Easy Condi Tempest solo build

Update 2021/06/16: Celestial stats have recently be buffed, so I decided to go full Celestial with my build.

I had a lot of fun creating a build for my tempest that provides a nice balance between DPS and survivability. I think it may be a nice build for players who are looking for an easy and non-complicated Elementalist build.

This build is designed to make the Elementalist easy to play. It combines decent DPS via condition damage with good defense and survivability for harder content.

If you can select a target and activate your skills you can play this build.

https://i.imgur.com/5MzxamW.png

Build link:http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGBFsE2aUZBFMq0GTMTrsRGqjqzV7D-zRhYKRfsEqSVIVkBHGJVRXq4cKCw+5B-e

Build template[&DQYfFRoXMB91AHUAvgGRAHYSdhKRABwBJgCWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA=]

Options:

• Set ground targeting to instant (optional)
• Enable "Snap ground target to current target" (optional)

Usage:spawn a fire elemental for DPS or earth elemental if you need a tank. You mostly want to be in fire attunement for the massive burn damage. Cast firestorm and the rest of your fire skills followed by the overload. Switch to earth to apply bleeds and shortly to air if fire and earth are on recharge. Back to fire and repeat. Only use water attunement if you need healing.

Use Ether Renewal to clean conditions and heal yourself."Eye of the Storm" is your get-out-of-jail-free card. It break stun and gives you superspeed and swiftness to bravely run away.

Balthazar runes for high burning duration and condition damage.Trailblazer stats provide decent condition damage with great defense.Carrion stats for health and highest condition damage.Shaman stats provide vitality and healing.A few Celestial pieces thrown in because I can.Rune of Divinity provides many attribute points and a 10% vitality bonus.Sigil of Smoldering for burn damage and Sigil of Bursting for 5% bonus condition damage.

Variants:Dagger offhand for more CC but lower DPSFocus offhand for more protection but lower DPSSignet of Restoration for continued healing at the cost of condition removal.Superior Rune of the Undead combined with Trailblazer stats for more defense.Mist form for a short invuln.

10K DPS against kitty golem:

Solo capping WvW tower with this build:

Edit: Tweaked with Balthazar runes.

You can optimize this build by a huge margin if you take dire/trailblazer gear and balthazar runes. Literally doubling your dps while still being extremely tanky, especially if you take elemental shielding trait (since you're not doing any bleeding anyway) and written in stone with fire signet (practically your best dps skill on a very low cooldown). There's also glyph of elemental power which is a stun break on a shorter cd than shout as well as pretty good dps boost.

The gameplay is the same, but the performance difference is huge. Celestial gear is a bait and completely useless in pve, so is any kind of power related stat on a pure condi build. Considering that the only sustain you have comes from healing skill (which offers low healing to begin with and should be used situationally, not always), you waste 400 stats on healing power which you arent even utilizing.

I'd also suggest dagger instead of scepter since it has more fluid combat (and since you're very tanky you dont need the range) as well as 2 great mobility skills (which can come in handy if you swap out eye of the storm).

Build link: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGgEsEWmAbidxoYk4o6c22A-zRRYcRQXMZ0gcCj8EorAcmGF8sB-e although I'm pretty sure that something similar can be found on metabattle.

^this, what steki said. The OP's build is a somewhat unfocused set of gear and runes and traits in comparison.

@"steki.1478" said:You can optimize this build by a huge margin if you take dire/trailblazer gear and balthazar runes. Literally doubling your dps while still being extremely tanky, especially if you take elemental shielding trait (since you're not doing any bleeding anyway) and written in stone with fire signet (practically your best dps skill on a very low cooldown). There's also glyph of elemental power which is a stun break on a shorter cd than shout as well as pretty good dps boost.

The gameplay is the same, but the performance difference is huge. Celestial gear is a bait and completely useless in pve, so is any kind of power related stat on a pure condi build. Considering that the only sustain you have comes from healing skill (which offers low healing to begin with and should be used situationally, not always), you waste 400 stats on healing power which you arent even utilizing.

