Tempest should get a real trade off

Anet is trying to install trade offs in all elite specs of the game, which means that the elite specs lose something permanently compared to their core classes.Recently, they installed more trade offs to other classes, like removing the in combat pet swap from the soulbeast.

Looking through the elite specs, tempest is the only one left without any real trade off in Anet's sense.I know that the attunement CDs are longer after overcharging, but the point is that the CD is just longer after using these. As long as you choose not to use the overload abilities, the tempest absolutely loses nothing compared to the elementalist.

That's not like the trade offs for other classes. Reaper's can't choose not to use their Reaper's Shroud and use their Death Shroud instead. Holosmiths can't choose not to use their Holoforge and get back their access to elite toolbelt skills. Chronomancers can't choose not to use their new set of shatters in favour of the core ones.

Tempest should get a real permanent trade off compared to the core elementalist. Most logical thing for me would be to increase their attunement CDs by default instead of just after overload use. But I want to ask you guys what you think, too. Is there another trade off you could think of to install in the tempest?

We don't need trade offs. Please stop what you're doing and clear your head. There's no need to nerf Tempest again.

@"Dahir.4158" said:We don't need trade offs. Please stop what you're doing and clear your head. There's no need to nerf Tempest again.

Tempest can get a compensation buff in exchange, tho. And you say we don't need trade offs, but it is pretty obvious that Anet wants every elite spec to give up something to get the benefits of their elite spec. Tempest is the only exception left here.

In my eyes, ANet did a good job at giving Tempest a natural reward-for-the-risk tradeoff: if you are able to pull off a long 4-second channel, you get a strong effect. If you get interrupted, you get pretty hard punished. Even if you complete the channel, you still get the cooldown punishment. This is good. The only thing I see as possibly going against their new philosophy is that overloads still act as stunbreaks. But hey, I don't really play Tempest enough to honestly say whether that is truly "unhealthy." Sure as heck is annoying fighting the unkillable Minstrel's Stoneheart Tempests in WvW, but I'd say that is more of an issue of Minstrel's being an overstacked support stat spread than anything.

If anything, maybe core Ele could get something shiny like core Rev did (which did absolute wonders for the class and gave it a distinct niche). Not really sure what the heck that could be though. As far as mechanical changes go, I consider both Weaver and Tempest to be very well-implemented and don't think either of them need anything else.

I think you are mostly complaining about tempest for other reasons, and you are not a ele main.Tempest trade off is the increased CD and you know that. Now you can avoid using overloads but then, what is the point of using tempest?If you don't play overloads you are playing a bad core, because you have one trait like used only for what? the stunbreak on the overload? but again you are using the overload and you get the tradeoff.As suggested, I think the problem is not the tempest, which is well balanced in my opinion, but core ele, which is missing something. Probably something little like a passive stat based on your element (fire power, air ferocity, water concentration, earth dmg reduction) or cast a spell when changing attunement, or something similar, because right now there are trade off for tempest and weaver, which change the way you use the attunements, but core is missing something.

@montecristo.1324 said:I think you are mostly complaining about tempest for other reasons, and you are not a ele main.Tempest trade off is the increased CD and you know that. Now you can avoid using overloads but then, what is the point of using tempest?If you don't play overloads you are playing a bad core, because you have one trait like used only for what? the stunbreak on the overload? but again you are using the overload and you get the tradeoff.As suggested, I think the problem is not the tempest, which is well balanced in my opinion, but core ele, which is missing something. Probably something little like a passive stat based on your element (fire power, air ferocity, water concentration, earth dmg reduction) or cast a spell when changing attunement, or something similar, because right now there are trade off for tempest and weaver, which change the way you use the attunements, but core is missing something.

I don't complain about tempest at all, dude. Even stated that they could (probably even should) get a compensation buff in exchange for adding a trade off.I am mostly just advocating that Anet is consequent with their trade off philosophy. They added the trade off to soulbeast with just one pet in combat (which I also agreed with), since they didn't have a trade off along their philosophy, even if people argued that the fact that the pet disappears if you use the merge mechanic was already there.

Logically, I think that tempest then also lacks a trade off by Anet's definition. Because tempest also just gets the trade off if you use the overload mechanic, just like soulbeast just got their trade off when they used their merge mechanic.

This, however, is not how their trade off system works. They want to implement a permanent downside of the e-spec, something is taken away that the core class has access to. This is not the case currently with the tempest.

