Tempest - Fresh Air

Part of the current metagame

Our curator decided this build is in the current metagame regardless of rating. The community gave this build a rating, making it top-tier: Great

Focused on: Strike damage

Designed for: Open World and Open World General

Expansions required:

Difficulty:

Easy

This build was last updated on September 10, 2024 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 patch.

Overview

A Power Tempest build for open world. This build has very high AoE damage plus somme boon generation for self and allies, most notably Might and Fury. Cast Overload Air to fry your enemies with a nimbus of lightning, then do it over and over again thanks to Fresh Air refreshing its cooldown.

With the trait Lucid Singularity, the build can also sacrifice damage to provide Alacrity to allies.

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Skill Bar

Scepter/Warhorn

Utility

Weapon Variants

Scepter+ Warhorn are your best weapons, providing the highest damage and some utility.

• Spear - can be considered by players with Janthir Wilds, providing great AoE damage, but it's harder to use.

Skill Variants

Healing

Glyph of Elemental Harmony provides strong burst heal and a boon based on attunement. Other alternatives are:

• Arcane Brilliance - potentially the strongest heal if there are 5 enemies in range, plus a blast finisher, but very weak healing if there are no nearby enemies.
• "Wash the Pain Away!" - weak heal, but heals in an AoE and also cleanses 1 condition.
• Ether Renewal - very situational heal that removes up to 8 conditions throughout its long channelling time.

Utilities

Signet of Fire is here only for the precision buff, so never cast it. If you already have 100% crit chance because you're using full Marauder gear, equip a different skill.
"Feel the Burn!" has low cooldown, decent damage, and provides Might.
"Aftershock!" combines damage, defense, and crowd control. Provides Magnetic Aura to reflect projectiles.
Other alternatives are:

• Glyph of Storms provides AoE damage in fire and air, while on earth it will blind trash mobs.
• Glyph of Lesser Elementals - spawn a small elemental army that dies when you mount up, good for fighting strong bosses.
• Cleansing Fire - additional condition cleanse.
• Lightning Flash - for mobility.
• Your overloads break stun when cast, but if you want a dedicated stun break you can use Arcane Shield, which also blocks 3 attacks, or Mist Form for invulnerability, or Armor of Earth for Stability.

Elites

Glyph of Elementals is simply the best elite for solo play. Cast it on Fire for damage, on Water for support, healing and Knockback, on Air for a Stun, or on Earth for defense.

• "Rebound!" - very situational skill that can be considered against certain bosses with oneshot attacks.

Specializations

Variants

• Tempestuous Aria - sacrifices defense for extra damage. The loss of Stability from Harmonious Conduit may cause you to be interrupted while using an Overload, so be careful about that.
• Lucid Singularity - useful in groups to provide allies with Alacrity. You can technically provide permanent alacrity with only the bonus concentration of Gathered Focus, but this isn't realistic in real fights. This trait works best if you can acquire more concentration from food or gear like Diviner.

Fire

If using Spear, replace Water with Fire. It is harder to play but has great AoE damage. You still want to spam Overload Air but you will also use Etching: Volcano and Etching: Haboob.

Equipment

This build uses the same gear as power weaver and power catalyst for ease of gearing.

Head
Berserker

Shoulders
Berserker

Chest
Berserker

Hands
Berserker

Legs
Berserker

Feet
Berserker

Backpiece
Berserker

Accessory
Berserker

Accessory
Berserker

Amulet
Berserker

Ring
Berserker

Ring
Berserker

Scepter
Berserker

Warhorn
Berserker

Sigil

Sigil

Rune
x6

Relic

• Rune of Superior Rune of the Scholar is almost identical to Rune of Superior Rune of the Dragonhunter. Either can be used.
• You can use Relic of Zakiros to trade a minor amount of damage for sustain, Relic of the Cavalier to start combat with boons, or Relic of Durability for a little extra defense.
• Equip the highest tier Jade Core you can afford.
• In open world, you can consider using full Marauder gear instead of Berserker to sacrifice a small amount of damage for a massive health increase. If doing so, switch your runes to Rune of Superior Rune of the Deadeye. The amulet can be Dragon. With this gear set you no longer need Signet of Fire and can use another damage or utility skill instead.

Consumables

Budget consumables are acceptable for use in open world.

DPS

• Prioritize Steak Ascended food.
• /
• /

Farming

• Prioritize Steak Ascended food.
• /
• (and variants)

Usage

Overloads

Overloads are the profession mechanic of the tempest. After attuning to an element, remain in it for a few seconds to achieve Singularity, allowing you to press the attunement key again to Overload that attunement and cast a powerful skill but place the attunement on a long recharge.

In this skill, you will focus on Overload Air.

Damage

Fresh Air resets the cooldown of Air Attunement every time you critically strike while attuned to a different attunement. This includes resetting the cooldown of Overload Air. Thus, the idea behind the build is to use Overload Air, attune to another element and maybe use some skills of that element, and then return to Air, triggering Electric Discharge, the extra ferocity from Fresh Air, and the extra damage from Transcendent Tempest.

Your goal is to spam Overload Air for damage. If you are playing alone, you can also Overload Fire for damage and Might. Since Overload Fire creates a fire field, you can use combo finishers to provide yourself and nearby allies with even more might (See: Guide:What are Combo Fields).

After Overloading, attune to another element, cast 1 or 2 skills then return to Air since Fresh Air has recharged it.

