Build:Tempest - Alacrity Support Healer

The community gave this build a rating, making it second-tier: Good

Focused on: Healing, Support and Utility

Designed for: Raids

Expansions required:

Difficulty:

Normal

This build was last updated on July 01, 2025 and is up to date for the June 24, 2025 patch.

Overview

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

The combination of Elemental Bastion and Powerful Aura allows tempest to provide healing and Alacrity in a 600-unit radius by spamming auras. This allows a lot of freedom in terms of weapons, traitlines and skills to suit different encounters, though a bit of care is required to ensure all boon are being properly covered.

Additionally, you have tools such as "Rebound!" which will allow you to skip certain mechanics that would otherwise down the group, and Arcane Resurrection allows you to help revive players without locking yourself into the animation.

Skill Bar

Dagger/Warhorn

Utility

Weapon Variants

• Staff has practically the same healing, but the lack of Warhorn creates a shortfall in boons that needs to be addressed. In return, Staff has greater ability to provide healing at range.
• Even if you have to be at range a lot, Dagger is the best mainhand option for Warhorn as it contains an aura, a leap finisher (for providing more auras), and an extra source of Fury.

Skill Variants

Utility
As you need to leave Water Attunement for boons, this can leave you without major sources of healing, so Signet of Water, Conjure Frost Bow and Glyph of Elementals (water) are there to fill in the gap. "Feel the Burn!" provides long-range Might to make up for the small AoE of Overload Fire. Any of these skills can be swapped out if desired:

• Glyph of Elemental Power (earth) in Earth Attunement will provide some barrier.
• If using Relic of Karakosa, Arcane Wave provides some extra on-demand healing (assuming there is a field to combo with), as well as some CC.
• Most utility shout skills provide an AoE aura, which trivialises maintaining permanent Alacrity, Regeneration and Vigor thanks to Invigorating Torrents, in addition to the other potent effects:
  • "Aftershock!" provides Aegis and a blast finisher for Relic of Karakosa.
  • "Eye of the Storm!" provides a group stunbreak as well as Superspeed which can be particularly useful on "event" encounters such as Spirit Woods or Siege Escort. It also offers some extra Stability, which may be useful during Overload Fire as you don't use Harmonious Conduit and being interrupted mid-cast will cause you to drop Alacrity. Note that this shout does not provide an aura.
  • "Flash-Freeze!" is a reliable way to access Frost Aura, which can be a potent defensive tool against attacks that cannot be blocked with "Aftershock!".

Elite
"Rebound!" provides Stability and a way to skip certain mechanics that would otherwise down the group.

Template Code

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Specializations

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 provides permanent Swiftness and extra Protection padding from Elemental Attunement. Arcane Resurrection is a nice bonus.

This said, Arcane is not essential, so it can be swapped to another traitline:

• Fire and Earth add a lot of potential condi cleanse via Smothering Auras and Diamond Skin, respectively. Fire provides more, and at double the range, but Earth has more synergy with the rest of a healer's kit.
• Air offers higher CC.

Earth

Earth makes Protection very easy by adding it to your auras, provides an extra source of Stability, and allows you to cleanse conditions with every blast finisher.

• If using a signet, Written in Stone provides an additional aura source.
• Rock Solid provides Stability, which can be problematic on encounters that corrupt boons. In this case take Earthen Blessing instead.

Fire

Fire also adds condition cleanse and additional sources of auras if using at least one conjured weapon. Pyromancer's Puissance can also be used to increase the AoE of your Might provision - particularly helpful for Staff, which relies on the small 180-unit AoE from Overload Fire. However, the AoE from this trait is only 240 units so the difference may not be noticable.

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

Staff
Harrier

Sigil

Sigil

Rune
x6

Infusion
x16

Infusion
x2

Relic

Equipment Variants

• Relic of the Monk 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.
• Sigil of Superior Sigil of Renewal and Sigil of Superior Sigil of Water offer nearly identical healing. Water was chosen as it is cheaper and heals more frequently.

Consumables

Food

• • as a cheaper alternative

Utility

Usage

In addition to Alacrity, Heal Tempest can provide permanent uptimes of Fury, Might, Protection, Regeneration, Swiftness and Vigor. The way you do so will change between weapons and what your third traitline is.

Auras you apply to allies provide Alacrity and healing, and Powerful Aura makes any aura applied to you also apply to allies within 600 units. A standard "loop" is around ~25 seconds, so you want to be providing at least four auras during this.

You can fit in two overloads, so Unstable Conduit is extremely valuable. This leaves Invigorating Torrents as your only way to apply permanent Vigor. It also gives Regeneration, so these two boons are easily covered.

With Warhorn, Might is trivial and you can reliably upkeep Fury thanks to Heat Sync. Most supports and some DPS will also provide Fury, but if you are literally the only source, you could pad your uptime with Convergence or Overload Air. An easier approach is just to bring "Feel the Burn!" as this also improves Might generation and provides an aura.

With Staff, your options for Might and Fury are much more limited. You must run "Feel the Burn!" to provide permanent Fury, and the easiest way to provide Might is with Overload Fire. Might could also be provided by taking the Fire traitline for Pyromancer's Puissance, but you'll need to attune to fire twice during the loop to reach 25 stacks (or attune once and Overload Fire, but then Overload Fire is already providing full Might).

