Guild Wars 2

posthumecaver.6473:

nearlight.3064:

Hahaha and the people on the ele forums thought that tempest would never see the light of day in high level pvp. How about them apples.

You know, only reason people play Tempest, an old trait in the water line, take out the Aura Sharing, let see how many people will play Tempest, when OP perma protection/perma fury/constant healing/perma aura/perma swiftness/disappears.

Aura sharing was mehhh before specialization patch now OP like hell….let see what happens when it gets 10s ICD, which I am sure on the way.

Then everyone would switch to cleansing water/torrents tempest with soldier runes and just run full aura-shouts to cleanse condis on their team by a ridiculous margin.

It would honestly be the next shoutbow warrior from old cele meta in an ele skin. I’ve played it a few times, and while aura-share is way more fun, this build negates all the damage that condi builds can really do in teamfights, which I think is a bit unhealthy for the game.

Dragonhunter is the best counter because they have so much unblockable damage and CC and have solid ranged pressure (mesmers have always relied on staff/gs kiting against dps guard to not instantly drop but this won’t work anymore).

Revenant and condi reaper can also delete it for similar reasons but the matchup is better for them.

My friend plays dd tempest with water/arcana and cantrips and torrents. I think you could take shouts instead to, and I think earth would work well too (I use earth for my warhorn builds)

Celestial amulet for sure, probably focus on mightstakcing so battle/energy, durability or leadership or strength runes. I’d say either cantrips or shouts could work but I’d take cleansing water instead of aurashare.

NeXeD.3042:

Is it only the copy that goes through evades?

The copy got removed after BWE2. The skill now simply pulses torment. The pulstating pestilence GM is supposed to still copy conditions, but its bugged to be the same as the new embrace the darkness and is a laughable pulse of torment, unless they bothered to fix it, which I havent heard that they did.

I haven’t heard of anything going through evades from mallyx’s set, just some unblockable skills, but I’ll test some things around to be sure.

SolarDragon.7063:

I think part of the problem is that lots of pub players use condi builds, which rev is stupidly weak to unless you kitten yourself with Mallyx. Most of the ESL groups don’t use condi much at all because there are too many counters as a whole. So ESL players can kitten out revs all over the place, but as a pub player you run into all the condi classes which just DoT you down. Quite quickly in the case of any of the major burners.

thats wrong. condi-chill reaper is very highly represented amongst the EU scene at the moment and a bit on NA, and so is condi-rev to a lesser extent.

Shoutbow doesn’t exist and people are still using aurashare instead of celansing water tempest so most people arent running builds that spam AoE condi clear anymore.

I just want to say Jana, this is getting ridiculously off-topic. No wonder anet can’t take these forums as a serious institution of balance.

Jana.6831:

You’re right, then I don’t know what this bubble is that mesmers almost constantlyy have around them – but really: I can’t land a backstab and since they often don’t even know I’m there that thing is definitively passive.

The bubble is most likely the channeled shield block. I’m not sure what their can use that’s unblockable, but dragonhunter and revenant and reaper can attack and CC through it no problem.

OP you might as well be my best friend ever.

I grew tired of the signet builds back in august, so to see more of the same is just saddening to me, along with the complete death of reaper build diversity with almost every builds taking spite and soul reaping.

I’ve run condi reaper with curses and master of corruption and with shouts and I honestly think those give condi reaper way more sustain and better spike pressure.

And yes, vampirism signet healing for barely more than 4K on celestial with a crappy active is a fail cele build to me.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

You don’t need to crit to break DS.

Y’all need to L2P seriously. NONE of the professional players have any issue with this.

You surveyed them all?

I’d wager that many of them do have an issue with it. Not in its strength, but on its polar nature. It’s either winning the fight for you, or worthless. I’d bet that most high level players would like to see it become more applicable against Power builds and in teamfights (conditions are big deals in both), and would happily trade the auto-win vs. condition builds to get it.

That said, neither of us will know.

I know a lot of high level players and most of them genuinely prefer using stone heart to diamond skin. It’s just a better trait and helps tank damage and get rezzes. The thing is it’s not a viable trait to use without cleansing water and torrents for cleansing, so many default to diamond skill of the needs of their team comp prefers powerful auras. It’s a very juicy tradeoff. And as I’ve said elsewhere, the amount of AoE cleanse that build has with stone heart tacked on makes diamond skin look irrevelant. You just can’t share shocking aura with it (or as much protection), which is something else a lot of teams highly value.

messiah.1908:

revenant doesnt need third party to do his dmg while condi mesmer needs them (illusions) so with aoe some illusion might not proc the torment and confusion even with superspeed

may this be the reason why revenant get picked over mesmer

the burning and poison on revenant is hardly noticable like on mesmer and while rev relay on energy and cd mesmer only on cd (and short one with alacrity)

Yeah with vipers rev Ive spiked people with up to 17 torment stacks and 15 confusion stacks from spamming kitten like banish enchantment or chaining echoing eruption with embrace the darkness and autoattacks.

Chronomancer condi pressure can still rival rev I think, but as you’ve said its iced to shatters actually landing, and revenant is a lot harder to take down than chronomancer using a glassy amulet.

Jana.6831:

apharma.3741:

Jana.6831:

At least mesmers, partly guards, eles have got passive invulnerabilities – so it’s not in their hands when to “spam them”. Oh and scrapper – constantly invulnerable.

You’ve said this before. In the interests of staying constructive is there any chance you can list these passive invulnerabilities, especially the ones that are not in their hands?

