment

Yashuoa.9527:

How about the following additions to the overloads?

Fire overload=Blind enemies within x radius.

Water overload=Attacks done to you during this overload are converted to x amount of healing/or x% of it is converted to x amount of healing.
Water overload changed to be useable after 1 second in the overload, compared to the other overloads who require 5 sec waittime.

Air overload=Put weakness on enemies within x radius.

Earth overload=Put slow on enemies within x radius.

What do you think of these additions to the overloads?

This would give them a bit of an extra defensive touch.

I like this. Give the Overloads a fixed radius as well, probably as big as the current Air Overload (360 radius). Add these effects to the current ones:

Fire Overload – Balance damage. Lower it to the same level as Air overload. Blind enemies for 2s on your radius with 2s ICD per person.

Water Overload – Damage you receive is converted to healing and heal your allies in your radius for half the amount. Chill enemies in your radius for 3s with 2s ICD per person. Leaves a 4s Frozen Ground that chills enemies for 2s per pulse.

Air Overload – Fine as it is. Apply 3s Weakness on enemies within your radius with 2s ICD per person.

Earth Overload – Fine as it is, just make the radius higher. It already applies cripple

This is pretty much the old Zerk S/D one-trick-pony build on a Marauder Amulet and Elemental Surge instead of EA.

Why is Tempest mechanic bad?

Overloading is basically asking people to boon strip and then burst you or they can just straight up burst you. Pair it up with having both the lowest base HP and Armor in the game, I don’t even know how they came up with the idea of asking you to face tank in the front lines. Being able to dodge roll while overloading is a big deserved buff.

Stab is a big problem as well as you only have 2 access to stab while overloading, Harmonious Conduit (1 stack) and Armor of Earth which is on a 75s base CD. You can’t even use Rock Solid actively as your overloads get canceled when you swap attunements.

In PVP, Tempests are mostly forced into Celestial, even support roles. Unlike Ele, they need a lot more Vit and Toughness because they can’t dodge while overloading. Healing scales bad like usual with Elemental Bastion so Cleric Amulet is a no-no. Cleric w/ Aura heal is around 1.4k while Celestial heal is around 1.1k. Is the extra 300 healing worth losing 5.5k HP? Especially now that you’ll need to face tank a few shots to finish your overloads, every bit of HP is worth it.

Why is it fun?

Well for me, the visuals are awesome especially the War Horn ones excluding Heat Sync.

Support, mainly condi cleanse ability, is ramped up a lot. With soldier runes, Invigorating Torrents, Cleansing Water and Shouts/Auras, Tempests pretty much become cleanse bots. You still lack personal and stab sharing though.

AoE healing has been ramped up a lot too. Wash Away the Pain works wonders when used properly added to your passive Aura traits and active Aura skills.

Coolguy.8702:

Shadow.9418:

I can’t decide if this thread is for real or someone is making fun of the nice community players who have spent a good deal of time trying to figure out proper, balanced suggestion to make tempest a better specialization.

Here’s something i had in my bookmarks for a long time. A post made by Dulfy where she transcribed some of the info from a live stream.
Developers:
Josh Davis – Host
Jonathan Sharp – Game Design Lead
Karl McLain – Game Designer

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/282wjy/balance_philosophy_developer_livestream_notes/

Purity of purpose/Holes and Roles/Opportunity Cost
Purity of purpose: You don’t want something that does too many things at once. If everything does everything to equal levels, you don’t have this purity of purpose. You want things streamlined so players know how to use it and not too many tools within one toolbox.
Holes and Roles: You don’t want a single class to do things better than everybody else or else they end up as Apex predators. You want to put hoes in the roles so they don’t do everything good at once.
Opportunity cost: If an utility skill have too much utility, it overshadow other utility skills and no one would use the other utility skills. There need to be an opportunity cost for using for skill over the other.

and this bit here…

Elementalist: Flexibility, jack of all trades, large skillsets. High AoE potential. High skill floor – hard for new players to jump in and high skill ceiling.
Weakness: Recovering from burst damage, but water attunement can help sustain the damage. Versatility is strength but also weakness – higher cooldowns on weapon skills. Inability to deal with booned enemies.
Official design: Versatility through weapon skills – we want to maintain that. Defense against sustained DPS is good and they are very supportive in most roles they assume. Low base HP is an intentional design so we can give them more support. Poor defense against spike damage is also intended so they have to wary about spike damage. Escapeability: Too much in the fast and helped them against spike damage. Inability against booned enemies is a specific hole in the role since they can AoE from ranged.

