Chemical Rounds allows an engineer to exceed the 100% condi duration cap with food buffs and such for their pistol skills.
No other trait allows you to do this.
Please fix this trait so it behaves like other traits, and does not exceed the 100% duration cap.
What do you need Reflect for? And no, Block will be periodically destroyed by the boss’ auto Magic Aura. Higher armor doesn’t really matter if you intend to soak up the Seeker’s damage: You’ll die! You still need to avoid colliding against the Seeker to the minimum: like, strafe left-right, pull them together then dodge over. On the other hand, you can dodge over the blue teleport aoe at the last minute to avoid the boss moving too much. So perma Vigor is much more preferred than high armor.
Have you seen the sustain that a cele ele can pump out compared to a cleric guard in a PvP match? Ele can get a high up time of Protection and Regen. With Tempest, you are looking at 40% damage reduction with aura/protection. You have yourself Might and Fury. You have your own Rebound, which you can share with your DPS allies during Bullet Storm, too. You also have plenty of blast finisher to coordinate a water blast with your engi.
Since you don’t need any of the Reflect/Block/Stability (yet), it’s pretty much a fair game to have a cele ele tank/kite the boss.
This^
My biggest problem with having an “Easy Mode” and “Hard Mode” for raids is that it removes something big for players to strive for.
Right now, players just do the very easiest dungeons, and never do any of the hard dungeons. People sell Fractals and Arah because that few people want to do these. Plus, they can use the money they got from doing all those easy dungeons.
If raids had an “Easy” and “Hard” mode, no one would take raiding seriously, even if someone said it was a “Hard mode” kill. Everyone would just say “Yeah, I killed the Vale Guardian” with a party full of Nomad’s characters versus an untimed Vale Guardian. People would strive for the lowest common denominator (as they already do with dungeons), and ignore the hard content.
By making all raids hard, it forces people to respect raids as difficult content that they must either organize and get better for, or just not do at all.
And unlike many other MMOs, GW2 gives plenty to do for less skilled players. Fractals are being revamped, the Verdent Brink has been great, and stuff like grinding masteries or working on a guild hall all are great distractions for casuals.
And by keeping raids exclusive, when someone does manage to beat a wing, or even a single boss, people will look to that person and know that they were part of a truly skilled group. For the first time, GW2 can grant a real sense of accomplishment to PvE players – something that it’s lacked for a long time (see: credit card legendary weapons and RNG fractal skins).
Raids should be brutal and exclusive. The timer should be kept low to prevent players from using too many support characters or too tanky of builds. And no “Easy Mode”, which would ultimately cause people to just devalue raids and never take them seriously.
(edited by Neko.9021)
Even though I find it amusing that timers essentially make damage the most important thing, I think that having a strict, low timer is necessary. Otherwise, a lot of the fear of the raid is gone. You should NOT be able to run more than 2 supports without being punished, otherwise, why not just run 5 Supports, or 10 Supports and lose all fear from all the mechanics?
I also think that splitting up raids in difficulties would split up development resources and, rather than just trying to build good raids in general, they’ll end up skewing towards super easy ones and ones that are far too hard. Keeping it to one difficulty forces them to make actually balanced encounters.
Also, most people should not be able to complete the raids. They’re supposed to be hard. 99% of the content in HoT will be doable by everyone, and raids are supposed to be the hard, instanced, exclusive content, based on sheer skill and organization. GW2 basically doesn’t have this right now.
I think players are just shocked because they’ve facerolled everything up till now, and the arrival of raids now basically show that they, or their group, were not as good as they thought they were. Some people who thought they were gonna do raiding in GW2 may just not be good enough.
And that’s excellent. People should be excluded if they’re bad. GW2 literally does this no where else in PvE. Raids finally give us a way to show who is really good, and who is bad.
Introduction
I really enjoy running a fully specced Tempest with Warhorn and Shouts. While the power level is probably not where everyone wants it to be, I think a few adjustments can put it in a really decent place. The Tempest doesn’t need to be the absolute strongest thing in the game – I think it’s fine if it exists sort of in the middle of the pack of builds.
In a way, this is actually pretty neat. The Tempest and a lot of its abilities are currently overvalued by the devs and underpowered in the actual game, which means there’s still a lot of room for adjustments to be made without creating something that dominates the game.
PvE Tempest versus PvE Core Elementalist
First off – what’s the point of the Tempest anyway, in a PvE context? The Tempest had a pretty difficult challenge, from a PvE perspective, going into the game. The Ele has one of the strongest sustained DPS builds in PvE with a glassy Fire Staff Lava Font spam build, and the Tempest was entering into a game where it would inherently have to compete with that spec.
In this case, the Tempest almost immediately loses while doing any old content. Enemies in old PvE do not move and have large hitboxes. A Glyph of Storms + Lava Font + Meteor Shower combo destroys almost anything, and does a massive amount of AoE damage.
Still, that spec in particular more reflects a problem with the content itself than a problem with the spec itself. This is more apparent with new content – if enemies move, no one wants to run Staff Ele. This makes sense. Since you need an enemy to simply stand still in Lava Font in order for the build to be effective, if enemies start walking around the room (see, the new raid boss), it becomes a lot harder to get a big burst AoE combo, or even get full value off of your Lava Font.
In this way, the glassy Staff Ele spec is actually fine for the game, and serves as a check against the developers from developing lazy content. If an enemy doesn’t move, players will simply destroy it with a Fire Staff Ele. I like this dynamic, so I wouldn’t nerf Fire Staff Ele.
Tempest as Support?
At the same time, getting back to our original topic, one has to wonder then what Tempest should bring.
Tempest could simply try to compete as another pure DPS spec, but from the get go, we see a few problems. The Tempest is clearly meant to be be some sort of hybrid, support-style spec. The 3 Grandmaster Major traits are not DPS traits – two are support, and one is defensive.
I’d like to take this moment to say that this is not a bad thing. Traditionally, players in PvE have shunned support-spec builds that aren’t absolute hard defense (Aegis, Blinds, Reflects, etc.) This is understandable with the content that PvE had – enough of it was easy and static enough that you didn’t need much soft support like defensive boons or healing. However, it is apparent with the switch up in mechanics, both in the new open world and in the new raid content, that they want to make soft defense (healing, Protection, other defensive boons) more valuable.