Edit: it’s the first and second minor in the chaos line

Wat. Regen and protection are hardly considered passive invulnerability.

So what if chronomancer can chain together sword evades, shield block and evade well for a while, they tend to melt to focus fire once those cooldowns are all up.

Fat Disgrace.4275:

nearlight.3064:

sephiroth.4217:

My thoughts???

My thoughts is that Diamond Skin is utterly useless. THE ONLY REASON it’s effective, is because Tempest Aura builds that spit out protection and heals. The protection is the bloody problem.

Protection on Tempest build is 40%.

40% reduced damage. Take Earth for another 10%. Frost Auras for ANOTHER 10%. Scrapper Runes for another 7%.

-67% physical damage, heal abuse and immunity conditions.

Diamond skin IS NOT the problem. It’s just part of it. The real issue is nearly 3/4 damage is negated passively as a permanent bonus.

If we could rework the trait lines a little on earth and remove that passive -10% damage reduction, maybe some condition builds will have more success at breaking that 10% health pool to apply conditions. Ontop of that, if we remove protection when applying an Aura at the given state that an Ele can dispense them, that would remove the permanent uptime on protection which is essentially 40% damage negation. I’m sure that much of a drop in direct damage intake would allow for more condition builds to shine and even stand a chance.

Tempest is in a perfectly balanced spot right now aside from a couple bad traits and afew warhorn skills. Nerfing it much at all would make it totally useless, while buffing it more than the underpowered stuff it was would make it overpowered.

I don’t see whats wrong playing a SUPPORT build that hits like a wet nooddle that can take a lot of punishment from damage reduction. You also can’t have perma-protection on D/F without using earth overload off cooldown or durability runes (so no scrapper runes) which not every build will want at all. Warhorn is underrated but strong since it lets you have more consistent perma protection without needing to overload earth off cooldown or run boon duration runes.

Also in general, the other reason that tempest is balanced is because of the tradeoff between powerful auras and cleansing wave. If you run powerful auras you get lots of shocking aura on teammates and perma protection on teammates, but you lose almost all your cleanse, so you’re forced to take diamond skin. Cleansing wave with invigorating torrents and soldier runes is so much AoE cleansing for a team that it makes diamond skin look like a cheap parlor trick (and you get to take stone heart too). I can guarantee thats what most tempests will bandwagon too if diamond skin gets nerfed.

They hit harder then a wet noodle, I managed to hit a tempest for 2.5k using eviscrate (full adrenaline bar and intel sigil) as a berserker amulet gs/axe sheild warrior.sure it didnt crit because of stone heart, butIf I was to hang around I am sure the ele would of out dps me. That isn’t right at all. Fair point warrior is in a crappy spot but still, bunker/support builds should not deal more dps then high dps builds/amulets.

By the time that matchup would have swayed in either way someone from another team should have been able to plus the fight. Tempest can hold nodes well in 1v1s but can’t kill anything in 1v1s in a reasonable time frame except for dragonhunter with reflects, so you can’t assault nodes by yourself.

I think that’s balanced, because it’s functionally more similar to bunker guard of old in providing teamfight support and a bit or extra AoE damage, but it’s not some goddess of 1v1s like the old d/d ele or older cele engi. They’re not even close in power. Tempest is a support spec, and that’s what it’s good at. Put it in a team that can take cant age of its support and sustain and it will fail hard.

Also there are quite a few ways you can avoid stone heart (wait for him to swap out of earth after overloading due to the 20 second CD on earth then) Moa him, or chill him and watch him melt if diamond skin is broken. Tempest is fairly weak to focus fire compared to other support specs, and Sonia Druid, which I think is a fair trade off.

Dristig.9678:

nearlight.3064:

Cele reaper: no healing power use and doesn’t have enough immediate damage to kill good Druids and scrapers in a reasonable time frame, but it can absorb more damage.

If that’s true, then Soldier makes more sense. Soldier has the same drawbacks but with freakish durability. It doesn’t seem like the (relatively) small amount of Condition damage on Cele is enough to make a difference.

I mean if you want to have this problem, you can. Wearing Soldier I had a fight vs a druid at the Treb on Khlyo that was so long I had time to type “I’m bored.” and just leave.

Actually I wouldn’t agree with this. Most of the people running celestial in tournaments run the traits/weapons the exactly some way they would if they were going full condi, so even though soldiers is a much better mix of sustain and power damage, people dont run it so they can keep deathly chill and scepter and all that.

I find it so ironic that EU, which was once totally devoid of necromancers on top teams is now swarming with them. And the weird viper condi rev build that they come up with.. I think that is potentially stronger than necro once people master it.

posthumecaver.6473:

nearlight.3064:

ReaperJr.5967:

nearlight.3064:

posthumecaver.6473:

Specially D/X variants are free food for DH, we have to be in melee range and we don’t have enough stability to get out of their traps.

Tempest fares well enough with reflects from mag aura, and you can pop armor or earth or focus 5 if you bring it. I’ve never felt that weak against a DH compared to when I play chronomancer that actually is very much countered by dragonhunter since it has a lot of unblockable CC.

I think the issue arrives when you are caught in an array of traps without obsidian focus (i.e. getting jumped with JI by a DH during a team fight). Unless you run armor of earth, even if traited, a measly stack of stability on overload wont save you. :/

Yeah, but let’s forget that being caught in that trap is generally a death sentence for most builds in the game, it’s hardly an elementalist specific weakness:

My Reaper laughs to the traps

And I laugh at them too if I’m in earth with protection up (stone heart)

Most people use a combination of geomancy, doom, and energy. Bursting can also work too. Earth sigil is really bad.
I tried viper chrono earlier but revenant does it so much better..

