Guild Wars 2

They are situational, but in those situations, it would be overpowered if it had infinite use in a 60s time limit

why?

I don’t see your argument. Where is it? Those weapons don’t even scale with weapon stats. How are they even overpowered?

There is one gimmicky hammer build for farming plinx that I know of. Sometimes people ask me to put down Ice Bow but otherwise I never ever use them.

See post #5 in the thread below for gimmicky hammer build that is supposed to be a lot of fun.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/57471-conjure-lightning-hammer-build-discussion-thread/

I agree, given the way the weapons are now, having both charges AND a duration seems a bit too much.

Maybe it would help if they all had effects on placement, like the fire weapons do.

Or maybe an ‘elite glyph’ that would place a weapon based on your attunement, giving you more versatility.

Being able to switch to them like a normal weapon would be pretty powerful.
Overall though they are not a game changer.
They fit well into low arcane builds but if they were more powerful than a high arcane conjureless build a lot more people would use them.. specifically the more experienced players would be using them.

they are not useless but they are hard to use. in the ele concept just like the ele.

Yeah I feel like there are a lot of things about the ele that if worked on would make an incredible class. Just not fully balanced yet.

I treat them as just another spell. Ice bow is excellent when soloing PvE and you need to lay out some hurt from range on a single target before you close in with D/D. I also found it is quite good as a demolition tool.
Same with lightning hammer, it is sometimes just a part of my rotation. Just use the most powerful/useful abilities on it, and discard it – I never wait for the cooldowns to finish. So then both the duration and charges are not that important.

I use Flame Axe very often in my regular rotation. I find it compliments my usual fire/earth damage excellently while I’m waiting for the big hitter skills to come off cooldown. It also provides an additional fire field, a quick rollback escape, and ranged attack.

Give more traits that improve these, and give all conjured weapons on-summon effects! I’d love for a competitive PvP build be able to revolve around using a few of these spells.

Crunchy Gremlin.5798:

Being able to switch to them like a normal weapon would be pretty powerful.

Not really. It would make them more viable as a real build though, and that’s what really should happen. What would make more sense for this type of thing would be to make this a trait option, called something like “Weapons Master Avatar”, that would give you free swaps on demand without an extra summon, so only you would get the weapon and an extra one would not be placed. You could make this time limited to say, 60s, so ie. you could swap on demand for up to 60s and then go on CD for something like 30s. Why the short CD? Because for someone who is built around Conjured Weapons, that down time is killer, but its balancing so its a tradeoff.

Crunchy Gremlin.5798:

Overall though they are not a game changer.
They fit well into low arcane builds but if they were more powerful than a high arcane conjureless build a lot more people would use them.. specifically the more experienced players would be using them.

they are not useless but they are hard to use. in the ele concept just like the ele.

Agree. The weapons themselves I think are actually in fine shape. The problem is that they are unweildy and inconvenient as far as swapping goes. Most the weapons synergize with our base skills just great, but you are extremely limited in how to actually use the combo options because most of them do not combo and finish by themselves. They would however if you could swap them on demand. This way you could create a combo field with one weapon, then swap to another and do the finisher. Now, I think most people at this point would be thinking, “heck yea! Leap and whirl finisher baby!”, and yes that is an option, but its not the only option or even the most powerful use case.

I think the only objection anyone could have with this is wether or not you think this could be OP, so I think that this trait should lock you into conjured weapons for 60s and you would be unable to swap back out to normal skills if you really think that sort of thing is necessary.

I say nerf them & make them toggle like engineer kits…Maybe disallow usage of more than one or keep some part of the cooldown or something. Since an elementalist can’t switch weapons, we’re stuck at whatever range we initially chose. Staff? Long range. Dagger? Short range. Scepter? Mid range.
If another class notices which skills/weapons we’re using, all they have to do is go where our range is not. For a staff that’s as simple as getting in our faces. For daggers, keep some distance, for scepter, pick a place that gives you an advantage. Since other classes have a weapon swap, they’re able to adjust positioning like this…Elementalists are not. If they could be used indefinitely, they would provide interesting ways to compliment builds and add different distanced skills to an elementalist.
As it stands now, they’re very situational at best, and even then don’t really merit a spot on 99% of builds.