Opener

Against bosses and other strong enemies, try to follow this opener:

1. Overload Air
2. Lightning Strike and Fire Attunement
3. Wildfire
4. Dragon's Tooth
5. Phoenix
6. fill the gap with one auto attack
7. Overload Fire
8. Heat Sync ⇒ Air Attunement
9. Lightning Orb
10. Arc Lightning + Lightning Strike
11. Overload Air
12. Water Attunement
13. Shatterstone
14. Water Trident and Air Attunement
15. Arc Lightning + Lightning Strike until Overload Air

• If playing in a group giving you Might, skip Overload Fire and just return to Air quickly.
• Lightning Strike has no cast time nor animation, use it while casting other skills or overload.
• Use "Feel the Burn!" off cooldown.
• If using high damage skills like Glyph of Storms or Conjure Fiery Greatsword, use them when you attune back to Air because you will be under all these damage modifiers: Aeromancer's Training, Fresh Air, and Transcendent Tempest.
• You will activate Relic of Fireworks with Overloads, Wildfire, Lightning Orb, and Dust Storm.

Spear

If using Spear (requires Janthir Wilds), replace the Water traitline with Fire as indicated above. Your priority is still to spam Overload Air, but you will want to use Derecho, Volcano and Haboob as well, which will obviously work better if an ally is giving you Quickness so you don't delay Overload Air too much.

1. Overload Air
2. Fulgor and Fire Attunement
3. Etching: Volcano
4. Blazing Barrage
5. Meteor
6. Seethe
7. Volcano and Air Attunement
8. Etching: Derecho
9. Twister
10. Fulgor
11. Energize
12. Derecho
13. Overload Air and Earth Attunement
    • Etching: Haboob (skip if you have alacrity)
14. Earthen Spear
    • Fissure (skip if you have alacrity)
    • Harden (skip if you have alacrity)
    • Haboob (skip if you have alacrity)
15. Air Attunement and autoattack until Overload is ready, then repeat from step 1.

Always empower Volcano by casting Seethe directly before.
It's generally not worth it to stay in Earth for Haboob, but you can do it if you don't have Alacrity from other players. Likewise, Water attunement should only be used if you need condition cleanse from Ripple or a little healing from Jokulhlaup.

Auras

Auras provide useful bennefits to yourself. If needed, they can be shared to nearby allies by using the trait Powerful Aura and even provide boons with Zephyr's Boon. You have several skills that produce auras, including your overloads thanks to Unstable Conduit:

• Fire Aura: "Feel the Burn!", Overload Fire.
• Frost Aura: "Flash-Freeze!", Overload Water.
• Shocking Aura: Overload Air.
• Magnetic Aura: Sand Squall, "Aftershock!", Overload Earth.

Elementals

Elementals are really good allies in any open world elementalist build. Their only downside is that they die when you mount up. Consider summoning a few elementals before fighting bosses or other tough enemies.

Glyph of Lesser Elementals

Glyph of Lesser Elementals summons one elemental for 2 minutes. If you cast it off cooldown, you can have 3 elementals alive most of the time.

• The Lesser Fire Elemental deals good melee range AoE strike damage and Burning, and provides Might. It has the highest AoE damage of all Lesser Elementals.
• The Lesser Ice Elemental deals very low damage and inflicts a lot of Chill (80-90% uptime) through an ice combo field.
• The Lesser Air Elemental deals great single target damage and generates Swiftness. It has the second best damage behind Fire, but it's single target.
• The Lesser Earth Elemental deals low damage, inflicts Weakness, and is very tanky.

Glyph of Elementals

Elementals have the same attacks and behaviour as Lesser Elementals, but can be commanded to do an additional skill.

• The Fire Elemental can be commanded to deal damage and Burning in an AoE.
• The Ice Elemental can be commanded to deal damage in an AoE, while healing nearby allies by 6401, knocking back enemies, and removing 1 condition.
• The Air Elemental can be commanded to Stun for 1.5 seconds.
• The Earth Elemental can be commanded to inflict nearby enemies with 1 second of Immobilize and 5 seconds of Cripple, while providing 3 seconds of Protection to nearby allies.

Defense

• The best defense is always to dodge or sidestep attacks. You have permanent Swiftness so you can run around enemies while they die to your AoEs. You cannot dodge while doing an Overload or you will cancel it, but you can use that swiftness to get out of the way of telegraphed attacks.
• Glyph of Elementals is great for defense, as the elemental will often draw aggro away from you. The earth elemental is quite tanky.
• You get Stability when you overload thanks to Harmonious Conduit.
• You get Protection when you overload thanks to Hardy Conduit, from Sand Squall (which also extends existing boons) and from Glyph of Elemental Harmony when cast in Earth.
• You can increase your toughness with Rock Barrier.
• Magnetic Aura from Sand Squall or Unstable Conduit+Overload Earth reflects projectiles.
• Overload Water can be used in emergencies to cleanse 5 conditions and heal you a little. However, you will lack sustain as you'll lose access to Soothing Mist due to the increased cooldown of Water after overloading.
• Overload Earth is great for chipping away at breakbars with its crippled and immobilize. It also gives you stability at the start, and the lingering storm provides protection.
• Attune to Water Attunement periodically to refresh Soothing Mist and heal yourself with Healing Ripple. You also heal yourself with Water Globe and Water Trident
• Dodging attacks will also heal you thanks to Flow like Water.
• Blind trash mobs with Blinding Flash, Dust Devil or Dust Storm.

Crowd Control

• Cyclone - Pull
• Tidal Surge - Knockback
• Enemies that attack you or allies from melee range while having Shocking Aura - stun
• Crashing Waves (from Glyph of Elementals Ice Elemental) - Knockback
• Shocking Bolt (from Glyph of Elementals Air Elemental) - stun