Tempest - Fresh Air

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:

TBD

This build was last updated on January 19, 2022 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 patch.

Overview

Fresh Air Tempest is a Power-based Tempest build which features very good area damage through skills such as Overload Air and Lightning Orb.

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Skill Bar

Scepter/Warhorn

Utility

Weapon Variants

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

Skill Variants

Healing

• Signet of Restoration - passive sustain
• Glyph of Elemental Harmony - burst heal
• "Wash the Pain Away!" - very powerful shout heal that provides significant healing to nearby allies

Utilities

• Glyph of Storms - caps vuln or area blind
• Arcane Shield - breaks stun and blocks attacks.
• Lightning Flash - for mobility.
• Conjure Lightning Hammer - very useful for Scepter to fill spaces between cooldowns
• "Aftershock!" - projectile hate
• "Flash-Freeze!" - area Frost Aura, good for defense
• "Feel the Burn!" - low cooldown area damage, useful for tagging

Elites

• Glyph of Elementals - gives you a very strong pet
• "Rebound!" - defensive shout; good for allies

Specializations

Variants

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

Arcane

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

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

Head
Berserker

Shoulders
Berserker

Chest
Berserker

Hands
Berserker

Legs
Berserker

Feet
Berserker

Backpiece
Berserker

Accessory
Berserker

Accessory
Berserker

Amulet
Berserker

Ring
Berserker

Ring
Berserker

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

Gear Variants

Budget

• Sigil of Superior Sigil of Air - budget DPS
• Rune of Superior Rune of the Pack, Rune of Superior Rune of Infiltration, Rune of Superior Rune of Strength - budget DPS; do not use with Marauder

Defense

• Marauder - luxury set; trades a very small amount of damage for a 60% increase to health
• Knight, Soldier - can be mixed with other sets to increase defense
• Rune of Superior Rune of Durability, Rune of Superior Rune of Vampirism - defense
• Sigil of Superior Sigil of Energy, Sigil of Superior Sigil of Cleansing - defensive sigils

Consumables

Prioritize ascended food over everything else; steak (power) and flatbread (conditions). Using cheap/budget food is perfectly acceptable in open world.

Damage

and offer the highest damage when solo, and have good budget options in + . Run against trash for a very high damage buff.

Defense

for more dodges, for sustain against trash.

Farming

Run and (or its other variants) when trying to maximize gold per hour.

Usage

Fresh Air

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

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 Transcendent Tempest during which you should try to use major damage skills like Phoenix and Shatterstone. 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 Bolt to the Heart, this priority list will change drastically and you should strongly consider taking Conjure Lightning Hammer or Conjure Frost Bow to cover cooldowns in addition to the Arcane traitline to provide faster attunement recharge.

Scepter

1. Overload Air
2. Arcane Blast / Arcane Wave (space these out through the rotation if using Arcane)
3. Glyph of Storms in air attunement (if using it)
4. Lightning Orb
5. Lightning Strike + Blinding Flash
6. Shatterstone
7. Phoenix + Dragon's Tooth (attempt to land both of these in a Fire Field. It is worth using Wildfire first if none is available

Dagger

1. Overload Air
2. Arcane Blast / Arcane Wave (space these out through the rotation if using Arcane)
3. Glyph of Storms in air attunement (if using it)
4. Lightning Orb
5. Convergence
6. Transmute Lightning (against groups, it is better not to use this)
7. Drake's Breath
8. Burning Speed
9. Wildfire
10. Ring of Earth
11. Earthen Rush

Fiery Greatsword

If taking Conjure Fiery Greatsword, 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 Overload Air, you can use Arcane Shield.
• Glyph of Elementals, used in Earth Attunement, creates a tanky elemental that can help take pressure off you.

Sustain

• You can create a water field with Water Globe and then blast it with Phoenix or Sand Squall for area healing.
• Phoenix cleanses a condition.
• You can run Ether Renewal or Smothering Auras to better deal with condition pressure.
• Glyph of Elementals, used in Water Attunement, creates an elemental with strong healing and condition cleanse on a short cooldown.
• If you need healing really badly, you can run away and Overload Water.

Crowd Control

• Shocking Aura ⇒ Transmute Lightning (Dagger Only)
• Earthquake (Dagger)
• Cyclone
• Tidal Surge
• Crashing Waves (from Ice Elemental)
• Shocking Bolt (from Air Elemental)