Daggers have several gap closers, and staff has several effective CC spells, both of which are kinda designed to cover your range weakness. That said, what would be the point of nerfing conjured weapons since then they would be too weak to use effectively. Sure you could whip them out any time you wanted, but what would be the point, why would you just lock yourself out of your 20 skills for subpar 5 (a common argument even now with the weapons as they are)? Right now, you have to sacrifice a utility slot, but at least you got some damage to work with.

Simplicity.7208:

Staff? Long range.
If another class notices which skills/weapons we’re using, all they have to do is go where our range is not. For a staff that’s as simple as getting in our faces.

Last I checked(5 min ago), staff didn’t have minimum range, did that change since then?

I find the idea of attunement based weapon intriguing. It could make FGS a better elite at the very least….

Conjures have: cooldown, duration, and charges to limit its use. Way too many for them to be that useful. They need to lose the cooldown and duration and build on the idea of charges.

Suppose conjures have (instead of a cooldown) a rate at which they gain charges proportional to the current cd. Say for a cd of 60sec, you recover 25 charges for a rate of 1 charge every 2.4sec (round it down to 1 charge every 2sec). This way the trait conjurer still has its use. Without the trait it would take 30sec to get all charges ready. With the trait it would take 50sec. Dropping (we don’t actually drop them like warriors can do with banners) them would leave the charges at how many we don’t use.

This design would fit the current playstyle since we could still access all of our other weapon skills.

For a more complicated change, conjure weapon skills could have no cd. Before anyone says “WTF you smoking?” hear me out. Instead of cd’s to manage we could have charges to manage. Have conjure skills consume more than 1 charge.

Lighning Hammer (spontaneous numbers here)
1 – 1 charge
2 – 3 charges
3 – 5 charges
4 – 7 charges
5 – 7 charges
This would make using skills a tougher choice that you can actually use more often instead of saving them just in case you need it.

they should only replace the skills of 1 element, not all 4, and you should be able to switch back and forth freely for the duration.

it’s the only way they will ever be worth losing a utility slot.

you all need to make sure you actually use them seriously before deciding they need a change.
Flame Axe works fine. Throw it in at the end of a dagger dagger opener.
I have not tried to use the others much.
There are builds that work better with specific conjures although i like using the the axe from water with +20 damage from vulnerability and +2% damage for each boon.

that isnt to say that its better than a more accepted build but it is what it is.

they should only replace the skills of 1 element, not all 4, and you should be able to switch back and forth freely for the duration.
it’s the only way they will ever be worth losing a utility slot.

^ This.

Also I feel there needs to be an effect tied to their activation, something to make a conjured weapon worth the utility slot.

Bear in mind this is my opinion, but I think they are pretty much useless or a luxury at most.

I.E.

If I am wandering as D/D and stumble upon an encounter (I’m thinking pve and wvw mostly) which requires range I will just back off untill I drop out of combat and equip a staff instead of using a Frost Bow.

If I know beforehand that I need range I wont engage without a staff and just keep my usual utility skills.

I know GS is great for DEs, but I can manage just fine timing a Churning Eart/Flash on a wave of undead, or aiming a Burning Speed and rotate between attunements to use my various aoes. Not to mention I find the latter option more fun, but this is a personal preference.

So I’m wondering is there any situation where you absolutely need to have one of the conjured or wipe/die?

I haven’t met one so far and I have about 200 hours play time on my Ele.

Granted that I have no data to backup my opinion, I didn’t keep a track of how many mobs I could loot while using my base weapon set or a conjured GS.
It is mostly a feeling, but even if I were wrong I dont think it would be by a wide margin, else I think the difference would be more noticable.

Belive me, I would be glad to be wrong because that would mean I completely missed how great and essential conjured weapons are.

i dont believe that they are essential and i also believe that they are hard to learn to use. just like the ele.

so puttering around for a few hours with just one is not enough to show how they work.
IMHO you need to have a build based on their use. a standard D/D build is not good enough. thinking specifically pvp.

It’s too bad that when you have these active, you lose your utility skills.

this is a primary reason why these weapon skills + transformations = not so great.

TWMagimay.9057:

Last I checked(5 min ago), staff didn’t have minimum range, did that change since then?

If you’re a non-bunker staff ele and a warrior gets up in your face and uses 100B, you’re not going to try to put some distance between you? Yeah. Tell me how that works out. Tell me how a close range staff ele fairs against 100B. Meanwhile, I’ll be the ele lmao @ the noob who just got pounded into dust by a burst warrior.

