Power scepter tempest is awesome

[linnea.4968]

I just came here to say how awesome the newly buffed scepter fresh air power tempest is. Benches 45k dps and is very chill and straightforward to play. No piano concertos. Was top dps in strikes and open world today. Happy times!

 

Power Tempest Build - Guild Wars 2 - Snow Crows

Edited Tuesday at 08:36 PM by linnea.4968

[Chyro.1462]

Really happy its back. Takes me back to HoT times when fresh air power tempest was a thing before nerfs ^^

[Mascarun.7910]

Expect an ANET post soon for an upcoming balance patch: "Tempest is doing a little more than what we'd like to see" followed by 5k DPS nerf minimum plus butchering of traits, especially water traits because how dare water be used for offence? But anyway, I agree that tempest is fun, strong and easy to play (and, personally, the only well-designed elite spec for ele). Enjoying it while I can, while it actually feels worth it to play ele. 🥲

[soulknight.9620]

One, Two, CMC's coming for you

Three, Four, better lock your door

Five, Six, here comes a hotfix

Nine, Ten, never have fun again

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

I hope they don't nerf it too hard.  This build has a lot of good points to it.

• (Relatively) low intensity compared to some other builds
• Ready access to CC without losing much pace
• Good support pool to pull from
• Moderate Engagement Range
• Plenty of Flex Spots to pull from on the utility bar.
• Water line provides passive group healing

[Demented Yak.6105]

This has genuinely been the best update for elementalist since the path of fire era. Shame it'll only last 3 months max.

[ilthelia.8501]

if you don't want the build to get nerfed , just don't upload vids on youtube 🙂
nevertheless , it's a smooth and fun build to play

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

I hope they won't nerf traitlanes.

[Dapinchi.7920]

Isn't it a sad state of affairs that we finally get a fun update and we all know that it'll be nerfed into the shadow realm soon? We elementalist mains are masochists 

[lLobo.7960]

I'm really glad you are all enjoying it, but I don't find overloads that great of a gameplay. 

You wait a few seconds, press overload, watch you character hold up their arm for a few seconds... 

It's nice to have a viable easy build for content, but I hope they make more complex builds such as weaver have higher dps potential than this.

[CafPow.1542]

On 7/3/2024 at 5:08 AM, Mascarun.7910 said:

and, personally, the only well-designed elite spec for ele

Same. I prefer fire/earth condi but generally yeah.

anyways.

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

5 hours ago, Dapinchi.7920 said:

Isn't it a sad state of affairs that we finally get a fun update and we all know that it'll be nerfed into the shadow realm soon? We elementalist mains are masochists 

 

Classic pattern :

Update1 :
Elementalist ; Buff one skill + one trait.

"This particular build is doing better than we expected, We will lower the numbers just a little bit."
Update2 :
Elementalist ; nerf half the traits of Core elementalist, nerf unrelated skills and traits too.

[Codename T.2847]

Heed my words, I haven't played it just yet, but by the looks of Snowcrows this deadàss seems easier than Power reaper. Don't expect it to stay viable for long.

Edited yesterday at 10:26 AM by Codename T.2847

[Faebe.7341]

finally a fun viable power tempest fresh air build. hope it stays. but kitten 1 guy got a 45k bench, this need to be urgently nerved cant have anything that competes with virtuoso

[Junkpile.7439]

So where damage come from? Scepter doesn't even have any good damage skills.  🤔

[Santo.2419]

Tried it, and it's fun. Suits my playstyle much more than the condi build I was running.

And yeah, I aint getting close to 45k (open meta stuff)...and lets be honest that most of us won't. So, don't ruin it for all of us Anet for some random sweaty golem benchmark 🙏

[Mascarun.7910]

4 hours ago, Faebe.7341 said:

finally a fun viable power tempest fresh air build. hope it stays. but kitten 1 guy got a 45k bench, this need to be urgently nerved cant have anything that competes with virtuoso

God forbid anything competes with virtuoso for top DPS in real encounters. Sure, the build can lose 2-3k dps, but we all know ANET is going to do way worse than that. And there are still points that favour virtuoso and work against tempest in some fights: tempest doesn't have a brainless 600 CC option, tempest is stuck in melee for longer periods of time due to overloads (and having generally 900 range instead of 1200), tempest is reliant on overload air's pulsing damage fields and tempest loses a lot more damage from being CC'd or moved at the wrong time due to not gaining transcendent tempest. 