Weaver on the other hand already follows that train of thought. They replace their mainhand #3 weapon skills. Replacing skills with different ones is the trade off for many other elite specs as well, this is fair game. Tempest however just got buttons added with the overload, which just have a downside if you choose to use them. Tempest is in the same situation like the soulbeast before the addition of their actual trade off with disabling pet swap in combat.

Again, I am not complaining about the tempest. If they are in need of a buff, buff them. I am just looking at this system logically and noticed that tempest is still left to get a trade off when you look at the changes Anet has made.

I see your sense. You gain overload without losing anything in return. Maybe increase all attunement CD to 12s but make overload no longer be an 18s cd

They don't need trade offs for the sake of having one. They have a long channel on their added mechanics, the long cooldown after using them prevents them from switching to that entire element for a long time again and none of the other stuff they got is out of line at all. Hard disagree on this one.

@Kodama.6453 said:

@montecristo.1324 said:I think you are mostly complaining about tempest for other reasons, and you are not a ele main.Tempest trade off is the increased CD and you know that. Now you can avoid using overloads but then, what is the point of using tempest?If you don't play overloads you are playing a bad core, because you have one trait like used only for what? the stunbreak on the overload? but again you are using the overload and you get the tradeoff.As suggested, I think the problem is not the tempest, which is well balanced in my opinion, but core ele, which is missing something. Probably something little like a passive stat based on your element (fire power, air ferocity, water concentration, earth dmg reduction) or cast a spell when changing attunement, or something similar, because right now there are trade off for tempest and weaver, which change the way you use the attunements, but core is missing something.

I got your point, even if I think that the CD increase is already a fair trade off. But at this point I would suggest to not put a tradeoff on tempest, which is well rounded, but put something new to core, because now is lacking something.It was done for rev, core rev was lacking of something and it was a bad idea put a tradeoff on herald. I think we need the same thing.

@montecristo.1324 said:

@Kodama.6453 said:

@montecristo.1324 said:I think you are mostly complaining about tempest for other reasons, and you are not a ele main.Tempest trade off is the increased CD and you know that. Now you can avoid using overloads but then, what is the point of using tempest?If you don't play overloads you are playing a bad core, because you have one trait like used only for what? the stunbreak on the overload? but again you are using the overload and you get the tradeoff.As suggested, I think the problem is not the tempest, which is well balanced in my opinion, but core ele, which is missing something. Probably something little like a passive stat based on your element (fire power, air ferocity, water concentration, earth dmg reduction) or cast a spell when changing attunement, or something similar, because right now there are trade off for tempest and weaver, which change the way you use the attunements, but core is missing something.

Giving core elementalist something that the elite specs don't have access to also works for me, like you said it was done to the revenant so they can also do it to the elementalist.

Your idea to give stats in any given attunement, while tempest (and maybe weaver too) not getting these benefits could work. But on the other hand, this is already a mechanic for the traits associated with the specific attunements (getting power from fire, ferocity in air, damage reduction (former toughness) in earth, and outgoing healing from water), so I guess implementing this would have to come with a major rework for the elemental trait lines as well, because I don't think we should double up on stat bonuses from these trait lines.

Half of the traits are focused on overloads so if you just choose not to use overloads, you're pretty much wasting the whole spec while not gaining much.

@steki.1478 said:Half of the traits are focused on overloads so if you just choose not to use overloads, you're pretty much wasting the whole spec while not gaining much.

Taking soulbeast without using the merge mechanic also was a waste of the spec, they still went with the removal of the in combat pet swap as a trade off.

However, montecristo had a good point about revenant getting something added to core to remove for the trade off instead off just putting a disadvantage on the herald. Giving core elementalist something that the elite specs don't have could also be a great way to bring the tempest in line with the other trade off designs, this possibility didn't come to my mind, but it is probably a more elegant solution than adding a downside to tempest and having to compensate buff them at the same time.

@Kodama.6453 said:

@montecristo.1324 said:

@Kodama.6453 said:

@montecristo.1324 said:I think you are mostly complaining about tempest for other reasons, and you are not a ele main.Tempest trade off is the increased CD and you know that. Now you can avoid using overloads but then, what is the point of using tempest?If you don't play overloads you are playing a bad core, because you have one trait like used only for what? the stunbreak on the overload? but again you are using the overload and you get the tradeoff.As suggested, I think the problem is not the tempest, which is well balanced in my opinion, but core ele, which is missing something. Probably something little like a passive stat based on your element (fire power, air ferocity, water concentration, earth dmg reduction) or cast a spell when changing attunement, or something similar, because right now there are trade off for tempest and weaver, which change the way you use the attunements, but core is missing something.