I'd also suggest dagger instead of scepter since it has more fluid combat (and since you're very tanky you dont need the range) as well as 2 great mobility skills (which can come in handy if you swap out eye of the storm).

Build link: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGgEsEWmAbidxoYk4o6c22A-zRRYcRQXMZ0gcCj8EorAcmGF8sB-e although I'm pretty sure that something similar can be found on metabattle.

Thanks. I'll give it a try as well. The reason I put in the healing power is because without it the self-healing is quite low and I tend to use that a lot in WvW and long lasting boss battles.

I got some inspiration of this metabattle build:https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Tempest_-_Condi_Tempest

@TheQuickFox.3826 said:

@"steki.1478" said:You can optimize this build by a huge margin if you take dire/trailblazer gear and balthazar runes. Literally doubling your dps while still being extremely tanky, especially if you take elemental shielding trait (since you're not doing any bleeding anyway) and written in stone with fire signet (practically your best dps skill on a very low cooldown). There's also glyph of elemental power which is a stun break on a shorter cd than shout as well as pretty good dps boost.

The gameplay is the same, but the performance difference is huge. Celestial gear is a bait and completely useless in pve, so is any kind of power related stat on a pure condi build. Considering that the only sustain you have comes from healing skill (which offers low healing to begin with and should be used situationally, not always), you waste 400 stats on healing power which you arent even utilizing.

I'd also suggest dagger instead of scepter since it has more fluid combat (and since you're very tanky you dont need the range) as well as 2 great mobility skills (which can come in handy if you swap out eye of the storm).

Build link:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGgEsEWmAbidxoYk4o6c22A-zRRYcRQXMZ0gcCj8EorAcmGF8sB-e

although I'm pretty sure that something similar can be found on metabattle.

Healing power can be useful in pvp scenarios, but it's generally a waste in pve since you can deny a lot of damage with protection, blinds and evades/blocks. As I already mentioned, your build provides no sustain so healing power doesn't even have a purpose. If it had arcane traits or some other source of "regen" (like soothing mist, heal signet, heal on auras or similar) then you could get some value from healing power, but you wouldnt need it for the majority of pve since you can kill a lot of enemies with strong burst and passive defense that you get from traits (40% protection, 20k health and 3k armor, extra 10% reduction in melee range from earth).

Even on bosses, you can survive easily with just healing skill and environmental heals, even on a full glass gear and even if you get downed, as long as you're stacked with everyone, you'll get revived instantly so having stats on defense makes even less sense in those situations.

@"steki.1478" said:You can optimize this build by a huge margin if you take dire/trailblazer gear and balthazar runes. Literally doubling your dps while still being extremely tanky, especially if you take elemental shielding trait (since you're not doing any bleeding anyway) and written in stone with fire signet (practically your best dps skill on a very low cooldown). There's also glyph of elemental power which is a stun break on a shorter cd than shout as well as pretty good dps boost.

The gameplay is the same, but the performance difference is huge. Celestial gear is a bait and completely useless in pve, so is any kind of power related stat on a pure condi build. Considering that the only sustain you have comes from healing skill (which offers low healing to begin with and should be used situationally, not always), you waste 400 stats on healing power which you arent even utilizing.

I'd also suggest dagger instead of scepter since it has more fluid combat (and since you're very tanky you dont need the range) as well as 2 great mobility skills (which can come in handy if you swap out eye of the storm).

Build link: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGgEsEWmAbidxoYk4o6c22A-zRRYcRQXMZ0gcCj8EorAcmGF8sB-e although I'm pretty sure that something similar can be found on metabattle.

I tried your changes but I can only get slightly more DPS out of it.

You talk about mine having no sustain or healing. Do you have any suggestions of giving my build a few tweaks to give it some better (self) healing while maintaining most of the DPS and tankiness? I tend to play WvW a lot at night when it is quiet and take/defend locations alone or with just a few players. And ofc all kinds of PvE.

I'm getting around 14-15k on both tempest and weaver (getting around same results even on glassy power builds, making these much better since they are loaded with defensive stats). The point of tempest build is to camp fire pretty much, as soon as you swap to something else, you lose some damage, especially on scepter. Rotating to earth seems to be some dps increase and it gives solid defense through overload, but losing your major burst and damage for 20 seconds isnt very good for pvp scenarios.