Also just adding that invigorating torrents+cleansing wave+soldier runes is so much AoE cleanse that you won’t even need diamond skin at all to function, so you can take stone heart. In fact, this setup has even more condi immunity imo in more sitautions, but it doesn’t have the ability to readily share shocking aura, so its balanced by that.

sephiroth.4217:

My thoughts???

My thoughts is that Diamond Skin is utterly useless. THE ONLY REASON it’s effective, is because Tempest Aura builds that spit out protection and heals. The protection is the bloody problem.

Protection on Tempest build is 40%.

40% reduced damage. Take Earth for another 10%. Frost Auras for ANOTHER 10%. Scrapper Runes for another 7%.

-67% physical damage, heal abuse and immunity conditions.

Diamond skin IS NOT the problem. It’s just part of it. The real issue is nearly 3/4 damage is negated passively as a permanent bonus.

If we could rework the trait lines a little on earth and remove that passive -10% damage reduction, maybe some condition builds will have more success at breaking that 10% health pool to apply conditions. Ontop of that, if we remove protection when applying an Aura at the given state that an Ele can dispense them, that would remove the permanent uptime on protection which is essentially 40% damage negation. I’m sure that much of a drop in direct damage intake would allow for more condition builds to shine and even stand a chance.

Tempest is in a perfectly balanced spot right now aside from a couple bad traits and afew warhorn skills. Nerfing it much at all would make it totally useless, while buffing it more than the underpowered stuff it was would make it overpowered.

I don’t see whats wrong playing a SUPPORT build that hits like a wet nooddle that can take a lot of punishment from damage reduction. You also can’t have perma-protection on D/F without using earth overload off cooldown or durability runes (so no scrapper runes) which not every build will want at all. Warhorn is underrated but strong since it lets you have more consistent perma protection without needing to overload earth off cooldown or run boon duration runes.

Also in general, the other reason that tempest is balanced is because of the tradeoff between powerful auras and cleansing wave. If you run powerful auras you get lots of shocking aura on teammates and perma protection on teammates, but you lose almost all your cleanse, so you’re forced to take diamond skin. Cleansing wave with invigorating torrents and soldier runes is so much AoE cleansing for a team that it makes diamond skin look like a cheap parlor trick (and you get to take stone heart too). I can guarantee thats what most tempests will bandwagon too if diamond skin gets nerfed.

I feel like Viper would probably be better. Glassy as hell, but I’m sure that something decent can come from it.

Curunen.8729:

Duelling line as a whole is hard to take at least for me right now, because there are so many useful things in the other lines.

The adept traits are meh, and the primary other reasons are Blinding Dissipation plus DE.

Even sharper images isn’t such a big draw compared to things from other trait lines.

I mean, Inspiration is just so good with the condi removal and so on, Chrono for obvious reasons, Illusions is mandatory for condition builds, Domination for boon strip and solid major traits, and Chaos for amazing sustain.

Especially now with shield4, Chronophantasma, IR, Mental Defence, and other illusion generating skills, coupled with the change in pace of the state of the game I find it hard to justify taking Duelling over the other options.

Pretty much. I’d say that the best power builds right now are domination inspiration chrono, since you really don’t want to be without inspiration with the amount of Chill reapers running around eating people. And even then I’d say support builds work better and they depend on inspiration too.

I played condi necro before it was meta! And now everyone wants it!

You don’t necessarily need to play a build on meta-battle, but its a good starting point for new-ish players. That website just reflects what a lot of people on competitive teams run, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ve fully explored all the options that are available to them, but use you intuition. If something feels right, then its probably good. But feel free to adapt and adjust to get the best possible feel for what you’re trying to achieve.

Just don’t get caught in a choke to think that theres only one way to play a class.

Few weeks ago I was queued against him and he repeatedly smashed my face with a rabid condi reaper build of all things.

It was Awesome!

Salamander.2504:

I think it was nearlight who pointed out that Reaper doesn’t take advantage of of the healing stat, so it’s not the most efficient. My take on it is that you use cele if you want carrion-type hybrid damage (e.g., using Deathly Chill) but with more sustain from the added toughness. Plus the extra precision gives you a bit more leeway when considering whether or not to use the precision modifying traits like Decimate Defenses and Death Perception.

Yay I’m famous now.

Basically here’s the breakdown:

Cele reaper: no healing power use and doesn’t have enough immediate damage to kill good Druids and scrapers in a reasonable time frame, but it can absorb more damage.

Carrion reaper: much better damage and can kill cele bunkers way faster, but will be bursted down by marauders much more easily. (Though 1v1 it counters thugs like rev quite handily). Also can’t strip diamond skin on its own.

Logic: switch amulet based on what you’re going up against. Though carrion is better in most scenarios imo for the role yore trying to fulfill which is 1v1s and condi spam in teamfights since AoE cleanse is rare right now.

After 1v1ing eurantiens cele Druid as a cele reaper a month ago and failing to do enough damage to dent his sustain at all, I knew that carrion would give me more success in the things that I wanted to be successful at.

I tried it, and theorized it back when sinister was announced for pvp.

I think it has a lot of potential given the powerful condi niche in the metagame right now.. but revenant just has an easier time of it with better condi pressure, better physical damage, and better active defenses, and perma resistance.

Viper mes may have better mobility, but it will still get instagibbed by dragonhunters even with all of its active defenses, and I see it as being a strictly inferior choice and it won’t have much, or any condi cleanse.

