Guild Wars 2

Zenith.7301:

Xillllix.3485:

I think it’s quite the opposite. Having an elementalist play melee role is something that can only exist in PvE/PvP, certainly not in WvW.

Yeah, because celestial D/D eles are wholly absent from WvW rolls eyes so hard they become detached

He’s right you know. I mean besides roaming, when I did WvW and GvGs in a organized group, 1 or 2 D/D eles were considered a viable option on a gank squad, besides theif/mesmer and eviscerate warrior. Sure most ele’s would roll staff, but D/D had a niche in big groups too, so let for pinning down fragile gank targets and supporting the rest of the gank squad.

Kodiak.3281:

PlatinumMember.5274:

There is already a thread for feedback. I gotta say I am impress, you are sticking to your guns. I am not sure whether you are indenial or you truly believe the tempest is good despite video proof that it really isn’t.

I’m waiting for all these split posts to be merged into the one giant abomination thread personally.

Also it’s not our job to come up with solutions, Nearlight. It is literally the job of the game developer to come up with solutions. Our job is to provide feedback as to why things will or won’t work. In many ways showing the flaws of something is more important the a fluff post where pretending to the Developers job is in any way helpful. Pretending things are okay now means months and months of waiting for them to actually get fixed post release if they ever do.

I disagree, the point of constructive feedback is to show both why things are weak and how you would correct them. I believe that player driven solutions to problems are a more valuable and productive form of feedback than simply complaining.

The purpose of this thread is to offer ideas on how to fix things so that the developer’s will both see where things lack and what the players think would good solutions. Yes they make those decisions internally, but there have been many cases in the past where player feedback was instrumental in providing the developer’s with ideas for changes. I stand by my beliefs and I encourage you to stick to the more general feedback/impressions thread if you are unable to come up with any ways you would change something to make the Tempest, the elite specialization for a class you care about, an overall better specialization.

Also, I am in no way fanboying the devs in this post, so that part of your argument is just wrong, on top of being pointless towards discrediting my ideas.

Elementalist will offer much more boonshare for protection, that much is certain, and will have better capacity to heal allies (and break stun for them as well)

I didn’t expect wildfire to offer AoE boonremoval tough, that is really strong.

Mesmers will still be a bit better at boonsharing overall (since they have the signet proc phant trait), but I feel as though elementalists will it in a more supporty way, while mesmers will do it in a more offensive way, while retaining good burst damage.

PlatinumMember.5274:

There is already a thread for feedback. I gotta say I am impress, you are sticking to your guns. I am not sure whether you are indenial or you truly believe the tempest is good despite video proof that it really isn’t.

I ask that this thread remains a place for constructive feedback and discussion, not like the other thread where you and Kodiak just spew about how bad you think it is without offering any suggestions on how to improve it.

I think tempest is overall pretty strong looking, just that the shouts and traits need to be a bit buffed. Overall, I think the warhorn skills are really good for the most part, and I can easily see it being used over the offhands we already have. Mainly I think the warhorn just needs some CD reduction and a blast finisher somewhere. The only advantage OH dagger has over it is the fact that ring of fire stacks way too much burn (which should really be nerfed). If the warhorn had another blast finisher, I’d immediately rank it over focus in a cele build.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Tempest-Constructive-Feedback/first#post5315638

I’ve posted my own thread with detailed feedback for nearly every skill and trait, so please feel free to add your own comments there as well, so long as it is constructive rather than people ragging on what they saw.

Shouts: The shouts aren’t very good for a few reasons. Cantrips, particularly armor of earth will be necessary for tempest to be successful. Most of the shouts suffer from having too high of a cooldown in general for the effect they bring. Even with trooper rune synergy, I’m a bit concerned. The trait synergies are also underwhelming as there is no way to reduce their somewhat high cooldowns, and it would be nice to trait them to remove condis or provide boons such as stability.

Wash the Pain Away- The signet heal is already great with dagger/X, so wash the pain away would a bit less useful. Raise the healing or lower the cooldown to make it better.

Eye of the Storm- Its cooldown should be 30 seconds, as right now it looks like taking cantrips and the warhorn trait will just outclass it for AoE stunbreaking. Also, it should provide electirc aura to be consistent with the other shouts.

Rebound- The cooldown for this is perfect, I’d just buff the reduction to 33% or even 50% to make it a more gamechanging elite.

I’d also suggest adding a blast finisher to aftershock or flash freeze to make them more worthwhile.

Traits: Overall I liked what I say, but it can be improved

Minors: Overall good, just make hardy conduit last the full 5 seconds so its consistent with speedy conduit.

Adept: Probably the worst tier

Gale Song- This trait is fine

Latent Stamina- This trait is okay, but it needs to be more impactful, make it 25% endurance restored and make the vigor 5 seconds. Also does it apply to just allies? It was never specified, but it needs to apply to you as well.

Harmonious conduit- This trait is only good because of its synergy with other aura based traits in other lines

Master tier- Probably the best tier of this spec

Tempestuous Aria- This trait is decent, but it needs the weakness duration to be at least 5 seconds, and it needs to provide a way to reduce shout cooldowns, since with no trait to lower their gigantic cooldowns, a pure shout build looks lacking.

Earthen Proxy- Fine as is, good trait

Harmonious Conduit- Looks like a good trait, and offers a good choice between traits for this tier.

Grandmaster- Some interesting choices

Imbued Melodies- This trait looks really strong, and will make supporting engi/necro teammates very strong since they generally have poor stunbreak access. I’d also suggest making the trait add some sort of boon to yourself and/or allies when using a warhorn skill. A stack of stability would be ideal, since as before, you won’t want to give up cantrips to use as many shouts as you could, because the overlaods demand some form of stability.

Lucid Singularity- Looks decent but it already steps on the role of geomancer’s freedom. It needs more flavor, such as a single stack of stability for 3 seconds on overload, or resistance while channeling to make it a more competitive choice.

