Build:Tempest - Staff Aurashare Support

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

Focused on: Support and Utility

Designed for: PvP Conquest

Expansions required:

Difficulty:

Hard

This build was last updated on November 21, 2024 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 patch.

Overview

A PvP support Tempest support build focusing on massive healing output and great group cleansing plus some aura and boon sharing. It even has access to some AoE Stability sharing, which makes Staff unique amongst Elementalist builds.

Skill Bar

Staff

Utility

Skill Variants

Utility

Viable choices for the optional slot or even instead of "Aftershock!":

• Lightning Flash - better mobility, makes it easier to reach allies who need healing while also allowing you to escape to the safety of the highground when pressured.

• Conjure Earth Shield - multiple defensive CDs in one conjure ranging from CC to invulnerability. The invulnerability is especially useful as it could act as a substitute Obsidian Flesh to some extent.

• Armor of Earth - stun break and strong defensive skill on a lower CD than Mist Form, could make it easier to get casts off under pressure too.

• "Feel the Burn!" - 2 aura charges on low CD, boosts your group healing. Semi-popular when playing with Invigorating Torrents and Cleansing Water.

• Mist Form - instant invulnerability access + stun break, great panic button. Could even help you rez and stomp as long as you start channeling those before you enter Mist Form. The long CD made Mist Form lose its popularity, but you don't have access to any other instant blocks or invulns on Staff.

Elite

• Tornado - better mobility and CC that could peel for allies and even works on downed enemies, which could be used to disrupt rez attempts.

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Specializations

Variants

• Earthen Blessing is a bit more selfish option and makes you worse against CC, but Chill is one of your biggest counters and this could help deal with that.

Variants

• Taking Invigorating Torrents along with Cleansing Water on Water could significantly increase your group cleansing but overloads become harder to pull off due to the loss of Stability.
  • Latent Stamina can also be taken alongside this trait in order to squeeze more value out of Vigor. As Unstable Conduit becomes harder to utilize without the Stability from the other trait you don't lose out on much anyways.

Equipment

Staff

Sigil

Sigil

Rune

Amulet

Relic

Equipment Variants

Relics

• Relic of Reunification - adds more aura sources to the build, along with a brand new type of aura. However auras of the same type don't stack, so take Stop, Drop, and Roll instead of Soothing Ice on Water. It's worth noting that this rune's effect only goes off after successful casts of your entire healing skill, any interruption will deny the aura procs.

• Relic of the Monk - boosts your group healing and it's easier to utilize than Karakosa, but overall Karakosa is better when played right.

• Relic of Antitoxin - more cleansing.

Sigils

• Sigil of Cleansing

• Sigil of Purging

Usage

General

• Under General Options / User Interface enable "Thick party health bars" and "Always show health bars". These will make it much easier to keep track of who needs your support. For more tips check out our settings guide.

• When playing with Powerful Aura every aura applied to you is also granted to nearby allies. This isn't restricted to elementalist auras only - using Ice Spike in a Chaos Storm for example will share Chaos Armor with allies. Auras can't be applied to downed players.

• Auras in the build:

• Shocking Aura from Overload Air.
• Frost Aura from Overload Water, Frozen Ground plus the trait proc from Elemental Bastion.
• Fire Aura from Overload Fire.
• Magnetic Aura from Overload Earth, Magnetic Aura (Earth skill #3), Magnetic Surge (an Earth Shield skill) and "Aftershock!" (if taken).

• Tornado is useful in just about any situation. Whether you have to run away from a fight, peel for your allies, or interrupt an enemy stomp/rez attempt, can't go wrong with Tornado!

• Avoid getting locked into 1v1s, always be in team fights. You depend on your allies just as much as they depend on you! Tempest's job is to keep party members alive through support, and these allies must peel for you in return (if the enemy team gets to focus you without allies counterpressuring them you'll probably end up dead).

Overloads

• These skills become available after having spent at least 6 seconds in the same attunement. Switching to another attunement while overloading will interrupt the skill yet still puts the attunement on the increased CD of 20 seconds.

• Beginning an overload procs Stability, Protection and Swiftness on top of breaking stuns. Depending on your choice of utilities these might be your only stun breaks.

• Overload Fire is without a doubt the least important overload in the build and can be used more freely, even as a mobility tool between capture points or simply as a stun break in combat. You could even cancel the skill in the first second and use the Stability to safely cast something more important, like Glyph of Renewal or "Wash the Pain Away!".

