Talking about PVE right now.

1. Fury source

Right now the major source of group fury from heal tempest is "Zephyr's Boon" from air traitline or "Rebound!".

But as a healer, it feels weird to take air traitline just for fury/proc air more. Air is a all about getting more "ferocity" and damage traitline after all.

2. Group Stability and other boon

And this class still has little group stability. Only group stability is from "Rock solid" from earth traitline, which only lasts 2 seconds and cannot trigger when overload. And the super low duration means you have to attune to earth almost exactly when an CC is coming. But that may disrupt your pace, unlike "SYG" which can be pressed at anytime you want.

I think one way to fix this is to add stability to "eye of the storm". Also it feels very unfair because "stand your ground" has only 30 seconds cd (24 if traited), giving 10 man 5 stacks of stability and retaliation and break stun, while "eye of the storm" has 40seconds cd and giving no stability at all, only 5 man unless traited.

Is it really balanced? Why healbrand can have access to all boons except alacrity, while this heal spec have no aegis/resistance/quickness/little group stability?

Don't get me wrong. I play healbrand too and a lot more and really like the spec. But by playing both spec I can really feel how underwhelming heal tempest is.

Some side notes

What is the purpose of "Earthen Blast" from earth traitline? It does minimal damage (like ~400 at level 80) and cannot critical hit. It just feels so useless."Sunspot" cannot critical hit too and does little damage (~400), but at least you can buff it with "Burning rage" and you get "fire aura".

Another balance concern about stability.

"Stand Your Ground!" has 30cd (24 if traited),
10 man break stun,5 stacks of 6 sec stability, 5 sec retaliation.

But Armor of earth has 50cd,
user only,10 stacks of 6 sec stability, 6 second protection.

I am really confused about how balance in guild wars 2 works. Why can a skill has lower cd, way way more targets, but almost same effect? Is it because no one in balance team play elementalist in PVE and almost all are playing guardian/necromancer? (That's what I heard from a Arenanet guild player in game)

Design philosophy of each profession. If you want every profession to have the same strengths and weaknesses you might as well have 1 profession in the game. Guardian is a better boon support. Simple as that.

@"FrownyClown.8402" said:Design philosophy of each profession. If you want every profession to have the same strengths and weaknesses you might as well have 1 profession in the game. Guardian is a better boon support. Simple as that.

Hey buddy I am not asking for same strengths and weaknesses. I am just saying some traits and utility are so underwhelming and unfair.

It's a bit frustrating when I list data and concrete example, people just respond "simple as that" without any further explanation.

And you have to admit that elementalist is the least seen class in end game PVE right now.

Elementalist (DPS) is meta per discretize , it's just not really meta for raids. For 100cm though people are generally going for condi things like condi QB, scourges, and mirages though.

In addition, heal tempest has more healing overall but it just doesn't stack as well due to the soothing mist interval and people tend to run dagger mainhand in PvE for more damage.

edit: also Elemental Shielding (protection on auras) in the earthline works with auras , as does Smoldering Auras (for more condi clear) in fire but people would rather have fury + make more auras from air traitline (via fresh air overload). Unless Powerful Auras swaps position with Elemental Bastion in tempest traitline then you'll always end up making the decision to go offensive or defensive.

You have to keep in mind while you specify your suggestion is for PVE they have stated they can only do numerical splits for PVP/WvW. Given superspeed is so potent in WvW and heal tempest is part of the common support trio (firebrand, scrapper, tempest) ahead of minstrel warrior (which is really boring IMO) and chrono (given boon share is long gone , it's sort of a relic even if the meta runs minstrel) if stability is given it would probably be in earth traitline only.

I don't see firebrand losing stability or aegis any time soon. They might have adjusted cooldowns on the mantra of solace aegis if anything to legitimize "Retreat" or even making mantras 2 charges like on mesmer, but not overall.

Resistance isn't a guardian thing, it's only on the tome of courage on firebrand. I'm not sure what you would want them to do if they remove resistance from Chapter 4: Stalwart Stand , unless something happens to unbroken lines for example splitting the aegis to unbroken lines and replacing resistance with a long duration protection on Stalwart stand from unbroken lines.

Frankly fury is the domain of heralds, people just don't use them in PvE because of druids and firebrands.

Earthen blast exists mainly for competitive purposes as the cripple acts as a soft CC.

