Just consider tempest nonexistent instead of painfully trying to make it work. Once Karl sees that no one plays it they might (this is still huge if) think about that.
Zenith, I think most of us were talking pvp. For PvE I don’t think it matters as much considering ele/tempest will probably be pushed into some sort of semi-healer role for raids. Don’t know about super high level faptals though.
Super high level fractals introduce bosses with 5k armour and 5 millions hp (that’s basically 10+ millions hp for power builds) while at the same time they hit like a fly. In other words, high level fractals promote condition builds while any kind of healer build makes you waste even more time on those massive health sponges.
For a healer role druid is much better since it is a spike healer meaning it can deal damage and heal when it’s needed. Tempest probably can fulfil that role on some level, the problem is that its spike heal, overload water, is hardly on demand unless you literally camp in water attunement which doesn’t bring much damage potential.
Scepter is unusable in pve because it has absolutely no decent sustain damage. The only saving grace for it was/is lightning hammer which nullifies that flaw. However, might stacking doesn’t belong to ele any more hence this build is rather not used.
I can’t see anything decent you could get from getting a warhorn which arguably doesn’t offer anything other off-hands do.
As far as difficulty goes, it is similar. The general makeup is basically the same (an annoying gimmick, followed by a boss fight), with the main difference being that there’s few trash mobs to kill at the beginning in Underwater. The end bossfight takes way longer in Underwater (due to the hyperinflated boss health at the higher fractal levels), but you can still do it on autopilot, though, there’s no real danger there (which makes it easier than Mossman, barring the water trick ofc).
In the end, the main difference is speed – at higher fractal levels Swamp is just way faster to finish.
If you get a mossman, without exploiting him underwater is easier, no discussion here. Secondly, I hope you understand what hyperinflated means. Because the reality is that the only boss in those fractals that has hyperinflated health is bloomhunger. Those are health values for fractal scales 1 and 50:
The reason it takes longer to kill jellyfish is because a vast majority of people can’t even deal a decent damage underwater and/or they ignore electrified cages.
Karl planning to nerf dmg on fire overload so…what you ask will never happen
-Scepter is as bad as before..just not at 100%, only 90% I’d say an improvement -_-, still auto-attack is not the only thing that scepter need, the weapon is extremely slow and clunky with ridiculous casting times and after cast
They’ve already nerfed the damage on fire overload, is it still not bad enough?
Because my pet is not tanking the damage. I’m lucky if my jaguars don’t get 2-shot by melee cleave.
If it’s dead anyway, maybe it would be a good idea to change it to more tanky pet? Like the saying goes, dead dps is no dps.
Because on a power spec at the standard sword+axe+longbow setup, it is.
Quick draw is good for a condi build due to its reduction on bonfire, but a reduction on path of scars isn’t really going to make a huge impact, and the trait doesn’t work on whirling defense.
Sure it does, you just have to cancel it just before before it ends (they both have 5s time limit).
Your points are not really valid on giving up DPS for utility, because the fact is ranger gives DPS for no utility (his weapons with the exception of offhand axe have no utility whatsoever, and whirling defense has such horrendous DPS and makes you stationary so you’re giving up more DPS and survival for a reflect than an ele or engi ever will). In fact, ranger’s only utility comes from taking up a garbage traitline (skirmishing) for spotter, meaning he just wasted all minors and 2 worthless traits (the grandmasters are terrible) just for spotter, and his other utility lies in frost spirit, which comes at the opportunity cost of another DPS centric utility.
I’m quite curious why you think quick draw is terrible.
If you want to complain about difficulty, then by your standards ranger should be the supreme DPS class, if you’ve ever actually tried using 1h sword against mossman or archdiviner without a guardian feeding you aegis. In fact, 1h ranger is the only class who can’t even max melee thanks to the way 1h sword works.
Dagger ele has the largest range out of all melee weapons, there’s virtually nothing forcing you to be in striking distance other than when you do burning speed, which luckily also has a built in evade.
I realise ranger sword play is quite difficult (I play it) but have you ever consider attacking your target from behind when your pet tanks the damage?
Back in the days, smart people actually watched better players like this one guy to learn how to melee Lupicus. And those guys are actually in guilds who don’t use pug tactics and instead educate others to use a more efficient way. Please don’t put yourself in the denial state.