For either weapon, Protection can be covered either by taking the Earth traitline for Elemental Shielding, taking the Arcane traitline and attuning to Earth Attunement twice during the loop, or using Overload Earth. If there are any gaps in your uptime, you can pad it with "Aftershock!".

Similarly, Swiftness can be covered either with the Arcane traitline, "Eye of the Storm!", or blasting an air field. The only air field Warhorn has access to is Overload Air, whilst staff also has Static Field.

Warhorn Opener

Start in Fire Attunement

1. Throw out any quick DPS skills such as Wildfire and use "Aftershock!" (if using) in the fire field to blast some Might
2. Overload Fire to start stacking Might
3. Heat Sync to share the Might and Fury with your squad

Swap to Air Attunement

1. Convergence to blast

Swap to Water Attunement

1. Frozen Burst to blast more Might
2. Tidal Surge
3. Cone of Cold and swap during the cast

Swap to Earth Attunement

1. Sand Squall to apply Protection and extend boons on everyone
2. Dust Storm and other DPS skills
3. Wait until Overload Earth is ready and use it

Warhorn rotation

The core of your boon application is to use Heat Sync and Sand Squall whenever they are available (every ~25 seconds with Alacrity, though the build has enough boon duration to extend each loop up to ~32s if the situation demands), also using the overloads in their respective attunements. This means you want to switch to Fire Attunement within ~3 seconds of it coming off cooldown, and repeat the Opener. You should alternate between Water Attunement, Air Attunement and one of the other attunements, using whichever healing skills are available whenever you return to water. It is important NOT to use Overload Water as this will lock you out of Water Attunement for too long. While in Air Attunement you can use Cyclone for extra Swiftness or CC.

The blast finisher from Convergence is slightly delayed, so it is possible to cast it then switch to Water and use Frozen Burst before the blast hits, getting two combos.

Be aware that your skills that generate Magnetic Aura - Sand Squall, "Aftershock!", Overload Earth via Unstable Conduit, and "Rebound!" while in 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

Staff Rotation

The main selling point of Staff is the amount of long-range healing it can provide while in Water Attunement, so it is worth camping this attunement for most of the loop. Overload Water does not quite provide enough Alacrity to make it permanent, so it is necessary to regularly swap to Fire Attunement for a second overload and Might.

As it also lacks the utility of Warhorn, "Feel the Burn!" is essential as you otherwise lack Fury, and your Might would be less reliable.

Be aware that the boon radius for Might on Overload Fire is only 180, so significant Might uptime will be lost if you're not stacked tightly on your group. This can be somewhat mitigated by bringing extra blast finishers and comboing with fire fields, or using Glyph of Lesser Elementals in Fire Attunement (or swapping to a Warhorn build).

Opener
Start in Fire Attunement

1. Overload Fire to start stacking Might
2. "Feel the Burn!"

Swap to Earth Attunement

1. Eruption for the blast finisher

Swap to Air Attunement

1. Windborne Speed for Swiftness

Swap to Water Attunement

1. Ice Spike quickly to squeeze in another blast finisher

Rest of the Rotation
While in Water Attunement you can autoattack and use Geyser for group healing. Ice Spike is a blast finisher on a low cooldown, and your skills 3-5 all provide combo fields, and Healing Rain provides AoE condi cleanse. Use Overload Water as soon as you can, but don't swap attunement immediately. A good rule of thumb is to use Ice Spike three times while you're in Water.

For extra healing you can use a combo field as one of your last skills in Water Attunement, swap to Earth Attunement for Eruption, then Fire Attunement. Alternatively, by casting Lava Font as soon as you switch to Fire Attunement then Eruption will combo this instead for AoE Might - this requires not having any lingering combo fields from Water Attunement.

None of the skills in fire are particularly useful, so just use Overload Fire as soon as you can and repeat the Opener.

Video example

Healing

• Swapping to Water Attunement will trigger Healing Ripple
• Tidal Surge and Water Globe on warhorn
• Cone of Cold on dagger, plus you can use Frozen Burst to blast the water field from Water Globe for more
• Water Blast and Geyser on staff.
• Any aura triggers Elemental Bastion
  • Every shout apart from "Eye of the Storm!"
  • All your overloads thanks to Unstable Conduit
  • Shocking Aura on Dagger
  • Sand Squall on Warhorn
  • Frozen Ground on Staff
  • Magnetic Aura on Staff
  • Blast finishers in ice fields, or leap finishers in dark, ethereal, fire, ice or light fields.

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

• "Wash the Pain Away!" is your bread and butter emergency heal, as it doesn't require you to break from your rotation to use
• Signet of Water 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
• Conjure Frost Bow is a powerful conjure that will provide you with sustained from Water Arrow if 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
• Crashing Waves is an enormous heal on a very low cooldown for as long as your elemental is alive
• If using Relic of Karakosa, Arcane Wave 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, "Rebound!" 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 every skill is a DPS increase or a heal, 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.

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

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

• Overload Air generates about 15 stacks
• Lightning Orb can generate 25 stacks even on a small target if aimed properly
• Shatterstone'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:

• Deep Freeze 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
• Crashing Waves if your elemental is alive
• Tidal Surge
• Cyclone
• Shocking Aura → Transmute Lightning on dagger

If you're running Fresh Air 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.