You say that you prefer healing from yours, but again, I'm not seeing any healing in your build. The whole point of this build is to be bursty and tanky passively, while providing might to allies, not to have amazing damage over long time nor to have sustain (not to mention that wvw uses different balance and burns from ele skills are much weaker than in pve). If you want sustain you simply take weaver and arcane since they are loaded with sustain traits and it has more reliable damage against moving targets. For tempest to have some sustain it would rely on aura heals and water spec. Focus helps immensely with defense, warhorn only serves as a boon share weapon and blind against mobs.

@TheQuickFox.3826 said:Trailblazer stats provide decent condition damage with great defense.Viper stats provide highest condition damage.

I would say, use only Viper and replace it with some Trailblazer pieces if you need more defense.

For shorter solo-fights in PvE, solo play in OpenWorld maps etc., I would not recommend a condition build. Because the fight is already finished before you have ramped up all your conditions and then you waste damage and it usually takes longer compared to a DPS build (berserker mixed with marauder for example, maybe also soldier) to kill things. The shorter the fight, the better the survivability, usually. :)

EDIT: For PvE-solo-play and also WvW-roaming I think a fresh air tempest build with marauder gear is still a good and valid option that can have good survivability and is not overly complicated.

@Zok.4956 said:

@TheQuickFox.3826 said:Trailblazer stats provide decent condition damage with great defense.Viper stats provide highest condition damage.

You haven't read what he wrote. He likes long lasting boss battles. He meant champions or legendary on which power builds will have a hard time. Not even mentioning hot or pof, just fight some champions in orr.I would not even bother about builds for anything else in open world because it will be easy no matter the build you will use.Now, you can still play power if you are not alone and trust others to rally you (not guaranteed from my experience since others tend to go down almost in the same timeline).

Just to make a few things clear:

1. The build must be easy to play. This is why I for example don't like weaver (with all it's combinations) and dagger primary (zapping you back and forth all the time) just select target. Spam skills. Move a bit when needed. Dodge danger. Probably can't get around scepter primary here.
2. If it cannot easily solo-cap a tower in WvW it has no place for me. (requirement)
3. It must be tanky enough to survive the "huh wut" moment of a surprise attack by WvW roamers. (Thieves, mesmers)
4. It should have fair DPS.
5. It should have some self heal and/or condi removal for long boss battles. (Champions etc, solo DRMs)
6. And all without support of other players.
7. Yes, I know about vetted builds at metabattle and I respect those. And I use them when I need a specific build for strikes or other organized group content like DRM missions. But I'm looking for a build tailored to the above situation. I got my high-dps group builds but 90% of the time I play solo and just like an optimized build for the above.

@steki.1478 said:I'm getting around 14-15k on both tempest and weaver (getting around same results even on glassy power builds, making these much better since they are loaded with defensive stats). The point of tempest build is to camp fire pretty much, as soon as you swap to something else, you lose some damage, especially on scepter. Rotating to earth seems to be some dps increase and it gives solid defense through overload, but losing your major burst and damage for 20 seconds isnt very good for pvp scenarios.

You say that you prefer healing from yours, but again, I'm not seeing any healing in your build. The whole point of this build is to be bursty and tanky passively, while providing might to allies, not to have amazing damage over long time nor to have sustain (not to mention that wvw uses different balance and burns from ele skills are much weaker than in pve). If you want sustain you simply take weaver and arcane since they are loaded with sustain traits and it has more reliable damage against moving targets. For tempest to have some sustain it would rely on aura heals and water spec. Focus helps immensely with defense, warhorn only serves as a boon share weapon and blind against mobs.

Yesterday I also tested camping in fire on your provided build. (Thanks again) But that had even lower DPS. So I came to the rotation I demonstrated in the trial video of your build.

@Aigleborgne.2981 said:

@Zok.4956 said:

@"TheQuickFox.3826" said:Trailblazer stats provide decent condition damage with great defense.Viper stats provide highest condition damage.

