Tempest - Fresh Air Tempest

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

Focused on: Strike damage, Mobility, Dps.

Designed for:

Open World

 

Open World General

 

Open World Recommended

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Overview

A high-DPS Tempest build focused on strike damage. This build has a handful of relatively strong burst skills alongside high Vulnerability and Might uptime which make it ideal for general farming in Open World.

Pros

• Great burst damage
• Highly active playstyle
• Good mobility

Cons

• Low sustain/defense
• Poor damage at range

Skill Bar

Scepter/WarhornHealingUtilityElite

Weapon Variants

• Dagger (mainhand) - alternative with more CC, blasts, and aura generation
• Dagger (offhand) - higher mobility, lower DPS
• Staff - use in zergs for high area damage

Skill Variants

Healing

• - passive sustain
• - burst heal
• - if conditions are a problem.
• - very powerful shout heal that provides significant healing to nearby allies

Utilities

• - caps vuln or area blind
• - breaks stun and blocks attacks.
• - for mobility.
• - very useful for Scepter to fill spaces between cooldowns
• - projectile hate
• - area Frost Aura, good for defense
• - low cooldown area damage, useful for tagging

Elites

• - gives you a very strong pet
• - defensive shout; good for allies

Specializations

Build Code

[&DQYpKxE+MBknDxcBUAHLAE4B6wDLAPYAlwCWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA=]

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Variants

• - more dodges at the cost of passive stun break.

Arcane

Arcane can replace Water for a boost to Defense and Sustain.

• - further boosts Sustain at the cost of DPS.

Equipment

Ascended gear and stat infusions are not required; you can use exotic gear with the same stats.

Berserker

This set uses gear similar to its raid counterpart and is useful for general PVE.

6x

Superior Rune of the Scholar

• A few Knight's trinkets can be used if defense is needed.

Marauder

This set trades ~10% DPS for +~60% HP.

Marauder

6x

Superior Rune of the Scholar

Gear Variants

Variants

Gear

• Knight's , Soldier - can be mixed with other sets to increase defense.

Runes

• - budget option
• , - can be used with the Berserker's set to fine-tune crit chance.
• , - defensive options
• - strongest defensive rune if zerging

Sigils

• , - burst sigils
• - defensive option
• - for condi cleanse

Consumables

Farming

Food

• Any ascended food is superior to any other food you could use. Steak for power, flatbread for conditions.
• - Use for general farming.
• - Use for when you need to max out magic find.
• - more sustain
• Anything - Any food is better than none, but you should prioritize the food above before using any other food.

Utility

• , , - general farming

Solo

This food assists with more difficult content, such as bosses or bounties. Ascended versions of these are available and should be used when possible.

Food

• - permanent Fury when farming trash or with a zerg
• - extreme sustain when farming trash or with a zerg
• - a huge boost to damage whenf arming trash or in a zerg
• , - DPS food
• , - Defense and Might
• - Lifesteal
• , , - Damage Reduction Food

Utility

• , - Damage

Usage

Scepter vs Dagger

Each mainhand weapon provides a significant change in playstyle. It is important to consider which you would prefer to use.

Scepter

• This weapon allows you to provide very high might uptime due to its primary blast ( ) being on a relatively short cooldown. In addition, it has an extra blast over Dagger.
• Scepter does slightly less DPS than Dagger, but has much higher burst damage and access to ranged skills.
• Scepter is slightly less reliant on due to very strong skills in other attunements, such as and . This means being stuck in a different attunement for a short time is not as important, and thus makes Attunement Recharge less important to Scepter's playstyle on the whole.

Dagger

• Dagger has a simpler rotation compared to Scepter and does higher DPS, but has fewer blasts and very little access to ranged damage.
• Dagger adds a lot of mobility to the build due to and . These skills are also short-duration evades, allowing skilled players to avoid attacks more easily than Scepter.
• Dagger has easier access to Shocking Aura, which is an extremely powerful buff against trash mobs.

Fresh Air

is a unique trait within the Air Specialization that allows the elementalist to reset their cooldown on every time they crit while attuned to a different attunement. This is already quite strong due to traits like , however Tempest takes this a step further due to the interaction between Fresh Air and .

Each time you swap back to Air, you can Overload Air again after waiting for a few seconds. This provides you with a powerful buff from during which you should try to use major damage skills like and . Due to the resetting cooldown of Overload Air, this means you can have significant uptime on a 7% damage buff.

Damage

This build can operate cleanly off a simple damage priority list. We are assuming you are using Fresh Air here; if you are using , this priority list will change drastically and you should strongly consider taking or to cover cooldowns in addition to the Arcane traitline to provide faster attunement recharge.

Scepter

2. / (space these out through the rotation if using Arcane)
3. in air attunement (if using it)
5. +
7. + (attempt to land both of these in a Fire Field. It is worth using first if none is available

Dagger

2. / (space these out through the rotation if using Arcane)
3. in air attunement (if using it)
6. (against groups, it is better not to use this)

Fiery Greatsword

If taking , you should use it any time you find yourself with no skills left to use other than auto-attacks or low-DPS skills. This is especially nice for providing higher burst damage early in the rotation.

Defense

• The best defense is always to dodge or sidestep attacks. Use the high Vigor uptime of this build to your advantage.
• To block something without interrupting , you can use .
• , used in , creates a tanky elemental that can help take pressure off you.

Sustain

• You can create a water field with and then blast it with or for area healing.
• cleanses a condition.
• You can run or to better deal with condition pressure.
• , used in , creates an elemental with strong healing and condition cleanse on a short cooldown.
• If you need healing really badly, you can run away and .

Crowd Control

• ⇒ (Dagger Only)
• (Dagger)
• (from Ice Elemental)
• (from Air Elemental)