That was my point… For few months everyone, including every single guild, were ranging lupi. And when this guy and few others were claiming it’s possible to melee him, they were met with laughs.
You don’t even know if I’m a member of one of those guilds. So don’t assume you have some mandate of telling me who’s smart.
Ad personam, etc.
After the first split, did the boss really move around at all?
Earthen Proxy gives 40% damage reduction under protection. As a tempest, you have very good boon duration, on top of protection on Aura. If your group has one or two Herald, it’s almost settled on the permanent effect of this trait. A full zerker staff ele got hit by the auto Magic Aura of the Vale Guardian for 1.96k .
A full cele ele gets hit for 1.48k, a full rabid ele gets hit for 1.32k (damage reduction by toughness alone). With Protection, a full cele ele gets hit for 1.04k, a full rabid ele gets hit for ~920. With Earthen Proxy+ Protection, a full cele ele gets hit for ~888, a full rabid ele gets hit for ~792. These numbers can be reasonably sustained with Passive Regen and Heal.
Now, please back up your point instead of just your usual one-liner.
Should those numbers mean anything substantial? I know how percentages work, it’s simply not worth to pick traits like latent stamina or earthen proxy in their current iteration because there are better alternatives in other trait lines but if you believe otherwise, please, go on, play your full rabid tempest.
It’s fine and dandy not to use any of those sustain traits when you are able to assume a DPS role. But when you are hand picked (by the boss) to tank, your option is to adapt or reroll (ragequit? lol). Since the OP asked how to tank when you are not a bunker guardian, I provided him plentiful options an ele can have in his/her kitten nal. You can go deeply to Water/Earth-or-Arcane/Tempest and be virtually immortal or you can shed some of those defense for hybrid damage.
It would hold any merit if the boss actually didn’t stick to the highest toughness person.
Tempest has perma vigor if you want to push it that far and that’s where it can even outshine a bunker guard.
If you play water/earth/tempest than I have absolutely no clue how (5+3)/10 could give more than 1 without using cantrips (which was my original point).
If you and Karl think the trait is weak and need buffs, sure, I’ll be more than happy to go with its stronger version. Just to point out how the utility those traits provide is best fit for the raid situation.
More like, “if me, the vast majority of posters here and even Karl”.
For the record, our raid group went as far as 33% with two and a half minute left on the timer. We wiped because a stupid mistake with the lightning AoE, but the point is, I know how effective Tempest as a tank-kiter can be from my first hand experience. I don’t have any screenshots or VoD to prove it, but you can contact any of my raid team members (APeX members, Trackful, AK) to verify our positive experience.
You can be certain it was a positive experience, I’m certain it’s more beneficial to pick another profession.
Good job on deflecting the point of this discussion and cherry picking on the effectiveness of the trait.
Let’s go back from the start, shall we?
I quoted you once and you brought back an entire discussion… If you cannot understand that, I’ll try to make it easier.
You said something about perma vigour and I pointed that you cannot achieve that without cantrips because renewing stamina was nerfed by 50%. You also were gloating how earthen proxy is such a decent trait for tanking and I pointed out it’s a pretty bad trait.
Which depends on the skill of your tank. How’s about learning from better players?
Tank, keq.
Maybe instead of copying tactics from few first successful tries you should try figuring it by yourself? I recall “better players” ranging lupicus back in a day because that’s how it was done by the first few teams.
Notice until the first split, the boss hardly moved? And they finished the first phase in only 2 minutes.
Every class is a “jack of all trades/hybrid” in GW2. There is no class that doesn’t have DPS, Condi, Support, ect builds. However every other class has dedicated DPS, Condi, and Support weapons. Staff could be considered a support weapon, but they constantly blur the line between Condi and DPS which provides mediocre amounts of each and leads to the situation I spoke of.
That’s incorrect. Ele can be dps/support/control at the same time, it cannot be achieved with other professions. Staff cannot be considered a support weapon, what support is in air or fire attunement? Each weapon has skills from all 4 attunements which have different roles, unlike other professions whose weapons have usually one role.
Supposedly eles are. Though hybrids are never balanced properly in every game. They are either OP (when they can perform at each of a role almost as good as other classes) or UP (when their versatility isn’t good enough).
Sure that you lose your maximum staff effectivness on moving foes. But shall I recall you that staff elementalist weren’t wanted before the aknowledgement of the PS warrior? At that time people asked you to play D/F or D/D (even S/D sometime).