• Overload Air even on an build pumps out a considerable amount of AoE damage, use it to help your team get kills and to cleave downed targets. The AoE Shocking Aura that's applied at the end of the channeling is a very strong defensive ability too if you manage to use this Overload preemptively.

• Overload Earth is the hardest to mess up because it comes with Stability and it's one of your best personal survivability skills. The combination of Protection + Stone Flesh makes it harder for Power-based specs to kill you.

• Overload Water is the only overload which doesn't do damage, thus won't break Stealth. The build itself doesn't provide any access to stealth, but in an organized team you can coordinate this with an Engineer for instance and ask him to throw a Toss Elixir S at you. This should make it significantly easier to get this channel off, but you'll still be vulnerable to PBAoE like Jade Winds. One of the strongest emergency support CDs in the build, great at cleansing and healing allies but it can be a bit hard to use for self-sustain as the incoming damage is often greater than the healing of this Overload. While a successful channeling triggers a huge burst of healing at the end, if you're the one getting pressured don't overcommit - don't be afraid to cancel this skill if you have to dodge or use another defensive CD when you're in danger.

• Using "Aftershock!" before an Overload reduces the chance of getting interrupted by skills like Headshot or pressurd into canceling by a Rapid Fire.

Support and sustain

• Auras and overloads grant ~3 seconds of Protection, which is further empowered by Hardy Conduit resulting in a 40% direct damage reduction instead of the usual 33%. Frost Aura can reduce incoming damage for all affected allies by another 10% (and that's without even factoring in being on Earth for Geomancer's Training).

• Every aura you apply also heals allies via Elemental Bastion.

• Overload Earth is the best source of protection in the build. Not only does it pulse this boon each second, it'll also leave behind an AoE that does the same thing after a successful overload.

• Water Attunement is where most of your support comes from. Even just swapping to this attunement next to an ally is enough to heal and cleanse them via Healing Ripple and Cleansing Wave. Don't idle in Water too much because you should fit as many Water swaps into a fight as possible.

• Water Blast is an okay filler when you've got nothing better to do. Note: this skill can target allies.
  • Make sure that you don't have anyone targeted when you're trying to self-heal as you should aim this at your feet.

• Geyser is a decent AoE heal and one of your Water fields. Getting allies to stay inside can be a bit tricky but it's great for personal survivability at least.

• Healing Rain is your other Water field and an extremely valuable source of condition removal with a huge radius. However this skill is more about providing a steady stream of cleansing for your team over a longer period of time to prevent them from getting overwhelmed by conditions. If you or your temmates are already overwhelmed or close to it then Overload Water might be better because the Overload pulses more frequently and has no initial cast time.
  • This isn't just an anti-condition pressure tool, the healing on this skill is quite good if it can remove any conditions. This doesn't have to be 10 stacks of Burning, if you feel like you can sacrifice this source of cleansing on some Blind and Vulnerability it can act as a source of healing that could still end up saving your team.

• Ice Spike has value as a Blast finisher. Blasting Frozen Ground applies AoE Frost Aura, while blasting any of the Water fields on this weapon does AoE healing. Technically blasting Frozen Ground also results in AoE healing because of Elemental Bastion, but blasting a Water Field heals more.
  • It takes a few seconds for Ice Spike to fall from the sky and do its thing, which means you could even precast this skill and place the combo field after.

• Blasting these 3 Water Attunement combo fields is a very important part of group support on a Staff build:
  • Eruption is a low-CD blast finisher on Earth, cast it before leaving this attunement for Water. The delay on this skill lets you place combo fields from other attunements on top of Eruption.
  • Transmute Earth is for when you're swapping from Water to Earth and you're already standing in an active combo field. This is the chain skill of slot #3 on Earth Attunement that becomes available while you have an active Magnetic Aura. The build has plenty of Magnetic Aura sources like using skill #3 on earth or the utility shout "Aftershock!". Transmuting an aura consumes that aura though, so there's some decision making involved. Except for when your aura is about to run out, then there's really no cost to transmuting it and you should always try to if you get the chance. The CD is only 3 seconds so you could even do several transmutes from different sources back-to-back for more blast finishers.

• Transmute Earth is a source of AoE Stability, use it to shield important casts like your heal or rez glyph.

• Because of Stone Heart even just swapping to Earth could save your life against Power-based burst attempts. For a few seconds they'll be unable to score any critical hits against you and swapping out of Earth refreshed the buff (albeit with shorter duration).