The Tempest is solidly trying to go the defense and healing route of support. The heal-on-aura trait, as a concept, has a lot of potential to be very strong. Similarly, giving the Tempest a Water Field on its Warhorn, and having Overload Water heal quite a bit show that the Tempest is meant to be able to support a heal-styled spec. The biggest thing though, in my opinion, is “Wash the Pain Away!” This heals, AoE and baseline, 3560 + 1950 + 980 = 6490 HP, with no healing power gear. The heal has a very small radius for allies, but it’s a decent heal outright, and I honestly think that “Wash the Pain Away!” is one of the highlights of Tempest Support. If working with team mates correctly, it is an outright AoE heal that heals yourself and others for 6490 HP if positioned correctly, without having to invest in defensive gear.
Furthermore, the Tempest is able to enhance their auras with the use of many traits, including Powerful Aura in the Water Line, Elemental Shielding in the Earth Line, and Zephyr’s Boon in the Air Line. So from the get go, the Tempest is trying to synergize with these three trait lines. I think this is fine, and sets up the player to make some really interesting build choices.
The issue with Tempest, as a pure Support spec, comes when we start comparing it to other classes – in particular, the Herald (Revenant) spec and the Druid (Ranger) spec. The Herald is able to output massive AoE boons with little effort through the use of Glint’s utilities. It does this while retaining pretty darn good damage with Sword and other DPS traits. The Druid, meanwhile, has massive baseline healing – which by the way is fine. The Druid is meant to be a dedicated healer, so it makes sense that Druid has strong healing.
I don’t like to go around asking for nerfs to all the other classes, especially since I’m not entirely sold that the things that Revenant and Druid do are actually overpowered. So instead, I’d like to focus on what makes Tempest different and special, and try to focus on making those things better.
Overload!
The Tempest’s new mechanic, Overload, is what defines the Tempest. It is a mechanic unlike most others, with a conditional cooldown that starts upon attuning to a new attunement. When channeling an Overload, the Tempest Breaks stun and begins channeling a powerful skill that, at the end, has a massive effect that devastates the battlefield!
Except that it doesn’t, because somehow, over three beta weekends, overloads are still highly, highly, highly underpowered for their investment.
In order to gain an Overload’s effect, one must remain in the same attunement for 6 seconds. Afterwards, they channel the effect for 4 seconds.
That means the skill requires at least 10 seconds in advance thought to finally execute.
Finally, after managing to remain in an attunement, and then overloading for 4 seconds, you are locked out of your attunement for 20 seconds.
This all wouldn’t be much of a problem if it weren’t for the fact that Overloads are the primary mechanic of the Tempest. So there’s no getting away from them. They take up all of the Minor Trait slots as well, with traits based around overloading.
The fact is that Overloads are probably just too costly for what they do. They either need to have their effects buffed, or their costs reduced. And even if their costs were reduced, they’d have to be reduced significantly, since the effects of the overloads really aren’t that impressive as is.
To me, the Overloads are the most undertuned part of the class, which is incredible given that they’ve been buffed each beta weekend. It shows just how weak the mechanic is. And that’s a shame, because being so close to launch, it’s unlikely that a new mechanic can replace them. I’ve tried to be as positive as I could be up till now about everything else in this post, but as they are, and given that Overloads are the key to everything about the Tempest, it’s a shame that Overloads have just been so darn mediocre so far.
So here’s what I would do to make overloads stronger:
First, the channeling of Overloads in itself should be much stronger. When an Elementalist actually sticks around in their attunement and gets ready to Overload, there should be a huge payoff from the start. Here’s what I’d have:
- Overload Fire – The damage was nerfed before, when it really should have been left alone. The Might and Burning should tick twice as fast and twice as much (to increase from 10 ticks to 20 ticks), to inflict 20 stacks of Burn and give 20 stacks of Might.
- Overload Water – This skill need to be much stronger, especially considering that an Ele can easily heal 2600 HP baseline through Evasive Arcana + Healing Ripple. Overload Water should heal 1000 base with 1:1 Healing Power scaling per pulse, removing a condition each pulse. At the end of the channel, you and all allies gain massive Regeneration, cleanse a condition, and heal for an additional 2000 HP with 1:1 Healing Power scaling. The actual Overload Water channel should be a Water Field.
- Overload Air – This skill does a lot of damage, but it’s not much more than autoattacking right now or even Lava Font spam. The damage needs to be buffed by another 30%. Otherwise, it’s fine as it is.
- Overload Earth – This should blast finish at the start instead of at the end. This skill should also grant 3 seconds of stability per pulse, AoE (but should no longer grant 3 stacks of stability at the start). The pulsing should be doubled to be twice as fast and twice as much (going from 9 pulses to 18 pulses), granting 18 pulses of Protection, 18 pulses of Stability, 18 pulses of Bleed, and 18 pulses of Cripple. (This may sound really crazy, but one need only actually ever try to Overload Earth to see just how weak the skill is right now. It really needs a very strong buff in order to be useful for all the investment given into it).
Finally, the range of all over the Overloads should be standardized to 360 Range. As it is, Overload Fire (180 range) and Overload Earth (240 range) are very short Range, while Overload Water and Overload Air are 360 range. Since the cast times have been standardized, you might as well standardize the ranges as well.
Overloads, overall, need to be made much stronger in order for their investment to make any sense. Right now the effects are very undertuned, and they need to be made stronger in order for the Tempest to bring anything special to the class as a whole.
Shouts and the Warhorn
The addition of Magnetic Aura to Warhorn was a really good change, and the decision not to nerf Heat Sync was honestly probably what saved the Warhorn from becoming completely useless . The other skills are OK, though it’s hard to compete with Staff or Focus’ utility. Overall though, if all of the changes I mentioned are made to Overload (which is the most important part of Tempest, really), then Warhorn as is, as a sort of boon-sharing weapon, is probably passable. There clearly needs to be some refinement on the kit (especially that horrid Air 5 skill), but honestly, I don’t want to push too much right now.
