Guild Wars 2

I have an issue with conjured weapons that turns me off to using them completely and I’m sure others feel the same. I am not saying that they’re over or under-powered or that they’re completely useless, and this isn’t a thread to complain or start a fight about their effectiveness or not. I just want to point out one glaring reason why I don’t use them and perhaps make a suggestion that would possibly encourage people into using them more.

The issue
To start, let’s take a look at how elementalists are “supposed” to play: Any ele player can tell you that if you want to be a good and viable ele, you’re going to have to get good at attunement dancing. Unless in a huge zerg, ele’s should be constantly switching elements, taking full advantage of all their abilities, providing dps, control or support when needed or even just to combo off yourself when solo.

What happens when you conjure one of your elemental weapons? You’re stuck using that weapon until it runs out of charges or you put the weapon away… and if you put away the weapon soon after casting it, well you kind of just wasted that utility/elite (unless the sole purpose was to give an ally the weapon). Being stuck using one set of skills goes completely against an ele’s base mechanic, attunement swapping. You cannot swap to provide healing or CC or anything, you are stuck.

My suggestion
Swap the base elemental weapons skills with those of the conjured weapon while the charges last but allow for swapping between elements as normal.

For example: If you use the frost bow, swap that skill bar with the basic water attunement skill bar. When you swap to fire, your normal fire skills become available, and when you swap back to water again, you still have your frost bow skills until you run out of charges.

If this were the case, I could definitely see a huge increase in people wanting to use conjured weapons. It fits perfectly into ele’s base mechanic and provides tons more utility. Heck, I know I’d use them if this were how they’d work.

Problems
Of course, this isn’t a fix all. Complexity would be one issue as well as balance with all the other skills. Unfortunately, I’m running out of time to post this so I can’t go into much detail at the moment, but yes, I’m aware that there would be some.

Anyway, that’s about it. What do you all think?

I’m more of the opinion that Conjured Weapons should be treated as an extra “attunement” on their own, despite them having a certain amount of charges (Fiery Greatsword is somewhat an exception, however). Conjure them, use their skills depending on the situation you’re in and then return to your weapon skills.

I don’t think conjured weapons, aside from Fiery Greatsword, are meant to be used to their full charge capacity unless you can afford being stuck in a certain role until combat finishes – Frost Bow is awesome in this opinion as it does have some use in WvW. I invite you to review your approach and usage of them and reply again to the topic.

Honestly, Conjured Weapons shouldn’t have been 4 separate skills (+greatsword) to begin with.

I’d say merge the utility Conjure skills into a single glyph-like skill where the attunement you are currently in determines what weapon is dropped, and what weapon you get in your hand. From then on, while it’s in your hand, it swaps to the other elements respective weapon as you swap attunement.

Then, you have the versatility that the elementalist would otherwise have, plus a reason to use all of the weapon charges instead of throwing it away and provide an effective weapon swap.

Fiery Greatsword can stay where it is, and this single skill would probably have a hefty cooldown, but it’d be worth it.

Sekacnap.3984:

What happens when you conjure one of your elemental weapons? You’re stuck using that weapon until it runs out of charges or you put the weapon away… and if you put away the weapon soon after casting it, well you kind of just wasted that utility/elite (unless the sole purpose was to give an ally the weapon). Being stuck using one set of skills goes completely against an ele’s base mechanic, attunement swapping. You cannot swap to provide healing or CC or anything, you are stuck.

That’s the point of the conjure weapon skills; you lose your utility, support and CC of your weapon skills and primarily gain damage in return. Whether the benefit of conjure weapon skills is big enough compensates the loss of the former is up to debate.

Krisko.4093

I’d say merge the utility Conjure skills into a single glyph-like skill where the attunement you are currently in determines what weapon is dropped, and what weapon you get in your hand. From then on, while it’s in your hand, it swaps to the other elements respective weapon as you swap attunement.

You read my mind. I was just about to post that exactly. Conjures should be a glyph like. One spell, 4 different elemental weapons depending on attunement.

Krisko.4093:

Honestly, Conjured Weapons shouldn’t have been 4 separate skills (+greatsword) to begin with.

I’d say merge the utility Conjure skills into a single glyph-like skill where the attunement you are currently in determines what weapon is dropped, and what weapon you get in your hand. From then on, while it’s in your hand, it swaps to the other elements respective weapon as you swap attunement.

Then, you have the versatility that the elementalist would otherwise have, plus a reason to use all of the weapon charges instead of throwing it away and provide an effective weapon swap.

Fiery Greatsword can stay where it is, and this single skill would probably have a hefty cooldown, but it’d be worth it.

So basically you want the ability to weapon swap as an ele, except your secondary weapon has charges?

I must echo the problems of these skills at current.

20-30 charges would go very, very quickly if it changed attunements with you, further balancing this concept in my opinion. Toss the ability on a single 150 second CD and allow it to swap, and the skill(s) might see some use.

