Guild Wars 2

You forgot, Rebound also doesn’t work on you, only your teammates. So it doesn’t even save you from death for a second or two.

If the heal numbers were FAR higher, like 3-4x, and if you still got a heal even if the skill doesn’t proc on deathblow, then it would be decent. As it is, it’s one of the worst elites in the game.

? The Herald has so much frigging utility. I’m having a hard time grasping what you mean here.

(Revenant) are lacking a lot in terms of real utility.

I cannot believe anyone is complaining about DH in PVP!? I have no clue what else you’d want. DH properly built literally excels at every range. I regularly have 1 million+ dmg while being nearly unkillable. Seriously, if you cannot make this work in PVP you are doing something horrifically wrong.

Basically what the subject says. If I have stacks of might when I place the trap does that effect trap DPS/Healing or does it calculate that when the trap is triggered?

I played a bunch of PVP Tempest in BWE3 and now I’ve played a fair bit with the release of HoT.

Basically, it’s very average. You can go full-on Auramancer, but IMO that is only truly good with a premade to coordinate with. Or you can go Fresh Air D/F or S/F. It’s a good build if you roll the matchmaking dice and somehow your opponents lack CC. Neither build should use Warhorn, which is total unmitigated trash.

Now I’m not going to over-react and say now Ele is the worst PVP class. I don’t think that’s true – D/D ele is still quite good and Staff I find good as well. But sadly, I think both variants of Tempest are not as good as the two traditional Ele PVP builds.

My personal feeling is that Tempest not being able to dodge while overloading is the dealbreaker. If there was a GM trait that enabled overload dodging, suddenly the entire spec would make some sense.

Was the last point fixed with the latest patch?

Don’t buy exotic gear, with karma or anything else. It is super easy to get exotics by playing PVP. Choose a dungeon reward track (CoF, Arah or CoE for Berserker gear) and you’ll get 3 exotic weapons, 1 piece of armor and a bunch of dungeon tokens (trade for more exotic gear) for a single dungeon track.

If you really want to trade in your Karma for exotic Berserker gear., you can do it at a temple in Orr but I forget where. Check the wiki.

OneKlicKill.4285:

But I won’t play tempest I just don’t like the play-style and don’t think it is good, nor can it be good without them making it OP for a while.

I completely disagree. It’s a fallacy to say it cannot be good without being OP. Yes, balancing MMOs is hard – but it’s far from unattainable.

The problem is that Anet has had several BWEs now and did not make enough substantive changes to actually test if they could make Tempest good without being OP. They were content to leave it severely undertuned. Well, I could be wrong about that once we see it on the 23rd but realistically we all have to prepare for disappointment.

If they have decided to make no or minimal changes I don’t see why they just don’t tell us and be done with it. It’s better to warn us than to just spring that on the 23rd.

Maybe I’m out of the loop… But what is the issue with Runes of Perplexity in sPVP? Condi Mesmer isn’t a very good build right now. And Confusion is nowhere near as powerful as something like burning. It’s frustrating for build diversity in sPVP for Mesmers, as two of our weapons are condi weapons (staff, scepter) that aren’t very usable.

The silence is not a good sign I don’t think… But anyway if they could only change one thing I think it must be making some stability baseline in the Tempest line, for all attunements.

I did 1.4 million direct damage with a fresh air glass tempest in BWE3. Addmittedly, it was in a fairly long Stronghold match so some of that is NPC damage. But if you don’t get interrupted it’s definitely a ele build capable of huge burst.

nearlight.3064:

Don’t run fire. Blinding ashes is kitten for fresh air builds, with or without the nerf that happened. Run earth over fire for geomancer’s freedom (S/F F skill profit) and written in stone and use one with air to the fullest.

Also tempest over arcane makes fresh air do wayyyyyy more damage than you could hope for with just base ele, so theres that. One fresh air S/F air/earth/tempest game I played during the last beta, I did 800K physical damage, which is more than burst ele can typically do.

I just spent a few days trying to make Condi Mesmer work in PVP. It is okay, definitely not the weakest – but it feels much worse than a power build. The scepter is part of this… Really a bad AA, poor block.

The other part of the reason is that no runes or sigils that buff Confusion exist in PVP. Overall Confusion is much worse and much harder to use than Burning, for example.