Edit: A more radical idea is to have the trait apply a breakbar to each of the channels, not just earth, but have earth not have a breakbar without lucid singularity. We already pay enough of a cost in terms of increased cooldown for elemental overloads, so I argue that a reliable way to cover channels without cantrips is needed for the ability to really be useful, considering how often interrupts can happen in pvp, and how the PbAoE nature of the overloads makes running out of a fight to channel them inefficient.

Elemental Bastion- This trait looks potentially powerful, I’d suggest raising the base heal slightly, but this could make aura (and shout) based builds really strong with the right trait synergy.

Edit: After thinking more, I’d suggest merging harmonious conduit and elemental bastion together as a GM trait, moving unstable conduit down to adept level, and filling the open spot in the master level with a damage modifier based trait, such as:

Tempest Offense: Overloaded attunements do 10% more damage, and the damage of each attunement overload channeled skill is boosted by 10%

This trait would give elementalists more reason to go into tempest in PvE with a damage modifier.

Overall I’d say tempest looks like it will be the king of support in GW2, just a few traits and shouts need to be buffed, especially to make them competitive with what the elementalist already has. The warhorn looks really strong and a new niche of boon control and breaking stun for allies looks very promising for the Tempest.

Please feel free to add feedback, however I only ask that you keep things constructive. Don’t complain about things, just say what you’d like to see changed.

Okay so I just watched to livestream and I am overall pretty impressed with how tempest will be, but there are a few things that I would change to make it an overall better elite specializtion.

First off, the overloads: These look really powerful. You won’t always use them, but I’m glad that the the effect seems to be worth it. The 5 second window before the overload becomes active is honestly the perfect frame of time to balance it appropriately. I am now much much less concerned about being constantly interrupted when channeling, because the effects during the channel seem worth it (especially the damage from fire/air) to the point that being able to get the final damage effect off doesn’t seem vitally imperative. And I also like how being interrupted, or even finishing the channel doesn’t force you out of the attunement like we originally expected, so we can still use skills in that attunement or things like water dodge rolls even if we are interrupted. Overall the overloads look great, and I have no concerns about their implementation, since eles are actually able to cover their casts.

I will say that arcane CD reduction should continue to work with overload recharges to promote overall synergy between traitlines.

The warhorn skills: These are my favorite part of the elite specialization, and for good reason, the warhorn has easily carved its own niche out of the other offhands available, and I think that all of the skills are great, but lets go over them in detail.

Fire: These skills open up a new (and mesmerlike) ability of boon manipulation

Heat Sync- basically this skill is functionally the same to the mesmer signet of inspiration. The boonshare mesmer builds use it great effect to provide support, and with this skill, Eles have the potential to even outdo it, this skill is that great. I would make no changes, aside from maybe making the animation more flashy.

Wildfire- The firefield for the warhorn set, it looks like a powerful skill to. It removes 1 boon per pulse, while applying damage and burning. Its 40 second cooldown is a tad high, and seeing how ring of fire (the best d/d ele skill) is only 15 seconds untraited and applies so much burning, I think wildfire’s CD should be 30 or 35 seconds instead, although funcitonally it is very competitve with ring of fire since the boon removal is really powerful.

Water: These skills provide mobile offensive support, which water has kind of lacked before

Tidal Surge: AoE healing and knockback, This skill is very powerful and looks to be perfectly balanced, 8 seconds of regen is also very powerful and gives it synergy with cleansing water

Water Orb: I’m not sure why this skill is considered unblockable. This is a good skill since its the first water field that a D/X build has ever been able to use, and they have a low CD blast in that attunement to use with it. Great skill

Air: Damage and AoE control

Cyclone- AoE pull, 25 second cooldown, looks very strong, I’d say its well balanced. Unblockable, and will probably be really strong at interrupting rezzes and stomps since you won’t be able to cover it with aegis.

Lighting Orb- Damage skill, good cooldown. We didn’t really see its effectiveness against single targets in the livestream (they said it’d be strong though). It looks like retal will wreck you, so use it smartly, overvall it gives good extra damage in teamfights from the look of it.

Earth: More boon control and blind

Sand Squall: Extends all boon duration by 2 seconds, and gives protection which is pretty nice. You’ll be able to give an unreal amount of protection with earth now. 2 seconds seems pretty strong enough, but would a percentage, say 33% be more useful? This skill also looks like it should be a blast finisher, since the warhorn is lacking in blasts of its own.

Dust Storm: AoE pusling blind field. Looks like a great skill. I’d like to see it work as a smoke field though, which would give more combo field potential, and the ability to use it to blast stealth like an engi or thief could.

Overall the warhorn skills seem to be the strongest part of the spec, I’d really only want to see a lower CD on wildfire, and an extra blast finisher in there somewhere.

Xillllix.3485:

Supreme.3164:

Why people think that overcharges are a “must use” type of skill? As far as I can see, the overcharge will be a choice, that will reward map and situation awareness and strong CC presence on the battlefield was something the ele always lacked , skills like : a cyclone that pull enemies in from stealth, an area pulsing blind are what I’m looking for the most

One thing is certain, if it uses the same F1-F4 keys it’s going to be really annoying, because everyone is mashing these keys multiple time when changing attunement in combat to change asap. It has to be F5.

You get a window of 5 seconds before you can start overloading, so that won’t be a problem at all! Its probably the best gap time they could give it.

I am so pumped! In part because I have Howler, and in part because I like positioning and support based gameplay, but D/D ele always felt a bit shallow because it was so rotation based. I could even play with my eyes closed in a 1v1 and still survive. Eles been more of an alt class than a main class for me, but I think I’ll spend a lot more time with it with tempest, but for now I’ll grind out the last 30 or so wins to get a champ title on it.

I will be posting constructive feedback on the live stream though, just to try and bolster some helpful discussion rather than whining.

Belial.9350:

Xillllix.3485:

Staff used to be way more viable than it is now, you used to be able to have a berserker amulet and manage to survive. Now even with a maurauder you get 1-2-shot by any average mesmer, warrior rampage, thief, etc.

Name one team that won a tournament with a zerk staff ele.