To solve the secondary (or primary, depending on your point of view) issue of it creating a second weapon, make the weapon not spawned in your hands not change attunements with you if you pick up the new one and make it reflect the attunement you’re currently in, as per Glyphs. Essentially, the ones created for allies would function as they currently do, while the one in your hands would be a LOT more useful for the caster than it currently is (effectively being near-useless as it stands right now)

Conjurations were honestly the big thing that drew me to Ele in the first place, so it was fairly disappointing when I figured out by and large they aren’t that useful. Because Ele relies on essentially a constant rotational rhythm to be effective, a conjure breaks that rhythm. But you can’t stow the conjure temporarily when you need to get back to your rotation for a heal or an aura.

Ironically, they would be more worthwhile if they behaved like Engineer kits.

creating two of the weapons is a little clunky. one at target and one in hand.
I still don’t quite get it either. Im not sure why i would take this over the some of the other skills. even arcane shield feels like its more useful.

primarily because its cumbersome to cast, its duration is pretty short, and i don’t feel like they really are that special.

Could make the utility skill a summoned bundle that can be stowed with Weapon Swap key and re-equipped when needed. Like how engineer kits work.
Only since it is summoned it has a duration and then has to recharge.
So 30 seconds of a bundle type behaviour similar to engineer kits, and when that expires you have to wait for the skill to recharge.

They should just make the conjured weapons as our second weapon set, so we got a weaponswitch-function as long as the conjured weapon lasts / has charges. (Weaponswitch between your normal weapon and the conjured one.)

Voila, conjured weapons would be good and useful.

I actually found attunement swapping when wielding a conjured weapon rather useful, and don’t really know if I want to lose, say, the ability to proc protection by switching to earth while wielding lightning hammer.

Indeed it is, especially when you go to 15 points in most traitlines. ;-)

they should be like engineer kits.
(but still conjure one for your team)

If they’d be like engineer kits, the CD wouldnt be running as long as you use them. That wouldnt be that good, I guess. Or do you want to remove the charges ompletely? Then they would be OP. Imagine being able to use the Greatsword 24/7, that is quite powerful.

So no, im against “like engineer kits” ;-)

I am against this entirely.It would ruin my current build.

When you use a conjure skill, you actually summon two of what you got.In PVP no one else is gonna pick up your weapon.So when your done with your skills and want to switch you drop and switch back to your normal skills.Then once all on cooldown again you pick up your weapon.Then rinse and repeat.

You can easily utilize them in a way that allows ease of use and makes them viable and worthwhile.

They are fine as is.

Lots of good ideas here. Personally I find my biggest concern is that it isn’t worth sacrificing a much needed utility skill for. Engineers get bonus Fx skills on their kits, maybe we could get something similar to Necromancers summons? If you double press the skill it uses up the remaining charges to generate a scaling effect.

Honestly, allowing us to weapon swap between our “normal” weapon and our conjured weapon would be pretty cool. Give it a normal weapon swap recharge, so it would be different from kits. Keep the charges too, but have them get spent with the normal weapon’s skills, so that the player doesn’t want to swap between weapons unless absolutely needed. Forget the idea of having them pop up in the ground, because this system would make it impossible for other professions to use it, unless only you could pick the grounded weapons, which by itself is already a good idea, as we don’t always want other people to pick our conjures.

I think that getting a cast time refund on unused charges would be nice too.
The ice block freeze on the bow is a 3? second stun. its pretty powerful but i can kill a mob with fire scepter/focus as fast or faster than the bow.
the heal shot on the bow doesnt seem to be as powerful as the staff heal.

i would much rather have the weapon swap for my weapon choices… switch between staff and scepter/focus.

I just done feel the weapons usefulness in PVE.

can we get some more people saying how they use the weapons?

No charges. No dropped weapon. 30s cooldown if you drop the conjured weapon.

You’re already trading-in your versatility for single weapon, it might as well be simple.

-Jeff

P.S. Yes, GS will be used then. That’s not a bad thing, it is an elite skill.

Crazy idea: Conjured weapons act like Signets so while you have the skill as an option, you gain the Weapon Swap ability other classes get but only to that weapon. i.e. you choose Frost Bow and now you are able to equip Shortbows and swap to one. Clicking the Frost Bow power grants you a Frost Bow if you don’t have one equipped and summon one for an ally.

Several points:
-Having the skill chosen and equipping the appropriate weapon gives the stats of your equipped weapon to the summoned one (so it can be a strong and useful skill if equipped for it)

-Of course, just like a normal class, you can only chose TWO swappable weapon at a time during combat. Choosing a non-native weapon for Elementalist (like hammer) as your primary blocks you from the variety of attacks from attunements. But the option of having a Greatsword and a Bow or something is there as a build option…but again, you can only choose a max of 2.

-Choosing more than two of the conjured weapon abilities will let you swap for the equipped weapons but for the others, you’d have to activate the ability to have access to it (like now) or wait for the chance to reequip different weapons.