I actually did read what he wrote, but it seems you did not. He wrote "The reason I put in the healing power is because without it the self-healing is quite low and I tend to use that a lot in WvW and long lasting boss battles." to explain why he put in healing power in the build which is not a very good choice. And he also wrote "And ofc all kinds of PvE."

And he also wrote "I think it may be a nice build for players who are looking for an easy and non-complicated Elementalist build. This build is designed to make the Elementalist easy to play.", so it is not only about a build he likes, but about a build he thinks is a good build for others that want an easy Elementalist build.

I would not even bother about builds for anything else in open world because it will be easy no matter the build you will use.

I guess, then you are not the target audience for his "easy and non-complicated Elementalist build" if it is already easy for you.

@"Zok.4956" said:I guess, then you are not the target audience for his "easy and non-complicated Elementalist build" if it is already easy for you.

I prefer weaver over tempest. And yes, I struggle vs strong champions especially with power builds.Read again OP last post. He want something able to solo most things easily.

@Aigleborgne.2981 said:

@"Zok.4956" said:I guess, then you are not the target audience for his "easy and non-complicated Elementalist build" if it is already easy for you.I prefer weaver over tempest. And yes, I struggle vs strong champions especially with power builds.

I play tempest because I struggle with weaver vs all bosses with every build. :)

Read again OP last post. He want something able to solo most things easily.

It seems he wants to have a typical solo-roaming build for WvW with self-healing that is tanky enough to survive a dps-burst from other roamers but still has some DPS, so killing a WvW tower-boss does not take too long. And he wants to be able to kill a DRM endboss or champion.

A tower can be solo-capped with a glass cannon build (if the player is able to mitigate the damage) and with a bunker or healer build (it just takes a little longer). And (as an example) I soloed all DRMs at their launch-day (yes, even the Thunderhead-Peaks one with the scaling off the roof before the nerf) with my fresh air dps tempest with marauder-gear. They are somehow annoying but not hard if you look at the mechanics.

Maybe the OP should start with a standard WvW-roaming build. How much tankyness he needs and how much facetanking he wants is his personal preference and skill. Thats why I wrote (if he goes with a condi build) he should mix viper and trailblazer until it works for him (but he better should not mix power, healing etc gear with that).

Or maybe the best solution for the OP would be to make a bunker-build and a dps-build and then switch between the loadouts/templates with hotkeys to use the best one for the situation.

@"TheQuickFox.3826" said:Just to make a few things clear:

1. The build must be easy to play. This is why I for example don't like weaver (with all it's combinations) and dagger primary (zapping you back and forth all the time) just select target. Spam skills. Move a bit when needed. Dodge danger. Probably can't get around scepter primary here.

Then why does your rotation use 3 attunements? Literally no difference from weaver gameplay or FA tempest which has high damage from range and lots of blind access. What makes dashing or swapping attunements hard? It's still the same target and pressing stuff off cooldown.

2. If it cannot easily solo-cap a tower in WvW it has no place for me. (requirement)

You can do this on many different builds as long as they have aoe to clear mobs fast, the lord is the easiest part.

3. It must be tanky enough to survive the "huh wut" moment of a surprise attack by WvW roamers. (Thieves, mesmers)

Dire/trailblazer is all you need with some blinds/evades/reflects/cc that you can find on many weapons.

4. It should have fair DPS.

All the builds I posted have good dps, but wvw uses different balance so they may not perform as well as they do in pve.

5. It should have some self heal and/or condi removal for long boss battles. (Champions etc, solo DRMs)

Your build has none outside of healing skill, which is easily replaceable. For consistent cleanse there's cleansing sigil and smothering auras.

6. And all without support of other players.

The builds wont differ much considering that ele's self buffing capabilities are awful. The only way to get some extra buffing is playing in melee range since those weapons allow you to blast fields for might and heals.

7. Yes, I know about vetted builds at metabattle and I respect those. And I use them when I need a specific build for strikes or other organized group content like DRM missions. But I'm looking for a build tailored to the above situation. I got my high-dps group builds but 90% of the time I play solo and just like an optimized build for the above.