Well Zoose won ToL with fresh air ele, just to point out. He did play D/D for most of the games leading up to the finals though.

Sunshine.5014:

Yup, the Tempest spec will change the landscape quite a bit. Although it’s doesn’t change the fact that multiple Ele weapon has no built in defense, which requires Ele to trait into Arcana/Water to survive. The only one with defense mechanism is Focus.

The D/D Ele dilemma: not specing into Water/Arcana? No innate defense means you die in a few shots. Spec into Water/Arcana? Decent sustain that makes people rage.

Tempest won’t change the fact that D/D Ele still have almost no built in defense mechanism.

Yeah I agree with it. If anything tempest will just replace fire/earth in D/X builds, while simply providing incentive to have powerful gamechaing effects by not rotating through the same skills each and every time. I think that will be good for the class, but it still won’t work.

I’ll try to come up with ideas, but I’m thinking earth/water/tempest with stoneheart and like a sentinel’s amulet could work if the abilities will make it feel like the old shoutbow builds, but I’ll have to see when we know all the traits hahaha.

Whats the point of this post at all? The OP is now just talking about how hopeless glass cannon ele builds are in the current meta.

That may be true, but mesmer/thief are the kings of glass cannon builds right now. Engi and warrior are behind that only because of rampage and the tremendous downcleave they put out, and since they have blocks/invulns/stances to support them. Next is guard, medi guard isn’t very good right now since their relative survivability has been reduced, meanwhile their support builds are just more useful all around for any team.

Next we have well necro. Well necro isn’t very good right now because burst will end you, and deathshroud needs both toughness and vit before it can really help you survive, so cele is used instead. Also people can literally walk out of wells just as fast as they can walk out of your lava fonts. Lich is a poor mans rampage, and the whole build is shut down by careful use of blinds and dodges (D/P teef).

Ranger is next worse in my opinion, but mainly because its usefulness is map dependent. A pew pew ranger will excel on legacy of the foe fire, but will be very hindered on forest, as everything is much more enclosed with more ways to LoS. Overall settelers condi survival or carrion trap ranger just outclasses it in usefulness by far, and even then its limited by only being great in smaller fights.

Now we have zerker ele. Theres staff, fresh air S/F, and D/F. Ele’s base survivability is bad. Staff isn’t viable because its damage is all sustained rather than burst, and it doesn’t do that much damage outside of fire. Yeah the metoer shower will do massive damage in teamfights, but that is literally it. D/F is a little better for more actual burst damage, and some ways to survive, but it lacks mobility. S/F is about the same but with more range. Its biggest problem is that its hard to hit competent players with dragons tooth and phoenix, meaning that the smaller air burst is what you have to rely on. And once again, cele specs outclass it overall since celes have easy ways to heal themselves up to full to make their low health less of an issue.

So the bottom tier dps classes in pve, guard, necro, ele, and ranger, are all limited in one way by a crippling weakness that varies. In general though they lack easy to land burst damage and the survival skills needed to disengage or outplay someone. They also generally have more viable tanky specs that use celestial or an even tankier amulet to be nearly unkillable 1v1 and in teamfights.

So I hope this breakdown makes sense so that everyone understands why some classes work as zerk/marauder, while others don’t. Mainly its based on easy to land burst (or downcleave) and ways to survive, whether it be stealth or invulns or blocks or whatnot.

Staff is still viable. Its outclassed by support guard as a bunker and D/D ele as a bruiser but its still viable. Its not as nearly as outclassed as fresh air is by mesmer/thief though.

Watch the tempest livestream later, a lot of its mechanics seem to shake up at least the rotational play of D/D ele, and the warhorn skills could be awesome, so I’d suggest watching it to get an idea for the future of ele.

A couple of things:

PvE in this game is so kitten easy, it honestly doesn’t matter what you bring in my eyes (outside of say level 30+ fractals, which I don’t do anymore, or speed runs if you’re into that) as long as you try to max out your damage output as much as you can with your playstyle. And honestly, as an ele, as long as you use icebows like every fight, no ones going to care if you don’t use staff.

As for pvp, I think it will work. I’m expecting something similar to old shoutbow in terms of support and tankiness, but with more damage and CC. I hate that so many of you are being overwhelmingly negative, its honestly so despair-inducing to read. The livestream is soon, and I’m excited for it, I think the warhorn skills in particular (and non channel related traits) will seal the deal for tempest.

Still, I don’t think it will be perfect, so I will be righting a detailed post with feedback about each skill and trait to find contructive ways the devs could improve it without making it overpowered.

Finally, I’d just like to say that whining about how much you think something will suck is totally pointless. If you want to help, its much better to give constructive feedback that will help the devs finalize the profession, instead of meaningless complaining. I know they do listen to feedback in some regard, they even changed the elite reaper shout to give stability instead of resistance based on community feedback, along with a ton of changes for the revenant that the community helped to suggest.

Yeah since I got the fractal mace the other day I think I really want to use mallyx revenant a lot, but I’m not sure what the other weaponset would be.

If I go carrion (which is generally better than rabid for pvp, despite losing on crit procs from traits) then hammer wouldn’t be too bad in the offhand since I’ll have the power, but it still wouldn’t be ideal. Maybe sword or staff though, but I honestly don’t know.

It’d be easier to mix it up if I had a cele mallyx revenant, but without easy mightstacking (shiro trait isn’t enough imo) idk how good cele would be, and it would probably need jalis or ventari for sustain.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I suppose condi reaper’s might use it. 25 ticks of AoE poisoning isn’t too bad, making it a stronger albeit uncontrollable Corrosive Poison Cloud. The hard part about this is I’m not sure Condi Reaper is better than regular ole Condi necro.

It will be simply due to AoE dhuumfire that you can actually stack. Also damaging chill sort of helps a little, but not as much as the burn. Normal condi necro has kitten poor condi stacking except when fear chaining, transfering, or corrupting, but it will be a lot better on reaper due to that trait synergy.

Although condi necro as a whole needs major fixes to viable, especially in regards to fixing curses and raising the overall non burst condi pressure.