But we could try it to guage its success.

Crinn.7864:

Melanion.4892:

Does nobody see the necessity of counters like this?

If you don’t have a class or two that can completely nullify a full condi build, condis will run rampant.

There are counters to pretty much anything in the game except for tanky/sustain cele builds, and even the tanky/sustain builds can be bursted if caught out. The inclusion of these hard counters is how anet keeps certain builds from running rampant and unchecked. If you didn’t have stealth high damage classes, other classes can run much glassier and without as much in the way of damage mitigation.

You don’t need hardcounters when the game is choked full of softcounters.

Every class in the game has access to condi cleanses, and that’s not even counting cleanses/transfers from sigils and runes. On top of that there is the resistance boon, in addition to things like plague signet and necro staff #4. Additionally there are a number of traits and runes that straight up reduce the duration or damage of condis. Oh and lets not forget the occasional cleanses from combo fields.

And if after all that you still somehow have issues with condis, you can always bring a bunker guard with the double AoE cleanse on each shout + triple cleanse on F2.

No one runs bunker guard anymore, since while it can be a cleansebot, thats all it can do anymore. It doesn’t have the tools needed to get rezzes and stomps in this AoE CC cleave spam meta since its health is too low with cleric.

Arutha.9874:

Correct me if I am wrong but these reapers play Cele now?
Then wolfric your build probably hits the right balance of hybrid defence to counter his hybrid offence. You stop crits and clense enough condis while applying decent speed of condition output.
And ReaperJr pigeon holing into specific builds is happening to all classes and is not a bad thing when connected to survival. The problem is most have 3 trait line options for survival and can choose just 1 and stat the other, while Ele most of the time needs to choose 2 because of the low health pool, or YOLO! ;-)

They play either cele or carrion depending on the matchup. Cele has better sustain against burst rev/dd/DH/chrono comps and can strip diamond skin more easily, but it still won’t have enough damage to kill more bunkery things like Druid and scrapper. Carrion does, but it’s squishier and can’t easily strip DS by itself. It doesn’t need to since the tempest will be pretty vulnerable to a condi bomb after that in a teamfight.

ReaperJr.5967:

nearlight.3064:

posthumecaver.6473:

Specially D/X variants are free food for DH, we have to be in melee range and we don’t have enough stability to get out of their traps.

Tempest fares well enough with reflects from mag aura, and you can pop armor or earth or focus 5 if you bring it. I’ve never felt that weak against a DH compared to when I play chronomancer that actually is very much countered by dragonhunter since it has a lot of unblockable CC.

I think the issue arrives when you are caught in an array of traps without obsidian focus (i.e. getting jumped with JI by a DH during a team fight). Unless you run armor of earth, even if traited, a measly stack of stability on overload wont save you. :/

Yeah, but let’s forget that being caught in that trap is generally a death sentence for most builds in the game, it’s hardly an elementalist specific weakness:

Yashuoa.9527:

In pve people seem to be more content with the overloads than in pve.

Regarding PVP:
In pvp do you consider 1 stack of stability that doesnt refresh, enough? (which even costs a trait)

A 4 second overload casttime is plenty of time for an opponent to remove the stability and interrupt the overload.

Besides even if the stability doesnt get removed, that still makes us quite defenceless for 4 seconds, in which we cant dodge and not use other important defences. So we can become sorta a punching back.

So thats why it seems needed to me (in pvp), that the overloads gain the stability that earth overload has
and maybe in addition the suggestion for defensive elements to overloads (the posted idea with the additons of blind, convert healing, weakness and slow).

The 3xstability could be on the overloads by default and the blind, convert healing, weakness and slow additions idea, could be in that trait its place.

This would give an option in that trait row.

What do you think about that?

Not 3 stacks baseline to each element. Tempests can’t become godmode again. One stack is a good amount of counterplay because most builds don’t have as many CC cool downs as a tempest can overload during that same duration. I think the stability being a minor trait instead of swiftness would be fine, and HC could reduce overload cooldowns again in addition to its 10% modifier. To me that would be the ideal solution for QoL, not some convoluted overbuffing because God knows I play tempest because it’s not an example of a completely overpowered elite spec like most of the others.

You could always just play it safer with positioning and take torrents instead like many high level pvp tempests do. Even then you’d still have enough stacks on earth overload to get it off for perma prot rotations.

Condi builds were useless for the bast year due to shoutbow dd ele and bunker guard. I’m glad they finally have their day in the sun at last.

Arcane/water builds will be fine if you take torrents and cleansing water. Or diamond skin and either focus or cleansing fire.

I think diamond skin could be reworked to be more useful below the threshold in teamfights and less overpowered above the threshold in 1v1s, but that’s just my view point on it.

posthumecaver.6473:

Specially D/X variants are free food for DH, we have to be in melee range and we don’t have enough stability to get out of their traps.

Tempest fares well enough with reflects from mag aura, and you can pop armor or earth or focus 5 if you bring it. I’ve never felt that weak against a DH compared to when I play chronomancer that actually is very much countered by dragonhunter since it has a lot of unblockable CC.

Soryuju.8164:

nacario.9417:

Deniara Devious.3948:

This is more than enough proof that the new elite specs are overpowered compared to the base classes.

Or could it be to some extent due to players wanting to play what is new, and turns out to be on par with vanilla classes? Excluding the warrior though.