The Shouts are probably the most well placed part of the Tempest in terms of where they need to be for power level, but they are still just a little too weak, given their long cooldowns and the other strong utilites (such as Glyph of Storms or Arcane Wave) that Ele can take.
I think one of the biggest things that could change would be to make all of the Utility Shouts (not the Heal or the Elite) into instant-cast shouts. Then, even with an instant-cast buff, “Shock and Aftershock!” still has too high of a base cooldown to be considered, and should be reduced from 50 seconds down to 40 seconds. Finally, the Shout trait should have a CDR effect attached on top of it, in addition to all of its current effects. These changes would really help make Shout Ele a strong support-style build in its own right.
The Traits
Tempest Traits have gotten better, and I think they could still continue to get better.
For myself, I think there’s no other way to go about this than to go through each of the Major Traits, and say what needs to be done:
Adept Major:
- Gale Song – Good as it is.
- Latent Stamina – Increase the range to 600, and remove the Vigor effect. Instead, it should grant 50 endurance (1 dodge) to you and up to 4 allies in range.
- Unstable Conduit – If all of the changes were made to Overloads so that they were actually good, this trait is probably fine. If the changes were not made to Overloads, then move the Aura to the start of the cast of an Overload instead of the end, and have it grant the Aura to allies within 600 range.
Master Major:
- Earthen Proxy – This trait is misleading as it’s written. I spoke to many, many, many people who thought that this trait increases Protection’s protection from 33% to 53%. According to tooltips and just general testing, it seems to just increase Protection to 40%. Honestly, if Earthen Proxy actually increased Protection on yourself from 33% to 53%, it would probably be fine.
- Harmonious Conduit – I would remove the Stability (and add it to Lucid Singularity below). Instead, this trait should grant the Harmonious Conduit buff (10% damage) to you and all allies within 360 range upon completing an Overload. The Harmonious Conduit buff should be increased from 5 to 10 seconds.
- Tempestuous Aria – This should have a Shout CDR effect of 20%, in addition to its other effects.
Grandmaster Major:
- Elemental Bastion – This trait is just weird, but I suppose the biggest problem is that the Healing is just too low. It’s clearly meant to give the Ele a way to support allies with small heals. I would change the heal to 1302 baseline (to reflect Cleansing Wave), with 1:1 Healing Power scaling.
- Imbued Melodies – I like the changes to it, having it cast Sand Squall automatically and give 20% Boon Duration really for the Warhorn. It’s fine as it is.
- Lucid Singularity – This trait does a lot of weird stuff when I think it could be made much simpler. It should just give you 1 stack of Stability and 1 stack of Resistance each for 4 seconds upon starting an Overload.
Playing the Tempest
What’s funny about a lot of these changes is that even if they were all made, I doubt the Tempest would still see much play. That’s honestly why I suggest most of them, because right now, as it is, the Tempest’s power level really is that low. There’s a lot of room for the developers to make changes to the Tempest, and these proposed changes would go a long way to bringing the spec up to speed with the rest of the game. In particular, making Overloads much stronger would do a lot to distinguish the spec as a new playstyle and making it stronger as a whole.
I’d also like to talk about what I think is cool about the Tempest, currently.
Mainly, I think where the Tempest has the most success in new content is as a sort of Aura and Boon share build. Running all shouts with Zephyr’s Boon and Elemental Shielding allows you to put a lot of Swiftness, Fury, and Protection on allies. Combine this with Warhorn’s Sand Squall (for boon extension and a personal Magnetic Aura) and Heat Sync, and you can pump out a massive amount of long duration Might, Swiftness, Fury, and Protection on allies for a long time. This is where Tempest shines the most, and given that it’s probably one of the better configurations on a currently underpowered Elite Spec, I really do think it should be helped along to be made better, rather than ignored or nerfed (such as changing Heat Sync).
At the end of the beta, I found I was running this build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJBIhdSfJUgJ2fJYhJwhJWaAM3Lbmd0OsC6AzQhCQA4DC-TxRBABUcCAuS5HN7PgneAAeAAUq+jZKBJFQgTtA-e
I played around with it in the new Verdent Brink (which was much harder in BWE2, and apparently nerfed in BWE3, though apparently this was a bug and not intended), as well as in the new raid. I particularly liked how “Eye of the Storm!” with its AoE Super Speed helped people quickly get to the little Lightning Circle AoE when you needed to stack 4 people there to keep the raid from wiping, and I liked how “Rebound!” could be used to actually save yourself and 4 other allies in case something bad happened. Furthermore, the interaction between the Overload mechanic and Fresh Air allows you to get quite a few more Air Overloads than you would otherwise, which would go well with an improved Harmonious Conduit (and go better with just stronger Overloads in general). The build relied largely on Air Overload, Fresh Air, and Air autoattacking to keep up its damage.
Given, such a build is ultimately unfit for raids, especially given how much better Revenant and Druid do at doing the sort of support-DPS style than Tempest does, which is a shame, but it is what it is. I think that making more changes to Tempest and helping bring its power level to even just where baseline Ele is right now can help at least make it a decent mid-tier spec in the future. And I think that these changes would at the very least make it a good build for going into the jungle and trying to take on smaller challenges with friends, such as the Canopy Fights with a small number of people.
Also for people wondering if Cele or Cleric gear made a difference, the answer is no – Healing Power scaling was poor on Tempest so there was no point.
Conclusions
I really enjoyed the Tempest overall, even if the spec is very undertuned. I like the Overload mechanic even if the numbers are weak. I really enjoy playing with Shouts and Warhorn, giving allies lots of boons and a small amount of heals, even if Herald (Revenant) and Druid (Ranger) do it much better. I understand that balance happens in cycles, and Tempest will be starting at the bottom of the power curve at the release of HoT. This is fine, as there will always be someone there starting out. All I’m asking is that the gap at least be made smaller. I want Tempest to at least be good at the things it’s supposed to be good at – Overloading and Support. As it is, a Tempest can make a significant investment in traits, utilities, and weapons (no bothering investing in gear since the Healing Power scaling is so bad anyway), and it still comes up as pretty mediocre. Even taking all of the on-Aura traits like Zephyr’s Boon and Elemental Shielding leave a build that is pretty decent at easy-to-apply boon share, but it lacks that final bit to really make it worthwhile. That’s why I think Overloads need to be improved – because those can be that last bit that makes the entire Elite Spec worthwhile. Overloads are the key to Tempest’s success, given it’s the spec’s new mechanic, and they’re just not good enough right now.