As for my comment on nerfing them and letting them toggle…If they didn’t get nerfed, we could essentially have 8 weapon sets to freely rotate around and like established before, some conjured weapons are quite overpowered in niche situations. They need to be good in those niche situations, and they need to cover the things that our regular weapons do not.

They’re not meant to be the be-all & end-all for our DPS. They’re meant to support our DPS through adding different methods of assisting our team or providing different ways to cover our weaknesses. If we’re a D/D ele, a toggle ice bow would be a good method of getting some range. If we’re a staff ele, a toggle greatsword would be a good method of hitting something in our face hard. If we’re holding a point or attacking a keep, an earth shield would be a good method of bunkering down. They will inevitably be inferior to our regular weapon set, but the point should be to ensure we have a chance when fighting somewhere our regular weapon set is ineffective, not to ensure we have another equally effective alternative to play with…That would be identical to adding a weapon swap to an ele.

That being said….perhaps eles should have a weapon swap…Maybe on a 60+ second cooldown or something. All ArenaNet is doing by taking away an ele weapon swap is making us break combat, open our hero panel, and weapon swap manually. It still happens, it’s just a pain. The 60+ second weapon swap would allow us to do this without the hero panel thing, but it would also mean that we usually have to pick one and stick with it.

Simplicity.7208:

If you’re a non-bunker staff ele and a warrior gets up in your face and uses 100B, you’re not going to try to put some distance between you? Yeah. Tell me how that works out. Tell me how a close range staff ele fairs against 100B. Meanwhile, I’ll be the ele lmao @ the noob who just got pounded into dust by a burst warrior.

An evasive arcana elementalist doesn’t fight at maximum range though, and anyone with half a brain, melee build or no, would do well to avoid 100 blades. So that’s a non-argument.

I agree with the person you’re replying to: the range is not what sets the elementalist’s weapons apart. Or at least, compared to the other differences, it’s pretty irrelevant.

Simplicity.7208:

TWMagimay.9057:

Last I checked(5 min ago), staff didn’t have minimum range, did that change since then?

If you’re a non-bunker staff ele and a warrior gets up in your face and uses 100B, you’re not going to try to put some distance between you? Yeah. Tell me how that works out. Tell me how a close range staff ele fairs against 100B. Meanwhile, I’ll be the ele lmao @ the noob who just got pounded into dust by a burst warrior.

Oh, as opposed to being non-bunker D/D where you’d totally let a warrior get in your face and use 100B on you, right? I see how very pro you are….

Crunchy Gremlin.5798:

i dont believe that they are essential and i also believe that they are hard to learn to use. just like the ele.

so puttering around for a few hours with just one is not enough to show how they work.
IMHO you need to have a build based on their use. a standard D/D build is not good enough. thinking specifically pvp.

I was about to write a wall of text, but then I realized that if ANet took away Conjured Weapon I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

It’s not like they are bad, uneffective or underpowered.

I think they are just unoticeable.

I see people arguing over which weapon is the “best”, some say it’s staff, others are scepter/dagger supporters etc…

But I’ve never seen someone step up and say “you are all wrong, you dont need to use x weapon, conjure a bow/axe/whatever and you will be done, mark my words”.

I am sure there are people out there using them, but I havent seen one spawned in a very long time and I havent used one myself for even more time.

I use them all the time. Need to demolish something quickly? Frost bow. Nothing does that job better. Need to lay down some serious mass damage? Flaming greatsword. Have another player pick the other one up and watch things melt.
And you don’t lose utility skills when wielding a conjured weapon, only your attunement skills. So yeah, they’re not a replacement for your normal skillset, but if you pick the right situation, they make things a lot easier.

also, you can still change attunement, so heal on entering water, or fury on change, now your frost bow’s attacks crit

Conjured weapons should be the “weapon swap” for the Elementalist. You should get access to all of them except the Elite (greatsword) as soon as you get your weapon swap slot open. You would get to pick one for your slot and you could change it any time you are not in combat just like your regular off-hand weapon (it would function like a pop-up slot for your utility skills). Upon reaching level 30 you would get access to the Flaming Greatsword as well, but setting it as your swap would consume your Elite as well.

