Hello, this is my first post here. I am currently on my second play through and I decided to come up with my own tempest build after having look through most of the other DW tempest build here. Mine is by no means the best or most efficient but I can safely say mine is by far the most different in the way a rogue is meant to be played.
How you might ask. This build does not depend on stealth or abusing flanking/positioning. All you got to do is run in and unleash the damage.
Disclaimer: This build is purely "for fun" and I have not tried to run it on nightmare mode. I love theory crafting and decide to just test it out on a normal gameplay and so far it's looking great.
Skills on the Hot bar
The problem with Tempest is that half the hot bar is filled with 3 flasks and Thousand Cuts. That only leaves you with 4 more slots for your active skills. Explanations for combos at the bottom
1) Flask of Frost
2) Flask of Lightning
3) Flask of Fire
4) Twin Fangs
5) Deathblow
6) Throwing Blades
7) Thousand Cuts
8) Flank Attack
Important Passives
1) Looked like it hurt
2) Cheap shot
3) Ride the storm
4) All Upgrades for all flasks (Unquenchable Flames, Bitter Chill, Quicksilver)
The rest of the passives include maxing out all the Tempest tree, Dance of death, Sneak Attack, Evasion and Ambush but the top 4 are the most important.
Explanations
The skill rotations rely on utilising the 3 flasks with "Ride the Storm". This is the basis of all Tempest builds. Most Tempest build i see lacks burst damage but then again a rogue's skill set is limited only by its stamina so having those 4 skills apart from the flask skills are more than adequate to fully utilise your entire stamina bar.
Normally, I will rush in and just before making contact i will use "Flask of Frost". Immediately detonate frozen enemies with twin fang and deathblow. You have 2 detonators to make short work of 2 enemies (trash mobs) or a kill 1 stronger mob like those pesky two-handed/shield mobs. 5 seconds for the first Frost of Flask is more than enough time to pull off 2 detonators.
Next, follow up with "Flask of Lightning" and a "Flank Attack" or just run if there's not enough stamina. Take this time to score crits with "Sneak Attack" to fill up on your stamina. This is the only time in the entire rotation that requires positioning.
Lastly, do "Flask of Fire" and you have 2 options to go from here. If there are a bunch of enemies or if the boss has HP >50%, spam "Throwing Blades". Due to the animation, "Throwing Blades" is by far the best skill in a rogue's arsenal to complement "Flask of Fire". I've tried "Spinning Blades" but it is extremely lacklustre. If your daggers have masterworks then this combo is also effective on shield wielding enemies. I've got chain lightning and immolate on each daggers and am having tons of fun just demolishing groups of enemies. For this AoE, you don't even need most to be tightly grouped, they just need to be close enough for the chain lightning to jump around.
Alternatively, if the enemies or the boss (i.e.. Dragons) have 50% HP, then abuse "Deathblow" with "Flask of Fire". Even without Dragon-slaying runes, I am doing 10k per hit on "Deathblow" for a total of 20k. A "Flask of Fire" allows you to spam it 5 times for 100k damage but generally you don't need that much before a dragon is dead especially when you start the combo at 50% HP. You do not need positioning when abusing "Deathblow". (Maybe because I was hitting the Dragon's legs and it's considered flanking, I don't know, but I always avoid the head of the dragon anyway)
On trash mobs, the build generally do not require any emphasis on the rotations making it a lot easier to play with. Feel free to open up with "Flask of Fire" and 2x "Throwing Blades" and 2x "Deathblow" or fall back to the most reliable Flank Attack->Twin Fangs-> Deathblow.
Notes on Stats
I try to maintain at least 50% Critical Chance to reliably proc "Look like it hurt" and "Cheap shot". It is not good to rely on "Sneak Attack" for critical chance because you won't be flanking for half of the skill rotations. The rest goes into critical damage. I ignore any accessories that gives armor penetration because the enemies are always sundered already.
Gears
The only thing I want to talk about are the fade-touched masterworks. I use snoufleur for armor (heals 1% on hit). This effectively converts my thousand cuts to a panic button when I mess up my rotations and take a heavy beating on boss fights. "Flask of Fire" and "Throwing Blades" also does the same thing. With "Look like it hurt" it also recovers stamina.
As for weapons, I switched out to Hidden Blades Masterworks at higher levels. More hits are always better for recovering hp and stamina.
Endnotes
I am by no means a rogue expert but I've experimented a few with all the specialisation. Some advantage of my build is that I have "Flask of Frost", "Flask of Lightning" and Flank Attack, 3 skills to escape trouble when you mess up a rotation. This adds heavily to my survivability without ever relying on stealth.
I tend to avoid "Shadow Strike" because for some weird reason it hardly connects dealing no damage. It also relies on not taking taking damage which is counter-productive due to "Flask of Frost" and depends on stealth.
All in all, you just need to reliably dish out criticals to recover stamina, sunder enemies and burst enemies down.
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