The Scrying Pool takes a look at last week's reveal of the Elementalist's Tempest.

The Scrying Pool is a Guild Wars 2 column where I simply ask what if? Nothing is off the table as I dive into possible features and future content, looking at what currently exists in Guild Wars 2 before I answer my own what if question with how I think the feature and content could be implemented.

Normally that intro holds true, but with the Elementalist’s elite speculation reveal I will be flipping the tables. Instead of looking forward, the Scrying Pool will be looking back as we pick the Specialization series back up. The specialization series focuses on my impressions of each of the Elite Specializations after they get revealed while throwing in some of my previous articles and speculation for flavor.

As with the previous articles of this series, the Scrying Pool has remained a week behind to give time for the dust to settle and the spec to soak in. It is also a week behind because the Scrying Pool is written before the weekly livestream that shows off more of the what the Elite Specialization is bringing to the profession. As such, this week we will talk about the Tempest, the Elite Specialization for the Elementalist that was revealed last week.

The first thing to talk about is the speculation and data-mining from a few months ago that pointed to the elite specialization giving Elementalist access to the one-hand sword. This is a perfect example of the whole “When It’s Ready” mentality that ArenaNet has set. Things are not final until they are final, and they have said that they will talk about these things once they reach that point.

I had speculated that Ele’s would be getting one-handed sword, so it is a little disappointing that we are not getting that weapon on Ele with this spec. After seeing what the rest of the spec has to offer however, I am glad that sword is not the weapon coming with the Tempest. With Tempest gaining shouts and the point-blank area of effect Overloads, the warhorn just seems like a better fit with the spec. I am still hopeful that Ele will get the sword in a future elite spec and hopeful that the rest of the spec fits with sword.

When I wrote the Scrying Pool: Elementalist’s Mage, I said that the class felt really well rounded already. This left little room in my mind for the Elementalist to grow with the spec as it already does a lot and does almost all of it really well. The one thing I thought was missing was a true melee option, so it is a little interesting that the Tempest is viewed as the frontline spec.

A big part of my Mage spec was getting the Ele ready for frontline combat, so I find it interesting that ArenaNet was looking at it from the same perspective even if they did it with a completely different weapon. The Mage was thought up before we knew they were giving a full set of existing utility types to each elite spec, so I never would have thought of giving the spec shouts. Even so, a lot of my ideas for Mage ended up similar to things that the Tempest is getting.

Avatar of Flame for example ended up being similar to the Overload Fire skill. Just replace destroy projectiles with leave a giant fire tornado behind and they do much of the same thing.

Avatar of Flame — Become the embodiment of fire, destroying any projectiles before they hit you while occasionally damaging and burning nearby enemies. (Utility Type: Cantrip)

Signet of the Elements — Passive: Improves Power. Active: Put all attunements on a short cooldown and activate all attunement bonuses. (Utility Type: Signet)

While the actual effect is very different, the idea of Signet of the Elements was similar to what overloading elements does. The idea of Signet of the Elements was to “overload” all of the attunements at the same time and give off all of their bonuses at once. I like the Tempest’s overload more than this signet, as the signet always seemed a little too complicated when I was originally designing it. Tempest’s overload does one thing and makes it very obvious that is happening. It is hard to miss a giant fire tornado going off while easy to miss that you granted yourself a few boons.

Glyph of Elemental Storage — While active gain a buff stack for every skill used (includes attunements). When Glyph of Elemental Storage ends, deal damage and an additional attunement based effect based on the number of stacks. (Utility Type: Glyph)

Then there was Glyph of Elemental Storage which was another overload-like skill. My glyph idea was much more active than what Tempest’s Overloads are. With Tempest, players just need to not swap out of an attunement for a while and they will get access to the large attack. Glyph of Elemental Storage took some more finesse, as the player would activate it and then need to get a lot of hits in to help power up the overloading effect.

If you couldn’t tell, I like the Tempest’s Overloading mechanic. Enough so that I thought the effect could be made into the main aspect of an elite spec. I wish that there was more to charging up the ability to overload an attunement other than just sitting in that one attunement for a few seconds. It would be more interesting if it was built on some sort of loyalty to an attunement, where after using like 10 fire skills you can overload fire. It would also be a little interesting if overloading the attunement not only put the attunement on a long cooldown, but also forced you out into a different attunement. So if you decide to overload Fire, the Fire attunement would go on a 20 second cooldown and force you to a random attunement such as Water. In this way you really are locking yourself out of that attunement if you go for it. This combined with the long interruptible casts of overloading would then allow for them to be really powerful feeling skills, something that Tempest feels like it is missing.

Moving onto the Warhorn, it is the main this-elite-spec-lacks-feeling-powerful that the Tempest offers. It will really take a beta to get my own impressions of how it feels, but the warhorn doesn’t feel like it is doing anything really impressive. It has some nice damaging, some CC and some support with the moving water field, but nothing it does makes me want to play it over the other weapons available to the Elementalist. Hopefully the team goes through and does another look at the animations for some of the skills, as I think both the warhorn and overload animations could use some beefing up.

Then there are the Shouts. These shouts looked pretty cool. I know some people are thinking how annoying “Wash the Pain Away” is to hear over and over, but a lot of the shouts give that awesome feeling that the rest of the class was missing. Shouting “Flash Freeze” and seeing nearby enemies get chilled as the player shouts out Freeze was really cool. Likewise “Shock and Aftershock” was cool with the first part of the shouts crippling enemies when the player shouts Shock and then immobilizing enemies when they shout Aftershock. They mentioned that the skill might change to just being Aftershock, which makes a little sad with how well the shout matches the action.

There was another skill that I had come up for the Mage that didn’t end up making it into the original post.

Healing Tide — Heals self and cascades out in all directions, healing and removing conditions from allies. Nearby allies receive greater healing, farther allies have more conditions removed.

Healing Tide was my idea for the new healing skill which ends up very similar to “Wash the Pain Away” as the Tempest shout will supposedly heal nearby allies for more. It seems however, that the shout no longer removes conditions.

I think the Tempest is pretty cool in a lot of respects, though I am not sure how much warhorn I’ll be using with the new elite spec. I definitely want to get my hands on and play with it to see how it feels while playing it to see if it really is lacking that powerful feeling I am wanting from it. Also want to see what the cooldowns feel like, as the spec seems like it has a lot of increased cooldowns across the board. Out of all of the revealed elite specs, Tempest currently ranks at the bottom in terms of hype, but I’m still excited to play the new Elementalist goodness.

Matt "Mattsta" Adams is super excited for the updated Fractals of the Mist!

Wow, that Fractals of the Mist blog post was amazing! I am super excited for everything changing with Fractals. And then today they announce that next weekend (August 7-10) will the first Beta Weekend Event and it will include the first four Elite Specializations to test!! Hype!

If you have a question for me or a topic you would like to see talked about here, leave a comment below. You can also tweet your question and topics to me on twitter @MattstaNinja. Also, check out my site Mattsta.Ninja that focuses on guides and more for Guild Wars 2.