And I don’t think a condi reaper would have room for death nova anyway if taking curses, SR, and reaper

This is the best condition mesmer build for pvp in my opinion.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=VSZ-3l;0VPV1147wUF71;9;4VTW;0046038256;4Wwl6T;1l6Uwl6Uw1m

Basically it uses scepter/torch and staff with carrion amulet and uses dueling/illusions/inspiration.

You can run signet of isnpiration and the trait for it instead of mirror images and mental defense for more support, but without chaos, you don’t get tons of boon uptime, as this build is focused on bombing your targets with condition bursts from shatters.

Its probably the most cancerous mesmer build I’ve played so far. Carrion is chosen so it can contribute more direct damage to teamfights and make use of the high power scaling on scepter skills and mindwrack. Scavenging runes were chosen for max condi damage, and the sigils are flexible, but doom is reccomended on at least one set due to the lack of poison, while energy is just awesome for dodge clone generating.

This is a good post. I’ve noticed that without rampage, and without 100bladesing a rez attempt, warrior isn’t all that great or scary to me.

I’m glad you guys are excited for tempest, since most of the eles in the ele forums are doing everything they can to tell everyone how much they hate it, even though they don’t know full info yet :/

Well.., if you go ranked, you don’t have to worry about playing on troll maps like skyhammer.

But more full premades tend to queue ranked vs unranked, so you may run into teams that stomp everything with voice comms more frequently, but it won’t happen all the time.

I go back and forth between them, but I like ranked more just cuz I hate skyhammer and spirit watch a lot.

I’m going to test out a variant of this build with death magic instead of curses, since Unholy sanct should scale well with cele’s healing power. I’ll have a tad less boon corruption and condi pressure though, so I’ll have to see how it works out.

Shiki.7148:

nearlight.3064:

I also find it ironic how you’re jealous that the ele’s are getting more support when the Ele forums are upset and feel like they already have enough support.

I don’t really have a point here, just pointing out how different communities have different attitudes that are perplexing.

…That is EXACTLY my point. They get more support, which they didn’t need, while we don’t get support which we would have needed. It’s completely backwards. Not to mention they get even more fields combofields on WH. Or that Ele currently is top tier in all modes and has been for a long time. Half of Elite Specs have had an awesome theme with questionable execution currently, giving “more of the same” instead of actually changing things up. Guardians get what they needed : a very good 1200 range weapon, straight upgrades to their class mechanic, and traps that might be pretty useful. Mesmer got a freaking strong new F5, and wells which gives them a chance to be wanted for more than portals in dungeons as they are damage, cc and support all in one. Necro…gets to be a close range, slow as kitten high damage thing, without getting any active defenses to actually survive that type of playstyle in a world where shatter mesmers dominate and chill ate 3 nerfs in a row before it is even out, and eles get more support and fields on top of their already good enough support and fields (meaning it is relatively useless), and a class mechanic change that has a major drawback and is easily interruptable (except Earth maybe).

It’s currently 50/50 on the Elite Specs (only if they exactly stac as they are of course…there have been some changes to the Reaper shouts apparently, but it still isn’t enough. The CDs and casttimes are (for the most part) still too long, and “get more the more enemies you hit” is still terrible – it should be “3 base + up to 2 more if you hit more than 3 enemies”.)

My rebuttal is that elementalist is so great at everything in the game that there truly wasn’t something that they were woefully deficient in (like how necros have no cleave) that an elite spec could alleviate.

Sure theres burst damage, but thats there on the scepter even if it does suck.

I feel like the warhorn is going to allow stafflike fields and AoE CC with the daggers sustained dps and PbAoE, while the overload mechanic provides an incentive to not always attunement dance.

I remember fighting naked necros in skyhammer right after the dhuumfire patch two years ago.. They killed me so hard.

Its times like these that being a semi-Necro main that also mains mesmer and ele pay off. And who knew that having a norn ele with wolfy cultural armor would pay off in the long run either?

So that this is an actual discussion, what warhorn skin are you going to rock on your tempest, if you choose to use one?

Edit: Merged into this megathread… oh well

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Uh.. I don’t know if this was mentioned but, you’re not rooted when overloading. In fact, you gain swiftness/protection. If staff ele can pull off meteor shower and dagger churning earth.. I’m not too worried about the occasional interrupt.

Hopefully they’ll reduce the cool down on overloading so it only locks you out for 10s or so.

Thank you for bringing the multiclass voice of reason to these forums. And yeah traits should reduce the lock out time. We know 15 down from 20 from a tempest trait, and maybe arcane traits can reduced that further to 12 or so, but even then eles have actual skills that can cover their casts unlike say a necromancer or a mesmer that doesn’t take stab mantrs, stab trait, or signet trait (most don’t).

Argol Vazin.3061:

nearlight.3064:

Argol Vazin.3061:

Leo G.4501:

My perspective on what this spec brings to the players is effect for sacrifice, that sacrifice being holding off on swapping attunements to get a greater effect. Many players complained that the only viable way to play ele was attunement dancing, to the point that people will blindly say you are WRONG if you don’t dance your attunement rotation. Some people don’t like that spammy style and want a more calculated high-effect type of play. Currently you can’t really do that on ele, you need to swap and throw down your high cooldowns, not hold off and overcharge skills for greater effect. Basically, there is no advantage to holding off on certain skills and it’s all about what skills are off cooldown and which attunement they are in.

Staff, you are basically the master of AoE and you camp fire on Staff since you just have massive AoE DPS, add in ice bow/glyph of storms. arcane blast for fury and your good to go. not to mention with constant lava font there is no end to the might stacking.

Camp water for healing support…if healing actually meant anything.

Tempest offers nothing that staff alone already does, in fact the entire elite spec could be converted to a single elite skill that would be better for us as a whole.