Even metabattle has solo builds, but one build wont fit different criteria and definitely wont work the same in different game modes.

@steki.1478 said:I'm getting around 14-15k on both tempest and weaver (getting around same results even on glassy power builds, making these much better since they are loaded with defensive stats). The point of tempest build is to camp fire pretty much, as soon as you swap to something else, you lose some damage, especially on scepter. Rotating to earth seems to be some dps increase and it gives solid defense through overload, but losing your major burst and damage for 20 seconds isnt very good for pvp scenarios.

You say that you prefer healing from yours, but again, I'm not seeing any healing in your build. The whole point of this build is to be bursty and tanky passively, while providing might to allies, not to have amazing damage over long time nor to have sustain (not to mention that wvw uses different balance and burns from ele skills are much weaker than in pve). If you want sustain you simply take weaver and arcane since they are loaded with sustain traits and it has more reliable damage against moving targets. For tempest to have some sustain it would rely on aura heals and water spec. Focus helps immensely with defense, warhorn only serves as a boon share weapon and blind against mobs.

For pure condi build, swapping between earth and fire is ideal, which is why weaver is usually more flexible since it brings better self defense (extra health+barrier+vigor and more cleanse/protection since you're constantly swapping to fire attunement, unlike tempest which doesnt get much usage of smothering auras/elemental shielding if it's focusing on dps since it's reliant on overloads).

Would swapping earth to water specialization be advisable?It will lose bleeding dps and the important "Strength of Stone" trait which converts toughness to condition damage, but this will give regen and buffs for auras.

@"TheQuickFox.3826" said:Would swapping earth to water specialization be advisable?It will lose bleeding dps and the important "Strength of Stone" trait which converts toughness to condition damage, but this will give regen and buffs for auras.

My new ele is thematically based on regen and mist form. I slot water most of the time instead of earth: fire water weaver.I'm using armor of earth or stone resonance, twist of fate, and mist form.

I'm very new to weaver but I haven't die yet. I have been very low on health at times, but water helps a lot here. I did all orr skill points plus a few temples, it was challenging but I survived where my older eles would have died.Sometimes, I switch water for earth and I really like protection on aura. I feel it might be as good if not better. However, I can easily recover when I screw up with water while earth is better at preventing damage.I have healing power (Apothecary on a few slots) and I feel water is necessary while I am learning weaver and gearing my character. Riptide with water traitline and healing power is just too good.

Fire/water is played in some group content; to spread fire aura, to improve berserker dps with weaver for example, or heal/cleanse with Tempest.

But for Solo content there is no particular synergy between Fire and Water. It's not bad or good, it's just water sustain + fire dps.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGQAglZwwYXsJGJOKPntNA-zxIY8ogPISKAnB-e

My version of a condi tank is something like this, although I used core ele in pvp with arcane traitline instead of tempest. You dont need healing power as a condi tank, you can use heal signet and water signet if you want on cd with the earth signet trait. Water elite elemental is a massive heal every 15 seconds, and of course you have water overload and weapon skills too. Take smothering auras in fire traitline if you really want more cleansing. It works with either dagger/x or scepter/x, i tend to like focus offhand. Forgeman runes arent a bad option either.

I'm about to settle on a bit tankier variant with aura's for sustain. DPS is down from 10k to 9k but this one is being able to kill the kitty golem in the raid testing area with moderate pulsing damage on.

Build link:http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGBFsE2aUZBFMq0GTMTrsRGqjqzV7D-zRhYKRfUFSFZIqfDFIMSqiuUR7UEg9zD-e

Build template:[&DQYfFRoXMB91AHUAvgHLAHYSdhKRABwBJgCWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA=]

Build video:

For your general open world gameplay, I do not recommend this variant because DPS is a bit lower without the extra viper stats. But for soloing harder mobs while taking damage, or if you feel fragile as ele, this one is for you.I also tried the signet of restoration skill with the written in stone trait. This one heals much better but leaves me with a condition problem. I tested every trait that removes conditions but these are all not reliable enough, especially because conditions tend to come in large bunches. Only Ether Renewal is able to cleanse a large bunch of conditions in one go.

