Debunking Tempest Healing Myths (WvW)

I'm making this forum post because i'm kinda getting annoyed with all the misinformation being spread about healing tempest, and i'm really here to set the record straight on many misconceptions about tempest right here right now.

In WvW, i main what's a called a BIS Staff Healing Tempest. This means that every trait is designed for maximum healing efficiency rather than cleansing or boon duration. This also means that i do not run any of the meta-battle "condition-cleanse-boon-duration-extender" build variants which in my time researching how to optimally support on this class, to lack any sort of reason to specialize into those things.

For reference Here is the BIS Healing Tempest build I currently run.http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGgAYZlRwcYMsGWJm+XXtaA-z1IYwoqvQSKKyKFquA89jEK7h3S7bWA-wIngame Build Link: [&DQYRPyUXMDXHEgAApRIAAHYSAAB0EgAAmRIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA=]

And here is a variant that uses Minstrel Gear for a bit more self defensehttp://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGgAYZlRwcYMsGWJm+XXtaA-zVRYQRQbMqwFSSRRWpQ1FgvfkQZP8WafzC-wIngame Build Link: [&DQYRPyUXMDXHEgAApRIAAHYSAAB0EgAAmRIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA=]Take note on the trait choices.

So the first myth to be debunked:

The best cleansing abilities on Tempest is Overload Water and dodging, not shouts!

! Overload Water, and dodging are the two most powerful cleansing abilities on the class.! I have done the math on all cleansing abilities and traits, including shouts and other variants! on condition cleansing, and these two abilities are so powerful that they are stronger than! using all shouts or applied regeneration cleansing abilities and traits available combined.!! In other words, to get the same amount of cleansing as a single use of overload water,! you need to use all of your shouts. In essence you don't NEED to use any other ability! to cleanse so long as you are using Overload Water and dodging on cooldown. Here! are some examples, that show how many conditions you can cleanse by using OW and! dodges alone.! !

Staff 1 is one of your best healing skills! and it's better healing than x/warhorn!

! If you aren't spamming this skill, you are missing out on at least 20% of Tempests healing capabilities.! I've done my research into warhorn as a utility and it pales in comparison to staff in nearly every! single way. Staff not only has a blast finisher on a 4 second cooldown, but it also has G E Y S E R! and Healing Rain...These two outweigh whatever utility warhorn could ever even think to! provide to you, but not only that, staff 1 happens to be one of the best healing skills available.!! To put it in prespective, spamming staff 1 will heal 10x the amount of x/warhorn even if you! kept all your weapon abilities on cooldown. The number staff 1 can heal for over the course! of 3 minutes is a little more than 1.3 million healing, and it's completely underrated for this reason alone.

Being in a 5 man sub-squad gimps your healing!

! Soothing Mist is the the most powerful healing ability on tempest. It heals for 2.3 million healing! over 3 minutes if specced into Soothing Power (which is what you should be specked into,! otherwise...you are losing out on 1+million healing). Believe it or not Soothing Mist can apply! up to 13 people at any given time. If you are in your a 5 man subsquad, you neatur it's ability to! reach 13 people (can only effect 5 people) and again you are losing at least 60% healing from! your best healing ability. Amalgamate the fact that you aren't using Soothing Power and! remaining in a 5 man subsquad, means you are doing a poultry 400,000 healing from Soothing Mist,! gimping yourself nearly 80% of it's potential, and about 20% of your healing potential.

Yes, you have to camp water!

! Perhaps you realize by now, that if you aren't spamming staff 1, and aren't maintaining! Soothing Mist (which correlates to about 40% of your total healing) given the statements! said previous, you now realize that in order to do these things, you have to camp water.! Soothing mist can only be maintained on 13 targets by staying in water...but then again! why would you leave? What things can you do in a fight that are so important that other! members of your party can't do? I get it, using Staff 4 on Earth is useful every once and a while...! but is it worth risking your teammates health, and potential death, who could have also! done the same thing with Rev Staff 5?!! Swapping out of water can be useful in some situations...but if you care about condition! cleansing, healing and support for your teammates via Superspeed, and immobilization! from Aftershock and reflections, that's more than enough support to help THEM do their! own jobs, and it requires you to camp water.