When Anet decides to nerf tempest, I say they should lower or even remove the power damage modifier from tempestuous aria and call it a day, instead of complicating themselves and annoying us by nerfing a million different traits and weaponskills again. Another thing to consider is the possibility that they nerf sceptre/power tempest back to the ground to make their precious spear the top power weapon for ele, repeating the tragic history of every ele condition weapon getting kitten'd over to make the garbage that is pistol the undisputed best condi weapon. 

12 hours ago, lLobo.7960 said:

I hope they make more complex builds such as weaver have higher dps potential than this.

Perhaps weaver should be doing more than tempest, but I believe that dps potential is simply the symptom of a greater issue. Instead of increasing the dps potential of complex builds, for one, we should be raising their DPS floor. People are currently flocking to tempest not simply or solely because it is currently the strongest DPS build while having relatively low complexity, but more importantly because it isn't an absolute pain in the kitten/pianofest just to get acceptable numbers, a problem that has been plaguing ele as a profession for quite some time (although this issue is not exclusive to ele). On top of that, tempest actually has quite a few more options for utility (although not cc) over something like weaver, an issue common in most complex builds that lack either access to or affordance for non-DPS utilities/elites. 

Personally, I think that Anet should prioritise getting people to play the specs and adjusting the punishment for rotational mistakes in complex builds rather than raising the maximum DPS potential and balancing based on an often qualitative definition of complexity (in adddition to balancing based solely on benchmarks...), but it seems that Anet is still under the misguided notion that they should cater only to the small minority that enjoys some of these "complex" builds and accepts their current, clunky, sometimes deficient state. As a result, we have these "high-performance" DPS specs that few people actually play (and yes, play rate matters) because of how little they actually offer outside of having a hundred actions per minute or complex rotations that fall apart quickly in real combat scenarios. And in practice, complexity in GW2 means sub-par damage until you break through the skill threshold at a rather high point. We cannot keep arguing that a spec is worth playing just because it is "fun" or different without addressing the major inequalities across all core professions and elite specialisations. Unfortunately, this opinion is quickly rejected by those who are resistent to major change, so it feels like we will never get to see all the "fixes" that the game balance requires. 

52 minutes ago, Junkpile.7439 said:

So where damage come from? Scepter doesn't even have any good damage skills.  🤔

Sceptre not having good damage skills is actually false; water trident has an effective 3.0 damage coefficient if the enemy chilled, and its cast time is short. So in water, you would do 2-3 because the 2 skill inflicts chilled. In fire, phoenix has a combined coefficient of 2.45 with half the cast time as water trident; you will want to combine phoenix with dragon's tooth, which isn't as strong (2.25 coefficient with 3/4s cast) but at least it beats auto attacking. Finally, lightning strike (2 in air) is an instant cast 1.5 damage coefficient, best used while overloading, casting glyph of storms or using the air auto attack. Another thing to remember is that there are other multipliers such as stormsoul, fresh air, piercing shards and flow like water that carry the damage. 

To answer your first question, overload air is where most of your damage is going to come from due to the pure damage + proccing transcendent tempest and tempestuous aria. Your goal should be to overload air, swap to water or fire (alternate between the two) to use the 2-3 skills then swap back to air and overload again, using glyph of storms and lightning orb to shorten the amount of time you spend autoattacking in air. The most important concept is that you want to overload air as much as possible and never delay it as a Fresh Air tempest. 

 

(Sorry for this essay of a post; I might be bored)

Edited 21 hours ago by Mascarun.7910

[TheAgedGnome.7520]

Something is very wrong: this build is fun, effective, flows pretty well, felt like a spellcaster, and wasn't a PITA to play. How can this be GW2 ele??

In open world, this feels similar in effectiveness to my lovely sw/sw power Harb.

I used Marauder trinkets and a Jade 10 core, giving me 20k health. I swapped out Glyph of Storms for Aftershock for a stun break.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

4 hours ago, Junkpile.7439 said:

So where damage come from? Scepter doesn't even have any good damage skills.  🤔

The benchmark video has a DPS report in its description:  https://dps.report/3X2S-20240630-042844_golem

43% of the damage is from overload air.  12% from Arc Lightning, 10% from lightning strike, 7% from lightning orb.  Other than that, the strat for this build is to swap to fire/water and use the two highest DPS skills they have, then swap right back.  This strat accounts for around 19% of the total damage done.  

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

Yeah won't lie I'm happy for elementalists, but I'm kinda jealous this is for tempest and not weaver.
I thought Tempest should get QoL for support role, and weaver ... DPS/offensive boons etc. I hope they won't nerf Air, Water and scepter because of Tempest. 

