Hey guys, another concept I came up with for a few days now, I refrained from creating traits as I’m not good with them… Hope you guys like it!
General idea: The conjurer is my vision for a solid, decent specialisation which focuses on supporting elementals and creating fun and interesting magic with them. The main goal is to shift power from the elementalist to their elementals, and while this would mean focusing on IA, there are shadowstepping skills that take place centered on the conjurer, as well as a flagging system, so they feel more control over their elementals. The main goal mechanic-wise is to hinder the opponent through control, conditions, and spikes of burning/bleeding at a significant cost.
Warning: All skill coefficients are subject to change and are not intended to promote powercreep or unbalanced gameplay. These numbers are intended to be used as parameters for skills’ effectivenesses and should be tweaked to properly reflect GW2 combat system, so please take them with a [Vial of Salt].
Most AoE weapon skills are limited to three, while most elemental AoE skills are standard 5 targets.
Introduction
“I stand along my creation.”
Conjurers are elementalists who specialize in manifesting their power by creating magic elementals; this power is drawn from within, from concentration, and as such they choose not to directly damage their foes, but support their elementals with hindering and offensive spells.
Specialisation Mechanic
Conjurers — as the name implies — can manifest elementals specialized in a specific element. In order to do so, conjurers will have to fill up 3-5 Concentration Orbs by either damaging foes or applying boons to allies. Dealing damage fills 1/3 of each orb, and applying boons fills 1/2. The elemental’s damage/support abilities don’t change directly based on “lit” orbs, but at stages 4-5 their duration increases and they may gain benefic boons based on traits. Swapping attunements reset the lit orbs to zero as a way not to clutter the UI and maintain more predictable results in gameplay.
Once conjured, the elementals will last for as long as the lit orbs allow: 3 orbs (base) equals 30 seconds, increasing by 15 seconds for each additional orb. This means the elemental could live up to 1 minute, starting their invocation cooldown as the elemental dies. Summoning an elemental requires the aforementioned orbs, and a 20-second cooldown.
Orbs will disappear after summoning an elemental but the number of orbs consumed to summon it will be used to define an elemental’s rank as follows:
- 3 Orbs (base): Rank 1
- 4 Orbs: Rank 2
- 5 Orbs (Max.): Rank 3
Rank can be used to various mechanics as well as the new utility skill type.
It is possible to freely move between attunements while a certain elemental is up, but this will have the penalty of decreasing their duration by 10 seconds everytime you swap to a different attunement than the attunement related to that elemental. For example, the Air Elemental lasts for 60 seconds, if you move to fire it decreases current duration by 10 seconds; if you move back to air it won’t cause a penalty but if you move to different attunements, each one will decrease current duration by 10 seconds, further decreasing its lifespan. This is intended to alleviate the lockdown existent in Tempest mechanics, but still favor a specific element.
Further mechanics and behavior
Elementals also have an energy bar akin to revenant’s, and the upkeep is fixed to +2. Elementals have an auto-attack depending on their element and they will retreat depending on their nature (element), for example, Water Elementals will keep distance to heal and buff, while Earth Elemental will try to keep melee and deal massive condition damage. To support the proximity behavior all elementals will have a Shadowstep as second skill with a 15-second cooldown and will try and use them sparingly to achieve their intended behaviors (hopefully this is just a little chunk of code to program).
You can slightly change elementals’ behaviors with the flagging option. It has a 10s-cooldown and slightly modifies their movement: all elementals will stick to such position but will have a 200 radius freedom to move, and can freely cast ranged spells. This is something close to GW1’s flagging system and may help other minions’ control in the future, there is so much this can be expanded upon.
(edited by Valento.9852)