You don't need to spec any cleansing in order to cleanse the most conditions.

! Let me first start by saying that all condition cleansing traits and abilities on tempest pale in! comparison to the god-sent ability of Overload Water. You need to be using this ability on! cooldown, because not only is it the strongest cleanse on the class, but it is one of the strongest! burst heals on the class. Likewise, dodging is also one of the strongest cleanses on the class, and! you should be dodging every 10 seconds.!! So you are thinking, what about cleansing water trait? I did the math, it's trash. Reason? it gives! Overload Water a 25% increase in condition cleansing. From 40 conditions cleansed, to 50. Since! Overload Water contributes to about 50% of conditions cleansed (the other 40% being dodging,! and the other 10% being Healing Rain) That's a net gain of 12% effectiveness in cleansing.! Comparing this to Soothing Power, it's competing trait, i'm sure you can figure out how the two! actually compare....millions of healing? or 60 more conditions cleansed? The math is pretty! straight forward there. One could argue that it also adds cleansing to Healing Rain and! Flash Freeze...which it does, but these are marginal increases in condition cleansing that! really can not compare to Overload Water and dodging.

Conclusion

There are a lot more myths about Tempest i could probably talk about, but these are the big main offenders. Below I've provided more examples of the cleanse capabilities of a FULLY specked healing build using only Overload Water, Dodges and Healing Rain as cleansing sources. Again for reference, most of these pictures are Guilds vs Guilds fights in T1 on Reset night 3 days prior.

Good work! This is some seriously cool info

You forgot to link your current build? It helps to understand, doesn't it? ?

@Aigleborgne.2981 said:You forgot to link your current build? It helps to understand, doesn't it? ?

i linked it via hyperlink, but I think Hyperlinking doesn't work on mobiles, so I just now fixed the post, should appear now

Here's another myth: tempest isn't used solely for healing. After nerfs to chrono it's by far the best ranged CC you can get in the squad. FB and scrapper already provide very high sustain (and cleanses) so you don't have to focus 110% on just healing and cleansing.

Posting random screenshots of incompetent pug squads doesn't prove anything whatsoever. Otherwise lb soulbeast, gs zerker, burn dh, staff daredevil and even sword weaver would be the best dps builds.

@steki.1478 said:Posting random screenshots of incompetent pug squads

People always differ to this excuse when they can’t understand how a non condicleanse heal tempest can get top cleanse in every encounter.

This is my guild squad running on reset against other guilds in T1. Sure we accumulate pugs in our squad since they run open tag, it can’t be helped when we win every fight.

Anyway the logic in the rest of your comment is flawed. Staff tempest has decent CC, but you can basically do the same thing by using aftershock, which can be used in water attunement, and you don’t need to compromise your condition cleansing to do so. We’ve gone over this already.

It is my understanding that the problem with ele healing is its reliance on water fields. These fields block other more useful fields such as fire or light and that handicaps the squad.

Am I mistaken?

Good job !

I run something exactly the same (1- 2 diff) both in WvW and Fractal/Raid.

People still underestimate the tempest and follow the meta blindly even if the tempest have one (maybe The) of the highest burst heal in the game.

@saloja.7920 said:It is my understanding that the problem with ele healing is its reliance on water fields. These fields block other more useful fields such as fire or light and that handicaps the squad.

Am I mistaken?

In WvW, there really isn’t a problem with Ele itself, it’s just that people want Ele to replace Firebrand, but it can’t because they have no access to AOE stability, which is one of the most important aspects of Zerg play.

Water fields are also important and always valuable as a group healing mechanism, but it’s usefulness is debatable because of how fields in general work.

Fields can only be blasted by 5 individuals. The amount of healing depends on who is blasting the field, and each blast can effect 5 targets. So if a field is blasted once by 5 individuals it amounts to anywhere between 25,000 to 50,000 healing total. This isn’t actually a whole lot in comparison to say “Wash the Pain Away” which itself can heal for 150,000 healing.

