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Tempest - Alacrity Support Healer

The community gave this build a rating, making it second-tier: Good

Focused on: HealingSupport and Utility

Designed for: Raids

Expansions required: Heart of Thorns builds

Difficulty:
Normal
This build was last updated on October 10, 2024 and is up to date for the February 11, 2025 patch.

Overview

Tempest is capable of providing permanent uptime of Alacrity Alacrity, Fury Fury, Might Might, Protection Protection, Regeneration Regeneration, Swiftness Swiftness and high Vigor Vigor on their subgroup, along with a lot of healing.

The need to constantly switch attunements makes the rotation quite rigid, so it has to rely on utility skills for reactive healing, and its reliance on being close to the squad for boons makes it a poor kiter. On the plus side, you gain

which will allow you to skip certain mechanics that would otherwise down the group, and allows you to help revive players without locking yourself into the animation.


Skill Bar

Dagger/Warhorn
Utility


Weapon Variants

  • Staff has practically the same healing, but the lack of Warhorn creates a shortfall in boons that needs to be addressed. In return, Staff has greater ability to provide healing at range.


Skill Variants

Utility
As you need to leave

for boons, this can leave you without sources of healing, so , and are there to fill in the gap. provides long-range Might Might to make up for the small AoE of . Any of these skills can be swapped out if desired:


Elite

provides Stability Stability and a way to skip certain mechanics that would otherwise down the group.


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Specializations


Trait Variants


Specialization Variants

Arcane is chosen as a default traitline as the lower cooldowns on attunement swapping and overloads allows you to be more flexible with your rotation, and provides permanent Swiftness Swiftness and extra Protection Protection padding from

. is a nice bonus.

This said, Arcane is not essential, so it can be swapped to another traitline:

  • Fire and Earth add a lot of potential condi cleanse via and , respectively. Fire provides more, and at double the range, but Earth doesn't require you change other traits and has more synergy with the rest of a healer's kit.
  • Air offers higher CC.


Earth


Equipment

Head
Harrier
Shoulders
Harrier
Chest
Harrier
Hands
Harrier
Legs
Harrier
Feet
Harrier
Backpiece
Magi
Accessory
Magi
Accessory
Magi
Amulet
Harrier
Ring
Harrier
Ring
Harrier
Dagger
Harrier
Warhorn
Harrier
Sigil
Sigil
Rune
x6
Infusion
x16
Infusion
x2
Relic


Equipment Variants


Consumables

Food


Utility


Usage

The basic rotation idea will be the same regardless of which mainhand weapon you're using, as your key skills are on your overloads, warhorn, and shouts, leaving mainhand weapon skills predominantly for damage.


Opener

Start in

  1. Throw out any quick DPS skills such as and use (if using) in the fire field to blast some Might Might
  2. to start stacking Might Might
  3. to share the Might Might and Fury Fury with your squad


Swap to

  1. to blast


Swap to

  1. to blast more Might Might
  2. and swap during the cast


Swap to

  1. to apply Protection Protection and extend boons on everyone
  2. and other DPS skills
  3. Wait until is ready and use it


Main rotation

The core of your boon application is to use

and whenever they are available (every ~25 seconds with Alacrity Alacrity, though the build has enough boon duration to extend each loop up to ~32s if the situation demands), also using the overloads in their respective attunements. This means you want to switch to within ~3 seconds of it coming off cooldown, and repeat the Opener. You should alternate between , and one of the other attunements, using whichever healing skills are available whenever you return to water. It is important NOT to use as this will lock you out of for too long. While in you can use for extra Swiftness Swiftness or CC.

The blast finisher from

is slightly delayed, so it is possible to cast it then switch to Water and use before the blast hits, getting two combos.


Be aware that your skills that generate Magnetic Aura -

, , via , and while in - will cause you to reflect projectiles. This can be very useful, but can also lead to problems at encounters such as Matthias or Cairn if you are not careful when you use them.


Video example


Staff Rotation

The main selling point of Staff is the amount of long-range healing it can provide while in

, so it is worth camping this attunement for most of the loop. does not quite provide enough Alacrity Alacrity to make it permanent, so it is necessary to regularly swap to for a second overload and Might Might.

As it also lacks the utility of Warhorn,

is essential as you otherwise lack Fury Fury, and your Might Might would be less reliable.

Be aware that the boon radius for Might Might on

is only 180, so significant Might Might uptime will be lost if you're not stacked tightly on your group. This can be somewhat mitigated by bringing extra blast finishers and comboing with fire fields, or using in (or swapping to a Warhorn build).


