Fairly new player needs advice - PVP Tempest

[Sundoor.5630]

Hi All,

 

I'm kind of desperate with Tempest in PVP. I've been playing GW2 for a little over a month now and have played only two professions so far, Mechanist and Tempest

With Mechanist I'm doing OK in sPVP, still learning but decent. Tempest I felt to be a really interesting profession to play, but in PVP I feel almost utterly useless

 

Here are the pain points I've experienced:

- Rotations are super complicated for a faced paced fight. I learned the combinations, what action is useful in what situation, but when I'm getting banged in a teamfight with all the interrupts and stuff, there just isnt any time to execute

- I've tried _many_ builds from pure DPS to full healer/support to tanky and pretty much anything inbetween. The only build that seemed to work is the support one but in solo queue sPVP I felt entirely at the mercy of my team comp many times allies running outside of my buff/heal range, leaving me alone in fights, no peel etc. which statistically lead to more losses than wins. Damage builds didnt seem to work for me at all - even the pure tunnel vision DPS build was peanuts compared to the damage my mechanist dishes out and it has more survivability. Tanky/balanced builds have so low damage that most necromancers, guardians etc. just laugh in my face.

- Overloads work in really short ranges, most of the time its a total suicide unless going for a tanky build

- Any weapon other than staff is way too low range, opponents just focus and wipe my face on the floor with a squishier build. Staff is close to useless though, as its area spells are dodged all the time 

 

Is there anything I'm missing? Kinda frustrated that I do not add much value to the team unless I go full healer

 

How do I git gud?

 

Thanks, any advice is appreciated

 

[Mimiga.9815]

-Ultimately there isn't much of a defined rotation when it comes to elementalist in PvP, especially with Tempest specifically. It tends to be an ebb-and-flow type game in which you are bouncing back and forth between applying pressure with your offensive elements and sustaining on your defensive ones. There likely aren't too many times you should be sitting in one for too long, as accessing fresh cooldowns will often be more rewarding than waiting for others that are still several seconds away. There are exceptions, of course, but those are contextual. Keep in mind that the trait Harmonious Conduit can vastly assist in your ability to complete your overloads, and just the same an overload can be canceled right after it's started so that you can benefit from the stability while using another skill.

 

-Tempest is currently in an excellent place as a support in PvP, though as a whole tends to suffer in other departments. Running the Air traitline and using Warhorn for Lightning Orb can get you some cheeky kills as a DPS, but ultimately it's heavily affected by CC and projectile hate and you will only really catch people off-guard with it once. You are ultimately better off playing support most of the time. In this sense, we are all typically subject to the team we get queued with, but it would pay to mind what kind of fights you are going into as a support. You should always be trying to head towards or fight with your team unless things go weird. A support gets the most value out of having teammates around, and additionally you can somewhat force people to peel for you. Know that abandoning a fight that's going south is often better than rushing in. Two dead players is worse than one dead one alive. 

 

-Yep. Luckily Tempest has a wide access to CC and you have points to be fighting over.

 

-Staff is a gimmick weapon at best in PvP.  You would benefit far more if you ran Dagger Focus, even if you are shorter range. This can be compensated for partially by using your environment to leave your opponent's line of sight and forcing them into your range. Additionally, Dagger Focus offers a great deal more defensive capabilities with plenty of Transmute skills, Shocking Aura access on demand (which is a huge reason Tempest is good in the first place), Gale, and the entirety of Focus Earth. Even as a more damaging build, these things still greatly raise your survivability for the times when someone would've just walked through all of your staff CC skills.

[Downstate.4697]

What build you playing? Wouldnt really recommend a dps tempest. Like the person above said, d/f is your best bet. Fire 3, earth 3 and earth shield 3 allow you to get distance. You can also overload earth for stab and you also have an invuln in earth and in earth shield. The problem of allies running out of your healing is not just a tempest problem. Make use of movement skills to keep up and try to stay alive. Your support is really from your cc/res glyph while your healing is almost always from your heal and water overload. Best of luck.