The power of fields comes in when those 5 individual players are blasting the field multiple times. So if those 5 people blast the field 5 times, that amounts to 250,000 healing. On paper this sounds nice, but how many people can blast a water field 5 times while on the move? It’s a very unrealistic scenario

Edit; but just to be more precise, ele doesn’t rely much on waterfields. Most of its healing comes from stacking passive healing sources (Soothing Mist + regeneration + staff1) and Burst healing sources (Overload Water, Wash the pain Away and Rebound) with utility based on Geyser resurrection, Superspeed and Reflections. Water fields don’t play much of a role, but they are there if needed.

Your scrappers should be cleansing for a lot more, especially in 2-3 min fights. Either you're playing with crazy pugs, or you're a super beast, but I doubt it's the latter. The scrappers in EU would eat the ones in NA for breakfast.

@"Dahir.4158" said:Your scrappers should be cleansing for a lot more, especially in 2-3 min fights. Either you're playing with crazy pugs, or you're a super beast, but I doubt it's the latter.

Look, i'm telling you how you can play your class better by sharing information about optimizing the usage of your skills and abilities. You can either take that information and apply it (because hello, Overload Water and dodge is available to all tempest builds :open_mouth: ) or you can continue to live in complete denial, that you aren't optimizing your build properly, and let scrappers continue to out-cleanse you on the cleanse meter, and perpetuate a false stereotype that tempest healers have no place in WvW.

Now i particularly don't even care about cleansing, since mind you i am a healer running raw healing. The cleanses just happen as i heal. So long as i am dodging and using OW on cooldown (and don't forget Healing Rain too if you really want to maximize), the cleanses will go off in addition to the healing that i am focusing on. I'm just dispelling the myth that you HAVE to spec cleansing in order to do good cleanse on a tempest, when it's simply not true.

Thanks for the analysis. This is gold.A question if I may. Does assigning the Tempest to a sub-group with less than 10 people really reduce the number of targets of Soothing Mist? That seems rather counter-intuitive to me. And, if it is confirmed true, where should Healing Tempests go in the Squad panel? I see in your screenshots that sometimes the Tempest(s) are assigned to a 5 to 8 unit squad, while sometimes standalone. And, do you still get proper Stability and all other benefits for personal survival without anyone else in your sub-group?Also, where does the number '13' come from?

Well that turned out to be more than just one, but anyway. Thanks in advance :)

@Virtuality.8351 said:Thanks for the analysis. This is gold.A question if I may. Does assigning the Tempest to a sub-group with less than 10 people really reduce the number of targets of Soothing Mist?Also, where does the number '13' come from?

Hi again,Yes. Anything less than 13, but greater than or equal to 5 will result in less healing capacity of soothing mist. All of this has to do again with the nature of pulsing friendly AOE Buffs with ally target caps.

Soothing Mist lasts 10 seconds, pulsing out its effect to 5 people (including yourself) every 3 seconds. So if you exclude when this buff applies to yourself, it will effect 4 allies, plus 4 additional allies on the next pulse, and again another 4 allies on the next pulse, before the first pulses duration runs out, you can have the effect on 12 allies (plus yourself) at any given time.

If you are in a subsquad of 5 people, the buff will always prioritize this subsquad first, and thus the buff will only refresh on the same 5 people. The bigger the subgroup, the more allies the buff can apply to, and the smaller the subgroup is (less than 5), the more the buff can apply to.

That seems rather counter-intuitive to me. And, if it is confirmed true, where should Healing Tempests go in the Squad panel?

do you still get proper Stability and all other benefits for personal survival without anyone else in your sub-group?

I prefer to remain in my own subsquad. Even though it’s nice to be in a subsquad of 15, nobody runs this way. The perks of running in a 15 man subsquad is that you can get more access to stability and other ally heals like you said.

if you run in your own subsquad you will get less stability and healing from your allies definitely. But doing it this way means your healing can prioritize anyone in the squad rather than just the subgroup, and this is really good for giving your healing to players that need it. This is one reason I made a minstrel variant of the current build I use, and also why I put on sigil of luck. Luck is actually pretty useful for giving yourself needed boons, so long as downs are happening, which in a WvW setting is rather often. Also sigil of luck is good for tagging bags because it can give you retaliation. Seen a 4x increase in bag production running as a healer now, feels good.