While there have been some ups and downs with ele i find it has generally stayed close enough to it’s design intentions. I have seen good players do some crazy stuff and bad players that couldn’t figure it out if you gave them a manual and a phone help line.

In my personal opinion, i find your suggestions in the original post as rather rushed and ill thought with no regard to any sort of balance.

The smoke field suggestion was downright amusing, did you at any given point ever consider the fact that ele has lots and lots of blast finishers and can access whirl finishers as well? what is to stop the ele from becoming a thief with near perma stealth or spamming blind bolts in pvp matches.

Invulnerable while overloading? why not make it so that elementalists never die, from anything, ever, it is pretty much what you are saying. That you should be allowed to nuke everything while completely invulnerable. God mode much?

I admit tempest has issues and warhorn is a mess, but players have found ways to play it, like say fresh air-arcana-tempest. It isn’t perfect and at some point the developers will probably give us better alternatives, but until then try to refrain from poorly thought of suggestions, it shines a bad light on the ele community as a whole and makes everyone look like they have no clue how to play and the developers will never listen. Check out some of the other threads with suggestions, there are a couple of them that are actually pretty good, and not game breaking.

If you read my post after this you shoulda seen that i knew itd be really broken if this happened, whole point of this thread was to show how you could make a weak elite like tempest as strong as dragonhunter.

As for the smokefield part, dude you know most of the blast. finishers eles have will get them revealed right? And if u take warhorn you’ll barely have any blast finishers, mh dagger or scepter really only has like 1 blast finisher so it wont be too op.

Dragon’s Tooth
Phoenix
Frozen Burst
Sand Squall
Arcane Brilliance
Aftershock
Arcane Wave
Evasive Arcana – Shockwave

These are the possible blast finishers for a S/WH or D/WH Tempest. I’m not saying you should take them all but some of them have pretty low CD. I also don’t think that it’s in an Elementalist’s lore to be sneaky. Ask thieves/engis how smoke field + damage works.

I personally have fun playing D/WH with GoS in PvP and be a semi blind bot but both their CDs are too long. Still waiting for an update which would make Eles more about team fight control like GW1 (lower blind/chill CD skills)

They removed our ability to dodge while in overload so they gave us Hardy Conduit. But is that 40% physical damage reduction worth losing the ability to dodge? Protection only affects Physical Attacks so we can still be hit by condi bursts while dodging allows you to avoid both Physical skills and Condition applying skills. Just let us dodge while overloading or give Hardy Conduit a few seconds of Resistance.

Healix.5819:

To be eligible for the free slot, your account had to be created prior to January 23 and you had had to apply a HoT serial key to your account prior to launch. If you met those requirements, you’ll need to contact support.

Oh…

I started playing at GW2 launch but I only bought the HoT upgrade AFTER the release. I definitely included that in my ticket but the reply was to wait until Friday, October 30, so I thought I was eligible. kitten , so new players can buy the game for $40 while Vets who didn’t buy before HoT launch pay double (core + expansion) and only get an ugly skin?

Weren’t Veteran players who upgraded to HoT supposed to get a free character slot? I haven’t got mine yet.

I’ve already sent a ticket last week and the reply was wait ‘til Friday. Yes I know it’s Friday tomorrow, the second Friday since they told me to wait.

FinalPatriot.8034:

Kyon.9735:

PvP – I play Auramancer DD and it’s loads of fun for tempest.

Kyon, could I trouble you for a link to your build? I’ve not really looked into the tempest much. I had been running a condi version in tPvP and now with the human racial elite skill, it might be worth checking into again. It was just nice as nobody played the build and my Ele was immune to condi’s until you got her health below 90%.

It’s nothing special as many others use the build. You can probably see them if you searched the latest topics on this forum.

Fresh Air – Air, Earth, Tempest. Just get the usual traits that synergize in Air and Earth and get the Overload traits in Tempest. For PvP, I suggest taking Glyph of Storms for more AoE pressure.

Auramancer – Air/Earth/Arcana, Water, Tempest. Same basic Aura traits in Air/Earth and Aura traits in Tempest. Get soldier runes and shout utilities. Up to you if you wanna go defensive/offensive. Playstyle is like playing a more supportive DD.