[Sundoor.5630]

Thanks for the advices, very helpful 🙂 I'll stick to support then

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

Support Tempest being at the mercy of their team is normal. This is how it works for all supports, since they're just force multipliers; if your team doesn't know how to play, you can't carry them and you'll take the loss for it no matter how good you are, whereas damage builds can carry bad teams to some extent.

 

The biggest thing I see in games is no peels, then my team blaming me for "dying on the tankiest class in the game", when I was focused by half the enemy team (or more).

 

As for DPS, sadly Catalyst is better at it than PvP due to their quasi-ranged mobility. Imagine if your Water-dagger autoattack actually dd damage, and that's what you get with Catalyst Fire/Air. Their support skills (Jade Spheres) are also absolutely massive and cover the entire point.
 

You'll probably find the most success on Fresh Air Alacrity Tempest running a Power-Vitality amulet, but this is a build that revolves mostly around Shocking Aura and Lightning Orb.

Edited August 2, 2022 by Mariyuuna.6508

[Sahne.6950]

17 hours ago, Sundoor.5630 said:

Hi All,

 

I'm kind of desperate with Tempest in PVP. I've been playing GW2 for a little over a month now and have played only two professions so far, Mechanist and Tempest

With Mechanist I'm doing OK in sPVP, still learning but decent. Tempest I felt to be a really interesting profession to play, but in PVP I feel almost utterly useless

 

Here are the pain points I've experienced:

- Rotations are super complicated for a faced paced fight. I learned the combinations, what action is useful in what situation, but when I'm getting banged in a teamfight with all the interrupts and stuff, there just isnt any time to execute

- I've tried _many_ builds from pure DPS to full healer/support to tanky and pretty much anything inbetween. The only build that seemed to work is the support one but in solo queue sPVP I felt entirely at the mercy of my team comp many times allies running outside of my buff/heal range, leaving me alone in fights, no peel etc. which statistically lead to more losses than wins. Damage builds didnt seem to work for me at all - even the pure tunnel vision DPS build was peanuts compared to the damage my mechanist dishes out and it has more survivability. Tanky/balanced builds have so low damage that most necromancers, guardians etc. just laugh in my face.

- Overloads work in really short ranges, most of the time its a total suicide unless going for a tanky build

- Any weapon other than staff is way too low range, opponents just focus and wipe my face on the floor with a squishier build. Staff is close to useless though, as its area spells are dodged all the time 

 

Is there anything I'm missing? Kinda frustrated that I do not add much value to the team unless I go full healer

 

How do I git gud?

 

Thanks, any advice is appreciated

 

Not long ago i started a thread featuring a Conditionbruiser tempest.

I am currently playing it in Platinum level and i am having great success. The build has some insane sustain and tankyness and is perfect for winning 1v1s and standing your ground on sidenodes or even in midfights. If you want to play tempest as anything other than support, this is probably the strongest build there is.

The thread i linked has some insane textwalls where i explain everything you need to know 😄

heres some random clips of the FFA arena, so you can see how to play it.

 

Edited August 2, 2022 by Sahne.6950

[Sundoor.5630]

Very interesting, I'll give it a try a good number of tries 🙂

Thank you

Edited August 4, 2022 by Sundoor.5630

[Sundoor.5630]

On 8/2/2022 at 12:04 PM, Sahne.6950 said:

Not long ago i started a thread featuring a Conditionbruiser tempest.

I am currently playing it in Platinum level and i am having great success. The build has some insane sustain and tankyness and is perfect for winning 1v1s and standing your ground on sidenodes or even in midfights. If you want to play tempest as anything other than support, this is probably the strongest build there is.

The thread i linked has some insane textwalls where i explain everything you need to know 😄

heres some random clips of the FFA arena, so you can see how to play it.