I see in your screenshots that sometimes the Tempest(s) are assigned to a 5 to 8 unit squad, while sometimes standalone.

Ya, I’m almost always the stand-alone ele. It’s not easy to convince people that running this way is the most optimal for the groups sake, that’s why the other ele’s are in their 5 man sub-squads...holding onto beliefs perpetuated since the beginning of the game

Believe me I still have arguments with some people I consider to be smart and fully capable players, but it’s mostly because people have hard-baked beliefs about the game, that comes more from things like intuition or word of mouth rather than going in and actually extensively testing something, asking questions about the status quo, or viewing things from an alternate perspective.

Tempest is a great healer both for burst and sustained healing, and cleansing, but its more suited to pug zergs than highly organized squads. In guild groups you need to take scrapper for high superspeed uptime and stealth. Also scrappers convert condis into boons instead of just cleansing them.

@Paradoxoglanis.1904 said:Also scrappers convert condis into boons instead of just cleansing them.

True, and that’s one big reason why I don’t go full cleanse tempest and go full healing instead. Why focus on cleansing just to compete with cleanse scrappers on the cleanse meter which gimps boons on your squad when you could go full healer and do something less detrimental. Even if you don’t go cleansing you can still do competitive cleansing with them.

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@Paradoxoglanis.1904 said:Also scrappers convert condis into boons instead of just cleansing them.

Not a zerg play expert here but isn't scrappers condi convert a double edged sword though since that produces more boons for the necros to corrupt? Where as tempest is straight up cleanses, so it's in a way a 'safer' option.

@Zexanima.7851 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@Paradoxoglanis.1904 said:Also scrappers convert condis into boons instead of just cleansing them.

Ya. I suppose it’s one of the bigger more interesting questions about boon spam vs strip spam. I think that in a general sense boons can be spammed at a faster rate than corruptions can strip them, but I’ve never taken the time to analyze it in depth. I think a simple comparison in Arcdps can reveal the general ratio of boons applied vs boons stripped and we could come to a general conclusion based on that.

But ya as of right now, engi’s cleanse conversion is an important part of engi’s job as a boon provider via cleansing, and tempest taking that away from them makes engi’s spot in zergs a bit less useful. Not saying ele’s Shouldn’t be cleansing though, it’s just having dedicated tempest cleansers is competing directly with scrappers, while a full heal tempest doesn’t.

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:Hi again,Oh hey :) Did not notice it was also you in the post on Herald's Boon distribution potential. Thanks for answering my questions, both of which happen to be related to the interaction of pulse mechanic and effect duration. I have to amid that I've never seen forced randomization of buff application possibly more beneficial and you really changed how I saw it. The idea that the inherent fluctuation in WvW is not merely a problem to be dealt with, but an opportunity that one can exploit to further enhance their performance really fascinates me. Kudos on this one!

I see in your screenshots that sometimes the Tempest(s) are assigned to a 5 to 8 unit squad, while sometimes standalone.

That for me brings up another point though. Since Soothing Mist does not stack in either density or duration, there is always a loss of of healing potential due to overlapping Soothing Mist on allies already with the effect on them, and even more of such with multiple Tempests as healers in the squad. What would your take on this be?It seems to me that either we resize the sub-groups somewhere between 5 to 13 and place one Tempest healer in each of those, so that at least only overlapping from the same source occurs instead of from multiple sources, or we embrace the randomness, keep the conventional 5-unit structure while assigning each Tempest healers to their own standalone squad, hoping the effect more or less saturates (literally and figuratively hehe :P) the entire squad. After reading through this thread, I am more toward the latter.

@Virtuality.8351 said:That for me brings up another point though. Since Soothing Mist does not stack in either density or duration, there is always a loss of of healing potential due to overlapping Soothing Mist on allies already with the effect on them, and even more of such with multiple Tempests as healers in the squad. What would your take on this be?