These are professional players competing for a $200,000 prize pool, and they’ve already had a full month to play with the new specs in casual games. When you’re on a pro team competing in a major tournament, you play what you think is going to give you the best chance of winning, not what you happen to feel like that day. That can even mean switching off of your preferred profession for the duration of a meta where that profession is weak. A handful of pro players do specialize on one profession exclusively, but these players are the minority, and often need to have team compositions built around them to compensate when their profession isn’t “up.”

The results here show that the game’s most competitive players resoundingly agree that almost all elite specs are superior to their base professions, and that Warrior has no place in the competitive metagame. It’s possible that a few regular specs could slip back into the meta if they can be used to counter specific elite specs, but we’re not looking at anything resembling balance between the two. It’s the opposite of what Anet said they were aiming for.

Well done teams used base elementalist or base warrior in the NA qualifiers but didn’t win to go on to qualify for the proleague itself. I also remember olrun only recently swapped to tempest and was playing d/d ele in the normal esls, which qualified their team for this competition.

Cogbyrn.7283:

nearlight.3064:

Cogbyrn.7283:

Nova Stiker.8396:

ozzy.8059:

the only way to kill someone as a reaper is with condis this meta.. when i go power all i see is nothing because they just kite for days or

block immune evade block immune evade block immune evade block immune evade block immune evade block immune evade block immune evade block immune evade.

need something to tick past all this junk!. did you know mesmer’s can be immune for 20s while dealing damage?

I wouldn’t be taking Diamond skin if it wasn’t for Reapers. Chill just destroys Elementalists hard and now there is an elite spec that applies perma chill.

Diamond Skin is a hard counter to the hard counter.

If it wasn’t for Diamond Skin, Reapers would have taken Elementalists completely out of the meta.

What ever happened to team cleansing that seemed to basically keep condi Necros out of the meta entirely for a long time?

Well I’ve posted a lot about this many places, so I feel as though I can adequately discuss the nuances of this meta shift.

Firstly, many new elite specs don’t come with AoE cleansing in their skills/traits in a high amount, and many base class pvp builds have to give up some component of their AoE condition cleansing to become that elite spec (such as giving up arcane/cleansing water to take tempest). Things like tempest generally don’t pack as nearly as much AoE cleanse as they did as a base ele unless they kitten their stats and utility with soldier runes over something like durability or radiance. Druid has poor ally cleanse with only verdant etching seeds, scrapper usually only brings heal turret and maybe some minor help with e-gun and elixir tosses. The new support builds have shifted more towards massive AoE healing and (tempest/druid) and boon spam (tempest/rev)

Secondly, many of the base class builds that were famous teamfight supports for many pvp teams can’t handle the power creep anymore. Bunker guardian’s health is too low to rez people without minstrels, so their shoutbuilds are dead, and the revamped settler’s shoutbow build can be bursted down way too quickly by revenants and dragonhunters. Cele D/D ele fire/water/arcane can’t handle dragonhunter as well as tempest can. DPS chronomancer can’t afford to take inspiration, so thats why the bunker builds are becoming more popular (though helseth’s isn’t optimized for better ally cleanse).

Thirdly, lots of new powerful builds are very weak to conditions, especially revenant, druid, scrapper, and tempest once diamond skin is broken. This has allowed condi builds, primarily reaper, and less so with condi rev, the ability to cement a firm seat in the current meta, since they have enough spammable condi pressure to actually kill the new cele bruiser/healer builds, because none of them have the invinceable network of massive passive AoE condi cleanse to protect them anymore for the reasons I just discussed.

So in conclusion, Diamond Skin is balanced (though a QoL rework could be interesting) because without it tempest would be instantly deleted by reapers. Viper condi revs can break it no problem, and it breaks pretty easily in a teamfight.

I appreciate the elaboration. I think it is interesting that the meta shifted in such a way that it opened the door for condition builds to pressure the new hotness. The aoe cleanse builds get killed by builds that get killed by condis, which have issues with the aoe cleanse builds. From a team play and team comp perspective, that sounds like the sort of cyclical balance that creates room for meaningful variations in comp. At least it is in that direction, tweaks aside.

It isn’t that i don’t want Eles to be able to counter condis, but it seems like it is a weird/bad trait no matter how you slice it. If teams can pop the ele below 90%, then it is a garbage trait. If a condi player isn’t built to out DPS the sustain in power damage, it is nigh invincible. I can’t help but think, even if it feels balanced because there are no options for Eles without it, they could just be given a better option that allows them some play between 90 and 0, without making it so other condi builds have no play between 100 and 90.

Oh believe me I’d love a different diamond skin. It’s been discussed for a long time hit nothing has happened. I don’t like how bipolar it’s usefulness is. But right now tempest pretty much needs it to function. You could also trait torrents and cleansing water for a bit of AoE cleanse as a tempest, but it’s not aurashare per se, so the support is weaker elsewhere because applying things like shocking aura/protection to teammates are so strong.

Hahaha and the people on the ele forums thought that tempest would never see the light of day in high level pvp. How about them apples.

Overload earth can easily give you permanent protection if you have earth and either warhorn or boon duration runes.

StickerHappy.8052:

nearlight.3064:

StickerHappy.8052:

nearlight.3064:

I will try out my arcane build with leadership runes over durability though, since those tunes could be stronger, then I could probably take elemental bastion again for a bit more sustain. And yeah I know it’s not optimal just because of the warhorn’s weakness, but I like it a lot as a weapon and I feel as though arenanet will improve it one day. Most of the slow interrupt skills I mostly use for stopping Rez attempts, and I like that cyclone gives swiftness and that tidal surge gives regen.