 

 

 

Alright I've actually gave this a lot of tries, but failed horribly, I felt bad for my team even 😕

I understand why it could work and indeed it is pretty decent in 1v1s, but 1v1 is a rare scenario where I come from (upper silver-lower gold) and I get _destroyed_ in anything else than an 1v1, disable spam completely breaks the flow, from then on its a race to survival 😕

I've tried some custom-built builds that made sense on paper (damage with survivability) but it is just too much, feels like tempest and ele in general is very much dependent on the smooth flow of attunement rotations and when there are 2+ people banging on you I feel there is no time to focus, rotation gets interrupted all the time and all skills on their own are dogshit

 

Extremely frustrating to play anything else than support. Support is great but often times my team avoids me like the plauge wondering who I can give auras and healing to 😞

 

Edited August 23, 2022 by Sundoor.5630

[William.3871]

On 8/2/2022 at 6:15 AM, FrownyClown.8402 said:

What build you playing? Wouldnt really recommend a dps tempest. Like the person above said, d/f is your best bet. Fire 3, earth 3 and earth shield 3 allow you to get distance. You can also overload earth for stab and you also have an invuln in earth and in earth shield. The problem of allies running out of your healing is not just a tempest problem. Make use of movement skills to keep up and try to stay alive. Your support is really from your cc/res glyph while your healing is almost always from your heal and water overload. Best of luck.

I use my ele as hybrid dps/support tempest hybrid and consistently hit above 25% of team damage (up to 35 sometimes, without afk’s) if I stay on points where teamfights are, which is its job, basically.

 

fire-earth-tempest traits, nearly inmune to condition imparing conditions (roots, freeze -the biggest ele counter-), and perma 40% protection makes this build a very tanky yet damaging class, than heals yourself everytime you cast an aura -avatar stats-.

 

im playing right now necro to use other classes, but had no problem to come after a 2 years break from the lowest elo to mid gold in just one season using hybrid tempest, playing casually.

 

my utilites are heal, fire and earth signets, and aftershoock (i do massive bleeding after each root).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 24, 2022 by William.3871

[Sahne.6950]

11 hours ago, Sundoor.5630 said:

 

 

Alright I've actually gave this a lot of tries, but failed horribly, I felt bad for my team even 😕

I understand why it could work and indeed it is pretty decent in 1v1s, but 1v1 is a rare scenario where I come from (upper silver-lower gold) and I get _destroyed_ in anything else than an 1v1, disable spam completely breaks the flow, from then on its a race to survival 😕

I've tried some custom-built builds that made sense on paper (damage with survivability) but it is just too much, feels like tempest and ele in general is very much dependent on the smooth flow of attunement rotations and when there are 2+ people banging on you I feel there is no time to focus, rotation gets interrupted all the time and all skills on their own are dogshit

 

Extremely frustrating to play anything else than support. Support is great but often times my team avoids me like the plauge wondering who I can give auras and healing to 😞

 

Hey,

sorry  to hear that you dont have success with it. This build is by no means solely good in 1v1. Your defenses scale with numbers(mag,shock and invulns are just as effective against 1 as they are against 5), and all of your attacks are AoE. The tricky part is tho, that you need to know what the enemy is playing, to use your defenses (mag and shockaura) offensively to reflect enemy damage or to stunlock someone.

Maybe this gameplay can help you. pay close attention to the combos and playstlye. For example, stun/rootlocking your enemy in your fields is key. Also keeping your mag and shockaura up is the bread and butter of this build.

All the gameplay is in Gold3. and i am currently plat 1 with 1579 ratingpoints, playing only this build.

 

Edited August 24, 2022 by Sahne.6950

[Sundoor.5630]

10 hours ago, Sahne.6950 said:

Hey,

sorry  to hear that you dont have success with it. This build is by no means solely good in 1v1. Your defenses scale with numbers(mag,shock and invulns are just as effective against 1 as they are against 5), and all of your attacks are AoE. The tricky part is tho, that you need to know what the enemy is playing, to use your defenses (mag and shockaura) offensively to reflect enemy damage or to stunlock someone.