Another good question and observation. Yes the more eles there are in the squad with soothing mist, the less effective any particular eles soothing mists becomes, especially since soothing mist is a unique buff. For this reason, having one ele per 15 people is ideal. (Though never hurts to have more than one ele providing sustain)

As an aside, the general idea is to compress a squads multiple functions to as little people as possible. So for instance if you can compress the jobs of 30 people into 15 people, you can take on enemy groups of 30 with only 15 people, and this is kinda what allows zergs to fight in outnumbered situations (or have your group designed to be twice as potent than another group with the same amount of people)

So if one revenant is able to provide a squad of 15 with all those glint buffs, rather than having 3 revenants to provide those glint buffs, you’ve compressed that particular job, freeing up 2 positions, in which you could run something else instead, like a jalis/x and a malyx/x or whatever other build or class you desire. It speaks more to the fact that it’s an optimization process, to squeeze as much as you can with as little resources available to you.

It seems to me that either we resize the sub-groups somewhere between 5 to 13 and place one Tempest healer in each of those, so that at least only overlapping from the same source occurs instead of from multiple sources, or we embrace the randomness, keep the conventional 5-unit structure while assigning each Tempest healers to their own standalone squad, hoping the effect more or less saturates (literally and figuratively hehe :P) the entire squad. After reading through this thread, I am more toward the latter.

Right. So in a setting where it’s hard to accommodate everyone (for example, scrappers stealth is based on 5 target limits, and is required to effect everyone with an even duration) means that there must always be a compromise like you said. The best we can do is do our best to optimize what we can.

Right now I’m working towards exploring all the possible ways in this line of optimization to see if it’s possible to create a super borked 15 man sub-party squad. But for now i have to think in terms of the confines of 5 man sub parties due to guardian and scrapper, which means having eles and perhaps boon/heal revs to be in standalone sub-squads. There’s definitely multiple avenues to explore outside of healers, but it’s a process to figure out what’s possible.

Totally agree with you on the Overload Water and dodging. I do Overload Water more than any other healing skill, but didn't know the math behind it--only the results. I do keep my Eye of the Storm as a stun break for disengaging from fights. Our guild tends to run 10-15 people most times in squad. My traits are exactly like yours except for Cleansing Wave, which doesn't make sense now that I look at it. I am always in water, so it's rare that I attune to water often enough to make that cleanse. I'll make that switch for certain. I do wear full Minstrel's and Trooper runes. I'll look closer at your gear and see if I should make a few changes. Thanks for posting!

@Grey Mane.9487 said:Totally agree with you on the Overload Water and dodging. I do Overload Water more than any other healing skill, but didn't know the math behind it--only the results. I do keep my Eye of the Storm as a stun break for disengaging from fights. Our guild tends to run 10-15 people most times in squad. My traits are exactly like yours except for Cleansing Wave, which doesn't make sense now that I look at it. I am always in water, so it's rare that I attune to water often enough to make that cleanse. I'll make that switch for certain. I do wear full Minstrel's and Trooper runes. I'll look closer at your gear and see if I should make a few changes. Thanks for posting!

Hey,I did the calculation earlier for the Troop Runes + Cleansing water Variant, just to give you an idea of the comparison. The sample size is a 3 minute encounter, assuming you use all abilities on cooldown, and cleanse the maximum possible cleanses possible, which also assumes you are the only cleanser in the squad:

Trooper+Cleansing WaterOverload Water(50)- 21sCD - 9 uses = 180s = 450Dodge (15)____- 10sCD - 18uses = 180s = 270Wash the Pain Away!(20)- 20sCD - 10uses = 180s = 200Healing Rain(30)____ - 32sCD - 6 uses = 180s = 180Flash Freeze!(20)- 25sCD - 8 uses = 180s = 160Eye of the Storm!(10)_ - 40sCD - 5 uses = 180s = 50AfterShock!(10)__- 35sCD - 6 uses = 180s = 60Eye of the Storm!(Trait) (10)- 40sCD - 4 uses = 180s = 40