But I still enjoy the Tempest, and I’d hope the devs consider making at least a few of these changes to make it stronger with the new PvE content.
(edited by Neko.9021)
It should be noted that since someone has to run a tank build in order to kite the boss around with highest armor, a Cele Ele would not actually be a bad choice at all. One group did it with a Cele Guardian. I’m sure Cele Ele would be OK.
Fresh Air refreshes Air Attunement’s cooldown whenever you crit.
When a Tempest attunes to a new attunement, the attunement will become available for Overload in 6 seconds.
In this way, Fresh Air allows you to “get around” the downside of overloading Air Attunement.
So Fresh Air synergies very well with Tempest if you can use this interaction. However, it’s really not a very big deal, because at the moment, the power level of Overload is still very low for the cast time and draw backs of Overloading.
I would not like them more. Even if Overloads are questionable in power level, I don’t want to rely on a Resource Mechanic for the Ele outside of Cooldowns. I just dislike Resource Mechanics, and it’s one of the key draws to the Elementalist for me over other classes.
The Enrage mechanic in the first boss was great, and I totally loved that there was now a real pressure to the fight, rather than being able to simply tank everything the whole fight.
However, doesn’t this have the opposite effect of what was the intended goal – to make glass cannon builds less desirable? Given the Enrage timer and the amount of HP the enemies have, it seems like you’re really going to want as many people in glass DPS specs as possible, if not all of them. The passive damage is annoying but can be healed through with a few support skills and water field blasting.
It looks like, based on the health of the enemies and the enrage timer, Berserker/Sinister is going to be even better than in dungeons, because a team of Nomad players are literally going to be unable to complete even the first boss.
Wow, reading through some player’s posts here almost makes me feel sad about humanity’s future. Self entitlement mixed with opinions from people that have ZERO knowledge about development is sad. It is not because you have an opinion and you are free to say it that your opinion has value (or is correct). You can say the biggest bullkitten out to the 4 winds and it would still be bullkitten.
That said, ANet could have really used a PTR server to test their biggest systems, like Squads and Raids. These occasional 2 days testing on the weekends are too little. I won’t be surprised if they postpone the release of the new Squad system (and, therefore, raids) to a date after the official release of HoT.
Raids were not going to be launched at release of HoT anyway, though.
Is it intentional that Overloads all break stun, baseline? I tested it after looking at the tooltips, and it seems that all Overloads now break stun, baseline.
This is not a comment on whether or not Overloads should break stun baseline – I just wanted to know if this was an actual, intended change, or if this is a bug.
Shouts are really close to being good, but they’re currently slightly overvalued by ANet.
If they had a Shout CDR trait and all the utility (non-Elite, non-Heal) Shouts were insta-cast, they’d be fine. Soldier/Trooper Rune interaction with Shouts makes them all condi cleanses, which, combined with a theoreticaly CDR trait, lets them be spammable enough to be decent.
But two of the utility shouts have cast times and their cooldowns are just a little bit too long without a CDR trait.
Trait is pretty cool now with range increase. Too bad it’s in the Water line which is already good.
I think Tempest should have it instead.
Also, the auto-proccing Ice Aura one that heals allies with aura application makes much more sense in the Water line, both mechanically and flavorfully.
It’s very good.
Sad to say, Tempest builds are gonna be orphans with the way the balance of the spec is going. It’s suffering for the sins of its predecessors, even if it did nothing wrong.
Encouraging players to play all the classes is limiting to party diversity…
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( sigh…)
This was a pretty harsh nerf, but the fact is, Arcana is crazy bloated strong right now. Their decision to move Elemental Attunement to Minor and allow Eles to take a new trait in the Master Major slot, plus being able to keep Evasive Arcana (AND un-nerfing Evasive Arcana in PvP) were huge buffs to Ele. In that light, nerfing the Vigor trait to 10 sec ICD makes sense.
Had they gone through the initial decision to put Elemental Attunement to GM along with Evasive Arcana would have put the class in a very odd position. Have you ever tried a build without Elemental Attunement and without Cantrips in sPvP?
I tried it myself. It does not work very well, and when it does work a little bit, you’re off wondering where is your swiftness, where is the heal… et cetera.
Maybe, but they didn’t simply keep Elemental Attunement where it was – they changed it to a Minor trait, and allowed Eles to take a whole new trait in its place – either Elemental Contingency or Final Shielding. This, plus getting a 3rd GM trait, put Ele so far ahead in PvP. They had to put some cuts somewhere, and nerfing damage and Vigor seems like a sensible way to go about it.
Ice Bow did a tremendous amount of damage, especially against large hitbox enemies, and undoubtedly skewed the balance of many encounters. With the upcoming PvE Raids for next week, they had to nerf Ice Bow.
It was a change they should have made a long time ago, honestly.
I am strictly speaking about sPvP.
We all know that they should have split the skills a long time ago, but ANet is merging all the skills across all game modes. Ice Bow had a tremendously negative impact on PvE, so unfortunately, unless they split the skill between PvE and PvP (they should, btw. And I wish they did), the skill has to be nerfed, which happens to affect the PvP version as well.
Instead of fragmenting the game in two (pve vs pvp) they might want to adjust skills in a way where it become difficult to abuse pve AI. Icebow 4 is only so good when the target do not move.
This effect is felt on Staff too. Things are so good against immobile targets, but so average on players. In my opinion, it’s the skills that need to be looked at. Eruption, Lava Font, Ice Spike, Meteor Shower essentially fit that unhealthy design. In pve those have a very good chance to hit; in pvp, you need to trap the target into them (but it’s not worth it). Faster and more reliable skills they need to design I say.
I don’t disagree with what you’re saying, but the thing is, that would require changing a bunch of skills all over the game, plus possibly changing the AI of the game to act differently. Given all of this, plus the fact that they want to give us beta Raids next week, put ANet in a position where they had to nerf Ice Bow directly. Imagine raids being brought to GW2 for the first time, only to have 10 Ice Bows immediately destroy the encounter before anything even happens. It would have been a joke.