PvE – Anything works in PvE as long as you have a good group with you. People were kicking you in dungeons because while D/D is completely viable, other setups are so much better in terms of DPS and utility. However, you’ll probably need to play at a higher level when playing in HoT maps since playing Melee is always a hassle against hard hitting mobs.

WvW – still one of the more versatile and easier builds to play. Will still struggle against the condi meta.

PvP – I play Auramancer DD and it’s loads of fun for tempest. I’ve tried DPS Fresh Air DD, Minstrel Auramancer, and Celestial Auramancer. Since I play Auramancer, I slot shouts instead of cantrips it’s expected that I go down faster if I get ganked/CC chained compared to Cantrip DD. DD ele will still be a good point holder (DF is still way better). I’m no pro player so I don’t know how it will fare in top tier tPvP.

Having lots of fun with Fresh Air Tempest in PvP… as long as you don’t get marked. I’ve only been back for a day but I don’t find it strong/stronger than I expected. Maybe I’m only having lots of fun because of the new animations.

As I’m basically a noob again, I find the idea of staying in one attunement too long for overload and actually overloading an attunement suicidal. It’s either go for Fresh Air or don’t use overloads at all for me.

Relajo.4375:

Kyon.9735:

Request: Dear You , from Higurashi

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OOl0yA2v2g

This also happens to be one of my favorite obscure anime songs, and I have been working on tabbing it for a bit now. Here is what I have come up with. Please feel free to take and alter at your leisure. Also note, I was not able to tab the middle flute part as the range seems to go too high for the flute If you find a way to do it, I would love to know!

( )—indicate higher octave

Dear You

hide spoiler

Dear You—Flute

(2 321 2) 6 (321 2 321) 6 (5 2)

(2 321 2 ) 6 (321 2 321) 6

(2 321 2) 6 (321 2 321 1 5 2)

(2 321 2) 6 ( 321 2 321 ) 6

4 4 1 4 (1 1 1 1 2 2 2 3 3)

4 4 1 4 (1 1 1 2 2 2 2 5 3—-)

646 (11 222 33) 6646 (11 2 222 53)

(553 551 22125323)

(553 551 221 21)

(2 321 2) 6 (321 2 321) 6 (5 2)

(2 321 2) 6 (321 2 321) 6

(2 321 2) 6 (321 2 321 1 5 2)

(2 321 2) 6 (321 2 321) 6

(2323 6 3323 321 5 3)

(2323 6 3323 22121)

(2323 6 3323 321 5 3)

(2323 6 3323 22121)

OMG thank you very much. I didn’t think people still drop by this forum topic. Thank you very much, I love it. I didn’t actually watch Higurashi but I love this music.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

DonEllz.6312:

Condi necros though just need to get out of the game cos they are so cheesy and do not need stability cos they are too strong

If they’re so strong and cheesy, why do we see so few of them in tournaments? Those guys aren’t playing with some code of “honor”, they will do whatever it takes to win.

Necros are strong. You don’t see them that much in tourneys because tournaments are all about proper rotations around the whole map. What Necros lack to be more effective in Tourneys is mobility. IMO their lack in mobility and Stability is what balances the class.

If mesmers are not so out of the meta, you’d see a lot of Mesmer (Portal) + Necro pairings.

Most people take 0 0 2 6 6.

How about Runes of Strength? Might stacking is great for both Power and Condi builds but you’d lose the chance to apply other condis from other rune sets.

You can map it to other keys. My F1~F4 are Alt+1~Alt+4.

I’m still wondering why Thieves get a Chill applying skill when they use Steal on an Elementalist. Isn’t it common knowledge that Thieves would usually cheese out Elementalists yet Anet still gave them access to Chill which is an Elementalists greatest bane in terms of conditions?

Yes, both Power and Condi Necros are really strong. Like most people said, the problem lies with their mobility. If only Mesmers aren’t so out of the meta, we’d see more Necro + Mesmer pairings.

So please Anet, buff Mesmers aside from their cheesy but not so useful in tPvP PU builds.

oZii.2864:

I looked at sPvp where celestial ammy Eles are doing well. Obviously this is with rune of strength help but the same can be done with hoelbrak and a sigil of force.