Total: 1,410

Monk+SoothingMistOverload Water(40)- 21sCD - 9 uses = 180s = 360Dodge (15)____- 10sCD - 18uses = 180s = 270Wash the Pain Away!(10)- 20sCD - 10uses = 180s = 100Healing Rain(15)___ - 32sCD - 6 uses = 180s = 90Flash Freeze!(0)____ - 25sCD - 8 uses = 180s = 0Eye of the Storm!(0)_- 40sCD - 5 uses = 180s = 0AfterShock!(0)_____- 35sCD - 6 uses = 180s = 0Eye of the Storm!(Trait) (0)-40sCD - 4 uses = 180s = 0

Total: 820

Comparison:Cleansing water contributes an additional 260 condition cleansesTrooper Runes contribute an additional 330 condition cleanses

The ratio of Overload Water+Dodge to everything else in a dedicated condi-cleanse build is 51%The ratio of Overload Water+Dodge to everything else in a non condi cleanse build is 76%

In other words : OW+Dodge makes up 50% of your total cleansing on a full condicleanse build,and on a non condi cleanse, OW+Dodge makes up 76% of your total cleansing.

As a final note, Eye of the Storm (Trait) and Wash the pain Away contribute to condition cleansing, but i didn't factor it into my original post because honestly i forgot that WTPA! actually heals conditions. In most cases these skills aren't really used as condition cleanses in the first place, but i added them in the calculation here to give a truer picture.

@"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" said:So if one revenant is able to provide a squad of 15 with all those glint buffs, rather than having 3 revenants to provide those glint buffs, you’ve compressed that particular job, freeing up 2 positions, in which you could run something else instead, like a jalis/x and a malyx/x or whatever other build or class you desire. It speaks more to the fact that it’s an optimization process, to squeeze as much as you can with as little resources available to you.

Before I continue, for those who might be reading and out of loop, we had another discussion also on the topic of effect sharing in WvW and its efficiency in another thread under the Revenant sub-forum. In case this interests you, here is the reference.

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/1141540#Comment_1141540

And, yes, I know we are in the sub-forum dedicated to Elementalists. Sorry for derailing :P

I am ambivalent about assigning a reduced amount of Boon Revenants into standalone sub-groups.

While most of the Boons the class provides stack in duration (Fury, Swiftness, Protection, Regeneration, Alacriy), and therefore their effect can potentially be maximized when assigned standalone, Might stacks in density and its effect thins out across all affected allies. If we go unconventional on this one by assigning a reduced number of Revenants to standalone sub-groups, we just might need additional source of Might just to make up and keep it at 25 stacks, which could take up additional slots in the squad if unable to be incorporated or compressed into other units.

There's also another point to consider. Under the current Boon-Stripping/Corruption meta, in terms of Boon management, it is as important to consider how fast one may recover the lost Boons, as to consider the maximum allies one unit is able to provide with continuous Boons.

We are running a mix of Tempests and Scrappers, which means that a greater portion of Conditions than convention get cleansed insteand of converted into Boons. Since conditions, particularly Torment and Weakness (which get converts into Might), are spammed under the current Scourge Bomb meta, less conversion means that we are more reliant on conventional Boon generation. This limits how far we can go on cutting and compressing source of Boon support, in this case, Revenants.

And last but not least, many guilds run with one Revenant per party just for Rite of the Great Dwarf. The sheer sustain the setup offers is just too much to give up.

Right. So in a setting where it’s hard to accommodate everyone (for example, scrappers stealth is based on 5 target limits, and is required to effect everyone with an even duration) means that there must always be a compromise like you said. The best we can do is do our best to optimize what we can.

Right now I’m working towards exploring all the possible ways in this line of optimization to see if it’s possible to create a super borked 15 man sub-party squad. But for now i have to think in terms of the confines of 5 man sub parties due to guardian and scrapper, which means having eles and perhaps boon/heal revs to be in standalone sub-squads. There’s definitely multiple avenues to explore outside of healers, but it’s a process to figure out what’s possible.

Also, I just came up with this idea. What we need is actually a new feature: Nested Subgroups. For example, a subgroup may consist of multiple, say, four parties. Two of those hold a Firebrand, a Scrapper, a Scourge and a Spellbreaker, while the rest hold a Tempest and a Revenant respectively. And a squad is composed of multiple subgroups like this. Boons are first prioritized to allies in the party, then the subgroup, and then the squad.