As of now though the arcane build just feels a bit better overall than running earth/aurashare/soldier runes, but I do agree that evasive arcana is the main reason to go down that route at all.

On a related note, one of my friends who mains staff ele said that they felt that staff didn’t work very well with full on aurashare compared to cleansing water, which makes sense to me given how the warhorn feels derivative of staff. I’ll also add that running AoE condi removal right now is a very valuable form of support that most other support builds, like Druid or metabattletempest can’t really do that well, and has died elsewhere considering how shoutbow and bunker guard are virtually extinct.

Keep me posted.

So the Warhorn Trait, the sand squall proc is in fact 30 seconds? If its not 10 seconds then this would be not even an option to spec at all. That was the only thing making this trait remotely viable.

I did a convoluted spreadsheet analysis looking at the feasability of maintaining 100% protection uptime over 20-second intervals looking at different trait, rune, and weapon combinations. Basically what I found is that imbued melodies with earth traits lets you maintain perma-prot much more easily, though this is not a requirement. The “meta” water/earth D/F build can only maintain perma-protection for its team only if it overloads earth off cooldown (9 pulses of 1s prot and 3s from HC) and it and its team remain in the dust storm radius for the full duration of the aftereffect. That scenario is not realistically feasible, especially on legacy and in pug groups. With durability runes instead of shout runes its a bit more feasible, but you still won’t be able to maintain perma prot without camping the dust storm, since that setup peaks at 21.5 seconds (with 20% boon duration, and we may wish to use different runes). Without durability runes, you need to blow multiple cooldowns to get enough protection, so you’ll have way more holes in your defenses compared to an equivalent warhorn build.

Even without imbued melodies or any boon duration at all you peak at 22 seconds of prot per 20 second interval if you camp the full overload if you use warhorn. You peak at 25 seconds per 20 second interval with leadership runes (30% boon duration). This benchmark is significant because it means you don’t have to camp the dust storm to have perma protection. However its important to note that gaps in your protection uptime can be filled by using other auras from shouts or from other overloads, its just that using warhorn for sand squall alone means you need to use less overloads/shouts to maintain perma protection, even with no boon duration.

So basically my main conclusion is that warhorn lets you more easily maintain protection, even without imbued melodies, when looking at the efficacy of earth/water aurashare builds. I also did the test with arcane builds, and have concluded that its not worth it, even though arcane builds let you maintain perma-prot much more easily with EB, I don’t think its worth considering because as you said, aurashare is just better support. And I think I’ve come up with a combination of runes, utilities, and traits for a WH build that has way more potential than the meta D/F build.. but I need to do a bit more testing to be sure. The build I’ve come up with is better support than the D/F build hands down, and should have better practical protection uptime.

Anyway I hope this made sense. Feel free to ask me about other protection uptimes with combinations I didn’t say or discuss.

Hmm interesting.. you mentioned several times camping dust storm. What does it have to do with prot uptime?

I do agree with the aura part, it’s not even a support matter, heal on aura will keep yourself more sustainable than without it.

Here’s the thing, I use WH for condi bombing, dust storm, geo and doom sigil, earth overload + fire 5, with celestial ammy, regular might stacking and all with leadership runes give you decent might uptime, like around 15 might, that gives you about 900 condi damage on cele which is really good. Try it sometime.

WH has good mix of condis and utility not to mention they are AoE and the blindness from Dust Storm helps a lot of damage mitigation.

I have an Idea, use your prot uptime stacking and get rid of earth, lets face it we take earth bec of the prot on auras trait, diamond skin is just secondary, then maybe you can go water / X / temp.

You also mentioned that you already created a good potential WH build, would you mind sharing it?

Oh I should clarify, I meant camping the dust storm as in the sand tornado left behind from the earth overload at the end that pulses out more protection bleeds, not the warhorn dust storm skill. I’ll pm you my build later. I can look into more builds without earth, but they’d still probably need arcana instead to have perma prot.

Yeah I get that, I get that.

Also, I’m very surprised about the amount of teleosts running torrents. They must almost never be able to get off overloads.

Starfall.6425:

Compared to pre-HoT Mesmer isn’t as strong in a 1on1 anymore. Anyon else feels the same?

Yes you could spec and equip for a beastly 1on1 build (which Fat Disgrace might have faced) but would those be good in Conquest?

I also don’t see it as the best point holder in the game because you will get decapped during the evades.

Mesmer is my 3rd pvp-class and I’m currently a bit struggeling with the builds I try.

You can only get decapped through distortion, not the evade well or the sword evades.

apharma.3741:

Here’s what I can gather from it.

Everyone and their mum loses it if warrior and thief aren’t represented at all. Even though we’ve spent nearly 3 years where one has nearly always had a place on every team and the other has flip flopped between stack to the roof, mandatory or token cleanse/heal bot.

Here’s hoping the next big balance patch shakes it up and we see these two classes back, maybe guard and ele can take a time out from being meta?

Or you know, we could have a “balanced” meta where every single class has one or more viable builds for all levels of play.

It’s no fun when 1 or 2 classes suck eggs and the rest are either overpowered or in a good spot.

morrolan.9608:

Mooncow.6847:

Celestial still way over represented. Will this ever change?

People seem to choose it almost by rote, that mesmer build that I think all were running (Chaos, Insp, Chrono) would benefit more from another amulet type than cele IMO.

Yup, I think of three different amulets that would work better for that build than cele since it has virtually no condi pressure or heals that scale well with healing power.

messiah.1908:

Morwath.9817:

So far, we got Celestial meta, 20/40 (50%) amulets used in EU Pro League today were Celestials, Orange Logo was the only team which used heavy condi setup.