Looking at tempest I would rather have lower cooldown on "Feel the Burn!" as the might stacks are low and maybe less cooldown on "Rebound!" in PvE because you will need insane timing to use it to prevent lethal damage (whereas a firebrand can use mantra of solace every 9-12s or less with alacrity). Because aegis is a firebrand thing you probably would want more blind application instead for tempests , but that is on staff / scepter+warhorn mainly.

The only thing regarding shared stability on elementalist is from rock solid which is underwhelming. The duration could easily be lengthened for PvE.

The Tempest only truely shines in WvW. There it does rather well with strong cleanses and a good healing spam uptime. They compete with Scrappers rather than with Firebrands, though. I mean, Firebrands are even more of a must-have in WvW than in PvE but that's different story entirely.

What makes Tempests kinda undesirable in PvE, unlike in WvW and not unlike the Scrapper in PvE, is the fact that there is rarely the need to have a build that does powerful healing and strong cleanses only. There might be the odd boss or the weaker group in the need of carrying but pretty much any healing or cleansing requirements can be covered by Druids and Firebrands. Two builds you gonna have anyways and two builds with respectable healing when done right.

Druid is kinda a mixed bag as they are only really being used in raids. The way they play does not fit into WvW squads and there are far better options for Fractals these days.People have asked and complained about why Scrappers and Tempests get such easy and strong builds in WvW while Druids continue to be rather inferior there. I guess this goes both ways and we would need to do a lot of rebalancing if we intended to provide all classes with good builds for all roles and especially all game modes.

Firebrands certainly are the real must-have over multiple modes these days. Just for the sake of a fun discussion, I would most likely provide Tempests with their own easy Quickness and possibly a group damage modifier in the form of, let's say, Fire Auras. I would add a new Fire trait they would be required to spec into similar to how Firebrands have to face the trade off of speccing into Perfect Inscriptions if they want to share Signets.People would then basically get to pick between a Quickness Healer with stronger (and debatably easier) healing or a Quickness Healer with strong Stab and just an overload of boons. Both builds would have their own unique damage modifiers and their usual other tools.

I think properly played Tempest is still the strongest class in the game. This is after many years of experience with many characters and builds and having played all classes and their elites on Exotic or Exotic/Ascended gear mix or better.

They have to be really careful balancing Ele or its subclasses because Tempest especially can get out of almost any situation in any game mode, and when played properly they just don't, die. I've survived things in high-level instanced PvE that my allies couldn't survive despite having half the HP and half the armor, because Tempest defines adaptability that's normally unobtainable with the class designs and limitations.

Yes, even in Fractals and raids. Its just not meta because you often want min/maxers, which Tempest can't do well.

I'd say that their greatest weakness is indeed group Stability. One possible solution is to make the Overloads provide specific boons: Fire pulse Might and Quickness, Water pulse Regeneration and Vigor, Air pulse Fury and Swiftness, and Earth pulse Protection and Stability.

Then add Alacrity to Fire Shout, Resistance to Water Shout, and Aegis to Earth Shout.

Right now we rely on Auras for most boons, which isn't a good idea, because you can only take three traitlines and two of them (Water and Tempest) are always required, meaning you must chose Fire for cleanses, Earth for Protection or Air for Fury+Swiftness.

Giving us a way to provide more boons without having to use auras to do it would be very helpful.

@"Euclid.2517" said:Talking about PVE right now.

1. Fury source

Right now the major source of group fury from heal tempest is "Zephyr's Boon" from air traitline or "Rebound!".

But as a healer, it feels weird to take air traitline just for fury/proc air more. Air is a all about getting more "ferocity" and damage traitline after all.

While I feel it's a shame that the elementalist lost so many group fury sources, it's obvious that ANet have start to reduces the access to boons that does not fit their idea of each profession's design. You should probably be more warry about how long the elementalist will be able to retain the few scrap of fury he got than complain that it's located in Air magic.

As it stand, we can only think that fury isn't an intended boon support for the elementalist.

2. Group Stability and other boon

And this class still has little group stability. Only group stability is from "Rock solid" from earth traitline, which only lasts 2 seconds and cannot trigger when overload. And the super low duration means you have to attune to earth almost exactly when an CC is coming. But that may disrupt your pace, unlike "SYG" which can be pressed at anytime you want.

I think one way to fix this is to add stability to "eye of the storm". Also it feels very unfair because "stand your ground" has only 30 seconds cd (24 if traited), giving 10 man 5 stacks of stability and retaliation and break stun, while "eye of the storm" has 40seconds cd and giving no stability at all, only 5 man unless traited.

