Power scepter tempest is awesome

[Chyro.1462]

A little bit off topic, but does someone know how much ferocity you'd need to compare to a 10% flat damage trait? With a 100% crit build of course, where ferocity applies to every hit. I assume it isn't as simple as 10% critdmg = 10% flat dmg, cause the flat dmg still gets multiplied by crits. Mostly asking for build experiments, like how much the 180 ferocity trait would lose compared to having 10% dmg vs disabled/defiant enemies. Or if running arcane traitline (more likely in boon dps build) if the 2% dmg per boon increase is always better than the arcane lightning trait (150 ferocity + boosted arcane skills) - though quite certain the 2% dmg per boon is stronger at least in group content, since you usually have at least 8 boons (so ranging from 16% to up to 24% dmg bonus depending how many boons are active throughout the fight).

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

2 hours ago, Chyro.1462 said:

A little bit off topic, but does someone know how much ferocity you'd need to compare to a 10% flat damage trait? With a 100% crit build of course, where ferocity applies to every hit. I assume it isn't as simple as 10% critdmg = 10% flat dmg, cause the flat dmg still gets multiplied by crits. Mostly asking for build experiments, like how much the 180 ferocity trait would lose compared to having 10% dmg vs disabled/defiant enemies. Or if running arcane traitline (more likely in boon dps build) if the 2% dmg per boon increase is always better than the arcane lightning trait (150 ferocity + boosted arcane skills) - though quite certain the 2% dmg per boon is stronger at least in group content, since you usually have at least 8 boons (so ranging from 16% to up to 24% dmg bonus depending how many boons are active throughout the fight).

Enough to be 10% higher than your current crit damage modifier.  So, if you currently have 210% critical damage, to get a 10% boost you'll need 315 total ferocity to gain a total of 21% higher crit damage, totaling to 231%.  Assuming your critical hit chance is 100%.  If it isn't a guaranteed crit, divide the additional ferocity by the decimal of your crit chance.   

[Mascarun.7910]

Well, it seems we are looking at 46k now for the pTempest water/air sceptre benchmark. On a small golem. So... really not feeling so hopeful about Anet not nerfing tempest into oblivion after they see that. (Anet, if you are reading this, please be gentle and simple with the nerf; identify the one issue and adjust the one thing that needs to be adjusted.)

4 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

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.

Slothasor is actually not that good of an example; I got a Slothasor kill just this morning and easily topped the DPS chart as mushroom 1, although maybe it helps to have a more coordinated group to avoid many of the issues you describe. Slothasor is big and slow, overload air's radius is not big enough to require special positioning with regards to the mushroom eaters and fear is only an issue if you have stability when you don't truly need it (since the slublings will corrupt it into fear). As for the shakes, go as far as overload air permits and pray. 

From my personal experience, the performance is definitely topping the DPS charts in many encounters, although maybe not in Twin Largos (I have not tested TL with pTempest yet), for which people generally prefer to bring condi anyway. Perhaps the most annoying raid encounter for me was Cairn CM, only because you have to avoid the teleports and use SAK, which interrupts your overload if not timed properly, and occasionally, you might get knocked back by the boss's attack. Still managed to do 30k dps, which I will take as a success. Deimos can be annoying as well due to pizza slices, but that can be easily mitigated by replacing glyph of storms with either arcane shield to block the attack or lightning flash to move out of your slice and deal damage to Deimos before the aoe goes off. 

Edited Friday at 09:16 AM by Mascarun.7910

[AliamRationem.5172]

I like that it uses water for a DPS build.  A couple of things. 

Can we get some better elite skills for damage?  The elemental as the best DPS outside of weave self (which realistically is going to lose out to the elemental in 9 out of 10 scenarios anyway because we don't typically have full 30 second DPS windows) for both power and condi as well as having arguably some of the best personal utility is really getting old.

Warhorn.  Same problem.  It's the best for everything.  How about some love for focus?  It could probably use more utility, maybe a more convenient field shape for flame wall?