Give Core an Arcane Attunement perhaps? Yeah I know that would be a fck ton of new skills to add, but that would be a trade off. An Arcane attunement might be fun to play with...

Otherwise an F5 that recharges all attunements but has a 60s CD itself might work.

Somewhat agree, IMO temp is a straight up upgrade if just due to access to shouts, in fact the heal skill having a highly coveted condi cleanse alone makes me take it as soon as I can. The overloads are definitely feelsbad enough though, i can't imagine how hard getting through that channel is in competitive.

I don't really know how i'd solve this though.

As far as buffing core goes...i don't think rev and ele are comparable, part of the reason core revenant felt so bad was the lack of f2+ skills which both of it's specs gave it, and while there were certainly other reasons and still major problems in core vs herald vs renegade on a level of game design, simply giving it an f2 key made core revenant match it's elite specs because it no longer felt like you were missing a part of your class without an elite spec - even if the core way to play, interactions with legends, remained. I do not think elementalist experiences the same thing, when I play core i don't feel like i'm missing anything aside extra 6-0 skills.

I think tempest and weaver have pretty good design in terms of how they mix up the core mechanic of ele, element swapping. For weaver, we have an altogether more complicated way to play that rewards us for swapping as much as possible, tempest wants us to swap through giving a downside if we don't...well...unless we don't even touch overloads, in which case it has no downside at all. I'm not sure what could be done to core ele that wouldn't feel like just adding something to it for the sake of it - elementalist traits are largely based around element swapping even on the non elite traitlines, i think anything that plays around with the swapping mechanic further deserves to be in another elite spec and not given to core.

Which brings me to, what kind of downside would be given to tempest? I think tempest already suffers a downside, and the major problem is that you aren't forced to interact with it, meaning we can access the delicious traits + shouts without experiencing any loss in effectiveness really...but forcing us to interact with overloads...? I think overloads already do a great job as "carrots" between overloads being really rewarding IF you can complete them, offering lots of great effects even if you don't, and the stun break being something elementalist in general struggles to access is an important part of that too - there is already pretty big incentive to overload, but we don't really have to. But "stick" doesn't offer great solutions either, for example locking us out of our other elements until we overload would be all sorts of problematic (though i kinda like the idea lol), and nerfing shouts/the traitline would be just awful.

All in all, i think tempest is in a complicated position, and I really like the gameplay that happens when we play around overloads and i'm not sure i'd want that gameplay changed just to give it a downside, but nor do I want just nerfs because a trade off couldn't be implemented through design. I'm kinda inclined towards that tempest is fine without changes, tbh, even if it doesn't get a true trade off according to anet's streak of trade offs so far.

The only way this could work is if Anet gets rid of the "soft" trade-off that tempest already has. They would have to decouple the overload cooldowns from the attunement cooldowns and install a permanent trade-off in its place. If they did not remove the "soft" trade-off, tempest would become incredibly bad and it would be the only spec with both a permanent and a "soft" trade-off. It would be like making soulbeast unable to return to their pet from beast form for 20 seconds, while they also only have access to one pet.

No, Tempest does not need a Tradeoff.Core needs something new.

They way Anet handle tradeoffs are killing the game, stifling builds, destroying creative building.I do not wish to see Anet simply gut something in the name of tradeoffs.

Anet needs to give many Core classes the Ancient Echo treatment and give them something unique that only Core has access to which is coveted by the Elite Specs, which will be missed by the Elite specs.

I like @Lan Deathrider.5910 's idea of adding an Arcance Attunement for Core.Both Tempest and Weaver will lose Arcance Attunement but gain new skills based on their specs (Tempest gets Overloads, Weaver gets Double Attuned skills)

@Yasai.3549 said:No, Tempest does not need a Tradeoff.Core needs something new.

They way Anet handle tradeoffs are killing the game, stifling builds, destroying creative building.I do not wish to see Anet simply gut something in the name of tradeoffs.

Anet needs to give many Core classes the Ancient Echo treatment and give them something unique that only Core has access to which is coveted by the Elite Specs, which will be missed by the Elite specs.

I like @Lan Deathrider.5910 's idea of adding an Arcance Attunement for Core.Both Tempest and Weaver will lose Arcance Attunement but gain new skills based on their specs (Tempest gets Overloads, Weaver gets Double Attuned skills)

Like I mention in this thread, I can agree with this approach and it seems fair to give core something new, which they can remove for the elite specs.Thinking about it, they kinda also did the same with the engineer. Originally, there hasn't been an F5 elite toolbelt skill. They added it later and now it serves as the replacement trade off for both scrapper (function gyro) and holosmith (holoforge).

