Post by Kieran on Mar 24, 2011 21:04:23 GMT -5
Introduction:
From my experience, the Tempest is much like the Inferno in that he's a glass cannon - excelling at offense but not very good at defense. The Tempest has a wide variety of heavy-hitting powers and a few hold powers, but he is inherently focused on damage over crowd-control due to his Role. As an Avenger, the Tempest's ranged damage is boosted by 20%, but his hold powers are reduced by 20%. To top it off, the Tempest's rooting powers are of average strength to begin with, so this 20% reduction really makes the Tempest only good for dishing out damage. But hey, the Tempest really shines in this regard, so if you're looking for a class that is centered around the idea that a good offense equates to a good defense, then this Archetype might be what you've been looking for.
Generic Preface:
All of my builds are meant to be equally playable in both PVE and PVP. Because of this, if you're a PVE-only kind of guy, feel free to remove the PVP advantages (mainly Nailed to the Ground and Crippling Challenge) and replace with the next Rank up - or allocate the advantage points somewhere completely different, as it's ultimately up to you. I would like to say though that even though my builds can do PVP, they also built to perform great in PVE, so it isn't like you're losing anything by having that PVP aspect to the build.
Powers:
Level 1: Electric Bolt (Ionic Infusion, Lightning Overload)
Level 1: Lightning Arc (R2, Crippling Challenge)
Level 6: Teleport (R2, R3)
Level 6: Sparkstorm (R2, Electric Personality)
Level 8: Electric Form (R2, R3)
Level 11: Thunderstrike
Level 14: Electric Shield (R2)
Level 17: Ball Lightning (R2, Triplicity)
Level 22: Ionic Reverberation (N/A)
Level 27: Electric Sheath (R2, Matter – Energy Union)
Level 32: Lightning Storm (Stolen Thunder, Nailed to the Ground) or Invocation of Storm Calling (R2, R3)
Level 35: Whatever travel power humps your camel.
Level 40: Gigabolt (R2, R3)
Talents:
Endurance/Recovery
Recovery/Intelligence
Endurance/Intelligence
Recovery/Constitution
Endurance/Constitution
Ingelligence/Constitution
Power Explanations:
Electric Bolt: Unlike the Energy Builders contained within other Archetypes, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that there are some hidden synergies hidden within this power. Ionic Infusion allows you to have a 20% chance with each "tick" of this power (while also increasing the change of your first, two-handed blast) to apply negative ions to your target. This debuff causes other electrical attacks to arc to secondary targets, which is an indirect method of causing AOE damage. Moreover, Lightning Overload grants a 20% chance for each “tick” of this power to jump to a secondary target. Now, you may be thinking that both of these supply minimal benefits, since they’re applying to an Energy Builder instead of to a damaging power. HOWEVER, the benefits to these advantages come into play when you take Ionic Reverberation (gained at level 22) into play. Ionic Reverberation gives you energy whenever one of your electrical powers arcs to a target affected by negative ions. With Ionic Infusion giving you a 20% chance to apply negative ions, and Lightning Overload granting a 20% chance to jump, this, coupled with Ionic Reverberation, considerably increases the amount of energy you receive whenever you use Electric Bolt. And the more energy you receive from your Energy Builder, the more time you can spend on simply spamming your damaging powers, which, in turn, equates to more damage dished out overall.
Lightning Arc: This is gonna be one of your bread-and-butter powers, at least until you receive Gigabolt at level 40. As a maintain power that also periodically arcs to other targets, your damage is going to be pretty good while using this power. Additionally, combined with other powers in the Tempest’s arsenal, your damage with this power can become quite outstanding. There is a little bit of a hitch-up on whether to choose R3 or Crippling Challenge, however. R3 will increase your damage even more, which can be fantastic reducing the length of engagements can be lifesaving at times. However, without Crippling Challenge, you’ll truly be… well, crippled (ha!) in PVP, as you won’t be able to punch through your opponents’ blocks. Because of this, there are a few ways you can go about this. If you’re a PVE-only type of guy, I’d recommend just going with R3, as that’ll serve you the best in tough situations. If you’re a PVP-only kind of person, Crippling Challenge is definitely a must. However, if you’re aiming for both PVE and PVP, I’d recommend going with Crippling Challenge as well. So long as you remember that you’d be best off not using Lightning Arc when in a group, you should be fine. Going along with a PVP and PVE focus, your final option would be to grab R3 and level up with that, then later retcon and rank up Lightning Arc last. This would allow you to be able to retcon at any time for a low cost and switch between R3 and Crippling Challenge as necessary.
