Elementalist is the new Scrapper.

[Kuma.1503]

Lets list off the things that scrapper had nerfed/deleted that a staff Tempest support can now do. 

Superspeed - Windborn speed was buffed to give AoE superspeed. You can pair this with eye of the storm for bursts of superspeed. 

Stability - Eye of the storm and Transmute earth aura give two sources of AoE stability. Overloads also give spammable stability to the ele itself, making it difficult to lock down. 

Cleansing - Overload Water, buffed cleansing fire, and buffed healing rain make for some good low cooldown cleanses for your group. This can be further buffed with traits such as Evasive Arcana (water dodge), smothering auras, and Cleansing water. 

Revives - This still isn't as potent as function gyro due to numbers tuning, but you can rez targets from range with geyser, or you can use rez signet. You also have the option to go for double geyser revives if traited for it. 

Consitent healing - Aura spam was buffed now that water 4 gives frost aura. You can blast it with water 2 to double up on the aura healing. You can pair this with water autos onto allies for a long range version of med blaster. 

Damage - A major advantage ele has over heal scrapper is long ranged non-projectile based dps. It's not much, but it's infinitely more than what scrapper was pumping out. This also means more tags and more loot bags. 

Crowd Control - Water 4, Air 5, Earth 4, Earth 5, Overload Earth immobilize, Shocking Aura from overload air to aid with pushes. 

 

 

 

[Xenesis.6389]

/points to nose

Got a good laugh seeing they're going to get more stability too with transmute earth.

At this point I'm sick of seeing elementalist everywhere just like I was for scrapper.

Good ole anet always hyper focusing two classes with everything.

🤷‍♂️

[Infusion.7149]

Some things to note:

• Windborne speed should not have been given superspeed in WVW. We will see how this plays out though, the uptime is severely shorter than scrapper.
• Eye of the Storm doesnt provide stab in WVW. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/"Eye_of_the_Storm!"
• Using overload water for cleansing locks you out of water, it is rarely used in that fashion
• Cleansing fire is for the tempest itself, it will never be used in a group environment.
• Relying on healing rain for cleansing is unlikely due to the pulse effect being stationary in contrast to purge gyro which moved with the scrapper
• In what universe can you run smothering auras (fire traitline) and evasive arcana (arcane) while also aurasharing?
• The auras are coming from overload on staff tempest and the shouts, that is not spam as everything has 20s cooldowns. The only short cooldown aura would be either from swapping to fire attunement if you run fire traitline or shock aura if you run fresh air.
• Med blaster healed for more than water blast.
• The meta tempest runs minstrel and water blast does next to no damage. Ice spike can be side stepped , geyser does no damage, frozen ground does nothing and neither does Healing rain.
• The CC you list other than the immob is completely negated by stability.

[Ephurum.2965]

40 minutes ago, Kuma.1503 said:

Lets list off the things that scrapper had nerfed/deleted that a staff Tempest support can now do. 

Superspeed - Windborn speed was buffed to give AoE superspeed. You can pair this with eye of the storm for bursts of superspeed. 

Stability - Eye of the storm and Transmute earth aura give two sources of AoE stability. Overloads also give spammable stability to the ele itself, making it difficult to lock down. 

Cleansing - Overload Water, buffed cleansing fire, and buffed healing rain make for some good low cooldown cleanses for your group. This can be further buffed with traits such as Evasive Arcana (water dodge), smothering auras, and Cleansing water. 

Revives - This still isn't as potent as function gyro due to numbers tuning, but you can rez targets from range with geyser, or you can use rez signet. You also have the option to go for double geyser revives if traited for it. 

Consitent healing - Aura spam was buffed now that water 4 gives frost aura. You can blast it with water 2 to double up on the aura healing. You can pair this with water autos onto allies for a long range version of med blaster. 

Damage - A major advantage ele has over heal scrapper is long ranged non-projectile based dps. It's not much, but it's infinitely more than what scrapper was pumping out. This also means more tags and more loot bags. 

Crowd Control - Water 4, Air 5, Earth 4, Earth 5, Overload Earth immobilize, Shocking Aura from overload air to aid with pushes. 

 

 

 

Couple of things to point out.

Superspeed - Not sure how much the Staff 4 will give. But you could have about 7ish seconds of Superspeed if you use them back to back. (Which you probably wouldn't.) 