Is it really balanced? Why healbrand can have access to all boons except alacrity, while this heal spec have no aegis/resistance/quickness/little group stability?

Don't get me wrong. I play healbrand too and a lot more and really like the spec. But by playing both spec I can really feel how underwhelming heal tempest is.

Some side notes

What is the purpose of "Earthen Blast" from earth traitline? It does minimal damage (like ~400 at level 80) and cannot critical hit. It just feels so useless."Sunspot" cannot critical hit too and does little damage (~400), but at least you can buff it with "Burning rage" and you get "fire aura".

First off, you pit skills against each other in an increadibly biased way.

Second, "Stand your ground!" do not break stun for allies, which is an important difference with "eye of the storm!". "Eye of the storm!" also grant swiftness and superspeed (and superspeed is valued highly by ANet's dev). Thus, you're comparing a fondamentally defensive support skill to a movement support skill.

Lastly, ANet's dev overvalue auras which are supposed to be the main support that the tempest grant. The true issue of the tempest isn't a lack of fury or stability (having both would sure help with being competitive but that's not what the tempest is intended to do), the true issue is the abysmal value of the auras in PvE.

Suggested change to improve the tempest value as a support in PvE:

• Fire aura: No longer grant might when struck, instead grant 100 power and 100 condition damage (like banner of strength). The burn when struck is kept.
• Shocking aura: No longer stun when struck, instead grant 100 precision and 100 ferocity. Now apply vulnerability when struck.
• Frost aura: No longer reduce incoming damage by 10%, instead grant 100 healing power and 100 concentration. The chill when struck is kept.
• Magnetic aura: Renamed Earth aura, no longer reflect projectile, instead grant 100 toughness and 100 vitality. Now apply weakness when struck.

Result: Auras become more valuable in PvE group content. Shocking aura and magnetic aura complains in sPvP/WvW die down. Frost aura, shocking aura and magnetic aura can be made more accessible to the elementalist (or at least at the level of accessibility of fire aura). Tempest traits relying heavily on aura become automatically more valuable.

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@"Euclid.2517" said:Talking about PVE right now.

1. Fury source

Right now the major source of group fury from heal tempest is "Zephyr's Boon" from air traitline or "Rebound!".

But as a healer, it feels weird to take air traitline just for fury/proc air more. Air is a all about getting more "ferocity" and damage traitline after all.

2. Group Stability and other boon

And this class still has little group stability. Only group stability is from "Rock solid" from earth traitline,

which only lasts 2 seconds

and

cannot trigger when overload

. And the super low duration means you have to attune to earth

almost exactly when an CC is coming

. But that may disrupt your pace, unlike "SYG" which can be pressed at anytime you want.

I think one way to fix this is to

add stability to "eye of the storm"

. Also it

feels very unfair

because "stand your ground" has

only 30 seconds cd

(24 if traited), giving

10 man

5 stacks of stability and retaliation and break stun, while "eye of the storm" has

40seconds cd

and giving no stability at all,

only 5 man

unless traited.

Is it really balanced?

Why healbrand can have access to all boons except alacrity, while this heal spec have

no aegis/resistance/quickness/little group stability?

Don't get me wrong. I play healbrand too and a lot more and really like the spec. But by playing both spec I can really feel how underwhelming heal tempest is.

Some side notes

What is the purpose of "Earthen Blast" from earth traitline? It does minimal damage (like ~400 at level 80) and cannot critical hit. It just feels so useless."Sunspot" cannot critical hit too and does little damage (~400), but at least you can buff it with "Burning rage" and you get "fire aura".

• Fire aura: No longer grant might when struck, instead grant 100 power and 100 condition damage (like banner of strength). The burn when struck is kept.
• Shocking aura: No longer stun when struck, instead grant 100 precision and 100 ferocity. Now apply vulnerability when struck.
• Frost aura: No longer reduce incoming damage by 10%, instead grant 100 healing power and 100 concentration. The chill when struck is kept.
• Magnetic aura: Renamed Earth aura, no longer reflect projectile, instead grant 100 toughness and 100 vitality. Now apply weakness when struck.

The magnetic aura suggestion is pretty terrible, since all the reflect ele has are from magnetic aura only. Reflects are a very valid support option in PvE.