This probably doesn’t so much ‘fix’ conjured weapons (they’re broken?) as it does give Elementalists even more variety of build options which I sort of feel Elementalists lack (or are shortchanged by their gimmicks). I think it’s cool that you can build a Mesmer or Necro to use pets or not or focus on conditions or something. Elementalist feels like it could (it’s got all the gimmicks like elemental pets and summoned weapons and variety of elements) but feels like it can’t be ‘focused around’ or ‘built toward’ in as meaningful a way. The elemental pets feel lacking, the weapons, while cool, seem to have limited use if you like to swap your stuff up on the fly. The attunements could be even better if the on-the-swap effects were more important but feel more like afterthoughts or “here’s a 25 cents even though you can’t buy anything with 25 cents anymore” treats.

Well at least change it to be non-ground targeted. Instead it drops on your foot…

I would rather they change it so that other people can’t pickup our weapons. If I’m running D/D in WvW (Which I love btw) I have Frost Bow as my ranged option, I use my 1st bow, to find that someone else has picked up my backup, therefore leaving me stood around lol. And no I won’t use staff, I hate it.

Since engineer is the closest comparison:

Engineer:
Gets a new weapon set with no cooldown, no timer and no charges
Gets a F2-F4 skill for the new weapon
Gets 1 weapon and no swapping

Elementalist
Gets a new weapon with charges and a time limit
Gets a second weapon for someone else to use
Gets 4 weapon sets

IMO, the elementalist should have a perma-weapon like the engineer, but the dropped weapon for someone else should have charges and a time limit

Interesting and similar ideas to mine here. My idea may not be the most balanced idea, but it could be made to be balanced over time, or with other ideas along with it.

So here it is: There’s been a lot of complaints and talk about an ele weapon swap, and I’d like one as well. Being a dagger/dagger (d/d) ele not having range is pretty awful since every other class can go from melee to range with the swap. I love the idea of the ice bow (so I could have range with d/d). The main issue with the ice bow is the damage, or rather the lack there of. Sure you can set the first skill to auto-attack, but when you crit for 300 damage it’s pointless. Really, a waste of a utility skill.

First part: There are 4 utility skills (Fiery Axe, Ice Bow, Lightning Hammer, and Earth Shield), 1 for each element, which can be mixed in with the ele’s mechanic. So rather than having a weapon swap to a normal weapon, make it a swap to the ‘conjured’ weapons based on attunement. Along with this, if you’re in fire and you weapon swap then you get the fire axe and it’s skills (no charges). Then if you switch attunements, say to water, then you’d have the ice bow. You only would have access to your normal weapon skills upon another weapon swap.

Second part: Okay, so if this were to happen what happens to those utility skills? Well, there are a few options: 1) Remove them completely. To be honest, I don’t think they’re that used anyway. 2) Replace them with new skills. 3) Something else I’m not thing of atm.

Balance: Some say this would the ele too OP, so let’s talk about balancing this idea. There are two range (fiery axe ice bow) and 2 melee (lightning hammer and earth shield) weapons meaning, no matter what normal weapon you’re using you have all ranges to play with, similar to other classes. That portion, imo, is fair.

Next part of balance is the number of skills. To be honest, the ele needs all the base 20 skills to be on par with other classes anyway as that’s their whole mechanic. But having the ‘conjured’ weapons only out once you weapon swap ( so no normal weapon skills) would help balance and control the power the ele can pump out. This way, it’s almost like having a normal weapon swap, but with different range options.

Another issues isn’t so much with balancing but with complexity. 40 unique skills to learn would be actually quite challenging, even to some of those ‘pro’ players. Because once you switch then you need to know the exact skills you have and the range of all the new weapons. Perhaps to make it a bit easier have the swap unlock at lvl 20-30 or even as high as 40. That way you have time to learn your normal weapon skills first.

Normal weapon swap is ~10s for every other class (except engineer, as they don’t have weapon swap) but this swap for ele would be longer, say at least 30s (or 45s), to be much more balanced. This way you need to think: “Do I really want to swap?”

Some ideas here are very similar to this, but mine is a little more of a change on the class’ mechanic. I think that this idea would be really cool, though hard to play, would give the ele a way to weapon swap to give yourself the range you want.

Give me some feed back on the ups and downs of this idea. Might not be the best option to solve this issue, but I think it could be the foundation for a final decision. Cheers~

after conjuring a weapon, put it under weapon swap. that way elementalist can swap between the conjured weapon or his/her main weapon skills.

These weapons really concern me as many of my utility choices are weapons that i do not see being more useful then their difficulty to use.

Currently i will lose to content using these weapons that i can beat pretty soundly without them. So I am doing it wrong, likely, or there is no right way.

how about the ice bow. how is that used well?

I’d actually be happy with conjures if they were instant cast. Then you could use for example earth shield #5 in a clutch to make you invulnerable.