Tempest - Condition Auramancer
Overview
A hybrid, condition focused Tempest build for PvP with decent sustain against all types of damage and moderate group support. Its versatility allows for a lot of flexibility when it comes to roles, as the build can be quite strong in teamfights but also has 1v1 potential. While it does have some group support tools, it's not a true replacement for a proper support build for the team.
Part of the ranked metagame, but doesn't see much play in tournaments.
Skill Bar
Skill Variants
Weapons
- Offhand Focus - trades for and thus frequent access to condition cleansing. Focus offers worse mobility and damage but higher sustain. Grants access to powerful defensive cooldowns like , , and . CC becomes ranged but also single-target instead of AoE.
Healing
- - better cleansing and group healing, but much easier to shut down than the signet.
Elite
- - burst damage and mobility, could be a lifesaver when you're getting chased. Good in teamfights and for cleaving downed enemies.
- - lots of AoE CC on medium CD (even works on downed targets). Could help you peel for allies, set up kills, decap nodes, or to build distance and escape.
Stability.
- potentially life-saving skill, pushes the group support angle a bit more. Offers some nice group
Template Code
Specializations
Variants
Chilled (which mostly comes from Necromancers, especially Reaper).
gives up defense against conditions and better endurance regen for higher damage. Take only if the enemy team can't spam you with - is an excellent option if you're expecting a lot of Power-based burst damage from the enemy team but going for this trait slightly lowers your healing, aura access and even condition cleansing.
Variants
Vigor and some group endurance regen.
adds extra - makes it easier to pull off your Overloads, but costs you quite a bit of sustain.
Equipment
Note: attunement swapping counts as a weapon swap for Elementalists, allowing us to use Sigil of Cleansing and Energy even on this build.
Equipment Variants
Runes
- - maximum survivability, less damage.
- - better defense against conditions while retaining offensive stats.
- - slightly higher damage while trading the toughness for more HP.
Sigils
Sigil of Cleansing could be replaced with:
Burning duration, more damage especially against those with low cleanse.
- higher
Poison to the build for healing reduction, damage and extra condi variety. More of a 1v1 option.
- adds
Relics
- - less cleansing but more damage.
- - if you want to play as a sidenoder and take 1v1s this could add a new condition to the build with a high uptime, making it harder for enemies to cleanse your more important conditions. Also adds a bit of extra damage in general.
- - adds a new aura to the build, and a total of 2 extra procs to your heal skill with all the related synergy.
Fire Aura access to the build, it also makes your other sources stronger.
- not only does it adds more
Usage
Elite Specialization Basics
- Tempest gains access to Overloads after staying attuned to an element for a period of time. Overloads are stun breaks that pulse while channeling and have a powerful effect at the end.
- Tempests also gain access to Shouts, which have a large AoE effect that buffs allies and harms enemies.
General
- Your role is flexible, the build can do a decent job at everything from dueling to teamfighting. It even has some support aspects, mostly due to the Overloads and shouts.
Shocking Aura and then use (SoR) within the next 25 seconds, you won't get a
Frost Aura from the activation of the signet. With this trait using the active of frequently is highly recommended because you don't lose the active so there's no downside to it, but keep the CD in mind! Plan ahead a bit, as shocking aura is generally more powerful than frost aura - it's not always best to use SoR the moment you're missing a couple thousand HP, if you feel like you're going to have to use a stunbreak in the next few seconds you might want to wait a little and get the
Shocking Aura proc from the trait before using SoR.
- Sometimes you might want to use offensively for the shocking aura proc to get some CC (you can AoE stun enemies with if you're on Air Attunement). This is a bit greedy considering how this is the only stunbreak utility, but every Overload skill also breaks stun so you can get away with it occasionally.
grants you an aura based on the signet you've used, but has a 25s internal cooldown. This means that if you use for
- Your best damaging skills are , , and everything on except for the autoattack which isn't that great. should only be used on burning targets but the rest of the Fire skills you can spam in whatever order you see fit.