For the health of the game, Ice Bow 4 had to be nerfed.
This was a pretty harsh nerf, but the fact is, Arcana is crazy bloated strong right now. Their decision to move Elemental Attunement to Minor and allow Eles to take a new trait in the Master Major slot, plus being able to keep Evasive Arcana (AND un-nerfing Evasive Arcana in PvP) were huge buffs to Ele. In that light, nerfing the Vigor trait to 10 sec ICD makes sense.
Because the skill had the capacity to do far too much damage against large hit box enemies in PvE. It would have greatly impacted raids, which are being released in beta form next week. It was a good change, and something that should have happened a while ago.
This was a good change. I’m very pleased. Imagine bringing 5 Eles with a bunch of Ice Bows and nuking down Raid Bosses before anything happened.
Ice Bow did a tremendous amount of damage, especially against large hitbox enemies, and undoubtedly skewed the balance of many encounters. With the upcoming PvE Raids for next week, they had to nerf Ice Bow.
It was a change they should have made a long time ago, honestly.
I am strictly speaking about sPvP.
We all know that they should have split the skills a long time ago, but ANet is merging all the skills across all game modes. Ice Bow had a tremendously negative impact on PvE, so unfortunately, unless they split the skill between PvE and PvP (they should, btw. And I wish they did), the skill has to be nerfed, which happens to affect the PvP version as well.
This seems to happen a lot on the ele forms the lack of understanding any thing beyond one step combos.
Or they made a very accurate assessment that using 2 skills to give aoe stability on a 1 min cd is much weaker than using 1 skill to give aoe stability on a 24s cd, and since no one has ever considered stand your ground overpowered there’s no possible way that something much weaker than it could be overpowered, either.
If resistance and quickness are the things that supposedly make boon duplication op, why does it get nerfed on ele and not mesmer? Ele can’t generate either of those boons alone while mesmer has access to both and will be able to duplicate twice in a row with chronomancer, or 4 times in a row if it gives up its resistance access.
The full combo was 3 skills AoE into heat sink into Sand Squall all of this combo was done after getting stab from a gurd so you would end up with nearly 15 stacks of stab on a long duration and a very long protection effect.
Mez are also able to use that signet every time they make a phatomze too and the more boons they have on them self the longer the duration of there out going boons. So on a mez its a lot stronger of a trick.
Added note dose Chronophantasma work with the signet effect too if so then there is a lot of evidences that heat sync is NOTHING compared to what mez / cron can pull off with boon sharing.
Well if the problem isn’t vigor. Then it definitely isn’t quickness or resistance.
The issue then would be the might.
Mesmer, chrono or otherwise, has to invest heavily into ramping up 25 stacks of might to share. As does herald. So now you run into a situation where an ele can already blast 25 stacks of might for the party, but this time they can do it twice as easily, and they can increase the length of the intensity stacking boon.
It allowed you to stack might extremely easily. Adding more effects to it would be too much.Why is it important for the mesmer to be sharing might? This is about having perma quickness and resistances and mesmer can do that in the right set up. Tempest to a point could but not as well as a mesmer.
Something like this set up for mez (though i am not great with the numbers for armor but mostly the trail line build for max boon sharing). With a rev elite spec class +50% out going boons effect and about 4 boons on the mez your boon share will be about 90% duration i think you could push it to 100%. But my point is heat sync is nothing compared to what mez can build for when it comes to “braking the games boon duration.” Even with out a rev elite spec class +50% mez can get very close to perma every boon type in the game.
So if we look at your spec we can see you took away the trees that have damage modifiers. The mesmer then has to put everything they can into uptime of these boons. Quality boon generation is something the mesmer has to spec for.
If we look at the food we see it is 29 silver a pop. If we look at the nourishment we see it is time gated.
An ele can be scepter warhorn. Spec fully into damage. And still do tooth + fire field + phoenix + arcane wave + arcane brilliance + heat sync + sand squal. Giving aoe 24 stacks of might for at least 20 seconds. Perma if the trait. You don’t have to waste traits, all you have to do is select a specific heal and a specific utility. And this is with no boon duration.
Now if you want to add in traits this combo now gives 1 minute 30 second of fury. As well as a lot of protection, while your dps does not take the hit the mesmer’s does.
If you’re running Scepter Ele you’re gonna be doing like no damage after the initial burst, unless you wanna rock the Lightning Hammer.
You also give up quite a bit of damage going into Tempest. And even more by not taking Staff.
So yes, you are taking a huge DPS hit by using a Warhorn and Tempest.
Yes but we are comparing it to a mesmer that is giving up Dueling, Domination, and Illusions. The trees that have damage modification associated with them. You can exactly compare the mesmer and ele in terms of who is giving up something to achieve a goal.
If you want mesmer tier damage then by all means keep heat sync. But don’t make comparisons to builds that give up almost everything in traits and damage.
I understand you were looking at that terrible Mesmer build the other poster put, and I would not defend it. I also understand that taking Signet of Inspiration is an opportunity cost for the Mesmer (since Mesmers have so many valuable, useful utility slots that compete for each of their utilities).
However, it has to be understood that Warhorn + Tempest is also a massive cost for the Ele. Probably more so. They have to take the entire Tempest line which offers very little in the way of Damage or self-sustain, and then they have to take Warhorn, which has mostly terrible skills outside of Heat Sync and Sand Squall.
Mind you, Heat Sync is a desirable skill, and it definitely opens up a new (tier 2) build for the Ele, which I happened to very much enjoy. It would never take over DPS Staff Ele in PvE or Cele D/D Ele in PvP, but it was an interesting build that had the potential to see play in some other meta as an underdog spec. Now it’s being killed before it even gets to see live, because people are afraid of the currently overpowered specs that Ele currently has. That’s crazy. Warhorn Ele has little damage, little self-survivability, and does one trick really well (boon sharing). The spec didn’t deserve to die, and certainly wasn’t “overperforming”.
