Tempest - Condition Auramancer

The community gave this build a rating, making it top-tier: Great

Focused on: Condition damage and Support

Designed for: PvP Conquest

Expansions required:

Difficulty:

Normal

This build was last updated on January 15, 2025 and is up to date for the December 10, 2024 patch.

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 even has some group support tools it's not a true replacement for a proper support build for the team.

Skill Bar

Dagger/Dagger

Utility

Skill Variants

Weapons

• Offhand Focus - trades Transmute Frost for Transmute Fire for more frequent access to condition cleansing. Focus has less mobility and damage but higher sustain. Grants access to powerful defensive cooldowns like Obsidian Flesh, Magnetic Wave, and Swirling Winds. CC becomes ranged but also single-target instead of AoE.

Healing

• "Wash the Pain Away!" - much better since the buff, now cleanses 3 conditions instead of 1 (4 with Relic of the Trooper). Great with Water variant.

• Glyph of Elemental Harmony - powerful self-heal with a short cooldown. Best used with Water variant and good with Relic of Reunification.

Utility

• Signet of Earth - good personal defense with a nice active. Note: Be mindful of Written in Stone's 25s internal cooldown.

• "Flash-Freeze!" - nice defensive cooldown for your team, can swing fights in your favor if well timed. Best used with Water variant for the extra cleanse and healing.

• Glyph of Renewal - allows you to play the Support angle, especially with the Water variant.

Elite

• Conjure Fiery Greatsword - burst damage and mobility, could be a lifesaver when you're getting chased. Good in teamfights and for cleaving downed enemies.

• Tornado - lots of AoE CC on medium CD (even works on downed targets). Could help you peel for allies, set up kills, or use the combination of mobility and CC to build distance and escape.

• "Rebound!" - potentially life-saving skill, pushes the group support angle a bit more. Offers some nice group Stability.

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Specializations

Variants

• Blinding Ashes increases your sustain a little, could help you survive especially in 1v1s if that's the angle you want to push. Not an ICD; it affects each foe per interval.

Variants

• Strength of Stone gives up defense against conditions and better endurance regen for higher damage. Only take if enemy team has little-no Chilled (such as from a Reaper).
• Stone Heart 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.

• Latent Stamina adds extra Vigor and some team endurance (about 1.5/s if used off cooldown).

Specialization Variant

Fire can be swapped out for Water. This reduces your damage by a small amount while increasing your sustain and team support without losing your cleanse from auras (thanks to Invigorating Torrents and Cleansing Water.

• Consider swapping your healing skill and relic to options which synergize better with Cleansing Water for even more free cleansing.

Equipment

Dagger

Dagger

Sigil

Sigil

Rune

Amulet

Relic

Equipment Variants

Runes

• Rune of Dolyak - maximum survivability, less damage.

• Rune of Orr - better defense against conditions while retaining offensive stats.

• Rune of Necromancer - slightly higher damage, softer to Power burst.

Sigils

Sigil of Cleansing could be replaced with:

• Sigil of Smoldering - higher Burning duration, more damage especially against those with low cleanse.

• Sigil of Doom - adds Poison to the build for healing reduction, damage and extra condi variety. More of a 1v1 option.

Relics

• Relic of Isgarren - less cleansing but more damage.

• Relic of the Mirage - 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.

• Relic of Reunification - massively buffs your heal skill.

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.

• Written in Stone grants you an aura based on the signet you've used, but has a 25s internal cooldown. This means that if you use Signet of Air for Shocking Aura and then use Signet of Restoration (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 Signet of Restoration 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 Signet of Air offensively for the shocking aura proc to get some CC (you can AoE stun enemies with Transmute Lightning 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.

• Your best damaging skills are Churning Earth, Ring of Earth, and everything on Fire Attunement except for the autoattack which isn't that great. Fire Grab should only be used on burning targets but the rest of the Fire skills you can spam in whatever order you see fit.

• Overload Fire 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. "Aftershock!" doesn't do a lot of damage but the Immobilize is quite good at setting up bursts, rooting people into your Fire attacks.

• Glyph of Elementals summons an elemental based on the attunement you were in when you pressed the skill:
  • 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 "Aftershock!" or Earthen Rush.
  • 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.

Sustain

• Gaining an aura removes a condition and grants Protection thanks to Smothering Auras and Elemental Shielding.

• Smothering Auras 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 Shocking Aura (Air skill #3) and Frost Aura (Water skill #4).
  • When playing with Focus offhand you'll gain access to Fire Shield (Fire skill #5). Fire Aura is the most common one in the build, that's why you'll have higher cleansing.

• Written in Stone causes each signet to apply an aura based on the attunement associated with the signet:
  • Shocking Aura for Signet of Air
  • Frost Aura for Signet of Restoration
  • You can use the transmute skills on the associated attunements to get extra value out of these auras.

• Sunspot grants you Fire Aura whenever you attune to Fire Attunement. 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 Fear when your stunbreaks aren't available.

• 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, Glyph of Elementals summons a Water Elemental and Crashing Waves 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.

• Burning Speed followed by Magnetic Leap is a good defensive combo that could help distance yourself from enemies while evading their attacks and even comboing 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.

• Every Overload skill breaks stun.

• Overload Water 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 "Aftershock!" 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 "Aftershock!" and Magnetic Wave for critical moments. Also remember that Overloading Earth grants Magnetic Aura too!

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.