Hello, fellow Guild Wars 2 players! In this guide, we'll be discussing an easy and flexible build for the Elementalist elite specialization, the Tempest. The goal of this build is to provide you with versatility and low switching costs between different PvE game modes, using a single gear set with minor alterations. We'll focus on high-damage output while ensuring necessary defense and support capabilities. 

 

• Pros & Cons
• Playstyle and Skills
• Gear & Consumables
• Traits & Specializations
• Adjusting for Survivability
• Rotation Guidance

 

 

↖ Pros & Cons

Before we dive into the specific build variants, let's go over the pros and cons of this build.

• + Great damage output (around 40K+ DPS) with condition damage.
  
• + Offers support capabilities by providing protection, alacrity, stability, and auras.
  
• + Highly survivable due to strong protection on the Tempest specialization.
  
• - Mediocre access to crowd control (CC), requiring quick attunement swaps to Air and Water.
  

 

↖ Playstyle and Skills

The Condition Tempest build revolves around utilizing the Tempest specialization's potent shouts, warhorn weapon, and overload abilities. Overloads have different effects based on your current attunement and provide offensive or defensive capabilities. The primary attunement for this build is Fire, with occasional switches to earth, air, or water for defense or CC needs.

 

Weapon Skills:

• Scepter: Main weapon for damage output.
• Focus: Secondary weapon for additional damage and utility.
• Warhorn (optional): Improves might coverage and offers slightly less damage.

Relevant Weapon Skills:

Fire:

• Skill 2 (Dragon's Tooth): Delayed projectile that deals significant damage and applies might in a fire combo field.
• Skill 3 (Phoenix): Ground-targeted projectile that applies to burn, cleanses conditions and deals damage upon returning.

 

Water and Air:

• Skill 5 (Gale and Comet): Both skills have 900 range and apply strong crowd control (CC) effects, ideal for breaking break bars.

 

Earth:

• Skill 2 (Magnetic Aura): Provides 250 toughness for 30 seconds, significantly reducing incoming damage.
• Skill 4 (Magnetic Wave): Reflects projectiles.
• Skill 5 (Magnetic Leap): Grants invulnerability for 3 seconds, helping to survive dangerous situations.

 

Utility Skills:

Heal Skill:

• Signet of Restoration: Provides passive healing for each skill cast and can be activated for an additional burst heal. Retains the passive healing effect with Earth specialization.

 

Alternative Heal Skill:

• Arcane Brilliance: Applies burning and grants increased critical damage. Useful with the Arcane specialization.

 

Elite Skill:

• Glyph of Elementals (default): Summons multiple lesser elementals that provide passive damage and act as allies. Suitable for group content.
• Feel the Burn (alternative): Applies damage, burning, and grants an aura and might to yourself and allies in a large radius. Particularly useful in open world.

 

Utilities:

• Arcane Power: Applies venom-like effects, causing burning on nearby allies' attacks. Increases critical damage with an arcane skill.
• Take Elemental: Applies two long-lasting stacks of burning and grants passive precision with Earth specialization. It also provides an aura.

 

Additional Skills for Open World (optional):

• Glyph of Lesser Elementals: Summons multiple lesser elementals that provide passive damage and act as allies. Suitable for open world content.

Other utility skills for survivability can be explored based on personal preference.

 

Trait Choices:

Trait choices may vary depending on whether you are playing open world or instance content. For instance, content focuses on traits and utilities that maximize damage, while open world builds prioritize survivability and group support, albeit at a slight cost to damage.

 

Guild Wars 2 Tempest OW Roamer Build Links: https://tinyurl.com/ynumfc5r!

 

↖ Gear & Consumables

The gear for this build is quite specific and can be costly (Guild Wars 2 Gold) for the ideal setup. However, you can also use budget gear effectively. The ideal gear mix includes Viper, Grieving, and Sinister stats. Different combinations are possible as long as you reach 100% burning duration. If Viper gear is too expensive, you can start with Grieving gear and use cheap Ritualist gear in place of Viper or Sinister. The differences in damage between the variants are small, so choose what fits best with your other characters.

 

For sigils, the recommended setup includes a Torment or Sigil of Earth on the offhand. The Sigil of Earth is cheaper than the Tallman's Finger. The Bursting sigil is also essential but can be costly. As for food, you have two options based on the build variant: Fishy Rice Bowl for the increased burning duration or a standard food that boosts condition damage and expertise. The utility item is a Toxic Focusing Crystal for the highest damage output. If you can't afford it, you can use a Rune of Masterful Malice for a slight gain in condition damage.

