Guild Wars 2

Conjured weapons in their current state… are still close to useless but I also think their concept needs a little refinement.

Beware wall’o’text’o

Across all weapons (with the exception of lightning hammer and possibly flame axe), the base damage of their auto attacks are quite literally… pathetic.
Which is a shame because these conjure skills would be so fun to use if they were just done properly and actually provided a solid skill set.

Im gonna go through the skills of Ice Bow in particular and list the pros and cons of each. Obviously these are based of my experiences and stats so if anyone has figured out something that I haven’t, please say so.
Text in Italic can be applied to all conjured weapons in general

Ice bow

• Water arrow – 190 dmg for an auto attack… really? But wait, it heals for 15 health. Maybe this weapon is not supposed to deal heavy damage and focus more on the condition side of things but it still fails in both these areas.

When you conjure a weapon, your base skill set is replaced with a new set of skills (I think we all know this). Now you would expect that these skills would be relatively close in effectiveness as your base skill set. You could argue that each weapon serves a different purpose and you would be right but a lot of skills of these conjured weapons are just purely redundant

Now that being said, lets do a quick comparison (based on my current stats):
Water Arrow (Auto attack of Ice Bow)
- Damage: 190
- Heal: 15
- Range: 900

Water Blast (Auto Attack of Water Attunement)
- Damage: 201
- Heal: 400
- Range: 1200

Why in a million years would I want to replace Water Blast with Water Arrow?

Let’s not forget how horrid the projectile speed of Water Arrow also. Unless they were to reduce the cast time to 1/4 of a second from 3/4, but even then I’m not too sure that would be enough incentive.

Overall, I don’t think there is any benefit from this skill what so ever.

• Frost Volley – This skill is a step in the right direction. It provides 5% vulnerability and for a decent duration. The only thing I would ask for is a slight buff in the damage or a cooldown reduction.

• Frost Fan – Again, a decent skill for its high potential in chilling a target(s) for a lengthy period of time. I would however request a slightly lower cooldown.

Cooldowns for a lot of these conjured weapon skills are hindering their effectiveness and the fun they could potentially provide.
The approach I would have taken for conjured weapons would be to have fairly low cooldown on all skills to open up doors for opportunity. One skill would not be superior to another but rather help serve a different purpose to a similar degree of strength. The only reason why I say this is because you can only use a certain number of skills (charges being the limit) and I dont want to be sitting around wasting charges on a pitiful auto attack waiting for my other skills to come off cooldown.

• Ice Storm – I have to say, I only conjure Ice Bow for this one skill and then I drop it. Self explanatory really.

• Deep Freeze – I don’t really use this skill often. Takes too long to cast (2 secs) and you can’t move when casting it so essentially I’m just stunning myself to stun another target. Obviously works well if you’re not the target but the range is only 900 for a slow moving projectile.

Let’s get to the passive bonus stats Ice Bow provides:
20% condition duration – This works…
180 healing power – This not so much… The only skill that heals is Water Arrow for a whopping 15 health!
I mean, it helps slot 6 (your main healing skill) and possibly other utility skills but surely we are not expected rely on Ice Bows healing power just to increased the effectiveness of other utility skills.

Overall, I think all conjure weapon skills could benefit from the lower cooldown model to promote a faster paced action skill set.

never used them once after seeing how little i could do with them.

laughable damage, low utility, limited charges, high cooldows… yup, unless you’re looking to troll someone, not a single reason to bring them. only exception being the fiery GS but even then, it’s pretty situationnal and is not as versatile as, say, the elemental.

Note that for water arrow the tool tip is bugged currently and only ever displays 15 as the healing amount, but when in use it heals for a greater amount.

No, the only thing conjures need is to only replace the 5 skills of their respective element, not lock out all 20 weapon skills, so that Eles can continue to use their profession-defining mechanic, and then re-balance conjured weapon skills as needed.

I’ve always been a big fan of conjured weapons. I’ve always used them and find them great fun to play with.

I agree with some of the points you make about Frost Bow, but I think the important point is that its situational. I find Frost Bow pretty useful in wvw and some pve group events, but I wouldn’t recommend it as a general purpose conjure, its probably the 2nd weakest if you ask me. Its probably best to ignore earth shield as well, that is a waste of a utility.

However, I have always used lightening hammer from the moment I unlocked it. Its a great weapon that has some very very handy control effects. It also covers area damage with lightening storm, its an all rounded very decent weapon if you ask me. Plus, there’s nothing more fun than wielding a huge hammer made of electricity.

Fiery greatsword I’m also a big fan of, with a nice range of abilities from the closer melee to area effects. I generally prefer lava axe though, the fact that its more range focused appeals to me but again, its got a nice range of abilities.

I think, overall, conjures are a great addition to the elementalist profession and what probably puts it as my favourite profession of all. I think mainly though that conjured weapons provide a welcome change from the standard elementalist model, and through my experience generally allow you to stop kiting as both staff and d/d often end up in sticky situations. They make us more versatile, and add a fun twist into the profession.

I use the earth/magnetic shield sometimes cause I think it’s fun and unique. It does have certain problems though…

1st skill (auto-attack) burns the charges very quickly. Would like to see Anet reducing its attack speed (maybe like 2-3 sec per attack) and increase damage. Maybe add vulnerability?

2nd skill is kinda odd one, a crippling throw. I’d like to have some kind of single target taunt skill replacing this odd one, add crippled to it and maybe even bleeding when the taunted target hits you.

3rd ability (dash/daze) has too short range (600). Would like to see it increased to 900.

4th ability is perfect. Only thing I’d change is the visual effect.

5th ability (immortality) is good. Adding the taunt ability would be so good with this. Also add reflect projectiles to this.

Overall I think conjured weapons should have more charges. Or maybe just remove charges and let players use the weapon for a limited time (40 sec?).
Personally I think conjured weapons should only be conjured for the elementalist. Change the fire trait (conjuring) to something that would make conjure weapon spells work like they currently do. But move that trait to a lower tier, spending 20 trait points in fire ’’tree’’ is not neccessarily what every conjurer wants to do.

Remove charges.

Replace the silly trait in the fire line for a conjured weapon damage increase.

they either GREATLY boost the damage or average usefulness of conjured weapons OR let us combine ’em with our attunement mechanic to get EFFECTIVE results.

• Let them be equiped like an engineer equips his kits. (Instant with no casttime)
• Let the ele change into and out of the conjured weapon like an engineer can.
• When the charges are depleted, let the weapon go on cooldown.

• Change some of the skills for balancing reasons.

I find ice 5 to be one of the best stuns for bosses after you clear their defiant stack. Definitely worth the 2sec root considering how much longer it lasts.

Arenanet should just combine the 4 conjure weapon skills into 1 utility skill. You would then conjure a weapon based on your current attunement.

Has anyone ever used 3 conjure weapon utility skills at the same time???

Only problem: Anet would have to create 3 new utility skills.