@Ganathar.4956 said:The magnetic aura suggestion is pretty terrible, since all the reflect ele has are from magnetic aura only. Reflects are a very valid support option in PvE.

In open PvE maybe but in most of the newer group content ANet made sure that it cannot be of use anymore. I think in the current PvE it'd better for elementalist to have good access to an average buff than a mediocre access to reflect.

@Ganathar.4956 said:

The magnetic aura suggestion is pretty terrible, since all the reflect ele has are from magnetic aura only. Reflects are a very valid support option in PvE.

All aura reworks he suggests are bad, with the exception of fire aura, in my opinion.Problem is that he treats auras like they are a tempest only thing, which they are not, and they are utilised on skills of other classes as well with a very clear intent.

Let's take shocking aura, for example. Yes, ele and tempest in general are the main source of that aura. But did you know that it is also put on a triggered A.E.D. from the engineer if traited with gadgeteer?

The intention is that if you manage to lure an enemy into attacking you while your A.E.D. is up, you can heal back to almost full and another hit will stun them thanks to the shocking aura, giving you some more time to breathe and get your A.E.D. back up. Basically the same function why A.E.D. also removes damaging conditions from you if trigger, it is to prevent you getting bursted down again immediately after your healing triggered.

It is a great thematical fit (an A.E.D. uses electricity in the end) and also works really well together mechanically. And it also puts another emphasis on A.E.D. as our healing skill if you want to have more CC, since the toolbelt skill also stuns.

Another example from engineer once again: frost aura from the healing skill coolant blast if above 50 heat. The aura is there to give you damage reduction as a defensive mechanic, which is valuable for a glass cannon melee damage dealer like holosmith. 100 healing power and 100 concentration wouldn't give me the same value here.

@Kodama.6453 said:All aura reworks he suggests are bad, with the exception of fire aura, in my opinion.Problem is that he treats auras like they are a tempest only thing, which they are not, and they are utilised on skills of other classes as well with a very clear intent.

Let's take shocking aura, for example. Yes, ele and tempest in general are the main source of that aura. But did you know that it is also put on a triggered A.E.D. from the engineer if traited with gadgeteer?

The intention is that if you manage to lure an enemy into attacking you while your A.E.D. is up, you can heal back to almost full and another hit will stun them thanks to the shocking aura, giving you some more time to breathe and get your A.E.D. back up. Basically the same function why A.E.D. also removes damaging conditions from you if trigger, it is to prevent you getting bursted down again immediately after your healing triggered.

It is a great thematical fit (an A.E.D. uses electricity in the end) and also works really well together mechanically. And it also puts another emphasis on A.E.D. as our healing skill if you want to have more CC, since the toolbelt skill also stuns.

Another example from engineer once again: frost aura from the healing skill coolant blast if above 50 heat. The aura is there to give you damage reduction as a defensive mechanic, which is valuable for a glass cannon melee damage dealer like holosmith. 100 healing power and 100 concentration wouldn't give me the same value here.

It may be bad for PvP purpose but it's better for PvE purpose. The interesting point is that it remove the PvP complains about those auras since they become less powerful in this gamemode. People in PvP hate from their guts passive retaliation and they hate even more potent passive retaliation that hard CC them. The change of fonctionality don't hurt the thematic, if anything the thematic of electric stuf lean toward swiftness, vulnerability and ferocity more than CC nowaday (scrapper's evolution over the years, to stay within your engineer argument, is a good example of that).

I understand that you're attached to strong tools but those strong tools are mostly neutered by PvE mechanism and sometime overperform in sPvP/WvW to the point that they get ridiculous ICD and laughably low uptime for sPvP balance's sake. Like I said I'd rather have something of average value in all gamemode than something that is situationaly strong to the point of being nerfed. What's the use of shocking aura against a boss? Do the bosses even hit players when their breakbar can be broken or are they trying to channel big skills that you want to interrupt?

Do you think that any profession out there (especially engineer/holosmith) can just look at 100 point of concentration and say they have no use for them? Won't your heal and various sustain source still benefit from getting 100 point of healing power even if you are a glass canon to your very heart? You seem to see healing power as a mean to only support other, but the reality is that you also benefit from it to a personal level, it mean better sustain and, well, more personal might/fury/quickness uptime to a glass canon.

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@Kodama.6453 said:All aura reworks he suggests are bad, with the exception of fire aura, in my opinion.Problem is that he treats auras like they are a tempest only thing, which they are not, and they are utilised on skills of other classes as well with a very clear intent.