Stability - EoTS doesn't give stability in WvW. It's a stun break, but no Stability. Transmute earth aura will give it. (Losing the protection, but the stability is better.) Not sure if it'll be one stack or more, yet. The overloads give a single stack to the Tempest. I've not played Tempest as Zerg support healer. But I'm assuming the 1 stack (Or 3 if you Overload earth) may go sooner than later, the offset of that is the stun break that also occurs on Overload.

Cleansing - Overload Water cleansing will be as is. Cleansing fire will only work for the tempest and the staff cleanses stay the same. The buff comes from the healing that's coming when you cleanse. Healing rain works at range and will cleanse one more condi than the purge gyro would. It doesn't switch to boons like the old PoP build for scrapper. But with med kit/elixir gun, you've got more prominent condi cleanse for the Engi. But the healing rain does have the range on it.

Consistent healing - Aura spam does indeed get a buff. This will provide more protection if you're running an aura build in with Earth trait line (but that does lose Arcane/water for healing/boon support.) Water blast is nice, its long range projectile that could get destroyed through the projectile hate vs. a cone that is short range. This can be 50/50 for the engineer.

Revives - Geyser will rez for 4% (8% if you double up!) over the duration. Function could fully rez up to 3 people (if the gyro doesn't die or get CC'd.)

Damage - Def a win for Ele. With the range of staff and the ability to tag. You could run a mortar kit, but then you're running into the same amount of projectile hate. 

Crowd Control - Its zerg play, here. Stability or bust. BUT. The ele will have more access than the Scrapper does. (Running 'traditional' support build blah blah.)

[Kuma.1503]

4 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Some things to note:

• Windborne speed should not have been given superspeed in WVW. We will see how this plays out though, the uptime is severely shorter than scrapper.
• Eye of the Storm doesnt provide stab in WVW. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/"Eye_of_the_Storm!"

You are right on that. I could have sworn this was given stab to let it compete with other supports at one point in WvW. Seems I've remembered incorrectly.

4 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

 

• Using overload water for cleansing locks you out of water, it is rarely used in that fashion

It's not something you can just throw out whenever you feel like it, but as a burst cleanse/heal option it's solid. It can also help the ele break themselves/allies out of immobilize if other skills are on cooldown. Losing water for 16-20 seconds >>> dieing to immobilize

4 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

• Cleansing fire is for the tempest itself, it will never be used in a group environment.

This explains a lot. I've occasionally used this on support builds and noticed that people still die to condis I thought I cleansed. 

The wording simply states cleanses 5 conditions (3 in competetive) and inflicts burning. Target cap 5. It should specify cleanses condis on self

4 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

• Relying on healing rain for cleansing is unlikely due to the pulse effect being stationary in contrast to purge gyro which moved with the scrapper

It's a large enough radius that people aren't going to immediately move out of it. You do have to predict where the zerg is going to go a little bit, but I've never had issue with landing it. 

4 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

• In what universe can you run smothering auras (fire traitline) and evasive arcana (arcane) while also aurasharing?

Not all at once. I was listing out the options they had at their disposal based on which traitlines they take, so they're not pidgeon holed into one specific build in order to cleanse. I firgured that went without saying since I listed off Evasive Arcana, Smothering Auras, and Cleansing water which is three different traitlines. 

4 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

• The auras are coming from overload on staff tempest and the shouts, that is not spam as everything has 20s cooldowns. The only short cooldown aura would be either from swapping to fire attunement if you run fire traitline or shock aura if you run fresh air.

Assuming you're going for an aurashare build with Water/Fire with Powerful Auras, Smothering Auras, and Elemental Bastion. You could do the following. 

Drop Frozen Ground - Frost aura for 5 people, shared to additional people via powerful aura.

Blast with Ice Spike - Frost aura inside the radius. Additional shared auras if you hit yourself. 

Swap to earth and use 2. Optinally, you can tap it inside your frost field - Additional Frost aura + magnetic aura to 5 people 

Swap to fire - Fire aura to 5 people. 

You've also got auras from your overloads. Typically overload air/earth as you can afford to put those on CD temporarily and they provide shocking/magnetic aura respectively. 

You've got auras from your shouts. 

This does involve blasting inside of your fields which takes thought and awareness of where the zerg is going, but is honestly not that hard to do with practice.

