Heal Alacrity Tempest

July 2023

Heal Alacrity Tempest provides high amounts of sustained healing and permanent Protection, Regeneration, Vigor, Swiftness, Alacrity, and 25 stacks of Might. This build also has access to many useful utilities, including boon extension (thanks to Sand Squall), ample condition cleanses, projectile reflection, and a counter to one-shot attacks ("Rebound!").

Build Fundamentals

The core gameplay of this build involves rotating between Fire Attunement and Earth Attunement to cast Overload Fire and Overload Earth respectively, while quickly passing through Water Attunement and Air Attunement to use healing and utility as needed.

While casting the Core Loop, use "Flash-Freeze!" and "Aftershock!" off-cooldown. Save "Aftershock!" if you need to provide projectile reflection with Magnetic Aura or "Flash-Freeze!" to mitigate incoming spike damage with Frost Aura.

Tempest also has on-demand Stability from "Eye of the Storm!" and Aegis from "Aftershock!". (Note that you will typically use "Aftershock!" off-cooldown to upkeep Protection. As such, you may need to delay "Aftershock!" based on the encounter to use Aegis effectively.)

Using all of these abilities provides permanent Might, Protection, Swiftness, Regeneration, Vigor, and Alacrity to your team, while also extending all boons on your party by about 10%! If there is even a single source of partial Fury in your group, you’ll also more or less guarantee 100% Fury uptime.
Note: If there is no source of Fury in your party, use the Air traitline as described at the bottom of this page for Fury.

Adapt this Core Loop with the abilities you need depending on the situation.

Important Interactions And Ability Usage

Your main sources of sustained healing are Regeneration and Soothing Mist, which combine to heal your group for ~1000 HP per second! Simply entering Water Attunement provides a lot of your healing: Soothing Mist will be applied to your allies, while Cleansing Wave will remove one condition from five targets. As such, rotating through Attunements and weaving in Water Attunement will greatly benefit your healing output and condition cleanse.

"Wash the Pain Away!" is a powerful burst heal that also doubles as a condition cleanse. Other sources of raw healing include Water Attunement weapon skills such as Cone of Cold, Tidal Surge, and Water Globe. Water Globe is also a water field; utilize blast finishers with this to generate even more healing. Here’s an example of an excellent combo:

1. Water Globe into Frozen Burst
2. Earth Attunement
3. Sand Squall
4. Dodge in the globe to activate Evasive Arcana which will cast Shock Wave for a total of 3 blast finishers amounting to over 7000 area healing!

Save "Rebound!" to counter incoming burst damage that could cause people to go into a downed state. Knowledge of the encounter comes in handy here.

Delay Heat Sync after Overload Fire to share Might to allies too far away to get Might from Overload Fire.

Use Overload Water as your emergency heal and condition cleanse. Remember that after using this pulsing heal, you will not be able to re-enter Water Attunement for a while. This means you may want to delay leaving Water Attunement after using Overload Water. Otherwise, you may lock yourself out of key healing abilities for an extended period of time.

Vigor and Latent Stamina

Tempest has an important special interaction with Vigor; Latent Stamina causes applying Vigor to also restore 10 endurance (1/5 of a dodge roll) in addition to its normal effects. Combined with Invigorating Torrents, this means all auras will restore endurance. As a result, casting "Feel the Burn!", "Flash-Freeze!", and "Aftershock!" more or less off cooldown supplies extra endurance and Dodges to yourself and your team.

Water Attunement also applies Vigor to nearby allies, further increasing the importance of rotating attunements quickly and efficiently!

Latent Stamina has a built-in synergy with Evasive Arcana: when you are about to apply a lot of Vigor dodging immediately restores your endurance through vigor applications, essentially giving you a ‘free’ dodge and activating Evasive Arcana at the same time. Doing this will prevent you from ‘wasting’ the endurance gained from Latent Stamina.

Evasive Arcana

Evasive Arcana is an incredible trait that causes your Dodge in each Attunement to have a special effect:

• Fire Attunement: Flame Burst Area Burning.
• Water Attunement: Cleansing Wave Area heal and condition cleanse.
• Air Attunement: Blinding Flash Area Blinded.
• Earth Attunement: Shock Wave Area Bleeding, Crippled, and Blast Finisher.

Each of these abilities has its own separate 10-second internal cooldown. As such, they will almost certainly be available in each Attunement on your next Dodge. The two most notable skills are Cleansing Wave (burst heal and condition cleanse) and Shock Wave (Blast Finisher great for blasting water fields). Careful usage of these extra abilities can greatly improve your ability to sustain your team.

Blinding Flash does get a special mention as it can be used to blind enemies to mitigate incoming damage.

Alternatives

Utility Skills

You can swap out "Flash-Freeze!" for:

• Conjure Frost Bow If you need additional crowd control or even more healing.
• Glyph of Renewal For long-range revival with a variety of bonus effects!
• Signet of Water For long-range area heal.
• Lightning Flash For instant self-mobility.

If you need more than one specialized utility skill the order of replacement is as follows:

1. "Flash-Freeze!"
2. "Eye of the Storm!" (situational depending on if you need a stun-break/stability)
3. "Aftershock!" (situational depending on if you need projectile-reflect uptime)

Using Glyph of Elementals in Water Attunement will grant access to Crashing Waves which is a colossal area heal on a short cooldown. If you don’t need the utility of "Rebound!" then taking this will provide a significant increase in burst healing potential. However, the elemental can be a bit unwieldy to position correctly.

Gear

The gear specified here is a mixture of Harrier’s and Magi’s gear which provides massive healing, boon duration, and decent survivability.

Celestial gear is an excellent alternative that makes you extremely durable, deals a bit of free damage, and gets more value out of powerful condition applications such as Immobilize and Vulnerability. However, this may also result in you tanking in some encounters (not an issue in Strike Missions). This is typically not problematic, as Tempest is more than capable of functioning as a tank. Still, if you don’t want to tank then just stick with the Harrier’s/Magi’s setup.

Weapons

Scepter is a good alternative to Dagger if you prefer a more ranged playstyle and it also has a large amount of Blast Finisher potential from Dragon's Tooth and Phoenix for more healing or Might if required.

Staff is a playable option for extreme ranged healing and greater revive power. However, Might generation will be somewhat reduced and boon extension from Sand Squall will also be lost, which is less than ideal.

Traits

This build doesn’t apply Fury on its own, and instead copies and extends existing Fury. This is usually covered by other players in your group, but if it isn’t then replace Arcane with the Air trait line and take Zephyr's Boon, Raging Storm, and Fresh Air. This will provide a huge amount of Fury for your group! If you need more break bar damage take Stormsoul instead of Raging Storm.

If there is a significant amount of Burning or Chilled in an encounter, then Stop, Drop, and Roll will help massively, causing your dodge rolls to remove Burning and Chilled on a 10-second cooldown.