Teleport: I highly recommend this power over any other travel power because it allows you to get out of dangerous situations very quickly and painlessly. Say you’re surrounded and being pummeled to death by a number of baddies – all you gotta do is pop into teleport, launch straight up, and keep going until you lose aggro. If you’re in a building, just use teleport to retreat the way you came until you’re in the clear. Additionally, teleport allows you to skip the hordes of hallway baddies that are a pain in the rear. As it is, I had enough advantage points to be able to recommend ranking this up to R3, so you’re gonna be easily whizzing by your friends at level 40!
Sparkstorm: This power is fantastic. With Electric Personality, all you need to do is tap it in order to shroud yourself in crackling death. In addition to the local outright AOE, this power has a chance to arc to other targets nearby, which just increases the total DPS this power causes. Because of this, I cannot recommend R2 enough.
Electric Form: This power passively augments your damage, your equilibrium, and your damage resistances, so Rank 3 is extremely invaluable.
Thunderstrike: While this power might seem awesome at first glance, its usefulness is greatly diminished when one takes the 15 second recharge time into consideration. Because of this, I don’t really recommend upgrading this power at all – it’s still useful as a nice alpha strike to do some damage and spread negative ions, but beyond that, it’s not worth the investment cost.
Electric Shield: This is a pretty nice blocking power. On top of shielding you, it also does electrical damage to foes within melee range, which, while ultimately not very much, provides a nice, albeit minor, damage boost on the side. I’ve recommended leveling this power up to R2, but if you want to truly be a min/maxer, you can ditch all ranks of Teleport in favor for R3. However, R2 is fine for almost all situations – you’ll almost never need R3 for this.
Ball Lightning: This power is awesome – with the Triplicity advantage, it creates three non-targetable pets that dish out nice damage every second. At the end of this power’s duration (10 seconds), with Triplicity, two of the lightning balls will dissipate, but one of them will explode, doing great AOE damage. As a result, R2 is also recommended. The reason why I suggest Ball Lightning over Electrocute is because, as I explained in the beginning, the Tempest is assigned to an Avenger Role. Because of this, all hold powers are reduced by 20% in strength – which inherently makes the Tempest not a crowd-controlling Archetype. Moreover, Electrocute is an average-to-mediocre hold power, so it really (IMHO) isn’t worth having over Ball Lightning.
Ionic Reverberation: This phenomenal passive power is going to be your source of energy, as it gives you energy every time one of your electrical attacks arcs to a target with negative ions on it. Unfortunately, you can’t rank it up, but you should look forward to it nevertheless.
Electric Sheath: This power is a nice 15 second (with R2) self-buff that increases your damage by 50%, your equilibrium by 15%, and gives you energy whenever you are damaged. The reason I recommend ranking this power up to R2 instead of R3 is because while, Matter – Energy Union, doesn’t seem that great at first glance, it ultimately provides a 2000-3000 HP shield, which can give you the edge in a tough fight.
Lightning Storm or Invocation of Storm Calling: This is where this build will differentiate itself depending on your playstyle. On one hand, Lightning Storm is a great damaging power. It does nice AOE damage, and with Stolen Thunder, you have a 100% chance to knock your targets down with your first strike and a 15% chance with subsequent strikes. Because of this, you can tap this power in order to make good use of the knockdown Stolen Thunder provides. Moreover, from a PVP perspective, the Nailed to the Ground advantage with Lightning Storm is absolutely essential, so if you’re going for a mixed PVE/PVP focus, then this might be the power you want to take. On the other hand, Invocation of Storm Calling is nice because the Tempest already has a large number of AOE DPS powers. As it can be tapped to swiftly and consistently apply a nice debuff that makes it easier to take down bosses, it provides less overlap with the Tempest’s other powers and can complement the Tempest’s damaging powers as well. From a mixed PVP and a PVE/PVP viewpoint, I would recommend grabbing Lightning Storm, as it will not only help with your leveling, but it is also very much needed for PVP. However, if you’re going purely for PVE, then Invocation of Storm Calling is gonna be the power that I suggest for you, as it will provide less redundancy and greater synergy in the long run.