Elemental fury (Formaly tornado form): Unleash the fury of the elements in spectacular ways based on your current attunment. Becomes stronger the longer you are in an attunment before using it.
As you can imagine. each of the overcharges whatever they’re called would be represented in this single elite skill

The way I see it the warhorn will bring staff like AoE damage and CC skills that will be useful to use with the sustained damage and PbAoE of an MH dagger, which we couldn’t do before. In pve anything works so whatever, but in pvp this could be a cool new combo since the staff builds had powerful support for pvp, but the dagger builds always outclassed it in damage and flexibility, especially in smaller fights.

So I agree with Leo G.

All this spec needs to be viable is anything that makes it better, or as good as blinding ashes and the fire can trip trait. So far we know that getting more mileage out of protection and the ability to use game changing abilities every once in a while seems like a fair tradeoff so far compared to the fire line in cele pvp builds.

I’m personally excited to see what traits it offers that don’t apply to the channels.

There is your mistake, you are looking at it purely PvP.
Purely PvP, the warhorn is not going to outclass D/F or D/D in fact using Tempest and the overcharges in PvP is the stupidest idea ever “hey guys. please don’t interrupt me while I do a thing”

and of course in PvP Staff is still a contender anyway so Warhorn would still be outclassed

Well D/D is better than staff right now in PvP, but once we know the warhorn skills it could be possible that D/WH outclasses staff and D/F at the very minimum, which is likely, and maybe outclass D/D.

With staff you get great CC but low damage unless your enemies stand in your AoEs (they won’t). MH dagger takes care of that problem while things like the warhorn air cyclone will still provide AoE CC, and it sounds like you get an fire andwater field that moves from you in water, where OH dagger and OH focus do not have a water field that can be blasted. It sounds like the earth skills will provide AoE blind with sand squall, which we can do with blinding ashes or glyph of storms, but not staff and D/D (sans trait or glyph) specifically.

At least eles have ways to cover their casts, such as with armor of earth and arcane shield, unlike something like a necromancer, and you ptobably won’t be overcharging more than once per minute anyway.

Guardians can also give you stability on a low cooldown.

I think it will be viable, but that will depend on how good the traits and skills are when we get specific information about them.

Notsoperky.4291:

Lots of pretty animations to make it even more impossible to see anything or dodge enemy damage, what’s not to like? Lag- never mind, at least it’s pretty!

Can the overcharge be channeled whilst moving? Otherwise standing still for 3-5 seconds in any sort of pvp is usually termed ‘suicide’. Does the range even warrant it’s use?

I feel this has been designed by a dev who glanced into spvp and saw only d/d eles, without considering wvw or staff eles at all.

Can’t wait for some organised group feedback to see how it works in practice.

Yes you can move while channeling. The articles mention traits that give you swiftness while channeling (supersede would be better imo) as well as protection healing and immunity to chill/immob.

Shiki.7148:

Bhawb.7408:

Skoigoth.9238:

Don´t get me wrong, I kinda admire your enduring optimism (no sarcasm) in the face of Anets stubbornness/cluelessness/incompetence to properly address the problems our class suffers from since launch.

Its less optimism that they will fix us, and more acceptance that what we have might be the best we’ll ever get, so I’ll try to make the best of it.

Also, ANet has listened to us a lot, especially nowadays. Just because they don’t implement everything doesn’t mean they don’t listen, they don’t have the resources to do everything we ask, or even a small amount, and then the balance team just is on Mars when it comes to understanding Necro. However pretty much every good change they’ve made recently was due to direct feedback, so they do listen, and Reaper was made in response to a lot of our issues with the base profession.

Give me a single example of when Anet listened to us please. Teamsupport? They went with pure healing/siphoning and proceed to make the Revenant the one with the best heals in the game aswell as giving eles even more, and more valuable, support. Axe? Still Trash, they didn’t even fix the animation. Condition application? Still not even 1/10th of what other classes can do. Active defenses? Nope, not a single one. Letting us start with LF at the beginning of a PVP-Match? Nada. Blast finishers ? “they don’t fit”, so nope. Minion AI/Pathing? Still in a state not even found on private servers. Ways to keep enemies from escaping us in fights? No. Response to our feedback on how terrible MoC and Plague and CC as corruptions are? Not a single word.

Sorry, but all I see is Anet ignoring blatant problems because they have 0 understanding of just how much they kittened this profession up, because not a single one of them plays it. Even the dev resposible for Necros doesn’T play Necromancer – how the hell would he even know what the kitten he is doing? They said it themselves, no matter how much they “playtest” *COUGH*plague suicide got noticed by numbers alone COUGH their stuff it is already overtaken a few minutes after launch. Yet they refuse to have a Moderator/CM for each profession forum whose job it is to skim through feedback and relay it to the devs…And don’t come with the Forumspecialist, they neither listen nor provide correct info to him/her, and change some stuff 24 hours before release without a single word.

I also find it ironic how you’re jealous that the ele’s are getting more support when the Ele forums are upset and feel like they already have enough support.

I don’t really have a point here, just pointing out how different communities have different attitudes that are perplexing.

Thanos for the advice everyone. Do you guys have any advice that’s useful for soloq beyond what was already said?

Empty Sky.6354:

nearlight.3064:

The main thing that needs to be nerfed is ring of fire. Before that skill was fine. You wouldn’t be totally kittened over from having to go though it. Now with 3 stacks of burning every time you go through it, its absolutely insane damage. Why doesn’t flamewall from the focus apply a similar amount of burning stacks when people walk through it. I mean its much easier to not have to walk through, but it does much less damage.

If they made ring of fire apply just one stack of burning, it would be fine.

How is it ele’s fault or anyone else’s,if you keep going through Ring Of Fire ??!?!?!?!? It has radius of 240,giving you plenty of space to move inside it. You can even dodge inside it,if you are melee class. If you are ranged class,then keep the kittening range. Even if ele closes on you,puts Ring Of fire around you, go once outside of it,if you really need to and don’t go back in…problem solved.
Static field has radius of 180 (now maybe 240 ?,) and you can also move freely inside it. Are you gonna cry,that you get shocked/stunned every time you wanna get out or in of Static Field. This is purely l2p thing,if you keep going in and out of Ring Of Fire.

What I mean is I don’t understand how flamewall on focus stacks burning so kittenty in comparison.