Ice Bow did a tremendous amount of damage, especially against large hitbox enemies, and undoubtedly skewed the balance of many encounters. With the upcoming PvE Raids for next week, they had to nerf Ice Bow.
It was a change they should have made a long time ago, honestly.
This seems to happen a lot on the ele forms the lack of understanding any thing beyond one step combos.
Or they made a very accurate assessment that using 2 skills to give aoe stability on a 1 min cd is much weaker than using 1 skill to give aoe stability on a 24s cd, and since no one has ever considered stand your ground overpowered there’s no possible way that something much weaker than it could be overpowered, either.
If resistance and quickness are the things that supposedly make boon duplication op, why does it get nerfed on ele and not mesmer? Ele can’t generate either of those boons alone while mesmer has access to both and will be able to duplicate twice in a row with chronomancer, or 4 times in a row if it gives up its resistance access.
The full combo was 3 skills AoE into heat sink into Sand Squall all of this combo was done after getting stab from a gurd so you would end up with nearly 15 stacks of stab on a long duration and a very long protection effect.
Mez are also able to use that signet every time they make a phatomze too and the more boons they have on them self the longer the duration of there out going boons. So on a mez its a lot stronger of a trick.
Added note dose Chronophantasma work with the signet effect too if so then there is a lot of evidences that heat sync is NOTHING compared to what mez / cron can pull off with boon sharing.
Well if the problem isn’t vigor. Then it definitely isn’t quickness or resistance.
The issue then would be the might.
Mesmer, chrono or otherwise, has to invest heavily into ramping up 25 stacks of might to share. As does herald. So now you run into a situation where an ele can already blast 25 stacks of might for the party, but this time they can do it twice as easily, and they can increase the length of the intensity stacking boon.
It allowed you to stack might extremely easily. Adding more effects to it would be too much.Why is it important for the mesmer to be sharing might? This is about having perma quickness and resistances and mesmer can do that in the right set up. Tempest to a point could but not as well as a mesmer.
Something like this set up for mez (though i am not great with the numbers for armor but mostly the trail line build for max boon sharing). With a rev elite spec class +50% out going boons effect and about 4 boons on the mez your boon share will be about 90% duration i think you could push it to 100%. But my point is heat sync is nothing compared to what mez can build for when it comes to “braking the games boon duration.” Even with out a rev elite spec class +50% mez can get very close to perma every boon type in the game.
So if we look at your spec we can see you took away the trees that have damage modifiers. The mesmer then has to put everything they can into uptime of these boons. Quality boon generation is something the mesmer has to spec for.
If we look at the food we see it is 29 silver a pop. If we look at the nourishment we see it is time gated.
An ele can be scepter warhorn. Spec fully into damage. And still do tooth + fire field + phoenix + arcane wave + arcane brilliance + heat sync + sand squal. Giving aoe 24 stacks of might for at least 20 seconds. Perma if the trait. You don’t have to waste traits, all you have to do is select a specific heal and a specific utility. And this is with no boon duration.
Now if you want to add in traits this combo now gives 1 minute 30 second of fury. As well as a lot of protection, while your dps does not take the hit the mesmer’s does.
If you’re running Scepter Ele you’re gonna be doing like no damage after the initial burst, unless you wanna rock the Lightning Hammer.
You also give up quite a bit of damage going into Tempest. And even more by not taking Staff.
So yes, you are taking a huge DPS hit by using a Warhorn and Tempest.
Today was the first time after 3 years and over 6000 hours of playtime that i consider to leave the game. This was the reason https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fK1N_vqJPac&feature=youtu.be
No matter how many times i watch this and trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, it still turns out to be Arenanet giving the elementalists the finger, and not in a twisted funny way, but in a gloating ugly way.
Then i see how they tell us that Hey we have buffed your elite skill and it turns out you buffed the glyps, which very few of us ever uses anyway since the pet dies in two hits.
So in the end we still only have one elite still to use which is fiery sword and noone uses it for the damage but to move faster forward. The Icebow is dumbed down to a point were it will be useless, and since the axe and the shield was always uselss, so we now having 5 conjured weapons that noone will use, and we already had the useless glyphs, were one got less cd which have no meaning since the pets are easy to kill, which means in the end ele now have 10 skills that most of us never use.
But thank you for that gloating message from the Arena net staff on the twitch stream, your gtfo message is noticed.
Surely you’ve noticed in your 6000 hours of play that Ele has been the top class in GW2 PvE for a while now. Ice Bow was crazy, did far too much damage, and had to nerfed for the upcoming raid encounters.
So for this it is ok for A-net to insult us? Did you even watch the link?
It was a fun joke. Lighten up.
Today was the first time after 3 years and over 6000 hours of playtime that i consider to leave the game. This was the reason https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fK1N_vqJPac&feature=youtu.be
No matter how many times i watch this and trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, it still turns out to be Arenanet giving the elementalists the finger, and not in a twisted funny way, but in a gloating ugly way.
Then i see how they tell us that Hey we have buffed your elite skill and it turns out you buffed the glyps, which very few of us ever uses anyway since the pet dies in two hits.
So in the end we still only have one elite still to use which is fiery sword and noone uses it for the damage but to move faster forward. The Icebow is dumbed down to a point were it will be useless, and since the axe and the shield was always uselss, so we now having 5 conjured weapons that noone will use, and we already had the useless glyphs, were one got less cd which have no meaning since the pets are easy to kill, which means in the end ele now have 10 skills that most of us never use.
But thank you for that gloating message from the Arena net staff on the twitch stream, your gtfo message is noticed.
Surely you’ve noticed in your 6000 hours of play that Ele has been the top class in GW2 PvE for a while now. Ice Bow was crazy, did far too much damage, and had to nerfed for the upcoming raid encounters.
If icebow had such a game breaking effect on raids then they should scrap them and start from the beginning.
Ice Bow did far too much damage in PvE encounters, especially against enemies with large hit boxes. It’s as simple as that. It amazes me that people actually think that it was OK for a single skill to deliver so much damage.
Today was the first time after 3 years and over 6000 hours of playtime that i consider to leave the game. This was the reason https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fK1N_vqJPac&feature=youtu.be
No matter how many times i watch this and trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, it still turns out to be Arenanet giving the elementalists the finger, and not in a twisted funny way, but in a gloating ugly way.