Opener
Start in

  1. to start stacking Might Might


Swap to

  1. for the blast finisher


Swap to

  1. for Swiftness Swiftness


Swap to

  1. quickly to squeeze in another blast finisher


Rest of the Rotation
While in

you can autoattack and use for group healing. is a blast finisher on a low cooldown, and your skills 3-5 all provide combo fields, and provides AoE condi cleanse. Use as soon as you can, but don't swap attunement immediately. A good rule of thumb is to use three times while you're in Water.

For extra healing you can use a combo field as one of your last skills in

, swap to for , then . Alternatively, by casting as soon as you switch to then will combo this instead for AoE Might Might - this requires not having any lingering combo fields from .

None of the skills in fire are particularly useful, so just use

as soon as you can and repeat the Opener.


Video example


Healing


Your sustained healing will be lower when outside of

, so you should use your other skills to maintain your group's health:

  • is your bread and butter emergency heal, as it doesn't require you to break from your rotation to use
  • is a substantial heal and partial revive that can target players up to 1200 away. This makes it by far your most reliable ranged heal and therefore it should probably be saved for when it's needed rather than using it on the stack
  • is a powerful conjure that will provide you with sustained from if . The splash healing only works if you hit a target, but it could be used to provide healing to the stack if you need to be at range
  • is an enormous heal on a very low cooldown for as long as your elemental is alive
  • If using , is an instant-cast blast finisher, and thanks to it having two charges, it can be provide a lot of burst healing if used in quick succession.


Healing tips

  • While not exactly a heal, can be much more effective by negating incoming damage that would otherwise down multiple people - good encounter knowledge will help you make the best use of this


Damage

Conveniently, just about the only skill that isn't a DPS increase or a heal is

on dagger, so as long as you keep switching attunements at the correct time you can go pretty far by just mashing any skill that's off cooldown

You may also wish to avoid

on sceptre, as the extra toughness might make you the tank on some encounters


Fresh Air rotations If you're running

, you can structure your rotation for a bit more damage by going from after the opener staying in long enough to use each time. This is a minor reduction in boon generation that allows you to get two uses each of out , , and each loop.


Vulnerability If your group has low Vulnerability Vulnerability, you can boost it significantly by taking

and/or sceptre:

  • generates about 15 stacks
  • can generate 25 stacks even on a small target if aimed properly
  • 's short cooldown allows it to be used twice each time you switch to water, for an extra 10 stacks per loop


Crowd control

You don't have a huge amount of CC available, and what you do have is part of your rotation so you may need to delay some skills if there is a defiance bar coming up:

If you're running

you can keep your air skills off cooldown and go about your rotation as normal, as this trait means you will always be able to switch to air as soon as a defiance bar appears.


Ratings

This build has a rating of 4 stars based on 3 votes.
Log in or register to rate this build.
4 stars
OfficerAndyGentleman gave this build 4 stars • April 2024
The addition of the Karakosa relic has significantly improved this build's ability healing when outside of water attunement. Overloads are still somewhat awkward to use in practise, but much more reliable than they used to be.
5 stars
MechaOG gave this build 5 stars • August 2022
This build seems to be really good at many things. It has a lot of customizability to prepare yourself for all kinds of groups and encounters. If something doesn't work with one group, there is an alternative. With the August 23 patch, Aegis is also added to the kit with the change to Aftershock. This will take off the pressure from guardians and reduce the chances of messing up. Will be testing it further, and will update the rating accordingly.
3 stars
Centimane gave this build 3 stars • July 2022
Boon heal tempest's addition of alacrity at the expense of Elemental Bastion is a mixed bag. It now outputs similar enough boons to HAM or HB, but doesn't heal nearly as well as it used to while outside of water attunement. It also loses out on the (admittedly small) utility of auras because it doesn't bother sharing them. It also has a much harder time providing stability, can't provide aegis, and still has a hard time covering many of the mechanics healers traditionally handled. But in exchange is a large depth of options that come available to elementalists, 4 attunements worth of skills, valid weapon changes, a host of trait changes, lots of utility freedom that all allow you to tailor the build to the encounter. This build isn't for the feint of heart - to play it at a comparable level to HAM or HB is to know the class and encounters very well, and to be constantly tweaking your build. If you want a build that you can just copy and play this definitely isn't it - you should know every skill and trait (including the ones not taken in the build) very well and know when to apply them. In the right hands, this build is very strong. In the wrong hands this build doesn't contribute much.

Comments

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