If it were 2 stacks it would be fine.

And if you stay inside the fire ring the Ele will kitten you up with his earth skills.

Although I guess it’s fine if it doesn’t get changed, since with strafing and plague signet I can easily put 11 stacks back on that Ele by the time he leaves water attunement.

I don’t understand why they made ring of fire stack so much more burning, and in an easier way than flamewall. It’s kind of buzzard to me.

Argol Vazin.3061:

Leo G.4501:

My perspective on what this spec brings to the players is effect for sacrifice, that sacrifice being holding off on swapping attunements to get a greater effect. Many players complained that the only viable way to play ele was attunement dancing, to the point that people will blindly say you are WRONG if you don’t dance your attunement rotation. Some people don’t like that spammy style and want a more calculated high-effect type of play. Currently you can’t really do that on ele, you need to swap and throw down your high cooldowns, not hold off and overcharge skills for greater effect. Basically, there is no advantage to holding off on certain skills and it’s all about what skills are off cooldown and which attunement they are in.

Staff, you are basically the master of AoE and you camp fire on Staff since you just have massive AoE DPS, add in ice bow/glyph of storms. arcane blast for fury and your good to go. not to mention with constant lava font there is no end to the might stacking.

Camp water for healing support…if healing actually meant anything.

Tempest offers nothing that staff alone already does, in fact the entire elite spec could be converted to a single elite skill that would be better for us as a whole.

Elemental fury (Formaly tornado form): Unleash the fury of the elements in spectacular ways based on your current attunment. Becomes stronger the longer you are in an attunment before using it.
As you can imagine. each of the overcharges whatever they’re called would be represented in this single elite skill

The way I see it the warhorn will bring staff like AoE damage and CC skills that will be useful to use with the sustained damage and PbAoE of an MH dagger, which we couldn’t do before. In pve anything works so whatever, but in pvp this could be a cool new combo since the staff builds had powerful support for pvp, but the dagger builds always outclassed it in damage and flexibility, especially in smaller fights.

So I agree with Leo G.

All this spec needs to be viable is anything that makes it better, or as good as blinding ashes and the fire can trip trait. So far we know that getting more mileage out of protection and the ability to use game changing abilities every once in a while seems like a fair tradeoff so far compared to the fire line in cele pvp builds.

I’m personally excited to see what traits it offers that don’t apply to the channels.

Actually Exiton, in the last esl mime and happy kid both ran zerker amulet mantra memser om the same team and they came closer to taking a map off of the abjured than any other team so far, so double mesmer can possibly work.

What is the best strategy for this map? I am suffering from much frustration, since no one on my team, premade or pug ever wants to kill the enemy treb, so then we lose. I’ll try to burst it down (if I’m not playing a condi spec) once or twice at the start of the match, but it just gets hopeless when they continually repair it time and time again, especially with teef/mesmer mobility.

So what are the best strategies in both pug and premade for dealing with an enemy team that constantly repairs trebuchets?

rotten.9753:

nearlight.3064:

Yeah I knew it would be shouts, I predicted shouts and warhorn long before the reveal because the first article about elite specs in April said “at least one profession will be getting a full set of 6 shouts”. And I was right, based on that one sentence

Did tempest got a full set?

Rebound! – As the only arcane skill available to the tempest, this shout affects all allies around you and causes their next ability to have a 25% reduced recharge.

What does it even mean? It has two types or what?

Yes its a full set, and yes rebound is a shout. It just falls under an arcane elemental style, much like freeze is water and feel the burn is fire. Idk if recharge traits for water/fire/arcane skills will actually effect the shouts though, but its possible.

Fay.2357:

nearlight.3064:

when you were smart about when and where to do it?

Aka, in stealth and off to the side. Eles generally play right in the middle, and don’t have stealth. They have stability of course, but that’s limited.

Yeah that makes sense. The staff/gs builds used in tourneys right now havent really used stealth at all, but being able to use staff 2 while charging them is really helpful.

Thats why I hope eles will have some reliable way to cover their casts that isn’t on a long cooldown, since I think its a really cool spec, and more importantly the howler I have on my necro would look so hawt on my norn ele. But yeah, I think all the elite specs we’ve seen have been at least cool in traits, if not skills.

This ironic, since right now the elementalist forums are being pretty upset over tempest. I’m personally excited for it though since I have howler and it looks like it will be a fusion of staff Ele level control and D/D ele bruiser gameplay.

Mainy of them seem to think that the overcharges will get constantly interupted, but I don’t believe that. I mean how many of you had to charge mantras in the middle of a teamfight? Did you get constantly interrupted during that channel when you were smart about when and where to do it?

Chaos, do you have a link to the exact boonsharing build you run?

Oh yeah I remember this now! I like your shout names better than the ones they came up with lol.

The main thing that needs to be nerfed is ring of fire. Before that skill was fine. You wouldn’t be totally kittened over from having to go though it. Now with 3 stacks of burning every time you go through it, its absolutely insane damage. Why doesn’t flamewall from the focus apply a similar amount of burning stacks when people walk through it. I mean its much easier to not have to walk through, but it does much less damage.

If they made ring of fire apply just one stack of burning, it would be fine.

BlackBeard.2873:

Azel.4786:

BlackBeard.2873:

There appears to be some interesting synergy with fresh air

I will be honest, why is there a synergy with fresh air?

I could understand if you didn’t have to sit in an attunement for a while to be able to begin channeling, but as currently shown, it just doesn’t seem to have that. Fresh Air is all about jumping back into Air, not camping it for a length of time to then be able to start doing lightning strikes similar to Glyph of Storms.

And yes, impressive how even in the elite specialization the elite skill was trash. It seems like that is an internal directive at ANET.

When traveling between points, you are usually camping air for the +25% move-speed, so perhaps you can use the over-load at the start of fight for added burst, and again use it periodically in teamfights in between swaps to other attunements. It is hard to tell without knowing the EXACT timings and mechanics.