Then i see how they tell us that Hey we have buffed your elite skill and it turns out you buffed the glyps, which very few of us ever uses anyway since the pet dies in two hits.
So in the end we still only have one elite still to use which is fiery sword and noone uses it for the damage but to move faster forward. The Icebow is dumbed down to a point were it will be useless, and since the axe and the shield was always uselss, so we now having 5 conjured weapons that noone will use, and we already had the useless glyphs, were one got less cd which have no meaning since the pets are easy to kill, which means in the end ele now have 10 skills that most of us never use.
But thank you for that gloating message from the Arena net staff on the twitch stream, your gtfo message is noticed.
Surely you’ve noticed in your 6000 hours of play that Ele has been the top class in GW2 PvE for a while now. Ice Bow was crazy, did far too much damage, and had to nerfed for the upcoming raid encounters.
Each individual impact of Ice Bow affects 5 foes. This is being reduced to 3.
Currently, if there are 6 foes in the Ice Bow AoE, when an impact touches the ground, it affects the 5 closest enemies that are in range of the impact. And because of the spacing, there’s a good chance that an individual impact may only affect 1-4 people in the AoE.
All player skills unless otherwise stated have a max cap of 5 targets at most. The only things that defy this rule are “Wall” type skills such as Line of Warding or Static Field, and even then, it’s because these skills do not target enemies, so much as create a persistent effect at the area for a period of time.
Ice Bow had to be nerfed. Raids are coming out soon, and undoubtedly, everyone getting off a huge amount of damage with Ice Bow probably really skewed the encounter balance. It’s no coincidence they’re making the changes in light of the new raid wing that’s about to come up.
This makes sense. Surprised they didnt nerf deep freeze too, since 10 people coordinated could keep something stunned for 20 seconds if they do it right, but maybe the new break bar will make that impossible, who knows.
Deep Freeze is actually pretty fine in light of the new Break Bar system. The pacing of the Break Bar, as far as I understand it, is as such:
- Phase 1: Enemy has a Break Bar that can deteriorate from CC skills (Daze, Stun, Knockdown, Freeze, Float, Petrification, Slow, etc.), Movement Impairing Skills (Cripple, Immobilize, Chill), as well as Blind.
- Phase 2: Enemy’s Break Bar is broken. The enemy is Stunned and has 25 Vulnerability stacks at this time.
- Phase 3: Recovery period. During this time, the Break Bar cannot be deteriorated. When the Break Bar refills, return to Phase 1.
All Deep Freeze does is act as a very strong CC in Phase 1, which is honestly fine. The Ele is giving up a utility slot to take down a large chunk of Break Bar. That’s a pretty fair trade.
I don’t know why people fear this skill when the functionality has existed for so long already. It’s not like Boon Copying is very practical for sPvP, and taking Tempest is a pretty severe DPS loss for PvE Ele. There’s no way you were gonna stop running Staff Ele for WvW. That people feared this particular skill shows how off people’s perceptions of game balance is.
Tempest was supposed to be a Support Spec but then they nerfed its best Support Skill because D/D Cele Ele is too strong, so all other Eles must sacrifice.
Ice Bow had to be nerfed. Raids are coming out soon, and undoubtedly, everyone getting off a huge amount of damage with Ice Bow probably really skewed the encounter balance. It’s no coincidence they’re making the changes in light of the new raid wing that’s about to come up.
Ice Bow was pretty crazy. I’m glad to see it nerfed.
Are you actually complaining about the balance of class specifically in regard to their ability to perform in karma training open world PvE?
Because honestly, I don’t think anyone cares about balance there, given that all classes can more or less do it competently.
Why do people demand that the Ele get a close-range spec when it already has one? I swear, no one seems to play DPS Dagger Ele.
They once nerfed Signet of Restoration by 18%, and Ele was unplayable for a year. >_>
The sad fact of it is that, unless Ele has a greater Health Pool, Ele will always be forced to go bunker. The bunker spec on its own isn’t even necessarily that bad, it’s just that Burning is so strong, and the Fire trait line is so massively power creeped (Blinding Ashes, Pyromancer’s Training, and Burning Fire are all far too strong) that Bunker Ele can also do massive damage.
Personally, I’d like to see an Ele with a larger health pool, but less sustain. But since they’re never going to do both of those things, the easier answer is to just nerf the overpowered traits in Fire, as well as the Burning condition, so that at least Bunker Ele doesn’t also do too much damage.
Ranger has such a terrible reputation in GW2 it’s crazy. People just viscerally hate the class for whatever reason. If Ranger is bad, they complain the Ranger is so bad and has no place in GW2. If the Ranger is good, they complain that the Ranger shouldn’t be good, and that it’s proper place is to be bad.
Making Quickness a boon was such a strange thing to do anyway. It was just begging to be broken by doing that.
I can understand blacklisting Quickness from being copied by Heat Sync, but stripping down every other boon from the list just because Quickness copying is possibly overpowered is crazy. Copying the other common Ele boons (Swiftness, Fury, Regeneration, Protection) is something the class does anyway, and would honestly be fine for the Tempest in my opinion.
I’ll save you the trouble and tell you that Condi Ele just doesn’t work right now. Play another class if you want Condi.
To be honest, outside of Quickness and Resistance, I don’t see what’s wrong with sharing the other boons.
It has to be noted that taking Tempest and Warhorn requires two major sacrafices:
-Taking Tempest
-Taking Warhorn
Seriously. The Tempest line is a huge damage and survivability loss to take relative to almost any other trait line. Taking Warhorn means you lose out on the massive DPS of Staff in PvE or the incredibly good kits of OH Dagger or Focus in PvP. Seriously. Outside of Heat Sync, there is very little reason to take Warhorn over OH Dagger and Focus.
The thing is that Ele Offhands or Staff are already super strong. Just look at the OH Dagger kit. It has so many strong skills. Same with Focus, and same with Staff. Warhorn, without Heat Sync, makes 0 sense to be run with any build over these other 3 options. Even a condi option like some people have suggested like “Convert condis to burning” or “convert condis to might” or whatever would be so utterly situational that you would never seriously consider running Warhorn over any other weapon set.