There may also be miscellaneous light/dark fields from Necros/Guardians that you can blast into, but this is situational. 

4 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

• Med blaster healed for more than water blast.

It's not even close after the med blaster nerfs. 

You need 14 boons on the target before med blaster heals for more on the base heal, but water blast still boasts a slightly higher coefficient, so it continues to pull ahead if you have healing power. 

4 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

• The meta tempest runs minstrel and water blast does next to no damage. Ice spike can be side stepped , geyser does no damage, frozen ground does nothing and neither does Healing rain.

Remember we're comparing to scrapper which contributes next to zero in terms of DPS. (hey previously had AoE quickness to compensate, but that's been removed) Tempest as the option of running a celestial set and contributing a little bit to DPS (this can be conveniently tweaked to double as a roaming set). They also get more loot bags since staff is an objectively better tagging weapon than anything scrapper has access to. 

4 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

• The CC you list other than the immob is completely negated by stability.

True, but we're comparing to scrapper whose CC gets shut down by stability AND reflects.

Soft CC skills like Glob Shot and Chill/blind mortar get blocked by reflects. 

Frozen ground at least has the potential to slow down stragglers with chill and isn't affected by reflects. Earth 4 and Air 5 can lock targets in place during spikes. For example, you have your spellbreaker go in with bubble, and you lock them in place with Air 5 or place Earth 4 in the direction of their escape. This is especially relevant when fighting in choke points.

I'd say ele pulls ahead of scrapper here. 

Edited February 7, 2023 by Kuma.1503

[kurosy.1384]

Here we go worrying about Windborne superspeed while scrappers currently have superspeed at the start of any well 😕

Currently, staff support ele doesn't have a real place in wvw if not for farming cleanses and for some old affectionate player. With these buffs, it could actually come back to be relevant. Also, it will cover support differently from d/f or d/wh, meaning supp tempest will have to adapt the playstile a bit. That's going to be interesting.
If it ends up being too much OP i'm sure the nerf will come xDDD
Anyway at the moment both vindi and druid supp outclass tempest for cleanse and heals so i think there is room for the staff buffs to be good-but-not-broken

[Biermeister.4678]

When a Tempest can outrun a Thief they need looked at 

[Sahne.6950]

2 hours ago, Biermeister.4678 said:

When a Tempest can outrun a Thief they need looked at 

Good thing that Tempest cant do that.

Edited February 7, 2023 by Sahne.6950

[Jski.6180]

Scrapers is still very much usable in wvw its just no longer an support healing class (all though it can still play as one). We are just in the moment that scraper dmg is stronger then its healing. Now if forces the tempest to run healing auras to make up for the lost of the med kit healing from support eng so no real alacrity use.

Holo dose support super speed better for an group it always had its just a bit harder to use it right for both the holo player and the group being supported.

The big thing about tempest healing support vs say eng healing support was that tempest healing is very much open to be countered thought counter projectiles for its water 1 skills and hard cc for counter overloads as well as long cast time heals. Eng healing had low cast time to no cast time and was not an projectile. It may not seems like much of an differences but it realty adds up in a wvw fight.

2 hours ago, Biermeister.4678 said:

When a Tempest can outrun a Thief they need looked at 

Well most classes should be able to out "run" a thf as a thf has ports or fast burst of moment but once it uses up thoughs ports it should be open to classes that are not using ports. That has less to do with ele over all and more to do with super speed vs port balancing. Sadly thf can get super speed so the balancing can be messed up.

Edited February 7, 2023 by Jski.6180

[AlCapwnd.7834]

/S Healing rain and meteor shower now follow the caster.

 

I can dream. Dont beat me up to hard 😃

[Infusion.7149]

@Kuma.1503
Are you factoring 3 pulses of med blaster? Med Blaster was not nerfed this year, if you look at the skill history it has been untouched.
3 pulses of med blaster is one pulse of Water Blast in terms of time. You state you need 14 boons to reach parity which seems farfetched.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Med_Blaster
Med Blaster = 70+0.1*healing power in all modes base healing with 3 pulses every 1.2s
With 1K healing power you are looking at 510 healing before modifiers (such as 7% Health Insurance and 10% Sigil of Transferance) which is 545 or so

With 1.5K healing power you are looking at 660 healing before Health Insurance , ~706 with Health Insurance's 7% mod

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Water_Blast
223+0.15*healing power in PVP/WVW every 1.2s with a projectile travel time

With 1K healing power you are looking at 373 healing before modifiers (15% from Aquamancer's Training and 10% sigil of transference) this is around 430 before the sigil

With 1.5K healing power you are looking at 515 before sigil

With celestial stats as you insinuate the healing is even lower ; the meta version of aura tempest runs dagger mainhand currently.