Weaver/Catalyst.  Why is the spec that's easiest to play and has the most utility also the best DPS?  What's the plan here?

[TheAgedGnome.7520]

Had fun trying a Zealot's stat build hybrid support/DPS variant of the build this morning for open world. Still felt strong (was just exotic armor), and could provide some good boons, auras, and decent healing. 

 

Edited Friday at 02:29 PM by TheAgedGnome.7520

[DaKillaOfHell.5907]

7 hours ago, Mascarun.7910 said:

Well, it seems we are looking at 46k now for the pTempest water/air sceptre benchmark. On a small golem. So... really not feeling so hopeful about Anet not nerfing tempest into oblivion after they see that. (Anet, if you are reading this, please be gentle and simple with the nerf; identify the one issue and adjust the one thing that needs to be adjusted.)

 

46k on a small golem?!?

That is surely meta-defining!

 

Jokes aside, but judging from them nerfing everything on simple golem benchmarks, it would surprise me if they'd act differently here.

[Razor.6392]

weaver indirect nerfs inc

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

You can still doing great with Sword for Fire/Air.
I'm can't reach >40K on scepter with fire/air because I'm a noob - still it's better than Hammer ;  the rotation is quite harder than for water/air -unless you don't use water trident etc and just rotate fire/air with some AA. But with sword the rotation is simpler; you can easily maintain the persisting flame, and AA are a bit less useless. I did 42k in few tries (just Air > Fire  > Air > Some AA? > Fire ...). *Not necessary the "rotation" but landing small aoe skills.

Yet with Scepter Water you have 300 vitality, some healing on water attunement, dodge and soothing mist, ... and range. Which is totally worth.

 

Next step is to try alacrity fresh-air.

Edited Friday at 07:33 PM by Zhaid Zhem.6508

[mirage.8046]

With sword + warhorn, I could hit 30k with more practice. Despite swapping between fire and air a lot, my rotation is pretty tight since I wanna maintain fresh air, tempestuous aria, transcendent tempest, and relic of Peitha altogether. Not only is it a fast-paced rotation, but because if melee is unfriendly, it means you'll lose out on that 10% damage buff. You might as well drop relic of Peitha should you want scepter. It's fun and has a simple idea of combing into fields to maintain buffs. For group play, Powerful Aura makes this build more forgiving to share auras and offers new ways to grant specific ones by leaping into dark, ethereal, fire, or light fields. 

e.g., overload fire + lightning flash for relic of Peitha < fire glyph elite < flame uprising < air < polaric leap again for relic of Peitha. Additionally, by having fresh air, I can swap to air asap after crit hit to use polaric leap. In practice, however, you can rely on allies' combo fields instead of using fire overload or wildfire often. Solo play changes when you wanna put down fire fields ofc.

[soulknight.9620]

22 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

Weaver/Catalyst.  Why is the spec that's easiest to play and has the most utility also the best DPS?  What's the plan here?

You are absolutely right. To address the issue anet needs to nerf weaver asap!

[vardeleanu.8972]

Elementalist feels a lot better to play now with earthen blast giving us barrier with baseline earth and soothing power being a +300 vitality option, even usable on a dps build. I want to point out how nice is to have traited water in your dps rotation with free warhorn/dagger 4+5 and 2 charges of self healing scepter 3, and that you have respectable damage skills in every attunement if you have enough power. Really helps bring out some of that rainbow utility elementalist is supposed to have, that you almost never see in end game content.

The casting animation buffs to dagger breaths feels amazing, and even if it's not really needed nowdays, I'm sure healing tempests appreciate that they can solo provide furry. Good qol changes all around.

Honestly, the +300 vitality makes if feel like a whole other class. It's very nice, but I'm also worried that with all these changes ele might be losing it's identity, as I didn't see many tempest players enjoying the floor lately, and I've even found myself reflecting less and less on the textures of my favorite terrain.