 

↖ Traits & Specializations

Now let's discuss the traits and specializations for this build. The default specializations for damage are Fire, Arcane, and Tempest.

 

Fire specialization:

• It increases burning duration and allows you to apply more burning.
• Reduces the cooldown of fire weapon skills and increases the duration of fire fields you create.
• Grants increase strike damage every time a fire field placed by you hits a foe.

 

Arcane specialization:

• Recommended for group content to ramp up your damage quickly.
• Increases burning application on critical hits and with every hit of arcane skills.
• Increases boon duration, which is a nice side effect.
• Choose Arcane for more damage or Earth for a small DPS loss but increased utility.

 

Tempest elite specialization:

• It makes this build a "spin to win" build with overload skills, auras, and protection.
• Increases concentration and provides a damage bonus for a limited time when applying an aura to an ally.
• Tempest's protection reduces incoming strike damage by 40% instead of 33%.
• The Transcendent Tempest grandmaster trait grants 15% damage for 7 seconds after completing an overload.

 

Guild Wars 2 Tempest Condition DPS Builds Links: https://tinyurl.com/mshvfdfk!

 

↖ Adjusting for Survivability

To make the build more forgiving and increase survivability, we'll make some adjustments. Gear can be expensive, so we'll focus on adjusting food and traits first. Use Earth instead of Arcane: While you won't be swapping to Earth frequently, the traits in this line make the build tankier without sacrificing too much damage. Earth reduces damage taken from nearby foes by 10% and all incoming strike damage by another 10%. The key traits are Elemental Shielding and Written in Stone.

 

Utility Skills: Use the following utility skills to trigger the traits and maintain protection:

• Signet of Restoration
• Signet of Fire
• "Feel the Burn!"
• Aftershock (shout)

These skills apply auras to yourself or allies, triggering the protection from Written in Stone. Aftershock is particularly useful as it provides Aegis and Magnetic Aura to allies, allowing you and your allies to reflect projectiles and block the next attack. It also applies to immobilize and bleeding.

 

Additional Tweaks:

Depending on the situation, you can make some additional tweaks to the build:

• For frequent condition cleansing: Consider using Cleansing Auras and Fire Transmutation via Focus 5 to cleanse conditions from yourself and allies in an AoE. This may cause some damage, but it can make your life easier in certain situations.
• For more healing and safety: You can replace Transcendent Tempest with Elemental Bastion. This trait heals the target of any aura you apply, including yourself, and grants Frost Aura in an area when you drop below 75% health. This provides additional healing and a safety net for you and your allies.
• For stability and swiftness: Harmonious Conduit grants stability and swiftness when using an overload. This can prevent enemies from interrupting your Overload Fire.

If you still feel the need for more survivability, consider using -10% damage taken food and potions of higher toughness for an additional 16% damage reduction.

 

↖ Rotation Guidance

Now let's discuss the rotation for the Spin to Win Tempest. In this build, you'll be primarily camping Fire attunement unless you require additional defenses.

• Precast Arcane Power and Glyphs of Elementals before entering combat. Arcane Power significantly increases burst damage, so try to use it again at the beginning of a fight.
• Cast all weapon skills in Fire attunement and use your utilities on cooldown, including the heal skill.
• Use Arcane skills, such as Arcane Brilliance, Arcane Power, and Flame Burst (elite skill), to maintain the buff from Elemental Surge. Since your heal skill does the same DPS as your auto-attack, it's not a DPS loss to use it.
• Prioritize Overload Fire, as it provides a 15% damage modifier and ramps up burning stacks during its cast time. Try not to interrupt your auto-attacks, as they have a relatively long cast time.
• Squeeze in other important skills whenever they become available. Focus on maintaining the buff from Elemental Surge.
• If you need crowd control, swap to Air attunement and use skill 5, then swap to Water attunement and use skill 5. Air Skill 2 can also be used, as it's an instant cast. You may need to spend some time in Earth attunement before being able to swap back to Fire.
• If you require additional crowd control, you can use the Air Elemental Elite skill instead of the final one and use its second cast for crowd control.

This rotation allows you to focus on mechanics and your surroundings while dealing great damage and providing boons to your allies. With this build, you should be well-equipped to handle all PvE content in Guild Wars 2.