Heal Tempest was unexpectedly fun to play

[Serperior.6541]

Hello everyone i wanted to talk about how much i liked heal tempest, i was going in and out between buying another character slot or gearing my elementalist for the heal alac slot but then after asking some ppl and watching some guides i decided to bite the bullet and geared my tempest, tried it on a raid run with guildies and was pleasently suprised that how strong it was i had no problem keeping boons up and those heal bombs were  huge like water phase and overload is basically firebrand book 2 on low cooldown it was extremely funand  will be using it from now on

though still had some minor issues, those being

-No fury outside of air traitline: I find this not so important because you will most likely be paired with qfb anyways

-Low sustained healing (?): Well despite the big heal bombs i didn't really find any passive healing (like fire brand symbols) in heal tempest's kit but im not sure i just had a few runs after all. Hope some of you can clear it out. if im right about it this might be an issue where there is a mechanic that makes people continously take damage most notably boneskinner

-Overloads getting interrupted: this one was pretty annoying and had it a few times but it shouldn't be an issue if you can time it right

-Boss might move to another spot when you are about to do a field combo: this would be an issue most likely in raids as boss will have to be kited to different spots

 

But most important problem with this build is

-People actually pug for HAM not for alac heal lol, despite tempest being a perfectly fine replacement in most encounters

Edited September 18, 2022 by Serperior.6541

[the krytan assassin.9235]

Heal Alac temp is definitely underrated right now. Due to the nerfs over the last couple years the popularity of the profession is at an all time low. Also atleast 85% of the remaining ele playerbase simply prefers to do dps since support ele has been pretty much non existant for the last couple of years. 

Aside from the minor issues you mentioned (mainly a lack of Fury and alac being susceptible to interrupts) ele is doing a fantastic support job. 

The sustained healing of ele is actually pretty high and exceptionally high when using frost bow aswell. My main advice would be not to worry to much about constantly topping off your allies but mainly focus on going through your rotation. 

Also its important to mention the dps capacity of the heal alac Tempest. Celestial armor has excellent dps and heal potential for Tempest. It probably has the highest dps of all heal builds atm. 

Last but not least, feel free to join the groups that specifically search for a mechanist. Pretty much all groups dont care if you join on Tempest instead of mecha or people are simply to afraid to make a fuss about it. 

[Markus.6415]

11 hours ago, Serperior.6541 said:

Low sustained healing (?): Well despite the big heal bombs i didn't really find any passive healing (like fire brand symbols) in heal tempest's kit but im not sure i just had a few runs after all. Hope some of you can clear it out. if im right about it this might be an issue where there is a mechanic that makes people continously take damage most notably boneskinner

Since we lost the heal on Aura I'm taking the "Soothing Power" trait instead of the aura share in the water traitline. So it's important that you keep that buff up as long as possible. But I'm on your side on that, everytime yout leave water attunement it can get risky. Still wishing for some barrier application through earth.

[Dark.5674]

1 hour ago, Markus.6415 said:

Since we lost the heal on Aura I'm taking the "Soothing Power" trait instead of the aura share in the water traitline. So it's important that you keep that buff up as long as possible. But I'm on your side on that, everytime yout leave water attunement it can get risky. Still wishing for some barrier application through earth.

IMHO aurashare is still the better pick because of latent stamina + invigorating torrents. Soothing mist is basically another regen in disguise and most of the time you are not even in water anyway. GW2 group content except for a few exceptions does not require much group healing and heal from aurashare has always been a massive overkill. I have zero trouble keeping my group topped up most of the time, the only notable exception being boneskinner (which is problematic for all healing specs that don't go all-in heal, so not a specific tempest issue).

 

Staying out of water is not risky at all, wash the pain away, rebound and shouts are more than enough to handle any unexpected damage spike. Biggest heals come from switching back to water + evasive arcana + weapons cooldowns, not from camping water. So unless you somehow get cooldown on both wash the pain away and water attunement at the same time, you are always ready to react, the standard cooldown from switching from water is short, especially with arcane.

[Markus.6415]

23 hours ago, Dark.5674 said:

IMHO aurashare is still the better pick because of latent stamina + invigorating torrents. Soothing mist is basically another regen in disguise and most of the time you are not even in water anyway. GW2 group content except for a few exceptions does not require much group healing and heal from aurashare has always been a massive overkill. I have zero trouble keeping my group topped up most of the time, the only notable exception being boneskinner (which is problematic for all healing specs that don't go all-in heal, so not a specific tempest issue).

 

Staying out of water is not risky at all, wash the pain away, rebound and shouts are more than enough to handle any unexpected damage spike. Biggest heals come from switching back to water + evasive arcana + weapons cooldowns, not from camping water. So unless you somehow get cooldown on both wash the pain away and water attunement at the same time, you are always ready to react, the standard cooldown from switching from water is short, especially with arcane.