In a vacuum, the Tempest shouts look ok – but too long CDs. But after looking at what the Chronomancer is getting for new utilities, it’s apparent there is a massive power gap. For a 45sec CD compare these two utilities.

Eye of the Storm
Movement speed is greatly increased. Superspeed (5s): Movement speed is greatly increased.
Radius: 600
Breaks stun
VS
Well of Precognition
Evade all attacks. Blur (1s): Evade all attacks.
Cannot be knocked down, pushed back, pulled, launched, stunned, dazed, floated, sunk, feared or taunted. Stability (1s): Cannot be knocked down, pushed back, pulled, launched, stunned, dazed, floated, sunk, feared or taunted.
Endurance Gained: 30
Number of Targets: 5
Pulses: 3
Duration: 3s
Radius: 240
Breaks Stun
Combo Combo Field: Ethereal
Range: 900

That is just a single example, but basically every new Chrono well makes the new Tempest shouts look silly. Perhaps there is a desire to give weaker skills to the ele, since it’s already a powerful class. But Mesmer is not exactly weak atm either.

Arcane Shield and Brilliance are useful and in my utility bar. The others are very lackluster.

I did mention it a page or two back. Yes, Rebound doesn’t effect the Elementalist. That is absolutely the first thing that has to change. Then the heal needs to be raised 2-3×. And then there needs to be a better baseline effect if the heal doesn’t proc. Like a 50% heal, or protection, or something. Raise the CD if necessary. A bad elite with a short CD is much worse than a good one with a long CD.

Serenawyr.1523:

I find it interesting that no one has mentioned the biggest problem I experienced with Rebound: It doesn’t effect the elementalist themselves.

Now regardless of how good a skill it would be otherwise (and, granted, I might have just experienced a bug), this makes it absolutely useless in solo play, and barely usable as a niche effect in dungeons/raids. The heal/buff need to affect the caster as well as targets around them.

I really like it. Traiting to speed up overloads seems like a really obvious solution to lots of the problems of an overload heavy build. I also think that your proposed new trait Intensity should decrease the overload recharge time, while staying in the same attunement. 50% is probably too much, not sure what the right numbers are there.

Glenstorm.4059:

While I think it is too late in the HoT development cycle for Anet to a minor trait overhaul, I know that they are still looking to overhaul Latent Stamina and Earthen Proxy, so with hope, I suggest the following:

-Merge Harmonious Conduit AND Speedy Conduit into Hardy Conduit as the new Master minor trait. Call it Harmonious Conduit.

-New Master Major Trait:

Intensity: Overload charge-up time reduced to 2.5 seconds.

-New Grandmaster minor trait:

-Tempestuous Escalation: Remaining in a single Attunement grants you a stacking bonus for each second you remain in that Attunement:

Fire: +1% Damage (10% cap)
Air: +2.5% Critical chance (25% cap)
Water: +2% Outgoing healing affecting other allies (20% cap)
Earth: +1% Condition damage (10% cap)

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

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

The warhorn sounds are embarrassingly bad. I’m really, really hoping it’s placeholder stuff.

Looks like I posted this to the incorrect thread, going to try again here.

I’ve been having fun running a D/Wh Tempest in PVP this weekend. I’m sure it’s far from optimal but anyway, for science right?

I do have some feedback on the Warhorn and shouts that I wanted to share.

• Fire 4: This is ok now but if it is nerfed to only share Might it will be pretty weak. In that case it should build WAY more Might but even then it’s such a one-trick pony.
• Fire 5: This isn’t responsive enough for PVP, it just comes out too slowly. (this is a theme with Warhorn! Slow velocity)
  *Air 4: It’s nice as a Swiftness source, but it comes out too slowly to impact enemies in PVP. Also the pull is far too short if you somehow manage to hit someone.
• Air 5: This doesn’t do enough. It moves too slowly to get where you want it to, but then too fast when it’s next to an enemy. It’s weak overall. I don’t like it’s targeting method either. I wouldn’t be sad if it was completely reworked
• Water 4: As another heal it’s ok, as a knockback it’s just too slow.
• Water 5: I personally like it. But the healing could be higher.
• Earth 4: It’s ok but protection should be longer.
• Earth 5: The animation is really bad (almost invisible) and it seems to move way too slowly, similar to Fire 5. Are there any other weapons in the whole game with such slow velocity? Why does Warhorn need to be saddled with this slow speed?

