Tempest - Boon Support Healer

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

Focused on: HealingSupport and Utility

Designed for: Raids

Expansions required: Heart of Thorns builds

Difficulty:
Normal
This build was last updated on December 04, 2023 and is up to date for the February 27, 2024 patch.

Overview

Tempest is capable of providing permanent uptime of Alacrity Alacrity, Fury Fury, Might Might, Protection Protection, Regeneration Regeneration, Swiftness Swiftness and high Vigor Vigor on their subgroup, along with a lot of healing.

The need to constantly switch attunements makes the rotation quite rigid, so it has to rely on utility skills for reactive healing, and its reliance on being close to the squad for boons makes it a poor kiter. On the plus side, you gain which will allow you to skip certain mechanics that would otherwise down the group, and allows you to help revive players without locking yourself into the animation.


Skill Bar

Dagger/Warhorn
Utility


Weapon Variants

  • Sceptre can be used instead of Dagger if you need to be at range, but you will lose significant healing from .
  • Staff has greater healing potential, but the lack of Warhorn creates a shortfall in boons that needs to be addressed.


Skill Variants

Utility

is needed to maintain permanent Protection Protection if you aren't taking Arcane (or Warhorn). It also provides a blast finisher if using .

As you need to leave for boons, this can leave you without sources of healing, so , and are there to fill in the gap, but can be swapped out if they are not needed.

  • If using , provides some extra on-demand healing (assuming there is a field to combo with).
  • Most utility shout skills provide a number of boons thanks to , so it is important to keep at least one on your bar, but you can bring more if desired.
    • provides a group stunbreak as well as Superspeed Superspeed which can be particularly useful on "event" encounters such as Spirit Woods or Siege Escort. It also offers some extra Stability Stability, which may be useful during as you don't use and being interrupted mid-cast will cause you to drop Alacrity Alacrity.
    • is needed to cap Might Might if you're not using Warhorn.
    • is your only reliable way to access Frost Aura, which can be a potent defensive tool against attacks that cannot be blocked with .


Elite

provides a way to skip certain mechanics that would otherwise down the group.


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Specializations


Trait Variants

  • on encounters with a lot of Burning Burning or Chilled Chilled.
  • , in combination with the Fire variant below, can be used for extreme condition removal.
    • could be used in combination for even more auras.
  • for easier Protection Protection uptime.
  • will let you build Might Might up faster, but you lose the ability to provide permanent uptime of Vigor Vigor for the squad.


Specialization Variants

Arcane is chosen as a default traitline as the lower cooldowns on attunement swapping and overloads allows you to be more flexible with your rotation, and the extra Protection Protection from means you don't need to rely on to make it permanent. is a nice bonus.

This said, Arcane is a rather unimpressive traitline, so it can be freely swapped to Fire or Air:

  • Fire adds a lot of potential condi cleanse via .
  • Air gives you a primary source of Fury Fury, which may be necessary if you are somehow paired with a Quickness Quickness support that doesn't provide any Fury Fury for you to extend. It also offers higher CC.


Fire

  • if you aren't using any conjured weapons.


Air

  • and may be more DPS or utility depending on your rotation, was chosen for the extra Weakness Weakness uptime, which benefits a few classes.


Equipment

Head
Harrier
Shoulders
Harrier
Chest
Harrier
Hands
Harrier
Legs
Harrier
Feet
Harrier
Backpiece
Magi
Accessory
Magi
Accessory
Magi
Amulet
Harrier
Ring
Harrier
Ring
Harrier
Dagger
Harrier
Warhorn
Harrier
Sigil
Sigil
Rune
x6
Infusion
x16
Infusion
x2
Relic


Equipment Variants

  • is the best option for players that don't own Secrets of the Obscure.
  • The gear above is designed to cap boon duration when using +70 concentration food.
  • and offer nearly identical healing. Water was chosen as it is cheaper and heals more frequently.


Consumables

Food

    • as a cheaper alternative


Utility


Usage

The basic rotation idea will be the same regardless of which mainhand weapon you're using, as your key skills are on your overloads, warhorn, and shouts, leaving mainhand weapon skills predominantly for damage.


Opener

Start in Fire Attunement Fire Attunement

  • Throw out any quick DPS skills such as and use in the fire field to blast some Might Might
  • to start stacking Might Might
  • Stay in Fire Attunement Fire Attunement until you hit 25 Might Might
  • to share the Might Might and Fury Fury with your squad


Swap to Water Attunement Water Attunement


Swap to Earth Attunement Earth Attunement

  • to apply Protection Protection and extend boons on everyone
  • and other DPS skills
  • Wait until is ready and use it


Main rotation

The core of your boon application is to use and whenever they are available (every 24 seconds, with Alacrity Alacrity), also using the overloads in these attunements. This means you want to switch to Fire Attunement Fire Attunement within ~3 seconds of it coming off cooldown, and repeat the opener. You should alternate between Water Attunement Water Attunement and one of the other attunements, using whichever healing skills are available whenever you return to water. It is important NOT to use as this will lock you out of Water Attunement Water Attunement for too long. Enter Air Attunement Air Attunement for , and you can try to squeeze in some extra DPS via or but it's not essential.