And we can actually achieve this by simply creating multiple squads and using them as subgroups. The driver will be off-tag and marked with Green Arrow across all squads, so people know who to follow, while the squad leader marked with Purple Circle.

So a medium-sized guild group might just look like this.

Squad #1 (Commander Frontliner Squad)

• Party #1-1: Firebrand (Commander, marked with Green Arrow across squads) , Scrapper, Berserker, Spellbreaker
• Party #1-2: Firebrand, Scrapper, Reaper, Spellbreaker
• Party #1-3: Tempest
• Party #1-4: Frontline Herald (Might source #1-1)

Squad #2 (Fireteam)

• Party #2-1: Firebrand (Fireteam leader, marked with Purple Circle within their own squad), Scrapper, Scourge, Scourge
• Party #2-2: Firebrand, Scrapper, Weaver, Backline Herald (Might Source #2-1), Alacrity Renegade (Might Source #2-2)
• Party #2-3: Tempest

Total: 20 players in 2 squads.

We are going asymmetric here in terms of Boon support, prioritizing on the Fire team by assigning double source of Might, so that we have better confidence in Might stacking for our primary source of damage. This is still far from how compressed you'd preferred (15 units per Revenant), though still a 33% improvement (20:3, or 6.67:1) over the convention (5:1).

The same goes if you look forward to a 13-unit squad. For example, and of course this is premature and to be further optimized:

Squad #1 (Commander Frontliner Squad)

• Party #1-1: Firebrand (Commander, marked with Green Arrow across squads), Scrapper, Spellbreaker
• Party #1-2: Firebrand, Scrapper, Berserker (which maintains high stacks of Might itself)
• Party #1-3: Firebrand, Scrapper, Reaper (which maintains 25 stacks of Might itself)
• Party #1-4: Firebrand (Marked with Red Heart, which is the designated support for members in the 4th to 7th party and whose position is where the latter should rally to as close as possible.)
• Party #1-5: Scrapper (Follows the Red Heart marker; designated support for members in the 4th to 7th party.)
• Party #1-6: Frontline Herald (Might source #1-1)
• Party #1-7: Tempest

Squad #2 (Fireteam)

• Party #1-1: Firebrand (Fireteam leader, marked with Purple Circle within their own squad), Scrapper, Spellbreaker, Weaver
• Party #1-2: Firebrand, Scrapper, Scourge, Scourge
• Party #1-3: Firebrand (Marked with Red Heart, which is the designated support for members in the 3th to 7th party and whose position is where the latter should rally to as close as possible.)
• Party #1-4: Scrapper (Follows the Red Heart marker; designated support for members in the 3th to 7th party.)
• Party #1-5: Backline Herald (Might Source #2-1)
• Party #1-6: Alacrity Renegade (Might Source #2-2)
• Party #1-7: Tempest

Total: 26 players in 2 squads. The overall unit-to-Revenant-support ratio is 26: 3, or 8.67:1, which is a step further.

@"Virtuality.8351" said:Also, I just came up with this idea. What we need is actually a new feature: Nested Subgroups. For example, a subgroup may consist of multiple, say, four parties. Two of those hold a Firebrand, a Scrapper, a Scourge and a Spellbreaker, while the rest hold a Tempest and a Revenant respectively. And a squad is composed of multiple subgroups like this. Boons are first prioritized to allies in the party, then the subgroup, and then the squad.

Ya, that actually sounds like it would be a good feature. The more customization they would allow us, the more we could do with these sorts of ideas. Now if you ask me, they have enough trouble making Swiss tournament UI and GvG 15v15 maps because they can't fix their player count UI...so based on that info, i doubt they could even make additional changes to the squad UI without giving us some excuse that it would "take too long" or something lol

But ya anyway, the nested squad idea would be super cool and allow for a more real usage for lieutenants and different game-play. I feel like some people actually try to support their own 5 man party in the squad as best as they can, but its hard to keep track of them in big zerg fights since all we have to go on are the "slightly bigger" health bars. If we had a lieutenant in each party with their own little tag that only the party can see, that would be a really cool way to keep track of individual parties, and on top would allow rev's and healers with these kind of blanket abilities to be as useful as possible.