I'm still in doubt if I should keep the "Invigorating Torrents" trait (aura's grant regen) or go with "Harmonious Conduit" (Stability and swiftness on overloads) instead. In WvW I may benefit from the stability to make sure my overloads are not interrupted. In other content the regen is probably better.

I am very well aware this is a mixed bag and these builds tend to be less popular But I always liked the concept of being able to have a balanced build between DPS, tankiness and sustain.

And it does better than my previous celestial build:

! http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGhAsilFkwoSbMxssyGZoOKPetdA-zxYYrQBqRT53HPIwQpIBSKguAJMI0OBhrZeA-e(Lots of stats, but lacks synergy)

First avoid metabattle. They make glass cannon builds that are horrible. Ever been in a boss event and see all those players die alot? Yes? those are metabattle builds (I had asked many of them if they were).Second. Look on youtube for "Cellofrag", This player mains a weaver and has done tempest builds since pretty much day one. If there was anyone that knows Elementalists its him. He even has a discord that you could use to seek advice on for builds etc.

Enough said.

What you looking for is this. Water over Fire is a big sustain improvement while not reaally cutting any dps in WvW environment. Tho you loose stability on overloads.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGgAg2lZkxWaZN1sruWZleuTZtfA-zVZYKhCKIKkVekRDhG4ZkgEISFgkvAhrBeNg4TD-w

It lacks stability, stunbreak (only overloads) and mobility but makes up for it quite well otherwise. You won't run away from 4 people chasing you, but you can win some 1v3 and most 1v2 in WvW. You can eat most stuns even in 1v2 scenarios unless you agasint 2 full zerker classes and you have tons of soft CC to make up for the lack of mobility.

You are pretty much immune to conditions and projectiles and very high uptime of protection. Every aura heals you for 765, cleanses 2 conditions and provides protection. And you have plenty of auras to go by. Damage is also respectable with close to 1700 condi dmg.

This is no good for small or big scale, but for solo roaming and outnumbered fights it's very effective. For 1v1 you're pretty much bullet proof especially if you switch between Diamond Skin and Stone Heart as needed.

Thanks, worth a try.Is this one also good for scepter instead of dagger as primary weapon? I dislike the gameplay of the dagger with the movement attached to the skills and the shorter range.

You can probably get some results with scepter also but I'd say dagger is a lot stronger. Dagger #3 in fire, earth and air are big part of the build working. Pressure, kiting, avoid frame and oh-shit button all in there plus they don't require a target (helps a lot with thieves).

Dagger has better pressure and condi application than scepterScepter is more "power burst" but with long CD-delay. It's not bad in solo, because most of your conditions comes from utility skills and overload, plus range is cool to stay alive, but it's not "optimal"

@"Harum.2896" said:What you looking for is this. Water over Fire is a big sustain improvement while not reaally cutting any dps in WvW environment. Tho you loose stability on overloads.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGgAg2lZkxWaZN1sruWZleuTZtfA-zVZYKhCKIKkVekRDhG4ZkgEISFgkvAhrBeNg4TD-w

It lacks stability, stunbreak (only overloads) and mobility but makes up for it quite well otherwise. You won't run away from 4 people chasing you, but you can win some 1v3 and most 1v2 in WvW. You can eat most stuns even in 1v2 scenarios unless you agasint 2 full zerker classes and you have tons of soft CC to make up for the lack of mobility.

You are pretty much immune to conditions and projectiles and very high uptime of protection. Every aura heals you for 765, cleanses 2 conditions and provides protection. And you have plenty of auras to go by. Damage is also respectable with close to 1700 condi dmg.

This is no good for small or big scale, but for solo roaming and outnumbered fights it's very effective. For 1v1 you're pretty much bullet proof especially if you switch between Diamond Skin and Stone Heart as needed.

Just a note that I actually often just run Diamond Skin (had it wrong in the linked build) and only switch for Stone Heart if I'm struggling 1v2 direct dmg builds. With Diamond Skin you can face tank 1v2 condi mesmers and laugh your way to the bank.