Pugs asked for D/D ele? Like when did that happen? Before PS warriors you had one ele as a staff ele and the second one as a S/X + LH to stack might. D/F was never good outside of high scales fractals due to higher survivability than LH ele who basically had no defense.
From my point of view, this raid sample favour S/x ele/tempest.
A good old fresh air S/D ele/tempest build should be pretty interesting with a proper rotation. (It would provide both damage and support)
A D/D or D/Wh fresh air melee build could also be a pretty good. I don’t know how hard air overload hit with 25 might/25 vuln but it shouldn’t be shabby and on a low cool down due to fresh air, that’s one hell of an option.
Staff ele as healing support option also have their place out there.
Good old S/D fresh air? Did you posted in a proper forum?
Staff ele can be good in raids as a damage dealer only when bosses are relatively immobile and have larger hit boxes. That’s possible for later bosses but for the first one staff ele loses tons of damage potential because of boss’ mobility. And ele doesn’t have any decent build except full damage build so if that one is non-preferred due to the changes in mobs behaviour than staff ele will fall out of meta. In both teams that defeated the first boss of the raid, there were 0 eles/tempests.
Tempest offers a gameplay with a certain skillcap and people here are asking to remove that skillcap by deleting cast/channel time, basically transforming tempest in D/D 2.0 where there is little to no consequence for making a mistakes ( like overloading at the wrong moment)
I’m sorry that I need to be so blunt with people but…It’s about time we get rid of that way of playing ele, people charging headfirst and cantrips in hands inside any battle, doesn’t matter just charge in spamming RoF, burning speed whatever…if losing too much health, swap to water and try again…
The only overload that needs a look at it’s water, rest is more than fine….d/d has left people with really bad habits…
Since anet refuses to split balance into different game modes you ought to consider those game modes as well. Tempest is equally bad in pve as in pvp and your arguments about d/d lowering skill cap is non existent there because it’t not usable in pve.
Either you play the strongest ele build that relies on stationary foes or you try something that was nerfed which is fresh air d/f. Both of those builds can only work because only two of our auto-attacks are somewhat non-terrible. I can’t imagine spending 5 seconds just to use an overload that’s barely better than your normal rotation and might as well punish you if you fail to complete the channel.
So no, overloads are still too weak considering their opportunity costs.
I use dust storm for bleeds/blinds. Is that wrong?
Well, yea. In the segment of the raid that was available you couldn’t blind anyone.
So by your standards I should sacrifice my own survivability and that of my teammates just to burn the bosses HP bar a little bit faster? I’ll take 8-9k burn ticks 2-3k bleeds out of face-punch range any day.
I really don’t think this is a sittuation where anyone who isn’t running the most streamlined specialized Spec should be discluded from Game content (uncompetitive pve content at that) it all comes down to how well you know your routine for the build you play and being properly informed about boss behaviors and the like.
Edit:
This coming from a player who avoids competitive guild politics. I don’t mean for it to come off as an attack on the well-rounded guild groups just trying to be the most efficient, but just saying people shouldn’t be turned away because they’re running a build that is deemed “less efficient”. Let their actions prove their worth, first.
Those damage numbers are probably your peak numbers, the average dps of condition elementalist is quite low compared to other condition damage specs.
Anyway, raids should be hard enough for average players that will force them to run more optimised group compositions, despite Colin’s claims that everyone can fill every role. Moreover, it’s not an open world so people will be able to exclude builds that are not exactly top notch in their roles. Unfortunately for us, the general consensus is that tempest pretty much suck in raids but if you can complete it then I cannot be more happy because it means Karl made this spec at least carry-able.
I think a cele/sinister or zerker ele is one of the best things u can have at that fight. Is it for kiting or damage/healing its just an awesome All rounder. But thats just me.
That’s the thing. All-rounders were never a flavour of the month in pve meta. It’s all about being the best in your role.
Thieves may well end up in the same situation as well. Thief and ele could be the new ranger and necro of raids. The possible exception to this could be the odd fight with a boss that has a big hitbox, since ele staff damage will always be king in those types of situations.
The first boss can be quite mobile. And mobile enemies mean staff damage potential is significantly dropped.
Though I only attempted the raid twice (and with random groups, no less) I didn’t have any problems sustaining myself while keeping an eye on my teammates. Any time i’d see that i’ve taken agro, I would swap to earth and drop Dust storm-Feel the burn (proc protection on aura) Sand squall (proc again) then swap to water to gauge who needs heals and Toss tidal surge, Water globe and Trident their direction.