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@Grey Mane.9487 said:Totally agree with you on the Overload Water and dodging. I do Overload Water more than any other healing skill, but didn't know the math behind it--only the results. I do keep my Eye of the Storm as a stun break for disengaging from fights. Our guild tends to run 10-15 people most times in squad. My traits are exactly like yours except for Cleansing Wave, which doesn't make sense now that I look at it. I am always in water, so it's rare that I attune to water often enough to make that cleanse. I'll make that switch for certain. I do wear full Minstrel's and Trooper runes. I'll look closer at your gear and see if I should make a few changes. Thanks for posting!

You forgot to include swapping into water attunement doing a cleanse (Presumably 5 per 20s, though technically you could get up to 5 per 8.5s), the cleanse from rebound (10 per 75s), and since they are swapping out of water instead of camping you might include windborne speed as well, though you didn't include stop, drop, roll either and conditional cleanses are much iffier to include in calculations like these.

Frankly I dislike the idea of tempest as a pure healer because herald simply does that better. Even with the awkward rock it barely needs to use it to out do the healing tempest provides by a tremendous margin. It doesn't cleanse quite as much, but hey.

Tempest works much better as a burst healer and counter spiker (using that overload water and WTPA!) and then a CC supplementer via both hard and soft CCs on your own teams spike.

If you are running around getting the most out of soothing mist and spamming staff auto 1 you are either doing a world boss or standing under way to many ACs.

@God.2708 said:You forgot to include swapping into water attunement doing a cleanse (Presumably 5 per 20s, though technically you could get up to 5 per 8.5s), the cleanse from rebound (10 per 75s), and since they are swapping out of water.,,

There’s a very good reason I didn’t include the cleanse into swapping water attunement.Firstly, that trait (it’s called cleansing wave) requires you to leave water to make use of it. Leaving water means you lose cleansing from Overload Water (plus a hoard of other benefits from just staying in water) for an extremely small cleanse simply makes no sense for the calculation. So to be true to a real world scenario I excluded it.If you want to add it to the calculation, using the more realistic 5/20 seconds, over 180s is 45 cleanses max (a whopping 3% contribution...) in exchange you’ll probably lose around 2-3 uses of OW or more, which is 120 -150 cleanses. I suppose if you use WS, you can better alleviate that gap. Ofc you still lose all the other benefits that come with just camping water.

As for rebound I think you can figure out that it can cleanse about 20 conditions max every 3 minutes. it’s so negligible and isn’t used to as a condition cleanse ability so why bother listing it?

though you didn't include stop, drop, roll either and conditional cleanses are much iffier to include in calculations like these.

I did include SD&R. In the calculation I combine it with Evasive Arcana's dodge cleanse for a total of 15 cleanses per dodge every 10 seconds.

Frankly I dislike the idea of tempest as a pure healer because herald simply does that better. Even with the awkward rock it barely needs to use it to out do the healing tempest provides by a tremendous margin. It doesn't cleanse quite as much, but hey.

I’ve messed around with Venturi healing as well, and ya I agree they are very good anti-pressure-y blanket healers. Problems with Venturi imo is that it lacks a lot of utility....no ability to super Rez, not a lot of self sustain, lack of many burst healing abilities, and the lack of condi cleanse. Because of those things, you can never really replace tempest healer with a ventari healer. They work very nice together on the same team though. Makes for big passive sustain.

If you are running around getting the most out of soothing mist and spamming staff auto 1 you are either doing a world boss or standing under way to many ACs.

this is an assumption made by those who never played the class in this way. You can actually heal through heavy amounts of siege by yourself which is a testament to its ability to heal through lots of pressure. Where’s tempest shines is its ability to keep ur players at 100% health through these blanket heals+big burst heals, and so when ur enemy goes for a burst, they have to deal with 100% of your life bar not 40% of it.