Gigabolt: Ah yes, sweet, sweet Gigabolt. This power is amazing – and quite frankly, it’s the signature move of the Electricity Framework. With no recharge time and one heck of a punch, this power is very much worth getting to level 40 for. One thing to note is that I advocate obtaining Rank 3 over Death Arc because the latter isn’t that great. First of all, it only applies to the target when you deal a death blow, and with all of your other AOEs (such as Ball Lightning with Triplicity and Sparkstorm with Electric Personality), there is a great chance something else will deal the final blow before Gigabolt can. When working with other players in a team, the chance if Gigabolt killing the target is even more reduced, and in PVP, this chance decreases even more (due to the sheer amount of players). In addition, I’ve been told that Death Arc is broken, so this means that it’s not even functioning correctly ATM. Not that this won’t be remedied in future patches, but for all these reasons, I strongly advocate grabbing Rank 3 over Death Arc.
Talent Explanations:
As for the Talents: Endurance grants you more energy and increases the amount of energy you gain from your Energy Builder, Intelligence reduces the cooldown and energy cost of your powers, Recovery increases your equilibrium and the energy you gain from your Energy Builder, and Constitution gives you more health and allows you to last a bit longer in tougher fights.
I recommend getting the Talents listed because by choosing +5s for +8s essentially gives you two extra Talent points than you would get by sticking with +8s (10 compared to 8). Additionally, there is a complex system of Diminishing Returns for most Characteristics once you get beyond 200-220, so over-leveling your stats can have marginal results later on while balancing them out guarantees that you have good, high level stats in multiple Characteristics.
Extra Note:
For those who like to go fast, look no further because, due to the way things turned out, Rank 3 Teleport has been advocated for the first time in any of my guides - allow you to move as fast as Sonic Unleashed - PUN INTENDED!!!
Extra Note #2:
I would like to quote GammaBreaker on the subject of Crippling Challenge's side effect: "Crippling Challenge, while an essential block-breaker in PVP, is also a *taunt* in PVE. It will make whatever you're shooting come over and sock you in the chops. Even if it's a cosmic boss being tanked by a Behemoth."
So please be aware of this when you use a power with Crippling Challenge. And again, ultimately, if you don't like this or don't want to do PVP, feel free to remove it and spend the advantage points elsewhere. But do know that Crippling Challenge is almost required to play PVP, as it is a powerful debuff and it breaks through blocks.
It's really your call, though.
Conclusion:
Well, that’s all for now – if you have any input or advice for improving this guide, please feel free to let me know! Also, if you have any questions, please feel free to ask me either by PM or in-game! And if I have errors anywhere in my guide, please let me know and I’ll fix them as soon as possible!
From my experience, the Tempest is much like the Inferno in that he's a glass cannon - excelling at offense but not very good at defense. The Tempest has a wide variety of heavy-hitting powers and a few hold powers, but he is inherently focused on damage over crowd-control due to his Role. As an Avenger, the Tempest's ranged damage is boosted by 20%, but his hold powers are reduced by 20%. To top it off, the Tempest's rooting powers are of average strength to begin with, so this 20% reduction really makes the Tempest only good for dishing out damage. But hey, the Tempest really shines in this regard, so if you're looking for a class that is centered around the idea that a good offense equates to a good defense, then this Archetype might be what you've been looking for.
Generic Preface:
All of my builds are meant to be equally playable in both PVE and PVP. Because of this, if you're a PVE-only kind of guy, feel free to remove the PVP advantages (mainly Nailed to the Ground and Crippling Challenge) and replace with the next Rank up - or allocate the advantage points somewhere completely different, as it's ultimately up to you. I would like to say though that even though my builds can do PVP, they also built to perform great in PVE, so it isn't like you're losing anything by having that PVP aspect to the build.
Powers:
Level 1: Electric Bolt (Ionic Infusion, Lightning Overload)
Level 1: Lightning Arc (R2, Crippling Challenge)
Level 6: Teleport (R2, R3)
Level 6: Sparkstorm (R2, Electric Personality)
Level 8: Electric Form (R2, R3)
Level 11: Thunderstrike
Level 14: Electric Shield (R2)
Level 17: Ball Lightning (R2, Triplicity)
Level 22: Ionic Reverberation (N/A)
Level 27: Electric Sheath (R2, Matter – Energy Union)
Level 32: Lightning Storm (Stolen Thunder, Nailed to the Ground) or Invocation of Storm Calling (R2, R3)
Level 35: Whatever travel power humps your camel.