• Fire Attunement doesn't leave you defenseless either - Burning Retreat has a lengthy evade frame on top of being a mobility skill (useful for repositioning) and Flame Burst has an AoE Blind.

• Air Attunement and Earth Attunement has several CC skills, use them to kite enemies and peel for allies.

• Windborne Speed cleanses movement impairing conditions. Consider using it next to allies before swapping to Water to increase the chance of removing damaging conditions with Cleansing Wave. The Superspeed is quite useful for kiting too.

• "Wash the Pain Away!" is a very powerful AoE heal for both yourself and the team. Try to coordinate it with your allies so that they receive every pulse of the channel to maximize the healing. The first pulse heals the most but has the smallest radius, while the other two pulses have a lower healing value but larger radius. Lightning Flash (if taken) can be used to instantly move in and heal up teammates who are far away but need emergency healing.

Earth Shield

• Conjure Earth Shield is one of the strongest defensive skills in any Elementalist's toolkit. Use it whenever you're under heavy focus and running out of CDs.

• Stone Sheath (skill 2) blocks the next hit and grants you barrier.

• Magnetic Surge (skill 3) is the most versatile skill on this conjure as it has a bit of everything: mobility, CC, even Magnetic Aura application for group support + projectile reflect + aura trait synergy including healing and Protection. If you drop the shield while in Earth Attunement you get to use Transmute Earth too.

• Magnetic Shield (elementalist) (skill 4) is an AoE pull. Might not always be the best under pressure because of its relatively long cast time but it could be great at peeling for allies by pulling enemies off of them, and it does offer barrier/protection for personal survivability while disrupting enemies if it goes off. You could even set up kills for your team by pulling enemies from the safety of the highground.

• Fortify (skill 5) is the ultimate defensive skill, making you immortal (but also immobile) for its duration. Should be the first skill you use on Earth Shield if you're taking a lot of damage. This is a great skill when you're trying to stall a bit while waiting for CDs to come back up.

• You're free to use Overloads and swap attunements while holding the shield.

• When you cast the skill a 2nd shield spawns on the ground. Both you and your allies could make use of the second shield, but keep in mind that dropping the first shield and picking up the second one doesn't refresh the CD of shield skills. Using up all the shield skills, dropping the shield to use weapon skills and then picking up the 2nd shield a bit later is fine though.

Reviving allies

• Glyph of Renewal is a very potent ranged rez with a secondary effect that can be customized to fit a bunch of different situations. In general you should just focus on getting the rez as soon as possible regardless of attunement, but if you're able to swap to the right element beforehand this glyph becomes even more powerful. Couple of things to note:
  • The attunement bonus depends on which attunement you've started channeling this skill on. Swapping from Air to Fire in the middle of it for example is going to proc the Air bonus.
  • When playing with Rock Solid consider swapping to earth for the Stability while channeling the glyph.
  • Air Attunement teleports the ally to your location. It's great if you're in a safe spot, you may even consider teleporting to the highground beforehand with Lightning Flash.
  • Water Attunement brings them back with max HP, which is probably the best option if you only have to rez one ally and you're not in a safe spot.
  • Earth Attunement is for reviving multiple allies as it is an AoE rez.
  • Fire Attunement is mainly for your personal survivability. Even if you don't have an ally to rez, you could use this glyph on Fire and give yourself a 15 second window of immortaility, as using this skill in Fire revives the caster when they go down!
  • If you're absolutely certain that a teammate is going to die in 2 seconds, you may consider using this skill on their location in advance to bring them up a split second after they go down. This is a bit risky however, as if they don't die (or don't die inside the range of the skill) you're going to have to cancel cast with a weapon stow. While the weapon stow only sends it on a short CD of 5 seconds, that's more than enough for enemies to finish off your ally.

• If taken Mist Form turns the caster invulnerable, allowing you to rez without getting interrupted or killed.
  • Note: Mist Form must be activated AFTER starting to revive an ally, otherwise it won't work.

Stacking swiftness

• Stack Swiftness for your team before the game starts!

• For this you must begin on Earth Attunement. Cast Eruption on the exit gate and swap to Air Attunement while channeling this skill and then use Windborne Speed as soon as you can. Immediately follow up by placing a Static Field on top of Eruption before it goes off.

• Finish the chain with Ice Spike on Water.

• Swap to Fire as you don't want to start fights on Water (you'd lose out on the on-swap procs).