However, the BEST synergy would be some kind of tanky melee build, which is really hard to get a long channel off. It just seems so confused to me. This is probably why they had to take such a long break in specializations – even though they had these thematic concepts, and maybe even animations in mind, the class designers seem to be struggling to implement something fun and useful. This goes doubly for the ele dev, who we all know is completely lost in regards to designing the class.

Yeah both you and Azel bring up good points. It’ll only be worth using tempest if the rewards for the channeling, and the new skills are really all that good and worth the difficulty in channeling, which I hope that they would be.

From the article, when Karl was talking about the combo he’d do it sounded like tempest will have a lot of offensive pressure mixed in with that support, so that pressuring your enemies would be enough to put them on the defensive so you could have the gap of time needed to get a channel off. And even if it does turn out that ever teef and mes will use their instant interrupts on us, the earth channel will still be useful at the very least since it gets the revamped form of defiance.

Also Karl basically said that they overcharge channel for earth would be available in his combo after using all the non auto skills in earth attunement, so I don’t think we’ll necessarily have to worry about wasting time to autoattack before we can start a channel off, which would make it a lot more useful imo.

Overall I’d say that I’m optimistic about everything we know so far, and I’m excited to learn more. There have been downfalls to previous elite spec reveals, such as all the dragonhunter negativity, and concerns about the slowness of the reaper greatsword (its slower than medi guard hammer). But I think all of those things will take on different strenghts and weaknesses as people learn how to play with them.

Azel.4786:

nearlight.3064:

I play mesmer and it’s very easy to get a mantra charge off in a fight without stealth, since you shouldn’t get CCed unless you’re being directly focus fired, and even then you have the bonus 600 armor and phase retreat to help you. I works fine. I play the class so I know. And yes you will have to use positioning to recharge them in combat alot, especially with the mantra heal skill.

Elementalists should be fine because cele eles are among the last class to get focus fired in a teamfight because their sustain is so high. If you and your team are any good at teamfights charging the overload will be quite easy. I have full confine that it will work well in practice because charging mantras in combat works out so easily.

Do you know where the elementalist sustain comes from? It comes from high protection uptime and high amount of healing from Signet of Renewal, Soothing Mist, Water attune swapping and other healing skills – it does not come from a buff to toughness like mesmer mantra channeling.

Elementalist are getting protection with that minor trait, sure, but that is just a minor piece of their sustain – that can even be stripped away with a boon removal.

You still do not heal from Signet of Renewal,
Soothing mist is also unlikely if not in water (due to the time you need to be in an attunement to begin channeling)
Unless water channel you don’t get healing from water attune swapping or other healing skills while you channel.

Also, mesmer preparing mantras is a LOT different than how elementalist will need to do it:

- Mesmer tries to go for cover and stay out of the tick of the fight, because once they are done channeling they can use the mantra at the time it is most convenient.

- Elementalist will need to stay in the tick of the fight because: (a) that is how you will buff your allies; and (b) once the channel is over the effect stays rooted – i.e., if you move to the fight only when channel is over congrats, you discarded your overload for nothing.

Completely different mindset in using the ability.

Further, if you overload water and swap out, congrats for 15s you are locked out of a lot of healing severely reducing your sustain and AoE heal abilities (oh and you have those today btw).

There’s also a trait that heals you per second during each tick of charging the overload so I think the loss of signet heal is fine. Your complaint about the differences between mesmer and Ele positioning in teamfights is valid though, but I think it would still work if you had someone else who can tank a point. Also you can LoS and change terrain pretty easily on many, if not most points in the game, so you wouldn’t have to completely peel out of a fight while channeling.

Anyway we’ll see when we get video footage of the skills. It looks powerful, and you can do normal rotation spam like you do now, until you find the need to channel for a huge effecr.

On someone’s stream the other day someone mentioned a drinking game where they’d take a shot every time a mantra of distraction went off on you.

Yeah you’d be kittened good after a couple minutes.

Kodiak.3281:

nearlight.3064:

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

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

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

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

I play mesmer and it’s very easy to get a mantra charge off in a fight without stealth, since you shouldn’t get CCed unless you’re being directly focus fired, and even then you have the bonus 600 armor and phase retreat to help you. I works fine. I play the class so I know. And yes you will have to use positioning to recharge them in combat alot, especially with the mantra heal skill.

Elementalists should be fine because cele eles are among the last class to get focus fired in a teamfight because their sustain is so high. If you and your team are any good at teamfights charging the overload will be quite easy. I have full confine that it will work well in practice because charging mantras in combat works out so easily.

Laraley.7695:

nearlight.3064:

Laraley.7695:

So they gave ele might and burn – already an issue and has plenty
cleanse and rege – already an issue and has plenty
Protection and cripple – first is an issue and has plenty

Yeah, this is so new. I mean seriously, ele totally doesn’t have that. It brings a completely new stuff to the class. I knew I didn’t have to wait to know this is gonna be bad.

Edit: Oh yeah and boonsharing, ele totally cannot do that.
And kittening shouts. Why? Just why?

Wow, I’m actually even more disappointed than I was.

Like I’ve said countless times before the elementalist is such a well rounded profession that it wasn’t in any dire need of anything new unlike the necros with no cleave that got a GS. Yes the burst builds suck, but thery’re not a huge weakness to the overall viability of the profession since we can just run them.

Why don’t people realize that the overcharge mechanic adds a new and potentially gamechanging way to play ele isntead of just dancing though attunements as rotations?

Its a new playstyle whether you like it or not.

Okay, I’m really in a bad mood, but could you stop fanboying ANet so much? You’re the only one I keep seeing defending it. Just look at it. It does exactly what ele can do already, but it has a kitten mechanics. What’s good about it? Why would you take this over attunement swap which does exactly the same and doesn’t lock you in one attunement?

No point arguing with you, you’re gonna keep saying how awesome it is. Well, there you go. I know the skills and I’m even more disappointed. Happy now?

I just like pointing out the weak spots in other people’s arguments. I like arguing, it’s fun for me. And I like the elite spec for many reasons so it gives me something to argue about.