Level 40: Gigabolt (R2, R3)
Talents:
Endurance/Recovery
Recovery/Intelligence
Endurance/Intelligence
Recovery/Constitution
Endurance/Constitution
Ingelligence/Constitution
Power Explanations:
Electric Bolt: Unlike the Energy Builders contained within other Archetypes, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that there are some hidden synergies hidden within this power. Ionic Infusion allows you to have a 20% chance with each "tick" of this power (while also increasing the change of your first, two-handed blast) to apply negative ions to your target. This debuff causes other electrical attacks to arc to secondary targets, which is an indirect method of causing AOE damage. Moreover, Lightning Overload grants a 20% chance for each “tick” of this power to jump to a secondary target. Now, you may be thinking that both of these supply minimal benefits, since they’re applying to an Energy Builder instead of to a damaging power. HOWEVER, the benefits to these advantages come into play when you take Ionic Reverberation (gained at level 22) into play. Ionic Reverberation gives you energy whenever one of your electrical powers arcs to a target affected by negative ions. With Ionic Infusion giving you a 20% chance to apply negative ions, and Lightning Overload granting a 20% chance to jump, this, coupled with Ionic Reverberation, considerably increases the amount of energy you receive whenever you use Electric Bolt. And the more energy you receive from your Energy Builder, the more time you can spend on simply spamming your damaging powers, which, in turn, equates to more damage dished out overall.
Lightning Arc: This is gonna be one of your bread-and-butter powers, at least until you receive Gigabolt at level 40. As a maintain power that also periodically arcs to other targets, your damage is going to be pretty good while using this power. Additionally, combined with other powers in the Tempest’s arsenal, your damage with this power can become quite outstanding. There is a little bit of a hitch-up on whether to choose R3 or Crippling Challenge, however. R3 will increase your damage even more, which can be fantastic reducing the length of engagements can be lifesaving at times. However, without Crippling Challenge, you’ll truly be… well, crippled (ha!) in PVP, as you won’t be able to punch through your opponents’ blocks. Because of this, there are a few ways you can go about this. If you’re a PVE-only type of guy, I’d recommend just going with R3, as that’ll serve you the best in tough situations. If you’re a PVP-only kind of person, Crippling Challenge is definitely a must. However, if you’re aiming for both PVE and PVP, I’d recommend going with Crippling Challenge as well. So long as you remember that you’d be best off not using Lightning Arc when in a group, you should be fine. Going along with a PVP and PVE focus, your final option would be to grab R3 and level up with that, then later retcon and rank up Lightning Arc last. This would allow you to be able to retcon at any time for a low cost and switch between R3 and Crippling Challenge as necessary.
Teleport: I highly recommend this power over any other travel power because it allows you to get out of dangerous situations very quickly and painlessly. Say you’re surrounded and being pummeled to death by a number of baddies – all you gotta do is pop into teleport, launch straight up, and keep going until you lose aggro. If you’re in a building, just use teleport to retreat the way you came until you’re in the clear. Additionally, teleport allows you to skip the hordes of hallway baddies that are a pain in the rear. As it is, I had enough advantage points to be able to recommend ranking this up to R3, so you’re gonna be easily whizzing by your friends at level 40!
Sparkstorm: This power is fantastic. With Electric Personality, all you need to do is tap it in order to shroud yourself in crackling death. In addition to the local outright AOE, this power has a chance to arc to other targets nearby, which just increases the total DPS this power causes. Because of this, I cannot recommend R2 enough.
Electric Form: This power passively augments your damage, your equilibrium, and your damage resistances, so Rank 3 is extremely invaluable.
Thunderstrike: While this power might seem awesome at first glance, its usefulness is greatly diminished when one takes the 15 second recharge time into consideration. Because of this, I don’t really recommend upgrading this power at all – it’s still useful as a nice alpha strike to do some damage and spread negative ions, but beyond that, it’s not worth the investment cost.
Electric Shield: This is a pretty nice blocking power. On top of shielding you, it also does electrical damage to foes within melee range, which, while ultimately not very much, provides a nice, albeit minor, damage boost on the side. I’ve recommended leveling this power up to R2, but if you want to truly be a min/maxer, you can ditch all ranks of Teleport in favor for R3. However, R2 is fine for almost all situations – you’ll almost never need R3 for this.
Ball Lightning: This power is awesome – with the Triplicity advantage, it creates three non-targetable pets that dish out nice damage every second. At the end of this power’s duration (10 seconds), with Triplicity, two of the lightning balls will dissipate, but one of them will explode, doing great AOE damage. As a result, R2 is also recommended. The reason why I suggest Ball Lightning over Electrocute is because, as I explained in the beginning, the Tempest is assigned to an Avenger Role. Because of this, all hold powers are reduced by 20% in strength – which inherently makes the Tempest not a crowd-controlling Archetype. Moreover, Electrocute is an average-to-mediocre hold power, so it really (IMHO) isn’t worth having over Ball Lightning.