Edited 18 hours ago by Zhaid Zhem.6508

[Supernova Starr.2069]

15 hours ago, lLobo.7960 said:

It's nice to have a viable easy build for content, but I hope they make more complex builds such as weaver have higher dps potential than this.

They'll make weaver higher dps by nerfing tempest

[mirage.8046]

I've been playing power Tempest for over a year and I am so glad it's surfaced into popularity again; granted I swap between main-hand sword and scepter. <3 I love the charm of giving auras and getting a damage buff for doing so. Tempest has only gotten more and more fun and forgiving! 

• Auras and sharing them
• Alacrity (if you take lucid singularity)
• Unique self-buff 
• Frequent CCs
• Teleports
• Invulnerability
• Stability
• Mid-range DPS
• AOE stunbreak 
• Superspeed

Geninuely asking, what is NOT to love about Tempest rn? 

[rwknoll.7824]

This is a dumb question probably, but just to help me understand nuances better with creating builds and crunching numbers: What makes Water a better trait line than Fire in this case? How much different would the base DPS be if you ran Fire + Air trait lines instead of Water + Air? And why?

[draxynnic.3719]

7 hours ago, Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:

Yeah won't lie I'm happy for elementalists, but I'm kinda jealous this is for tempest and not weaver.
I thought Tempest should get QoL for support role, and weaver ... DPS/offensive boons etc. I hope they won't nerf Air, Water and scepter because of Tempest. 

They did buff the weaver dual skills as well IIRC, but it apparently hasn't had the same effect.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

9 hours ago, Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:

Yeah won't lie I'm happy for elementalists, but I'm kinda jealous this is for tempest and not weaver.
I thought Tempest should get QoL for support role, and weaver ... DPS/offensive boons etc. I hope they won't nerf Air, Water and scepter because of Tempest. 

Well, condition weaver is a ranged spec that does 44k DPS on the golem.  You have to fight with the pistol.  But I do wonder how much damage condi scepter weaver and power scepter weaver/catalyst do now...  I can understand wanting power weaver to be better myself.  I wouldn't complain if it was buffed.  But, each of the specs has advantages and disadvantages to them that really changes their appropriateness and usability.  Personally, I like power weaver for the immense CC, barrier generation, the skill evades, and the simplicity of it.  

Not to get everyone's hopes up, but there's a chance that power tempest won't get nerfed into oblivion.  The benchmark is high, but tempest still suffers from the same big flaw that it always has:  everything hinges on that overload.  To do damage, you need to sit locked in an element for lengthy periods of time, and then get locked into an animation for lengthy periods of time.  It isn't as easy as catalyst or weaver to swap to another element to utilize a particular weapon skill.  The tempest's DPS is contingent on an enemy that doesn't move out of the AoEs, doesn't have high pressure that forces evasive maneuvers, doesn't have plentiful mechanics that will interrupt either placement or actions, and doesn't spam counter-CC.  So, if you tried taking this build to something like Slothasaur, your DPS will tank because you'll be too busy avoiding the shakes, getting feared, chasing the sloth, or trying not to kill your teammate.  If that overload gets interrupted, kiss 43% of your DPS goodbye.  Because of this, I highly suspect that this build will have substantially lower real-world performance than what the benchmarks show.

1 hour ago, rwknoll.7824 said:

This is a dumb question probably, but just to help me understand nuances better with creating builds and crunching numbers: What makes Water a better trait line than Fire in this case? How much different would the base DPS be if you ran Fire + Air trait lines instead of Water + Air? And why?

The advantages that Fire gives are conditional, usually on two things.  First, sitting in fire attunement (Empowering Flame, Power Overwhelming).  Second, enemies sitting in fire fields (Persisting Flames, Pyromancer's Training).  For most builds, power or condi, this isn't an issue, because they spend a lot of their time sitting in fire attunement while sending out fire fields.  Scepter tempest does neither, spending most of its time in Air attunement.  With those gone, the DPS bonuses from Water (Piercing Shards, Flow Like Water) are better, because they give flat 10% bonuses each that aren't reliant on sitting in any particular attunement.

Assuming that you have an enemy that's given burning from teammates, you'll lose out on Pyromancer's Training 10% bonus by not taking fire.  The fire line normally gives 450 bonus power while attuned to fire, which will be gone...but it wasn't going to be used anyway.  Persisting Flames is another 10% that isn't going to be active anyway, so that can be discounted.  Aside from those, Burning Precision and Sunspot are paltry amounts of bonus damage.  So, taking Fire over Water with this strategy will probably net you around... 9% damage reduction, maybe 8% over sticking with the water line.