The range of boons needs to be large. Might, Swiftness, Regeneration, Protection, and Fury at least. Warhorn has to compete against superstar skills such as:
-Obsidian Flesh
-Magnetic Wave
-Swirling Winds
-Ride the Lightning
-Updraft
-Ring of Fire
-Cleaning Wave
-Healing Rain
-Static Cage
-Frozen Ground
Warhorn has like… Warhorn Air 5.
Seriously. Even the “good” skills on Warhorn would be the MOVING Water Field and Sand Squall, which while strong, has been bugfixed to now only give 4 sec of Protection and only extend other boons 2 sec instead of 4. Right now, it’s basically Sand Squall versus the kits of the other weapons, and the fight does not look good for it.
Heat Sync, simply put, makes Warhorn a competitive weapon choice with OH Dagger, Focus, or Staff. Without it, or with the very much weaker suggestions put out, Warhorn will never be taken over the incredible Staff in PvE and WvW, or the OH Dagger in sPvP, or even the occasional Focus, which still has an incredible kit. An OH weapon set has to be at least as strong as Focus in order to ever be seriously considered. With a complete nerf to Heat Sync, I can safely say that no one will seriously use Warhorn at any high level of play in PvP, PvE, or WvW. Heck, even with Heat Sync as strong as it was, it still makes more sense to run OH Dagger in PvP and Staff in WvW and PvE. Warhorn is barely hanging on as a Tier 2 weapon choice and it’s being pushed to garbage tier, and that’s just really what amazes me.
Please don’t nerf Heat Sync, or at the very least, allow the skill to share Ele boons like Might, Swiftness, Regeneration, Protection, and Fury.
(edited by Neko.9021)
Yeah, it seems like Wildfire might have just been a mistake. I hadn’t even heard of the boonrip until now.
To be honest, Tempest is going to receive a rather large nerf to its Support spec anyway when they bugfix Sand Squall to only give 4 seconds of Protection, not 8. This is fine, since as it was, the skill was a bit too strong.
But changing Heat Sync basically destroys the Support Spec. The Shouts and traits just aren’t enough to justify a Support Tempest as they are, especially when compared to the existing trees already.
What really gets me is that Tempest was advertised as a Support Elite Specialization, or at least partially. Yet once you change Heat Sync, the Tempest really doesn’t offer much in the way of support at all. So now I’m just sort of at a loss as to where the Support is. Even speccing for full Shouts and Support Traits, it really doesn’t seem to add much to a team in PvE, PvP, or WvW. The Boon Share was the thing that made the spec passable, and now that’s gone.
At the very least, there’s little reason to take Warhorn over, say, almost any other weapon set now. Staff gives two Water Fields and lots of other great team utility. OH Dagger has such a strong kit, and Focus has the best defensive kit. If we do see Tempests out there, they’re certainly not going to use Warhorn.
Either way, to get back on topic, I think it’s important to note that Tempest does little compared to the other trees to increase the Ele’s personal damage or survivability. As it is, it’s somewhat unlikely to be taken over the other trees.
The Boon Share on Heat Sync was the big thing you could build around on the spec, building towards Support, and now it’s pretty much gone. Even with fully decked out Shouts and other Support Traits, it’ll be pretty mediocre compared to what already exists without the Boon Share. The Boon Share isn’t even much of an upgrade to the Ele as much as it is a sidegrade to its specs (as Elite Specs should provide). Rather than increasing your personal damage or sustain, you’re sacraficing both for supporting the team.
To be honest, the power creep done to Arcana Tree and such was crazy, and I want the current D/D Fire Water Arcana Cele Ele nerfed as well.
Hard to do that while leaving the Ele with other viable specs. We rely so heavily on Arcane and Water to stay alive and kicking regardless of which weapons we use.
At the very least, nerfing the damage in Fire (both the trait line and burn application on skills) would go a long way. Right now, Cele Ele does too much damage and sustain. Nerfing the damage and leaving just a bunker would make it probably not all that great. You don’t really see any Earth-Water-Arcana Eles around, for example.
No!
Tempest should offer a different playstyle respect to the rest, no dev ever said that you must like this playstyle and that it must be superior to the rest.We already have a reality where teams run 2-3 eles and completely ignore what other classes got to offer
Now that ele get nerfed, we really don’t need something to take its place as support king which would bring even more nerfs
Why is it that because D/D Fire-Water-Arcana Cele Ele is completely broken, every other spec must suffer for it?
Heat Sync is a largely selfless skill that mainly buffs others. It offers a particular niche to the Tempest in the form of an actual Support Spec that can reliably share its boons to allies that aren’t right up on top of it. While it sounds similar to the current Ele, the actual Ele in practice doesn’t commonly share all its boons with allies due to distance issues.
To be honest, the power creep done to Arcana Tree and such was crazy, and I want the current D/D Fire Water Arcana Cele Ele nerfed as well.
Bur Tempest, and Warhorn, are actually pretty middling to mediocre choices right now. Which I was actually fine with, because it had one really cool thing it did thay the rest of Ele couldn’t really do – be a consistent large area boon sharing support spec.
I would sooner they nerf Evasive Arcana, Elemental Attunement, Soothing Mist, Healing Ripple, Cantrip Mastery, Pyromancer’s Training, and Burning Fire (things that actually are currently too strong on the Ele, and largely benefit a selfish do-it-all spec) over an actually interesting and somewhat (still gives you 3 might so in that way benefits you; heck remove the 3 might it grants yourself, that’d be an OK nerf) selfless weapon skill.
(edited by Neko.9021)
Just putting this out there, Mesmers can already boon share a rediculous amount of most of these boons like mad. Other day in WvW was a few Mesmers stacked up and they were boon sharing around 60 seconds of Resistance to everyone.
Not exactly sure what the problem is when it already exists in game.
Because obviously the one thing Tempest did well, it shouldn’t be allowed to do.
If the fear is that sharing Quickness and Resistance is too strong, I can somewhat understand. But the skill needs to at least be able to share the boons that Ele can already self-generate (Might, Swiftness, Regeneration, Protection, Vigor, and Fury).