Pulsing alacrity

[shib.1369]

"Lucid Singularity: This trait now causes overloads to pulse alacrity while channeling in addition to granting alacrity when channeling is completed. The total amount of alacrity granted remains the same."

 

The last pulse is a whole 5 seconds on my condi alac tempest (total alacrity is about 10-11s). This means your output is still butchered if there's cc spam/you have to dodge, and you miss the *final* pulse.

[thetwothousand.5049]

I actually don't hate this is my initial reaction, and I'm someone that was vocally in favor of it being a pulse over a single drop. With this set up in pve your alac is much safer, and the cc/dodges that you'll need to contend with aren't going to be enough to mess with the party's coverage. After 2 rotations you have a hefty amount of alac stocked, enough to make it to your next overload. The real QoL for pve is that the alac hits immediately so your party members rotations can benefit from the boon right away, instead of causing awkward delays.

 

For spvp and wvw this definitely a good example of have your cake and eat it too. An ele player now doesn't feel completely robbed if they are not able to complete the full channel, but there is still a significant result for an enemy player that is able to force the reduced channel time. 

[Jmvars.4501]

I see your point but it's still better than being a single big alacrity drop. There's also the added benefit of being able to instantly begin sharing alacrity, whether at start of combat or when you were off doing mechanics.

[DaKillaOfHell.5907]

After a bit of field testing:

 

The after-patch-solution isn't really a gamechanger.

Instead, it helps with recharging while doing OL, which is good, but with the overall duration being unchanged, it makes permanent sustainability harder than before, which shouldn't be like it is. However, stacking alac is an option, if you have enough pre-cast-time, which might be interesting in various raid encounters, which makes it better than the option before.

[soulknight.9620]

A sec or two extra alac uptime would actually solve the issue. 

[Infusion.7149]

I wrote a thread asking if pulsing alacrity was really the solution, so I kind of expected this result.

[soulknight.9620]

9 hours ago, DaKillaOfHell.5907 said:

Instead, it helps with recharging while doing OL, which is good, but with the overall duration being unchanged, it makes permanent sustainability harder than before, which shouldn't be like it is.

Dont know how it could be harder than before, since this is a improvement. Atm i find it lacking only in one particular scenario - when you dont have quick uptime. 

With quick you can perma 30 sec of alac with minor drop offs if you cancel an OL from time to time. 

[DaKillaOfHell.5907]

32 minutes ago, soulknight.9620 said:

Dont know how it could be harder than before, since this is a improvement. Atm i find it lacking only in one particular scenario - when you dont have quick uptime. 

With quick you can perma 30 sec of alac with minor drop offs if you cancel an OL from time to time. 

 

The problem is sustainability.

 

Since alac ticks also down when casting OL, this gives you less alac uptime after OL cast. I tried yesterday dungeon, Fractal, and Raid, and it came out that with quickness, it gives you a minor advantage, which is, depending on the gear (either you go full-support with harriers or half with celestial  or heal with harrier/magi), either a bit better or worse, but doesnt change much.

After OL you have to switch directly to next attunement in order to keep up alac.

 

What I found to be a viable tactic was to use pre-casting before the fight to have around 20-30 seconds of alac in the background, but I did that before patch as well.

 

Still, the problem is that I have to rely on such tactics and quickness upkeep to keep my own buffs up, so-to-say.

And as you say, it gets far worse when no quickness is there because the person providing quickness died. 

 

But I think, that, by buffing the time of the alac uptime for a bit, it should solve that problem.

[Ragnarox.9601]

It feels like I pump less alac than before the patch....

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

They still want to reward the full overload with more duration and others effects. That's a good point, but overloads are still boring to play with huge drawback. Just reduce the cast-time and alacrity pusle or not won't be an issue. 

[the krytan assassin.9235]

With the new patch you basically get 4 (2.8) of useless alac uptime on Tempest with your first overload/everytime you OL while you ran out of alac. The total amount stays the same when you can upkeep your alac. If you kitten up your rotation/ lose your alac for whatever reason you simply have up 1 (0.7) sec extra cooldown on your overloads. 

 

So overall they heavily incentivise to overcap on your alac a bit and do a quick double OL at the start of the encounter/run sand squall. 

 

Id say overall this is a buff for HAT, mixed for Adps(you get abit of extra dura even though you're failing an overload, but everytime you run out you'll get abit of extra cd. Htemp in WvW kinda struggles the same way as Adps in PvE, but i'd say it's a small buff since you become abit less susceptible to boonrip during the first 4 seconds

[Markus.6415]

47 minutes ago, Ragnarox.9601 said:

It feels like I pump less alac than before the patch....

 

That's just your brain messing with you xD. Only because theres no big alac number at the end you might feel it's less. But bear in mind that you don't have to wait through the whole channeling animation of the next overload. You get the Alac much sooner now.

[Zaret.1450]

I think its much better thsn before, i mean i tried it on wvw, i mean yeah you could get tons of cc on you, or have to dodge in a pinch or smth, but i still think its reasonable, i mean staff got aoe stab, ice aura, superspeed, and ele itself, at least in wvw, its pretty much meta already on tempest cleanse, so this change is enought, for raids... well there at least you can keep pumping alac without bothersome delays.

[nthmetal.9652]

19 hours ago, DaKillaOfHell.5907 said:

The after-patch-solution isn't really a gamechanger.

Instead, it helps with recharging while doing OL, which is good, but with the overall duration being unchanged, it makes permanent sustainability harder than before, which shouldn't be like it is.