Shouts

• Eye of the Storm: This doesn’t do enough for it’s long CD. Maybe if it applied other boons in AOE. But I’m not sure which.
• Feel the Burn: I like it for the short cooldown and the aura. But it’s nothing special.
• Shock and Aftershock: A great effect. Too long CD. I think all shouts should be usable during an Overload though (this goes for Rebound too).
• Rebound: This needs to protect yourself as well as your team. The proc’d heal needs to be higher, like 3x more – and if you don’t proc it, you should still get a 50% heal. Forget the aura. Right now this could be a really good Elite but the numbers are far, far too low.

Overload

• Fire: Good damage, especially with a burning build. But I feel with the short range, the risk/reward of this overload isn’t great.
• Water: It doesn’t do enough. It takes too long to charge (5 sec when you need healing is too long), then while you are in it, it feels mostly like wasted time while you get bursted down. Initially I thought it was ok but the sad truth is in is woefully undertuned.
• Air: Great damage. Good range.
• Earth: Honestly I didn’t use it much, only when I had rangers attacking me or I really feared incoming CC. Average, I think.

Very well said.

Tempest damage must be increased a bit more, or we should tweak the following:

1. Harmonious Conduit: After Overload, damage increased by 10% for 20s
   It gives people a reason to Overload and try to pull the Overload through.
2. Unstable Conduit: Grant an Aura at the start of casting Overload
   It makes Aura share builds a bit more viable.
3. Shock and After Shock: Also break stun
   We need more on demand stun break for Tempest, since it doesn’t have much access to Stability. This skill is a great candidate, and it doesn’t sound OP either if we make it a stun break.
4. Eye of the Storm: Grant a Shock Aura
   Much needed. Since it only break stun, it’s pretty weak for its cooldown.
5. Overload Water: Increase base healing by 50% and reduce healing scale by 50%.
   We don’t want to create immortal Cleric Tempest. On the other hand, Zerker Tempest is pretty weak and needs better access for healing.
6. Lightning Orb: Make the orb follows the Ele instead of moving in a line. Reduce cast time to 1/4s
   The current version of the Orb is terrible with the damage. If it has damage increased by 50% it’s still not OP. If ANet don’t want to do that, then they should make it follows the Ele instead of moving in a straight line

I think it should be a 2.5sec wait instead of 5 for water.

I forgot to mention one other thing. For the trait Unstable Conduit I really think it should grant the aura at the start of the overload instead of the end.

If you run an aurasharing build and you get interrupted during your overload, not only does that waste your overload it also wastes your auras. I just think it’s too easy to counter. And since aurasharing seems to be one of the primary possible builds of tempest I think it needs to be a bit stronger.

Hey there,

I’ve been having fun running a D/Wh Tempest in PVP this weekend. I’m sure it’s far from optimal but anyway, for science right?

I do have some feedback on the Warhorn and shouts that I wanted to share.

• Fire 4: This is ok now but if it is nerfed to only share Might it will be pretty weak. In that case it should build WAY more Might but even then it’s such a one-trick pony.
• Fire 5: This isn’t responsive enough for PVP, it just comes out too slowly.
• Air 5: This doesn’t do enough. It moves too slowly to get where you want it to, but then too fast when it’s next to an enemy. It’s weak overall. I don’t like it’s targeting method either. I wouldn’t be sad if it was completely reworked
• Earth 4: It’s ok but protection should be longer.
• Earth 5: The animation is really bad (almost invisible) and it seems to move way too slowly, similar to Fire 5. Are there any other weapons in the whole game with such slow velocity?

Shouts

• Eye of the Storm: This doesn’t do enough for it’s long CD. Maybe if it applied other boons in AOE. But I’m not sure which.
• Shock and Aftershock: I think all shouts should be usable during an Overload.

BTW the stuff I didn’t mention (all overloads, other Warhorn skills and shouts) are mostly all positive As for the traits, they do probably need tweaking too but I’m not knowledgeable enough about all the trait lines to say how.