Ionic Reverberation: This phenomenal passive power is going to be your source of energy, as it gives you energy every time one of your electrical attacks arcs to a target with negative ions on it. Unfortunately, you can’t rank it up, but you should look forward to it nevertheless.
Electric Sheath: This power is a nice 15 second (with R2) self-buff that increases your damage by 50%, your equilibrium by 15%, and gives you energy whenever you are damaged. The reason I recommend ranking this power up to R2 instead of R3 is because while, Matter – Energy Union, doesn’t seem that great at first glance, it ultimately provides a 2000-3000 HP shield, which can give you the edge in a tough fight.
Lightning Storm or Invocation of Storm Calling: This is where this build will differentiate itself depending on your playstyle. On one hand, Lightning Storm is a great damaging power. It does nice AOE damage, and with Stolen Thunder, you have a 100% chance to knock your targets down with your first strike and a 15% chance with subsequent strikes. Because of this, you can tap this power in order to make good use of the knockdown Stolen Thunder provides. Moreover, from a PVP perspective, the Nailed to the Ground advantage with Lightning Storm is absolutely essential, so if you’re going for a mixed PVE/PVP focus, then this might be the power you want to take. On the other hand, Invocation of Storm Calling is nice because the Tempest already has a large number of AOE DPS powers. As it can be tapped to swiftly and consistently apply a nice debuff that makes it easier to take down bosses, it provides less overlap with the Tempest’s other powers and can complement the Tempest’s damaging powers as well. From a mixed PVP and a PVE/PVP viewpoint, I would recommend grabbing Lightning Storm, as it will not only help with your leveling, but it is also very much needed for PVP. However, if you’re going purely for PVE, then Invocation of Storm Calling is gonna be the power that I suggest for you, as it will provide less redundancy and greater synergy in the long run.
Gigabolt: Ah yes, sweet, sweet Gigabolt. This power is amazing – and quite frankly, it’s the signature move of the Electricity Framework. With no recharge time and one heck of a punch, this power is very much worth getting to level 40 for. One thing to note is that I advocate obtaining Rank 3 over Death Arc because the latter isn’t that great. First of all, it only applies to the target when you deal a death blow, and with all of your other AOEs (such as Ball Lightning with Triplicity and Sparkstorm with Electric Personality), there is a great chance something else will deal the final blow before Gigabolt can. When working with other players in a team, the chance if Gigabolt killing the target is even more reduced, and in PVP, this chance decreases even more (due to the sheer amount of players). In addition, I’ve been told that Death Arc is broken, so this means that it’s not even functioning correctly ATM. Not that this won’t be remedied in future patches, but for all these reasons, I strongly advocate grabbing Rank 3 over Death Arc.
Talent Explanations:
As for the Talents: Endurance grants you more energy and increases the amount of energy you gain from your Energy Builder, Intelligence reduces the cooldown and energy cost of your powers, Recovery increases your equilibrium and the energy you gain from your Energy Builder, and Constitution gives you more health and allows you to last a bit longer in tougher fights.
I recommend getting the Talents listed because by choosing +5s for +8s essentially gives you two extra Talent points than you would get by sticking with +8s (10 compared to 8). Additionally, there is a complex system of Diminishing Returns for most Characteristics once you get beyond 200-220, so over-leveling your stats can have marginal results later on while balancing them out guarantees that you have good, high level stats in multiple Characteristics.
Extra Note:
For those who like to go fast, look no further because, due to the way things turned out, Rank 3 Teleport has been advocated for the first time in any of my guides - allow you to move as fast as Sonic Unleashed - PUN INTENDED!!!
Extra Note #2:
I would like to quote GammaBreaker on the subject of Crippling Challenge's side effect: "Crippling Challenge, while an essential block-breaker in PVP, is also a *taunt* in PVE. It will make whatever you're shooting come over and sock you in the chops. Even if it's a cosmic boss being tanked by a Behemoth."
So please be aware of this when you use a power with Crippling Challenge. And again, ultimately, if you don't like this or don't want to do PVP, feel free to remove it and spend the advantage points elsewhere. But do know that Crippling Challenge is almost required to play PVP, as it is a powerful debuff and it breaks through blocks.
It's really your call, though.
Conclusion:
Well, that’s all for now – if you have any input or advice for improving this guide, please feel free to let me know! Also, if you have any questions, please feel free to ask me either by PM or in-game! And if I have errors anywhere in my guide, please let me know and I’ll fix them as soon as possible!