Let's take shocking aura, for example. Yes, ele and tempest in general are the main source of that aura. But did you know that it is also put on a triggered A.E.D. from the engineer if traited with gadgeteer?

The intention is that if you manage to lure an enemy into attacking you while your A.E.D. is up, you can heal back to almost full and another hit will stun them thanks to the shocking aura, giving you some more time to breathe and get your A.E.D. back up. Basically the same function why A.E.D. also removes damaging conditions from you if trigger, it is to prevent you getting bursted down again immediately after your healing triggered.

It is a great thematical fit (an A.E.D. uses electricity in the end) and also works really well together mechanically. And it also puts another emphasis on A.E.D. as our healing skill if you want to have more CC, since the toolbelt skill also stuns.

Another example from engineer once again: frost aura from the healing skill coolant blast if above 50 heat. The aura is there to give you damage reduction as a defensive mechanic, which is valuable for a glass cannon melee damage dealer like holosmith. 100 healing power and 100 concentration wouldn't give me the same value here.

Electricity, especially on engineer and scrapper, still has strong thematical ties with CC. I don't know how you come up with the idea that this isn't the case anymore.

From engineer alone, skills with an electrical theme which are also associated with CC:

• thunderclap
• spare capacitor
• system shocker
• expert examination
• static shield
• static shock
• electrified net

Also 100 healing power and 100 concentration really would not have much impact on my holosmith.The only sources of healing I have while playing a dps holosmith are my healing skill and heat therapy.

Let's take coolant blast as the example again. Even if the frost aura applies before the actual healing, so that my main heal also gets the benefit from the healing power, above 50 heat it has a healing power coefficient of 1,0. So 100 healing power means that I get 100 healing more.... on 20 seconds cooldown. That is an additional healing of 5 per second.

Heat therapy coefficient per point of heat is 0,006. Even a full traited heat bar of 150 heat would translate into 90 more healing with 100 healing power..... Yes, I actually do not care about these ridiculously low bonus healings.

100 concentration translates to roughly 7% longer boon duration. On boons which are usually pretty short lived. Yeah, I would rather have 10% damage reduction than these effects.

I don't bother to take shock aura for my A.E.D. at bosses. But that's not just because of the breakbar, but the entire nature of the PvE bosses. The shock aura is there to prevent follow up burst, as I explained. That doesn't really happen in PvE content. I usually just use A.E.D. there to prevent a deadly mechanic and if that one got neglected by A.E.D., then most bosses don't follow up with another burst. You are safe for a while after that usually.

That why they should give tempest's aura traits to Core ele, buff them a bit; and make something else with these shouts and overload.Why Core ele has traits one trait per spec on auras, but only has 1 or 2 auras per build ? Why on tempest I have to build specs mainly for one trait (cf Earth)?

My issue with tempest : it steals one of the specifity of core elem, makes it mainly a medium for added effects with more auras : heal, protection, etc and so make core elem a very poor design.You actually don't really care if you spread fire or frost auras, the added effects become more important than the aura's effect itself. Shocking aura is the exception (and the reason fresh-air tempest is abusive)Imagine if necro's minions earned many and stronger effects with Scourge (Litteraly traits about minions in e-spec), and so devs slowly nerfs core traitlines because "Scourge is OP" !? It's the same here.

Give elemental bastion and invigorating auras to core specs ; delete unstable conduit. Problem solved; no more spammy fresh-air support tempest and Core would actually have a correct support build you could improve in a way with tempest/weaver.Give some auras in traits and skills instead of shouts/traits; make shouts, overload and related traits useful for their own effects rather than be a random medium to spread auras, and so added effects; damage Buffs, heal, alacrity/stab, etc.

I don't know about PVP/WvW heal tempest. But OP's post is really to the point and fair."Rock solid" needs to be buffed. 2 seconds of 1 stack stability when attuning to earth is just a joke.

Why do you feel a heal tempest in PVE should be running earth anyway?The only thing you would really benefit from is protection on auras. If running with an alacrity renegade you'd have protection output from the legends but no fury (unlike with heralds running glint).

Of course if you have a quickness firebrand of any sort using axe or even a dragonhunter using sword there's fury output from the symbols.

You'd still be running air over earth if you want to overload often , obviously water (aura share) + tempest. The only flexibility is with fire over air (for more condi clear) unless the powerful aura trait is outright swapped into tempest traitline.