Be aware that your skills that generate Magnetic Aura - , , via , and while in Earth Attunement Earth Attunement - will cause you to reflect projectiles. This can be very useful, but can also lead to problems at encounters such as Matthias or Cairn if you are not careful when you use them.


Video example


Healing

  • Swapping to Water Attunement Water Attunement will trigger
  • and on warhorn
  • on dagger, plus you can use to blast the water field from for more


Your sustained healing will be lower when outside of Water Attunement Water Attunement, so you should use your other skills to maintain your group's health:

  • is your bread and butter emergency heal, as it doesn't require you to break from your rotation to use
  • is a substantial heal and partial revive that can target players up to 1200 away. This makes it by far your most reliable ranged heal and therefore it should probably be saved for when it's needed rather than using it on the stack
  • is a powerful conjure that will provide you with sustained from if Water Attunement Water Attunement. The splash healing only works if you hit a target, but it could be used to provide healing to the stack if you need to be at range
  • is an enormous heal on a very low cooldown for as long as your elemental is alive
  • If using , is an instant-cast blast finisher, and thanks to it having two charges, it can be provide a lot of burst healing if used in quick succession.


Healing tips

  • While not exactly a heal, can be much more effective by negating incoming damage that would otherwise down multiple people - good encounter knowledge will help you make the best use of this


Damage

Conveniently, just about the only skill that isn't a DPS increase or a heal is on dagger, so as long as you keep switching attunements at the correct time you can go pretty far by just mashing any skill that's off cooldown

You may also wish to avoid on sceptre, as the extra toughness might make you the tank on some encounters


Fresh Air rotations

If you're running , you can structure your rotation for a bit more damage by going from Earth Attunement Earth AttunementAir Attunement Air AttunementWater Attunement Water AttunementAir Attunement Air AttunementFire Attunement Fire Attunement after the opener staying in Air Attunement Air Attunement long enough to use each time. This is a minor reduction in boon generation that allows you to get two uses each of out , , and each loop.


Vulnerability

If your group has low Vulnerability Vulnerability, you can boost it significantly by taking and/or sceptre:

  • generates about 15 stacks
  • can generate 25 stacks even on a small target if aimed properly
  • 's short cooldown allows it to be used twice each time you switch to water, for an extra 10 stacks per loop


Crowd control

You don't have a huge amount of CC available, and what you do have is part of your rotation so you may need to delay some skills if there is a defiance bar coming up:

  • is a significant amount of CC, and can be pushed higher if you're able to build up two stacks of water arrow before using it
  • if your elemental is alive
  • on dagger

If you're running you can keep your air skills off cooldown and go about your rotation as normal, as this trait means you will always be able to switch to air as soon as a defiance bar appears.


Ratings

This build has a rating of 4 stars based on 2 votes.
Log in or register to rate this build.
5 stars
MechaOG gave this build 5 stars • August 2022
This build seems to be really good at many things. It has a lot of customizability to prepare yourself for all kinds of groups and encounters. If something doesn't work with one group, there is an alternative. With the August 23 patch, Aegis is also added to the kit with the change to Aftershock. This will take off the pressure from guardians and reduce the chances of messing up. Will be testing it further, and will update the rating accordingly.
3 stars
Centimane gave this build 3 stars • July 2022
Boon heal tempest's addition of alacrity at the expense of Elemental Bastion is a mixed bag. It now outputs similar enough boons to HAM or HB, but doesn't heal nearly as well as it used to while outside of water attunement. It also loses out on the (admittedly small) utility of auras because it doesn't bother sharing them. It also has a much harder time providing stability, can't provide aegis, and still has a hard time covering many of the mechanics healers traditionally handled. But in exchange is a large depth of options that come available to elementalists, 4 attunements worth of skills, valid weapon changes, a host of trait changes, lots of utility freedom that all allow you to tailor the build to the encounter. This build isn't for the feint of heart - to play it at a comparable level to HAM or HB is to know the class and encounters very well, and to be constantly tweaking your build. If you want a build that you can just copy and play this definitely isn't it - you should know every skill and trait (including the ones not taken in the build) very well and know when to apply them. In the right hands, this build is very strong. In the wrong hands this build doesn't contribute much.

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