[Kuma.1503]

On 7/4/2024 at 9:30 PM, 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?

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Piercing_Shards 

10% damage buff that is always up. You can maintain the 10% dps buff just by doing your rotation.  

Also more vuln duration is nice. 

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Flow_like_Water

Basically the old rune of  Scholar bonus. But more forgiving. Plus some extra sustain on the side. 

 

These two traits are enough to make Water worth it for DPS Builds. But on top of that, you also get a lot of free sustain, which makes the build more forgiving. 

 

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

Also because you can't maintain 10% persisting flames with scepter/warhorn and water trident + shatterstone do insane damage in pve for no reason, particularly with Piercing Shards.

If you play an other set-up, like sword/warhorn, dagger ... with 0 damage water weapon skills but more fire field, Fire traitline will grant you better modifiers (+150 power in fire, +150power x2 in fire, +10 damage to burning foes, persisting flames) and burst.

Yet  for example swith sword, your fire weapon skill #3 won't be off CD when you'll attune back to fire after Air-Overload, so you won't use it or you'll delay your Air overload with some AA filler somewhere, you'll lose Transcendent Tempest buff ...
Scepter has shorter CD, and in "fast-paced" rotation with perma-alacrity, you don't care to have slighty less modifiers (in traits as long as you have more active) as you'll spam water trident/shatterstone easily, and of course Air-Oveload, maintaining Fresh-Air, Transcendent Tempest.

It's all about practicality and your preference in real situation, if you're fully alert 250APM, killing random mobs or boss etc; but Water gives you so much sustain, and scepter allows you to stay mid-range ... totally worth even if you're not a pianist.

Edited 23 hours ago by Zhaid Zhem.6508

[rwknoll.7824]

This all makes sense! Related question. If I’m in open world or a setting where I don’t have reliable access to Alacrity from others, how do you evaluate the DPS potential for Transcendent Tempest vs Lucid Singularity? If you aren’t reliably getting Alacrity from other sources, and you’ll be spamming Overload Air with Fresh Air, which of these traits gives you better value?

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

It's kitten I guess.

In theory you almost don't need boon duration to loop alacrity with Fresh-air Tempest, but in practice or chill gameplay ... ehrrr...
Plus Transcendent Tempest also recharges the singularity by 33%, which is already better than alacrity (25%), and fresh air recharges Air.
In solo play, if you just intend to spam air-overload in middle of events and whatever skills as fillers :  transcendent tempest is everyday of the week a better choice.

If you play condi tempest, it can be discussed; as your overload  (and attunement swap) will get the full CD.

Edited 22 hours ago by Zhaid Zhem.6508

[Chyro.1462]

6 hours ago, Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:

It's kitten I guess.

In theory you almost don't need boon duration to loop alacrity with Fresh-air Tempest, but in practice or chill gameplay ... ehrrr...
Plus Transcendent Tempest also recharges the singularity by 33%, which is already better than alacrity (25%), and fresh air recharges Air.
In solo play, if you just intend to spam air-overload in middle of events and whatever skills as fillers :  transcendent tempest is everyday of the week a better choice.

If you play condi tempest, it can be discussed; as your overload  (and attunement swap) will get the full CD.

Hm.. since it's for solo play likely in open world / story, I'd say it's more worth discussing the extra survivability/utility that alacrity offers compared to the damage trait. So I'd treat it more as giving up some damage in exchange for your sustain+survival skills being up more often. Like if you're facing a champ enemy solo, the extra damage may be worth it if you're good at dodging and know the enemy well. But if you have to take hits and sustain yourself through the fight, alacrity may get you through it by letting you use your healing and defensive skills (if you you have something like Armor of Earth or Arcane Shield on utilty) more often.

[CETheLucid.3964]

8 hours ago, Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:

shatterstone do insane damage in pve for no reason

All those years of slowly buffing Shatterstone finally paid off.  😎