---

What has changed significantly is the loss of quickness on WVW heal scrapper (which never should have gotten quickness duration to the extent it did) and cleansing changes on Fumigate and Purge Gyro that no longer allow for as much boon output from Purity of Purpose. That is without mentioning scrapper having stability on defense field. Granted defense field no longer is mobile so its effectiveness as a projectile defense is far lowered.

This is on top of implying you can rely on Eruption and Water Blast as blast finishers. The main blast finisher you will be using is "Aftershock" (which is overloaded in itself especially in PvE). Fire Aura/Frost aura are so inconsequential in the grand scheme of things and the only shock aura when running cleanse variants is from overload air which does nothing useful in minstrel unless you get the full channel off and "Rebound". I remember when I was helping design comps we explicitly did not run tempest because while close on paper, scrappers put out far more healing in the hands of the average player since the healing on med blaster was far higher when quickness was applied and if someone swapped out of water they probably were not going to be doing what they needed to be doing (unless it is an ele main or something). In addition, scrapper is less glass compared to tempest unless you have high protection uptime making it far more user friendly for newer WvW players.

Unless you can prove otherwise I am just going to consider "not even close" as hyperbole and disinformation. You cannot just use a single med blaster pulse to do your calculation when there are 3 pulses. If you want to make a point an arcdps log with healing table on either would be fine but the math doesn't add up here. Even the shouts on tempest have cast times unlike guardian SYG/Advance and warrior's "Shake it Off" except for "Eye of the Storm" which does not provide auras. This means that you will not be using auto while using those skills.

You can tag more on tempest is the only thing you can really say that has merit here.

Edited February 8, 2023 by Infusion.7149

[MedievalThings.5417]

Superspeed should NOT exist.  I say that as someone who mained scrapper for the 5 year run from PoF to EoD.

[MarzAttakz.9608]

Does all that lovely superspeed mean I can beat my targets to a pulp with my bare hands before my kittening staff projectiles hit them?

[SleepyBat.9034]

3 hours ago, Ubi.4136 said:

Superspeed should NOT exist.  I say that as someone who mained scrapper for the 5 year run from PoF to EoD.

No you're wrong, some classes need it for mobility (not thief). If you removed superspeed entirely that would send so many builds to the grave. If you want to make the argument that AoE superspeed shouldn't exist that is acceptable but saying it shouldn't exist period, is unacceptable.

[Xenesis.6389]

23 minutes ago, SleepyBat.9034 said:

No you're wrong, some classes need it for mobility (not thief). If you removed superspeed entirely that would send so many builds to the grave. If you want to make the argument that AoE superspeed shouldn't exist that is acceptable but saying it shouldn't exist period, is unacceptable.

/LaughsInMesmerManipulationAccent

[subversiontwo.7501]

On 2/6/2023 at 7:55 PM, Kuma.1503 said:

Lets list off the things that scrapper had nerfed/deleted that a staff Tempest support can now do.

Arguably, in terms of possible roles, Vindicator is the new Scrapper and Tempest is the new Firebrand.

I'm not a fan of what they are doing with the balance either. Not that it ruffles me too much that they are making eg., Staff Tempest OP now to convince the thickest around that it is viable, but rather because I fear where these things end up - with an overall cheaper balance, with less flexible classes and fewer, boring options. The Engi is a good example, where is it now? However, some of the loudest voices around have been proclaiming that eg., a Tempest need similar meters to a Scrapper to be viable to them and this is where we end up.

The issue isn't whether something becomes too good (eg., Vindi) as much as it is relegating certain classes to actual irrelevance (ie., Engi) over some perceived irrelevance (ie., Ele) that never was true. When people catch on and start complaining about the next set of classes, we risk seeing them hollowed out too: buffing what's balanced only to chip away at its edges until there is nothing but its most obvious pieces left.

Edited February 8, 2023 by subversiontwo.7501