- can do a lot of cleave damage but locks you out of Fire for quite a while, which could tank your damage after. It's also easily interrupted. It's best used on downed enemies to deny rez attempts, or as a finishing move against low HP targets when you don't have anything else.
- Both utility shouts can be used offensively.
Immobilize is quite good at setting up bursts, rooting people into your Fire attacks.
doesn't do a lot of damage but the
- Fire is best for damage. The Fire Elemental's special attack is quite dangerous, it can easily do 5k+ damage in one hit. Try rooting enemies into it with , or any other CC you have.
- Air is for CC.
- Water is for healing and cleansing.
- Don't use Earth. The theme here would be damage mitigation and soft-CC, but the effects are way too weak to be worth it especially compared to the other 3 attunements.
summons an elemental based on the attunement you were in when you pressed the skill:
Sustain
- Gaining an aura removes a condition and grants
Protection thanks to and .
- When playing with Focus offhand you'll gain access to (Fire skill #5). Fire Aura is the most common one in the build, that's why you'll have higher cleansing.
also makes you lose 2 conditions whenever you transmute an aura - in this build you get to do that on both Air and Water attunements by using the chain skills of (Air skill #3) and (Water skill #4).
Shocking Aura for
Frost Aura for
- You can use the transmute skills on the associated attunements to get extra value out of these auras.
causes each signet to apply an aura based on the attunement associated with the signet:
Fear when your stunbreaks aren't available.
grants you Fire Aura whenever you attune to . The above mentioned two traits therefore make attuning to Fire an instant source of cleansing and damage mitigation, something you can do even while stunned. With a little luck you could even break out of
- Water is your best attunement for dealing with conditions. ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ is a chain that can cleanse 6 conditions, and then you've still got Cleansing Wave.
- is basically your second healing skill that restores a large chunk of HP while removing conditions. It's also AoE so try using it near allies whenever possible.
- When used on Water, summons a Water Elemental and becomes available for you. This heals about twice as much as your healing skill, removes a condition, and even knocks back enemies! Always use your elite on Water if you're struggling to survive in 1v1s, but in teamfights this elemental can be a bit harder to utilize because it'll easily get CC'd.
Fire Aura for trait synergy.
- In general always try to use Magnetic Leap in one of your fire fields to combo auras.
- Make sure that you don't have an enemy targeted and "Auto targeting" is disabled in the options if you want to use these skills to disengage. If you're interested in further optimizing your settings, check out our settings guide.
followed by is a good defensive combo that could help distance yourself from enemies while evading their attacks and even comboing
- Every Overload skill breaks stun.
- cleanses a lot of conditions for you and your team over time but can be hard to pull off while being focused. Try disengaging a bit, blocking line of sight of attackers by hiding behind objects, using before casting this skill to shield yourself from projectiles and Immobilize enemies so they can't get into melee range, etc.
Tips
- Start each match in Air attunement. Use Overload Air as you approach the door, then use all your blast finishers in the combo field to stack
Swiftness on your team.
- Try to use your blast finishers in your Fire fields when possible for more AoE
Might stacking.
- When facing an enemy that uses a lot of projectiles (Rangers, Dragon Hunters, Rifle/Pistol Engineers, etc.) save skills like
Magnetic Aura too!
and for critical moments. Also remember that Overloading Earth grants
Pros
- Surprisingly high damage, good AoE. Excellent downed cleave.
- Exceptional sustain and utility, especially in protracted teamfights near allies; very hard to kill for a DPS. Good AoE healing, boon application (especially
Protection and
Vigor), condi cleanse, and auras.
Cons
- Heavily reliant on
Burning/
Bleeding for damage, lacks cover conditions; can struggle against builds with frequent and reliable cleanse. Low burst.
Related Builds
- Tempest - Condition Auroamancer - WvW roaming version of the build.
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