So yeah, this seems to be a thing and should probably be the path they take here.While the idea of an additional attunement (arcane) seems fun, I don't know if I would go for this.First, it would require an immense amount of work, since they would have to create skills for every weapon of the core set. Second, gaining access to 5 new skills for every build could add too much power to the core elementalist in the end and could result in major balancing problems.

@Kodama.6453 said:

@Yasai.3549 said:No, Tempest does not need a Tradeoff.Core needs something new.

They way Anet handle tradeoffs are killing the game, stifling builds, destroying creative building.I do not wish to see Anet simply gut something in the name of tradeoffs.

Anet needs to give many Core classes the Ancient Echo treatment and give them something unique that only Core has access to which is coveted by the Elite Specs, which will be missed by the Elite specs.

I like @Lan Deathrider.5910 's idea of adding an Arcance Attunement for Core.Both Tempest and Weaver will lose Arcance Attunement but gain new skills based on their specs (Tempest gets Overloads, Weaver gets Double Attuned skills)

Adding something new to core is the better approach in my opinion. I'd give Guardians an F4 that DH and FB don't get. And I'd make it s strong one.

For Ele, the other suggestion I had was an F5 that recharged all Attunements on a 60s CD. Would be useful to get back to the attunement you needed if it were on CD.

@Kodama.6453 said:

@steki.1478 said:Half of the traits are focused on overloads so if you just choose not to use overloads, you're pretty much wasting the whole spec while not gaining much.

Core definitely needs an F5 buff. I wouldn't consider a whole new attunement as the solution. That would take a lot of added skills and more of a 3rd elite idea. With an Arcanist you can add arcane fields, make arcane shield an aura, etc. There's a lot you can do with it.

I don't think a attunement recharge is needed either. Core Ele doesn't suffer from that problem. Unlike Weaver, changing attunements doesn't put a Cooldown on all attunements.

What core ele needs is a aura generator. Instead of sharing this aura like tempest does, the aura is given to the Ele based on its attunement at a 20sec CD.

Dagger Ele's can finally get Magnetic aura without taking focus. Scepter can finally get lightning aura. Staff can get fire, water, and lightning aura with easy access. It's a decent buff and plays to the classes mechanic

I think the F5 ability that resets the cooldowns of their attunements would be a neat idea. It could be used to add versatility to core builds by for example letting them swap to water attunement use some healing skills then immediately swap back to fire to continue dps without having to wait for fire attunement to come off CD.

@Fjaeldmark.9043 said:I think the F5 ability that resets the cooldowns of their attunements would be a neat idea. It could be used to add versatility to core builds by for example letting them swap to water attunement use some healing skills then immediately swap back to fire to continue dps without having to wait for fire attunement to come off CD.

Imo simply resetting is too shallow.Weaver already does this with Unravel, with two charges.

Maybe something like make F5 a short 5 second cooldown, and activating it will strengthen the effects of the next skill used? (not counting Auto attacks that is)

i thought the tradeoff was a self silence for 3 seconds where you can't dodge or cast other abilities except a point blank small aoe.

@Stallic.2397 said:Core definitely needs an F5 buff. I wouldn't consider a whole new attunement as the solution. That would take a lot of added skills and more of a 3rd elite idea. With an Arcanist you can add arcane fields, make arcane shield an aura, etc. There's a lot you can do with it.

I don't think a attunement recharge is needed either. Core Ele doesn't suffer from that problem. Unlike Weaver, changing attunements doesn't put a Cooldown on all attunements.

What core ele needs is a aura generator. Instead of sharing this aura like tempest does, the aura is given to the Ele based on its attunement at a 20sec CD.

Dagger Ele's can finally get Magnetic aura without taking focus. Scepter can finally get lightning aura. Staff can get fire, water, and lightning aura with easy access. It's a decent buff and plays to the classes mechanic

I like this idea a lot actually. Maybe give it a unique transmute flipover as well. +1

@Yasai.3549 said:

@Fjaeldmark.9043 said:I think the F5 ability that resets the cooldowns of their attunements would be a neat idea. It could be used to add versatility to core builds by for example letting them swap to water attunement use some healing skills then immediately swap back to fire to continue dps without having to wait for fire attunement to come off CD.

It's not really meant to be deep or game changing. It's just a small perk for playing core. I don't see Anet adding something complex to elementalists unless they give the profession a complete overhaul.