The more tanky enemy comp is, the better Carrion/Viper is.

indeed we see still cele meta but carrion/viper with necro/rev coming in whether its 1 condi class or 2 condi class . in the past no condi build was involved

I wrote about this in the diamond skin thread, but its basically because things like bunker guard and shoutbow and water/arcane D/D that spammed out AoE condi cleanses for their team at all times passively no longer work as well as they used to, and the new elite specs usually dont have a lot of cleanse.

Also carrion is needed for reaper to be able to kill druid/scrapper in a reasonable time frame, celestial merely helps it against a burst comp instead.

No, most condi reapers use carrion and take spite over curses.

The crit procs from curses are very very weak because bleeds do poor damage, so the extra power you get from carrion is more useful.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Nova Stiker.8396:

ozzy.8059:

the only way to kill someone as a reaper is with condis this meta.. when i go power all i see is nothing because they just kite for days or

block immune evade block immune evade block immune evade block immune evade block immune evade block immune evade block immune evade block immune evade.

need something to tick past all this junk!. did you know mesmer’s can be immune for 20s while dealing damage?

I wouldn’t be taking Diamond skin if it wasn’t for Reapers. Chill just destroys Elementalists hard and now there is an elite spec that applies perma chill.

Diamond Skin is a hard counter to the hard counter.

If it wasn’t for Diamond Skin, Reapers would have taken Elementalists completely out of the meta.

What ever happened to team cleansing that seemed to basically keep condi Necros out of the meta entirely for a long time?

Well I’ve posted a lot about this many places, so I feel as though I can adequately discuss the nuances of this meta shift.

Firstly, many new elite specs don’t come with AoE cleansing in their skills/traits in a high amount, and many base class pvp builds have to give up some component of their AoE condition cleansing to become that elite spec (such as giving up arcane/cleansing water to take tempest). Things like tempest generally don’t pack as nearly as much AoE cleanse as they did as a base ele unless they kitten their stats and utility with soldier runes over something like durability or radiance. Druid has poor ally cleanse with only verdant etching seeds, scrapper usually only brings heal turret and maybe some minor help with e-gun and elixir tosses. The new support builds have shifted more towards massive AoE healing and (tempest/druid) and boon spam (tempest/rev)

Secondly, many of the base class builds that were famous teamfight supports for many pvp teams can’t handle the power creep anymore. Bunker guardian’s health is too low to rez people without minstrels, so their shoutbuilds are dead, and the revamped settler’s shoutbow build can be bursted down way too quickly by revenants and dragonhunters. Cele D/D ele fire/water/arcane can’t handle dragonhunter as well as tempest can. DPS chronomancer can’t afford to take inspiration, so thats why the bunker builds are becoming more popular (though helseth’s isn’t optimized for better ally cleanse).

Thirdly, lots of new powerful builds are very weak to conditions, especially revenant, druid, scrapper, and tempest once diamond skin is broken. This has allowed condi builds, primarily reaper, and less so with condi rev, the ability to cement a firm seat in the current meta, since they have enough spammable condi pressure to actually kill the new cele bruiser/healer builds, because none of them have the invinceable network of massive passive AoE condi cleanse to protect them anymore for the reasons I just discussed.

So in conclusion, Diamond Skin is balanced (though a QoL rework could be interesting) because without it tempest would be instantly deleted by reapers. Viper condi revs can break it no problem, and it breaks pretty easily in a teamfight.

So this viper shiro/mallyx rev build, is it really all that great? I havent been able to watch the matches yet, but it sounds glassy as kitten, though a hyper offensive condi hybrid is something this game has needed for years, instead of runniny cele hybrids that wind up being more defensive than anything else.

StickerHappy.8052:

nearlight.3064:

I will try out my arcane build with leadership runes over durability though, since those tunes could be stronger, then I could probably take elemental bastion again for a bit more sustain. And yeah I know it’s not optimal just because of the warhorn’s weakness, but I like it a lot as a weapon and I feel as though arenanet will improve it one day. Most of the slow interrupt skills I mostly use for stopping Rez attempts, and I like that cyclone gives swiftness and that tidal surge gives regen.

As of now though the arcane build just feels a bit better overall than running earth/aurashare/soldier runes, but I do agree that evasive arcana is the main reason to go down that route at all.

On a related note, one of my friends who mains staff ele said that they felt that staff didn’t work very well with full on aurashare compared to cleansing water, which makes sense to me given how the warhorn feels derivative of staff. I’ll also add that running AoE condi removal right now is a very valuable form of support that most other support builds, like Druid or metabattletempest can’t really do that well, and has died elsewhere considering how shoutbow and bunker guard are virtually extinct.

Keep me posted.

So the Warhorn Trait, the sand squall proc is in fact 30 seconds? If its not 10 seconds then this would be not even an option to spec at all. That was the only thing making this trait remotely viable.

I did a convoluted spreadsheet analysis looking at the feasability of maintaining 100% protection uptime over 20-second intervals looking at different trait, rune, and weapon combinations. Basically what I found is that imbued melodies with earth traits lets you maintain perma-prot much more easily, though this is not a requirement. The “meta” water/earth D/F build can only maintain perma-protection for its team only if it overloads earth off cooldown (9 pulses of 1s prot and 3s from HC) and it and its team remain in the dust storm radius for the full duration of the aftereffect. That scenario is not realistically feasible, especially on legacy and in pug groups. With durability runes instead of shout runes its a bit more feasible, but you still won’t be able to maintain perma prot without camping the dust storm, since that setup peaks at 21.5 seconds (with 20% boon duration, and we may wish to use different runes). Without durability runes, you need to blow multiple cooldowns to get enough protection, so you’ll have way more holes in your defenses compared to an equivalent warhorn build.