Maybe this gameplay can help you. pay close attention to the combos and playstlye. For example, stun/rootlocking your enemy in your fields is key. Also keeping your mag and shockaura up is the bread and butter of this build.

All the gameplay is in Gold3. and i am currently plat 1 with 1579 ratingpoints, playing only this build.

 

 

Thanks I'll watch and analyze the video carefully, but also a question:

How do you pay attention to all the things in the chaos of a teamfight? You need to keep your rotation in mind, what the opponent is doing or going to do, positioning and reacting to sudden damage bursts and/or CC? Is it muscle memory, years of practice or is it something I'm missing here? 🙂 

Another question: which role do you usually play in sPVP? 

[Sahne.6950]

13 hours ago, Sundoor.5630 said:

 

Thanks I'll watch and analyze the video carefully, but also a question:

How do you pay attention to all the things in the chaos of a teamfight? You need to keep your rotation in mind, what the opponent is doing or going to do, positioning and reacting to sudden damage bursts and/or CC? Is it muscle memory, years of practice or is it something I'm missing here? 🙂 

Another question: which role do you usually play in sPVP? 

Hey,

its all muscle memory. I dont have to think about what i am doing. i just do it. (my ele is approaching his 10th birthday next month^^)

Also this build has not Rotations. It has a mindset / rules that you have to follow:

Always try to root->stun->root->stun. to lock your enemy in place.

When you have him locked in place, put a damagefield under him, via overload or Fire 3/4.

Always cycle your auras at maximum efficiency. (NEVER overlap magauras and other reflects/always try and get a "onhit" stun from shockaura and then transmute it for another stun.

DO NOT USE WATER. If you switch to water when your being attacked, your already dead. Use water only for the 4/5 for ranged pressure or to spawn the waterelemental.

Fire / Earth is Damage.

Air is CC.

Your sustain is actually hidden in fire. (Fire5 is your heal and cleanse)

When your stunned and dont have a overload ready to brack the stun. Either go in air and cast shockaura or go to earth and cast the 4 for a reflect.(both swapping attunements and casting those skills can be done while you are CCed and it will force the opponent to stop attacking you)

 

The best tip i can give anyone that thinks that a pvp match is "chaos"..... is to play ALL the other builds.... sounds odd.. but once youve touched every build, youll notice that every build has this 1 or 2 gimmicks that they try and do to you. Now you just have to look out for when they are going to do their thing.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 25, 2022 by Sahne.6950

[Guirssane.7082]

On 8/25/2022 at 8:49 AM, Sahne.6950 said:

Hey,

its all muscle memory. I dont have to think about what i am doing. i just do it. (my ele is approaching his 10th birthday next month^^)

Also this build has not Rotations. It has a mindset / rules that you have to follow:

Always try to root->stun->root->stun. to lock your enemy in place.

When you have him locked in place, put a damagefield under him, via overload or Fire 3/4.

Always cycle your auras at maximum efficiency. (NEVER overlap magauras and other reflects/always try and get a "onhit" stun from shockaura and then transmute it for another stun.

DO NOT USE WATER. If you switch to water when your being attacked, your already dead. Use water only for the 4/5 for ranged pressure or to spawn the waterelemental.

Fire / Earth is Damage.

Air is CC.

Your sustain is actually hidden in fire. (Fire5 is your heal and cleanse)

When your stunned and dont have a overload ready to brack the stun. Either go in air and cast shockaura or go to earth and cast the 4 for a reflect.(both swapping attunements and casting those skills can be done while you are CCed and it will force the opponent to stop attacking you)

 

The best tip i can give anyone that thinks that a pvp match is "chaos"..... is to play ALL the other builds.... sounds odd.. but once youve touched every build, youll notice that every build has this 1 or 2 gimmicks that they try and do to you. Now you just have to look out for when they are going to do their thing.