Soothing mist lingers around when you leave water attunement though. That's at least my type of rotation right now: I finish an overload, go into water attunement for soothing mist and quickly switch to another element for the next overload. So while my water attunement is on cd and an allie gets the big damage (and is not standing directly next to me) it could get risky. 

Shouts won't be enough to handle any unexpected damage spikes since the heal on aura trait is not the alac trait. I might also be running a completely different build then you 😅 It's Water/Air/Tempest Traitlines with Gale song for auto stun breaks.

[Dark.5674]

9 hours ago, Markus.6415 said:

Shouts won't be enough to handle any unexpected damage spikes since the heal on aura trait is not the alac trait. I might also be running a completely different build then you 😅 It's Water/Air/Tempest Traitlines with Gale song for auto stun breaks.

I mentioned shouts because of damage reduction (flash freeze frost aura + prot) and aegis from aftershock, not because of heals. Damage mitigation reduces the need for bigger heals.

Regarding soothing mist, I'm not entirely sure how to quantify it. Soothing power adds roughly 2k heal per second, probably affected by consumables, so maybe something like 2300 in practice, though with only about 75 % uptime depending on your rotation. Regeneration does about 2900 healing per second. The constant flow of regen from aurashare would therefore be better in a vacuum, but even without the auras you probably already have 100 % regen uptime fro flash freeze, attunement, tidal surge + sand squall, so in terms of healing soothing power is easily the better pick.

The aurashare is therefore only about vigor and endurance. Powerful aura let's you provide three extra auras within one roration cycle – sand squall, earthern rush into for overload and shocking aura. That's 30 endurance and permanent vigor uptime for 4 people. Whether that's more than the extra 2300 hps from soothing mist is hard to quantify, though to be honest now that i've put the numbers here, it looks less impactful then I felt before. 😄 Another thing is that both perks often get wasted (overheal or full endurance bars).

 

Edited September 18, 2022 by Dark.5674

[Chyro.1462]

Question about gearing:

 

I saw celestial mentioned and that heal/support tempest does somewhat decent dps for a heal build.

However I read in other places that celestial is bad for raids since it gives toughness and thus messes up tank targeting.

 

On sites that recommend meta builds (snowcrows, hardstuck) the recommended build for heal-alac tempest seems to be a mix of harriers and magi - so healing power + concentration with some power + precision mixed in.

 

I feel like fire + earth (aside from water) are the prefered overloads to go through on support tempest, for might / protection. And they both seem to lean more towards condition damage with burning + bleeding. Wouldn't it make sense to be running stats that lean more towards condi rather than power/precision? Something like plague doctors or seraphs?

 

Personally I really like Celestial cause it fits very well with ele's 'jack of all trades, master of none' kit and seems to have a decent amount of healing and boon duration. Just really not sure how viable celestial gear is in instanced hardcore content because of the toughness issue. And I really want to be certain of what gear to use before I start swapping out my cele gear.

[the krytan assassin.9235]

Unfortunately it kind of depends on the situation. Celestial is BiS whenever there is no toughness tanking involved (so all strikes and fractals and a decent amount of raid bosses). For raidbosses that use toughness tanking, there is a chance that you either have to tank the boss or have to lower your toughness. Tempest is good enough for tanking on most of the bosses, so i wouldn't worry to much about it (you'll have to learn the mechanics though). Some legendary gear for stat swaps (or extra heal armor sets) is preferred if possible. 

I'm not sure whether plague doctor or seraph gear brings that much more dps to the table since it lacks any expertise. Celestial is definitely the way to go for the best heal/dps combo. 

 

For the rotation you can choose to either stack some extra alac by doing triple overloading rotation fire OL-water-earth OL-air OL- water-Fire (repeat) or do a more dps focused rotation of Fire OL-water-Earth OL-Air-Water- Fire.  With the more dps focussed rotation you want to stay in Fire for as long as possible. For the other attunements: you shouldn't spend more then 2 sec in water or air attunement ever, switch earth directly after finishing its OL. 

Last but not least its important to mention that Tempest has basically 1 free traitline. You can either go fire 1-1-1 for max dps, Air 1-2-1 for Fury uptime, earth 3-2-3 for max surviveability or arcane (1/2/3)-1-1 for max boon duration and healing. 

Edited September 19, 2022 by the krytan assassin.9235

[zeyeti.8347]

On 9/17/2022 at 11:14 AM, Markus.6415 said:

Since we lost the heal on Aura I'm taking the "Soothing Power" trait instead of the aura share in the water traitline. So it's important that you keep that buff up as long as possible. But I'm on your side on that, everytime yout leave water attunement it can get risky. Still wishing for some barrier application through earth.