Even without imbued melodies or any boon duration at all you peak at 22 seconds of prot per 20 second interval if you camp the full overload if you use warhorn. You peak at 25 seconds per 20 second interval with leadership runes (30% boon duration). This benchmark is significant because it means you don’t have to camp the dust storm to have perma protection. However its important to note that gaps in your protection uptime can be filled by using other auras from shouts or from other overloads, its just that using warhorn for sand squall alone means you need to use less overloads/shouts to maintain perma protection, even with no boon duration.

So basically my main conclusion is that warhorn lets you more easily maintain protection, even without imbued melodies, when looking at the efficacy of earth/water aurashare builds. I also did the test with arcane builds, and have concluded that its not worth it, even though arcane builds let you maintain perma-prot much more easily with EB, I don’t think its worth considering because as you said, aurashare is just better support. And I think I’ve come up with a combination of runes, utilities, and traits for a WH build that has way more potential than the meta D/F build.. but I need to do a bit more testing to be sure. The build I’ve come up with is better support than the D/F build hands down, and should have better practical protection uptime.

Anyway I hope this made sense. Feel free to ask me about other protection uptimes with combinations I didn’t say or discuss.

Bunker chronomancer is probably the best pointholder in the game right now, though not with celestial. The active defenses are insane. And alacrity support is strong. Note that other, more offensive builds can run alacrity support with less bunkering and more damage, which is probably more versatile.

When more people starting master continuum shift people will realize that it’s a lot stronger than it seems, but right now I don’t feel as though everyone has figured it out completely yet.

I don’t think it’s OP though, since it requires the person driving the boat to skilled enough not crash into the iceberg.

Xillllix.3485:

In the current power meta with heavy classes hitting for 8-12k+ at range the elementalist needs a serious damage buff.

Or dragonhunter needs a serious damage nerf. Yeah, I’d rather have them nerf dragonhunter than buff tempest tbh.

posthumecaver.6473:

The thing is none build steorotype based power damage will work for Ele, even Scepter is not working, because we have 4 attunements Devs are fearing to put any sort of power coefficient to our attacks.

You want proof look to 100b or eviscerate, does ele has any attack that can dish 5K damage every 8s? anything close is 5K Firegrab if all the stars align and that is on 40s CD.

We deal our damage with burning and some power damage but guess what it is bloody hard to build burn pressure with Tempest, you have to go in xxxxxx deep in to deliver burning, if you go with D/F in, you commit, you can’t disengage and you die.

D/D can disengage but A/E/T is not tanky/sustain enough to play also.

I think that’s balanced. Tempest has all the tools to really support, sustain, and turn a teamfight, provided that your teammates are competent. It’s fine that it lacks disengage, because you shouldn’t need it. Did people ever complain about bunker guards being too slow? No, because if you build a team to teamfight, you should be able to win teamfights and you won’t depend on the mobility as much. And right now, the meta is extremely teamfight oriented, and only condi reaper and overpowered scrapper/rev/dh can comfortably 1v1 anything in this meta.

A lot of you say that tempest isn’t fun for you. That’s fine. Fun is subjective. You’re allowed to believe what you want about the spec. Personally I find it fun, because I like the idea of aurashare. Tons of heals, tons of protection, and tons of cheesy shocking aura are amazing for teamfights. I’ve also been experimenting with warhorn builds and have found a few things that can work with a cele aurashare build, and it makes me happy. I need to do more testing though to iron out some details though.

Nice gameplay! I really have to spend more time with earth shield, it works really well with the whole idea of tempest in general.

Alekt.5803:

I do not agree with stability baseline. Interruptable overloads means counterplay.

Normally I’d agree with you, but right now chronomancers, dragonhunters, druids, other tempests (shocking aura), reapers, and scrappers all poop out AoE CC on capture points with such braindead frequency that you have to be kiting off point to get overloads off, even with stability. And otherthings like DH CC, chrono shield/gravity well, and scrapper thunderclap can often interrupt through the one stack. Its fine when you’re not being focused, but when you are… forget about overloading.

It’s probably work if fire wasn’t nerfed so harshly. Without might in cantrips I don’t think there’s any justification, and not taking water gimps your ability to support people through either aurashare or cleansing water.

But those are just my thoughts on it. Run whatever build makes you happy.

I will try out my arcane build with leadership runes over durability though, since those tunes could be stronger, then I could probably take elemental bastion again for a bit more sustain. And yeah I know it’s not optimal just because of the warhorn’s weakness, but I like it a lot as a weapon and I feel as though arenanet will improve it one day. Most of the slow interrupt skills I mostly use for stopping Rez attempts, and I like that cyclone gives swiftness and that tidal surge gives regen.

As of now though the arcane build just feels a bit better overall than running earth/aurashare/soldier runes, but I do agree that evasive arcana is the main reason to go down that route at all.

On a related note, one of my friends who mains staff ele said that they felt that staff didn’t work very well with full on aurashare compared to cleansing water, which makes sense to me given how the warhorn feels derivative of staff. I’ll also add that running AoE condi removal right now is a very valuable form of support that most other support builds, like Druid or metabattletempest can’t really do that well, and has died elsewhere considering how shoutbow and bunker guard are virtually extinct.