This would solve the huge problem that Elementalists have with being range-locked. If you are using a staff you could keep the shield or hammer on the “swap” for when people close with you. If you are using double-daggers you could keep the bow on a swap for instances where staying at long range makes more sense.

And you don’t have the situation where providing a swap gives the Elementalist 16 more cooldown-oriented skills to use.

Yes, yes… this means that you wouldn’t be able to throw out these weapons for your teammates to use. Additionally, the damage of the skills may have to be tuned since they don’t currently scale with stats but would if you make them swaps.

I always thought conjures were meant to function similarly to enginer kits, letting us change range at the cost of a utility slot

Simplicity.7208:

If we’re a staff ele, a toggle greatsword would be a good method of hitting something in our face hard.

Alas, that would only be true if FGS was instant or near-instant cast FGS is good for changing things up a bit, but its cast time is prohibitive in emergency situations.

Gaudrath.6725:

I use them all the time. Need to demolish something quickly? Frost bow. Nothing does that job better. Need to lay down some serious mass damage? Flaming greatsword. Have another player pick the other one up and watch things melt.
And you don’t lose utility skills when wielding a conjured weapon, only your attunement skills. So yeah, they’re not a replacement for your normal skillset, but if you pick the right situation, they make things a lot easier.

I will give it try and see if Frost Bow will out damage my exotic geared Ele on objects.
I mention my equip because afaik conjured weapons (and kits) do not benefit from weapon damage and stats, so I used them more often when I was levelling.

Greatsword is nice for damage dealing, but when I tried it I thought it was lacking on defense so while soloing I used Elementals as my elite skill to distract mobs.

As I said in my previous post I know GS has its uses for events farming, but I still prefer to use my standard D/D skills (AA sound realy bothers me) and so far I can’t tell if the former is realy better lootwise.

I think the “best” conjured weapon is Axe because it will let me combo a fire field and a leap to gain an aura (aura build here), still I will not use it: in pve I have no need for a 4th aura, my D/D weapon set provides enough to keep associated boons up all the time; and there’s absolutely no way I am going to sacrifice mist form/armor of earth, cleansing flames/arcane shield/wave or lightning flash.

So I stand by my opinion: atm conjured weapons do not add anything, to me they are a flavour utility set which is perfectly fine as it adds some variety to our gameplay.

I would change my mind in an heartbeat if, for example, ANet made FB’s Deep Freeze cast time shorter: that would make it useable in a strategic way, but right now it’s a 2 second(an eternity) cast which iirc roots you in place. I don’t want it to be istant, that would be way OP, but something like 1 second(still a lot in pvp) would make it at least useable…

I just wish CW provided more options, because right now I don’t think my Elementalist would be weaker if ANet took them away.

All of the above is my personal opinion and I still wish there were someone who could prove me wrong with videos/guides of how great and gamechanging CW can be.

I find that flaming greatsword is excellent when I want to solo champion mobs. Not only you get excellent damage to speed things up, but the easy and constantly available cripple does wonders for kiting.
Lighting hammer fits in well with the staff when you need to take something down quickly in melee.

Though I would agree that conjured weapons, such as they are now, are not very useful in PvP. Aside from frost bow for taking down objects. It’s #4 damage is, I think, comparable to meteor shower, only it has a tighter area of effect and thus hits more often and delivers more reliably.

Anyone else noticed that the OP’s post…disappeared?

Mik Hell.8206:

Crunchy Gremlin.5798:

i dont believe that they are essential and i also believe that they are hard to learn to use. just like the ele.

so puttering around for a few hours with just one is not enough to show how they work.
IMHO you need to have a build based on their use. a standard D/D build is not good enough. thinking specifically pvp.

I was about to write a wall of text, but then I realized that if ANet took away Conjured Weapon I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

It’s not like they are bad, uneffective or underpowered.

I think they are just unoticeable.

I see people arguing over which weapon is the “best”, some say it’s staff, others are scepter/dagger supporters etc…

But I’ve never seen someone step up and say “you are all wrong, you dont need to use x weapon, conjure a bow/axe/whatever and you will be done, mark my words”.