 

 

 

 

 

always use water to proc soothing and healing ripple, just dont stay in water for too long, cast the cc and switch

[Sahne.6950]

19 hours ago, Guirssane.7082 said:

always use water to proc soothing and healing ripple, just dont stay in water for too long, cast the cc and switch

The build i am talking about doesnt use water traitline. No need going into water beside to cast the elemental or for the ranged pressure from 4 and 5.

[Guirssane.7082]

8 hours ago, Sahne.6950 said:

The build i am talking about doesnt use water traitline. No need going into water beside to cast the elemental or for the ranged pressure from 4 and 5.

Not using water as tempest?

[Sahne.6950]

14 hours ago, Guirssane.7082 said:

Not using water as tempest?

yup!

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGgAg2lZwGZasLGJO0PntdA-z5YXGFUAJkAGPA 

Its a tempest condibruiser. I managed to get to plat 2 with playing only this.

[William.3871]

1 hour ago, Sahne.6950 said:

yup!

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGgAg2lZwGZasLGJO0PntdA-z5YXGFUAJkAGPA 

Its a tempest condibruiser. I managed to get to plat 2 with playing only this.

I do use a very similar build. I just dont use earth shield but "After shock!" instead. It really does great dmg and increase surviability which allows to put the fire trait: "Burning fire" for extra condition cleansing.

I also use horn instead, very helpful in teamfights, but thats up to taste. The three off hand weapons are nice if you use them well.

 

Very strong build which never see the day for some reason. People try to kill me thinking I'm support and receive a welcome party instead lol

[Sahne.6950]

1 hour ago, William.3871 said:

I do use a very similar build. I just dont use earth shield but "After shock!" instead. It really does great dmg and increase surviability which allows to put the fire trait: "Burning fire" for extra condition cleansing.

I also use horn instead, very helpful in teamfights, but thats up to taste. The three off hand weapons are nice if you use them well.

 

Very strong build which never see the day for some reason. People try to kill me thinking I'm support and receive a welcome party instead lol

Personally i like the shield ALOT more. You get almost 4 timest the ammount of magauras out of the utilityslot compared to using aftershock. Now you slap all the invulnframes/blockframes and CC ontop and Earthshield has about 5 times the value :D

The interaction between conjurer / smothering auras and picking up the shield is also a nice condicleanse.

I personally believe that "aftershock <-> Earthshield" is no comparison at all... and Earthshield will be far superior in every single way.

You basicly have Aftershock on a 12 second cooldown just with the Shield "3".... i really see no reason to use aftershock... besides someone not liking the shield... 

Shield is bread and butter of every good ele build currently...

[Sundoor.5630]

I've had some practice and getting better with your build and can definitely see its strengths now

1v1 it is really good especially with knowing what the opponent can do (in which obviously I'm still lacking a lot :))

 

What I still dislike is that you have to give your damned (concentrate on a 100 things) just to perform on the level of some easier builds 😄

Also I still think it has a big weakness in teamfights. One hard cc and I'm dead before I can cast anything protective. Actually I kind of hate the slow casting times. Healing signet 1s is a LOT in an intense fight. Same for earth shield. Double so for water elemental. Sometimes overloads are death sentences. Necros just spam their whatever, remove your stability from overload, bamm you're dead. I've been even downed during earth shield invulnerability. No idea how.

 

This might not be an issue at plat level where everybody uses tanky builds and you have more time to react, but trust me around silver and lower gold, most people go for damage at least that's what I tend to observe. Against a similar tanky build this is great, I can pay attention to what the opponent is doing without worrying all the time when my HP will drop by 70% at any second

 

I'd love to know your approach to team fights. You cant just be a solo roamer, team mates will bark at you 😄 I wish dagger/focus would have scepter range.

Edited September 7, 2022 by Sundoor.5630