This doesn't mirror my experiences - and these come mainly from WvW, mind you. I do run Magnaminous Maintenance Oils for an easier uptime, but IMO helpful things like this should be factored in. I play mainly celestial or minstrel stats. In the fights I have witnessed - so under pressure - I see personal alacrity uptimes in WvW of >70%, which is pretty good, considering we were under pressure, boonstrips were present. I would consider everything starting at 50% pretty good, and that's where I saw struggle pre-patch.

More testing is needed against different enemy groups, though.

[zeyeti.8347]

As a pve endgame enjoyer , i pass my turn , not this patch i am gonna play hat or some weird dps/alac tempest , way better options and Qol with all other alacrity booner/healer , Mechs can give alac from a 1200 range , druid can popout 30 secs of alac in 2 secs then go away "kite" something , while also healing with his avatar , and Hat is there ... needing for everyone to stack 180 around him (like a forced massive group hug you don't wanna do) 

If it goes well for wvw then good for you wvw enjoyers guys , i am happy tempest is good somewhere at least .

15 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

I wrote a thread asking if pulsing alacrity was really the solution, so I kind of expected this result.

completely agree , it's obvious , long casting skills are a pain in the a*-* in hard content , especially if key boons are bend with it , interrupting or having one of your Ol cancelled before the end tick is too much of a punishement , but heh now we can at least give 3 secs of alacrity if we get interrupted , better than nothing i guess...

Edited February 15, 2023 by zeyeti.8347

[Erick Alastor.3917]

There is almost no difference with the current implementation.
Maybe, maybe, is a little less punishing for unaware HATs.
Problem is if you need to dodge, ress, cc, etc, alac upkeep will still significantly be impacted.
Even with 100% BD you can end up NOT capping it in less static scenarios, which is silly if you compare it to the overaboundance of boons provided by other healers.
I was for alac integration with auras (at least partially), but I imagined anet would never want to do that and indeed we went the overloads route, but done like this it's not a real fix, as long as a big chunk of the alacrity is bound to completing the overload HAT will always feel clunky imo.
With the current mechanic you still pray to find the time to complete an overload because otherwise you are visibly punished for not doing it.
You can't simply move to the next OL as soon as possible to recover expecting to not see your upkeep fall.
This would be kinda okay if you where going for like 30% BD, but having that happening with full BD is a bit ridiculus.
 

[Eekasqueak.7850]

should have slapped alac on shouts or something

[Sahne.6950]

Pulsing alac was a mistake, because your not getting the full value out of Alacrity, as 4 seconds of the alac, is you being stuck in a animation.

I liked to use the alac to speed up the time till my next overload was ready.  Now i am "wasting" alot of the alac time.

 

i dont like the change. Ever since the change i dont use the trait anymore.

Edited February 16, 2023 by Sahne.6950

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

The mistake was to not rework overloads (cast-time, range, CD).

[Chyro.1462]

I think I like the pulsing more than how it was before, even if the main part of the alac is still on finishing the overload. Makes sense that finishing an overload should be rewarding. Though I also think it's still too punishing to get overloads interrupted or having to interrupt them to avoid something. I think it's wrong that other classes can easily do reliable 100% alac uptime yet Tempest even with full boon duration has to struggle if anything unexpected happens. So either make the other alac classes as tight as it is with Tempest, or give Tempest more leeway with a bit extra duration on the alac output.

[zeyeti.8347]

Bend alacrity to Invigorating Torrents , so we can use "bastion of elements" or "transcendent tempest" for an alac/dps  , and alacrity will be no more struggle to upkeep , like ALL others alacrity booner.

It always puzzled me why does tempest has no straigtht healing or dps traits , as the only one are GM and so stucked cause alacrity is there too ....

Edited February 16, 2023 by zeyeti.8347

[Erick Alastor.3917]

On 2/16/2023 at 7:31 PM, zeyeti.8347 said:

Bend alacrity to Invigorating Torrents , so we can use "bastion of elements" or "transcendent tempest" for an alac/dps  , and alacrity will be no more struggle to upkeep , like ALL others alacrity booner.

It always puzzled me why does tempest has no straigtht healing or dps traits , as the only one are GM and so stucked cause alacrity is there too ....

I agree, but anet is clearly not willing to bind alac to auras, despite the pretty high access to them even just through combos.
Some are against it becuase they think they would be forced to use shouts, which is kinda weird since you usually go for them anyway on HAT and generating auras wouldn't even be that bad on aladps too with proper weapons and using probably even just a single shout.
The only real problem is that to make it work the aura share should move from the water line to the tempest one.

Edited February 18, 2023 by Erick Alastor.3917

[zeyeti.8347]

6 minutes ago, Erick Alastor.3917 said:

The only real problem is that to make it work the aura share should move from the water line to the tempest one.

This is not really the problem , water traitline has many damage modifier (+20% and +10% if in water) if it is to take powerfull auras , but it will completely disable tempest condi alac (it is alerady ... but whatever) . And if you wanna completely comit to that you can sue the traits that give you an aura trough successfull overload , if that overlaod get interrupts , you have your shouts o keep it up (shouts doenst even need powerfull aura as they give 5 peeps an aura anyway).

[Chyro.1462]

One downside I noticed with the pulsing alac is that it makes the upkeep on partymembers a bit harder in any scenario where you would finish the overload anyways. If there's non-stacked movement due to mechanics or similar, it's easy to miss some pulses on allies if you can't stay within their range for the full channeling duration. While previously you can just move freely during the channel as long as you make sure the people are in range for the finish of the overload channel. Like you could start overloading when still away from the party due to mechanics and then finish it back on stack, getting everyone the full alac duration - doing the same now would miss a bunch of pulses.

(don't take this as me complaining about the pulsing alac - just pointing out a difference I noticed that may be worth taking into consideration.)

[Jski.6180]

It feels like you need to push 2 sec of the alactiry puls. So you need 87% 89% boon duration now.