I am sure there are people out there using them, but I havent seen one spawned in a very long time and I havent used one myself for even more time.

please excuse me for my long opinion here…

Yes my feeling for this is that the conjures are hard to learn all on their own. they have a long cooldown, limited number of uses, and change the way the ele plays a great deal when used.
So the only people that will be able to say much about their ability are people that actively use them with some success in hard content/wvw/pvp. these folks are in the vast minority because the Ele is already hard to use. I mean honestly how many folks will willing make the ele harder to play. Personally i love that learning curve:) (Ex EvE player. ran outta time to play)

I don’t think they are that special but they are utility or elite skills.
So the real question IMHO its not if they are better than regular weapons, but if they are better or at least as good as the skills they replace in a build that is designed to use them.

I think the answer to that is yes for at least the lava axe.

I am OK with taking out 1 of my normal utilities to use a conjure. But i am only moderately skilled in lava axe and in the ele overall.

flaming greatsword is even harder to learn as its cooldown is 3 times longer than the others but its impact on the build is less as the other elites are either near useless or can be ignored. stability from tornado or fire and forget elementals. I am betting that elementals actually hard to learn as well but less obvious due to their nature.

People look at summoned weapons wrong. They are not meant to replace your weapons or act as a separate weapon slot skill. They are utility skills that are designed to be activated, used as necessary, and then promptly dropped. There’s a reason you get 2 of them per cast, and a reason why their cooldowns are fairly short.

Mik Hell.8206:

But I’ve never seen someone step up and say “you are all wrong, you dont need to use x weapon, conjure a bow/axe/whatever and you will be done, mark my words”.

I am sure there are people out there using them, but I havent seen one spawned in a very long time and I havent used one myself for even more time.

Maybe not here, but…

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/65884-the-ultimate-40-elementalist-levelingfarming-build-cantriphammer-build-highest-dps-innate-survivability/

There are a few others on Guru in similar vein, but largely it’s that the lightning hammer is quite popular among some crowds, primarily for the ability to blind slow-attacking PvE foes faster than they can attack.

Crunchy Gremlin.5798:

please excuse me for my long opinion here…

Yes my feeling for this is that the conjures are hard to learn all on their own. they have a long cooldown, limited number of uses, and change the way the ele plays a great deal when used.
So the only people that will be able to say much about their ability are people that actively use them with some success in hard content/wvw/pvp. these folks are in the vast minority because the Ele is already hard to use. I mean honestly how many folks will willing make the ele harder to play. Personally i love that learning curve:) (Ex EvE player. ran outta time to play)

I don’t think they are that special but they are utility or elite skills.
So the real question IMHO its not if they are better than regular weapons, but if they are better or at least as good as the skills they replace in a build that is designed to use them.

I think the answer to that is yes for at least the lava axe.

I am OK with taking out 1 of my normal utilities to use a conjure. But i am only moderately skilled in lava axe and in the ele overall.

flaming greatsword is even harder to learn as its cooldown is 3 times longer than the others but its impact on the build is less as the other elites are either near useless or can be ignored. stability from tornado or fire and forget elementals. I am betting that elementals actually hard to learn as well but less obvious due to their nature.

I respect your opinion, but in order to change my mind I need a video/guide of someone effectively using a conjured weapon to beat an opponent in an even level match.

Might be a limit, but that’s how it happens for me.

Spvp would be great, but a 1vs1, 2vs2, XvsX in WvW with all level 80 players decked in exotics would be fine too.

draxynnic.3719:

Maybe not here, but…

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/65884-the-ultimate-40-elementalist-levelingfarming-build-cantriphammer-build-highest-dps-innate-survivability/

There are a few others on Guru in similar vein, but largely it’s that the lightning hammer is quite popular among some crowds, primarily for the ability to blind slow-attacking PvE foes faster than they can attack.

I am well aware of the existence of that build, I was mentioning it in my original WOT, but I cut it in order to make my post shorter.

I tried it and I think it’s just a simpler approach to the Elementalist profession, during the time I tested it there was nothing I could do that was impossible to achieve with my standard d/d build and a carefull use of my skills/elites.

With the added downside (at least for me) of feeling like a watered down version of my Hammer Guardian: autoattack, use the occasional 2-5 skills and get a virtue-like regen from water attunement.

I already have a Guardian and I find it’s way more fun to play than LH build, not to mention it’s more powerfull too.

I am sorry for my late answer, but my attention has been focused on the latest’s patch leaked info