I dropped a lot of my crit damage but my weakness was other ele’s with crit damage so I put on a few celestial pieces to raise crit damage and healing. I noticed a difference with the sustain just from duels it was much better. I think the main stats to look at celestial for is some healing power, some vit, and some crit damage.

Great output. I started crafting celestial again because of Vit, Ferocity, and Healing Power. I also don’t mind the power loss now because of Runes of Strength and I also get more Ferocity than my previous set which was Knights/Soldier. I also like celestial because it lets me use different builds revolving around different traits with just 1 armor set.

More Fire Grabs!

scerevisiae.1972:

Klocknov.8219:

1. Blinding Ashes: The best new addition hands down. Yes you still have to go through the fire tree, but it is a good GM trait for investing 30 in it compared to the other two and probably the whole line I would say it is the best trait.

Clearly you haven’t had random pets/critters/players stroll into your fire field and consuming your blind proc… This trait is bad because it’s not deterministic – you can’t choose who gets blinded unless it’s a single target burn or you’re only fighting one enemy in an empty field.

Someone please correct me if I’m mistaken. From what I’ve observed, the Blind prioritizes your target. I’ve fought countless petting zoo builds and somehow I notice that I still blind my target. Yes, I run 6/0/0/2/6 build in dueling and team Queues.

Maybe I’m just really lucky or maybe this is how it really works. Need someone else to share their experience

Sera.6539:

There isn’t a feature for this, to my knowledge. You just haven’t kicked them, and they haven’t left. The only time I’ve seen parties disband automatically, is after a new build.

But from my experience when somebody logs off while in a party, they will be automatically kicked after some minutes if they don’t log back in again. Thanks for responding though

As the title says, is there a way to do this? Just curious.

I’ve seen a couple of people who log off and not get auto-kicked from my party, usually pugs from dungeons. After they go offline I AFK for 4 hrs+ and when I come back they’re still in the party. I’m sure that they did not log back in again.

My friends said they didn’t need to redo the story mode. Can someone clarify for me?

I did AC, CM, CoF story more than 10 months ago. My PvP rewards track says I need to play Story Mode again to unlock these 3 tracks. Am I bugged or is this normal?

RtL, aside from CD, is fine as it is. It doesn’t need any range boost from swiftness as it already ignores the effects of cripple and chill.

Let’s say just lower the base CD to 30s for a start. I’d love to see it apply Blindness or Weakness too.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

My list:

1. Stone Heart
2. Lightning Rod
3. Aquatic Benevolence
4. Blinding Ashes
5. Elemental Contingency

I have to admit here, i was wrong. When i heard about the trait i thought man that its terrible but it has won me over, Stone Skin is SO useful and works in pretty much any build. Helps against burst SO well. The most i have taken is like 3k from a Kill shot, we were just testing it compared to other attunements. In water i took nearly 6k damage, in Earth with the trait i took just over 3k damage.

The biggest issue i had (and still have) is the usefulness of being in Earth, especially D/D with its terrible auto attack. Ring of Earth is okay (would like Torment!) Magnetic Grasp bugs out SO much but useful when/if it decides to work. Earthquake is decent but on an insane cool down and Churning Earth, we all know about Churning Earth – insane cast time, no threat or punishment for just walking out of AoE and the cool down is insane. Really think it needs like the Cripple increased to 2-3 seconds per an application and have Torment in it as well as a threat so the player(s) have to choose – go out and take big Torment damage or stay in take less torment damage and try and dodge, invul, interrupt the cast.

I’m really happy for you that you can appreciate it now

When fighting against thieves I would usually just sit on Earth and wait for him to burst or run away. If he decides to attack me I have confidence that I won’t get bursted so I can switch to offense anytime I decide to burst him. I really hope they add torment on Ring of Earth and rework Churning Earth so it can actually be useful in 1v1s or small scale fights.

@topic
1. Stone Heart AND Blinding Ashes
2 Aquatic Benevolence
3. Lightning Rod
4. Elemental Contingency

P.S
I haven’t tried LR in DD yet.

Deneb.2697:

To make it less useless it would be enough to:
- add protection when channeling
- always hit when blind
- hit through Aegis

Then there would be a lot less counter-play against it.

Someone suggested it before, just revert it to be a Charged skill. The longer you charge it, the stronger it is. You have the freedom to choose when to actually activate it during the channeling duration.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Churning_Earth
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Charge_skill