As for fanboying the devs, being a dev is a lot of work and stress.. They deserve to be recognized for their hard work in making this game better and newer and fresher.

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

You guys are a vocal minority. Just be open minded as we get more info and when we eventually get to play this for real, and you may actually turn out to like Tempest, even if it wasn’t what you hoped for.

Laraley.7695:

So they gave ele might and burn – already an issue and has plenty
cleanse and rege – already an issue and has plenty
Protection and cripple – first is an issue and has plenty

Yeah, this is so new. I mean seriously, ele totally doesn’t have that. It brings a completely new stuff to the class. I knew I didn’t have to wait to know this is gonna be bad.

Edit: Oh yeah and boonsharing, ele totally cannot do that.
And kittening shouts. Why? Just why?

Wow, I’m actually even more disappointed than I was.

Like I’ve said countless times before the elementalist is such a well rounded profession that it wasn’t in any dire need of anything new unlike the necros with no cleave that got a GS. Yes the burst builds suck, but thery’re not a huge weakness to the overall viability of the profession since we can just run them.

Why don’t people realize that the overcharge mechanic adds a new and potentially gamechanging way to play ele isntead of just dancing though attunements as rotations?

Its a new playstyle whether you like it or not.

PlatinumMember.5274:

nearlight.3064:

Cele ele has actual weaknesses? The only one I can think of is chill kittening with cooldowns.

Also if you go on reddit you’ll realize that pretty much all the complainers about this spec are like 30 people just sitting here on the forums. People on reddit are as a whole much more positive about the elite spec, meaning that the oppostition of people on this forum is nothing more than a salty vocal minority whose complaints won’t change anything.

Who cares about reddit? A lot of people like shinny new things, they don’t think or worry about the details.

A few people were talking about how protection and swiftness will prevent you from being interrupted. The point being redditors are sheepies who are easily manipulated.

Who cares about the gw2 forums? On the forums the only people talking are the vocal few complaining about the changes and the brave few (like me) defending it. On reddit, there are 100s of comments that support everything we know about tempest so far, and only a few that are skeptical or attacking it.

My point: Only a few people are really against tempest. Even phanta (top pvp ele in the game) on his stream, says that tempest looks like it will have the tools to be very strong so far. Hes only really concerned about how the finished picture will look about shouts vs. cantrips.

Cele ele has actual weaknesses? The only one I can think of is chill kittening with cooldowns.

Also if you go on reddit you’ll realize that pretty much all the complainers about this spec are like 30 people just sitting here on the forums. People on reddit are as a whole much more positive about the elite spec, meaning that the oppostition of people on this forum is nothing more than a salty vocal minority whose complaints won’t change anything.

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

nearlight.3064:

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Are you seriously implying that staff can be used as a single target ranged burst weapon?

I’ll spell it out for you: A ranged single target burst weapon has to have fast cast times, fast projectile speed and very little aoe because otherwise the single target damage will suffer.

As you said most of the scepter single target burst comes from switching to fresh air which isn’t a scepter mechanic and actually works better with dagger.

Dragons Tooth isn’t burst because it needs like 2 seconds to do it’s damage and is so ultra easy to evade – just move, don’t even have to dodge. Phoenix is burst, but only in melee range because again it is much to slow to hit moving targets at range.

No I’m saying staff fills the niche of a general long ranged weapon, and that scepter fills the niche of a ranged burst weapon. You argue that the scepter sucks, and that may be true in practice, but it doesn’t mean that the scepter isn’t a ranged burst weapon, because thats what it is. It may be flawed, but if you land the hard to land fire skills and use fresh air bursts, you are in fact bursting someone from a ranged position.

And honestly if you were in the camp that wanted sword as the weapon for the spec, I really doubt sword would be a ranged burst weapon, just saying.

Fair enough, but my point still stands: Eles already have amazing support and cc in staff. Even you count scepter as ranged single target burst we all know that’s not what it really does – even in pvp lightning hammer is used over scepter attacks. So the elite spec still should have been about burst because that’s what we lack. Or they could have fixed scepter which they don’t seem to do.

And of course for burst to be viable you need some defense so you don’t instantly die with zerker/marauder amulet. Yet none of the new elite utilities offer any defensive value, nothing even CLOSE to cantrips.

So we get an elite spec with about the same support as staff and way less defense than what we already have? How can anyone be excited about that?

P.S. I was never in any “camp” and I couldn’t care less about what weapon style we get – what’s important are the weapon skills and what they are used for.

Because tempest should give you the group support of a staff and the damage, condi pressure, and PbAoE of the MH dagger. It sounds like it will be merging the staff and D/D playstyles with a touch of shoutbow, thus making it close range support, damage, CC, and area denial. The only skill on MH dagger that isn’t useful is air 2. Plus it sounds like fields from the warhorns will move with you. And it will reward you for staying in an attunement for a while instead of going though a rotation constantly.

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Are you seriously implying that staff can be used as a single target ranged burst weapon?

I’ll spell it out for you: A ranged single target burst weapon has to have fast cast times, fast projectile speed and very little aoe because otherwise the single target damage will suffer.

As you said most of the scepter single target burst comes from switching to fresh air which isn’t a scepter mechanic and actually works better with dagger.

Dragons Tooth isn’t burst because it needs like 2 seconds to do it’s damage and is so ultra easy to evade – just move, don’t even have to dodge. Phoenix is burst, but only in melee range because again it is much to slow to hit moving targets at range.

No I’m saying staff fills the niche of a general long ranged weapon, and that scepter fills the niche of a ranged burst weapon. You argue that the scepter sucks, and that may be true in practice, but it doesn’t mean that the scepter isn’t a ranged burst weapon, because thats what it is. It may be flawed, but if you land the hard to land fire skills and use fresh air bursts, you are in fact bursting someone from a ranged position.

And honestly if you were in the camp that wanted sword as the weapon for the spec, I really doubt sword would be a ranged burst weapon, just saying.

I offer this old thread as proof to support my claims that the scepter is a ranged burst weapon. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Highest-Possible-Burst/first