What was the point of casting Dust Storm?
My dps was entirely burn-oriented (Toughness/Heal power/Cnd dmg) with Scepter/Warhorn so I could keep a safe distance.
I will add that I wasn’t able to beat the Vale Guardian with either group, but I feel like my role was about right. Burning spikes fast and is a quick rotation through fire atunement to unload and end with Heat sinc to top off anyone who needs a stack of 25 might.
If you have a controlled environment like raids (unlike open world triple trouble) and enrage timers, you want to always make sure everyone is playing at the highest level. Condition damage elementalist doesn’t allow it so if your team mates don’t mind it that’s fine but I frankly cannot see it used by any “competitive” guild in the near future..
The Earth overload last weekend was pretty devastating though…cripple, bleed, immobilize and self protection + stability….then if you had a teammate (or yourself) standing inside the resulting storm dust devil = 30sec of protection. Is foe cripple/bleed/immobilize +self stab + self/ally protection for 30sec (and possible magnetic aura if traited), all on a 20sec cooldown not devastating or team saving? The downfalls are really only “20sec cooldown and lockout if you swap attunements”…on a tanky earth line condi build, not being able to be crit against while still adding lots of durability to allies seems pretty crazy…and you could still swap out to fire, add some might and burn.
Air overload was pretty crazy and could add some extra burst if you were on a team facing fewer foes. The storm itself strikes up to 5 foes equally number of times but you get more lightning strikes per ally afterwards, all striking like 1 or 2 foes can really hurt.
The water overload is a bit more dependant on your build. It can give you a little extra sustain if you don’t have the water line (I ran with Fire/Air/Tempest so no heal or regen on water swap) so those builds leaned to the extreme of “limited healing” has a bit of extra sustain. On the opposite spectrum, a build aimed at lots and lots of healing, Tempest offers a lot, including a strong team heal in Wash the Pain Away. If you wanted to be a “Water Elementalist” with lots of heals, Tempest gives you that niche option.
Earth overload was bugged but it’s nice to see it being used as an argument.
It cannot be saved. I predict that after some unspecified time period, maybe even a year, tempest will still see the low popularity numbers and Karl will overbuff its numbers. And the pendulum of ele balance will swing again.
1 month of grinding the equivalent of dailies is a very long time in an MMO before you can get to endgame activities.
The fun fact is that daily restriction were implemented precisely to stop the growth of non casual players. But like with most restrictions, they usually give opposite results.
What do you need Reflect for? And no, Block will be periodically destroyed by the boss’ auto Magic Aura. Higher armor doesn’t really matter if you intend to soak up the Seeker’s damage: You’ll die! You still need to avoid colliding against the Seeker to the minimum: like, strafe left-right, pull them together then dodge over. On the other hand, you can dodge over the blue teleport aoe at the last minute to avoid the boss moving too much. So perma Vigor is much more preferred than high armor.
Have you seen the sustain that a cele ele can pump out compared to a cleric guard in a PvP match? Ele can get a high up time of Protection and Regen. With Tempest, you are looking at 40% damage reduction with aura/protection. You have yourself Might and Fury. You have your own Rebound, which you can share with your DPS allies during Bullet Storm, too. You also have plenty of blast finisher to coordinate a water blast with your engi.
Since you don’t need any of the Reflect/Block/Stability (yet), it’s pretty much a fair game to have a cele ele tank/kite the boss.
I think you might have missed the last patch notes or you plan on using cantrips as well.
Either way, earthen proxy isn’t something I would have brought into a discussion.
There have been a countless ideas to improve minor and major traits yet Karl still ignores them. It’s quite a let down seeing how other devs are reacting to players’ feedback.
Staff ele used primarily for damage will fall out of raids, that’s definite. The first raid boss is much more mobile than, let’s say, Brie and you cannot snare it.
And the fact that once bosses are more mobile than dummies staff dps plummets. Not to mention the fact that you can’t even cripple bosses with breakbar.
I think that might be a consequence of the high end PvE community being sick of playing ele all the time for everything and wanting to try something else.
I cannot agree with that. Those people, at least those that recorded first kills, do not care about fun when something like virtual prestige is at stake. You play what will give you a victory.