Ofc thats why it isnt played a lot , i would go tempest heal 100% of time if it had the same capacity as Ham or Hfb , but it has not .

Too many things not done very well on it , you can overload water ... but you will loose soothing water effect , unless you slack in water few sec , which you dont want cause you need to overload fire for might uptime and earth for prot. uptime , and what ele lack the most is consistent healing out of water , i wont talk about ice bow , having a sustained heal for 20 secs on a 60 sec cd , berk...

"elemental bastion" was a key part for ele to go heavy on heals out of water , and the freaking ugly way to apply alac ... other spec pump out alac like there is no tomorrow while ele has to succeed his overload making the first sec of the combat with no alac at all and very sensitive to interrupt/damage/dodge . Just no ! I dont think many players have lost the taste of playing ele it's just that ele is too poorly "well" designed (trade off , etc) as others have no trade off at all. 

I really want to play it ! But first i want it 100% as efficient as the other heal support (1.73% played in raids and 2.42 in strikes , non existent in fractals . why ? cause it's bad compared to the others , thats all ! make it better and ppl will play it )

[Mauti.3520]

Would like to drop as well that like...98% of pugs asking for "HAM" accept you as Druid or Tempest just fine, at least for Raids and nm Strikes that is, I don't pug CMs. So just join, they just seem to don't know it better and just mean "Alac Heal" not "HAM" actually or are lazy idk. So don't be afraid, just hop in!

Heal Tempest has some minor issues, but none of it is a big deal, so some reasonable improvement qol/change/buff would be well recieved, but it's surprisingly good and fun to play, at least for me that is.
 

Edited September 28, 2022 by Mauti.3520

[soulknight.9620]

Tbh cele dps gain is not that noticable, ive tested it out during weekends. You get a couple k dps extra and thats it. Sure if you want to min/max things go ahead, but usually dps is enough in any encounter if you get ur team right. 

 

Edited October 3, 2022 by soulknight.9620

[Kulvar.1239]

On 9/28/2022 at 7:27 PM, Mauti.3520 said:

Would like to drop as well that like...98% of pugs asking for "HAM" accept you as Druid or Tempest just fine, at least for Raids and nm Strikes that is, I don't pug CMs. So just join, they just seem to don't know it better and just mean "Alac Heal" not "HAM" actually or are lazy idk. So don't be afraid, just hop in!

Heal Tempest has some minor issues, but none of it is a big deal, so some reasonable improvement qol/change/buff would be well recieved, but it's surprisingly good and fun to play, at least for me that is.
 

The glaring issue is the lack of Fury.

I would do 2 changes to allow for that in an interesting way.

Overload Air: give 4s Fury.
Tempestuous Aria : give 3s Fury when using a shout, no longer give Might.

The rationale for these changes :

Baseline with boon duration and alacrity, that would give around 36% Fury uptime with the standard alacheal tempest build that doesn't use Tempestuous Aria. So if you have party members that also provide Fury uptime themselves, it all come together neatly.

If your party need more Fury, you can switch from Invigorating Torrent to Tempestuous Aria. And then using shoots you get to permanent Fury uptime at the cost of some Vigor and Regeneration. Without needing to fill your whole skillbar with shouts, so you keep some nice build flexibility.

It won't change the snow crows benchmark for DPS Tempest as that assume support already provide perma Fury.

[soulknight.9620]

2 hours ago, Kulvar.1239 said:

The glaring issue is the lack of Fury.

Tbh its not an issue. As an alac heal you will get paired with quick dps (mostly qfb, qHerald, qCata etc) and all of them generate plenty of fury on their own (since they do tend to have a good amount of concentration). 

[Kulvar.1239]

13 minutes ago, soulknight.9620 said:

Tbh its not an issue. As an alac heal you will get paired with quick dps (mostly qfb, qHerald, qCata etc) and all of them generate plenty of fury on their own (since they do tend to have a good amount of concentration). 

Not wrong, but I think AH Tempest having a little baseline Fury and a trait to provide it fully would do no harm and be helpful sometimes.

[Faebe.7341]

Another Patch another tempest nerf.. not bad enough already? they really changed the awesome galesong Trait in PVE too, instead of stunbreak, stab and superspeed when we get cced we just get useless prot on heal.. prot to which we already have a huge access to. Now its just a useless trait. my disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined. thank you anet

Edited October 4, 2022 by Faebe.7341

[the krytan assassin.9235]

30 minutes ago, Faebe.7341 said:

Another Patch another tempest nerf.. not bad enough already? they really changed the awesome galesong Trait in PVE too, instead of stunbreak, stab and superspeed then we get cced we just get useless prot on heal.. prot to which we already have a huge access to. Now its just a useless trait. my disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined. thank you anet

gotta have atleast 300% protection uptime just to be safe!