Guild Wars 2

A-net does not want to maintain current profession balance.
We can see there will be many drastic changes in HoT.
In example, PU mesmers will have twice duration stealth.
And mortar will be a weapon kit that can be used in anytime.

Then, why can not conjured weapons be used whenever Eles want?
Why summoned elementals have limited durations while minions follow Nekittenil they are killed?

Kits are an engi mechanic, Conjures are an ele one.
I think they should be different and its good for the game.
It is nice also that you can give conjures to others.

What conjures need is a better trait option.
A trait that not only gives them more charges but also improved stat bonuses to compensate the dps loss.

ANet could add a trait that extends the duration each time an enemy is killed.

to give up my 20 professions skills and 1 utility slot i want to get either 1. a big damage boost or 2. a very good CC, with other words i need them to be “broken” in order to work properly. Since this is exactly the reason why anet changed FGS, LH and IB i don’t think there’s even a small chance that these weapons will find any usage anymore.

RIP conjures

lLobo.7960:

Kits are an engi mechanic, Conjures are an ele one.
I think they should be different and its good for the game.
It is nice also that you can give conjures to others.

What conjures need is a better trait option.
A trait that not only gives them more charges but also improved stat bonuses to compensate the dps loss.

Conjures are a broken ele mechanic. They need to be changed somehow. I suspect that someone just liked the image of an elementalist conjuring a weapon out of the ether, but they didn’t really have a role for them to play.

One thing that occurs to me is that they could be useful in WvW to offset the limitations of your chosen weapon. For example, daggers have a range problem. scepters don’t cleave. Staff has a point blank combat problem.

So in exchange forgiving up the various attunement swap skills you get to fill in a gap in an emergency. However, for this to work the skills have to have a reasonable cooldown and utilities. Also, they would need to be instant cast.

The big issue with conjures is that they put them on the one class for whom they are actually detrimental. They need to make up for the extra 3 sets of skills you have available at any time. To do that, they pretty much have to be OP in one specific area due to the wide breadth of skills already available at once. If you make them a way to counter the limitations of your weapon set, then as TooBz said you need to give them lower cooldowns and strong utilities. Do that, though, and you might as well dedicate a utility slot on every Ele to conjures(who DOESN’T want to take a utility which basically completely shores up your biggest weakness?).

So you end up swinging between the skills being wastes of utility slots, or being OP and near mandatory.

The obvious solution(let us switch in and out nearly at will for the duration of the conjure) is problematic since it steps on the toes of Engineer’s class-defining(whether it should be or not) kit skills. I honestly am not sure what can be done to fix it, but they can’t just outright copy another classes mechanics to fix it(due to how closely tied it is to the class, that is). Either way, I think it’s pretty clear they created a balancing nightmare when they gave Eles conjures.

Conjures have uses for specs that camp a single attunement. This goes more in PvE than pvp.
You can camp earth to be more defensive and use a conjure to get more dmg than your earth skills would provide.
You can camp water to improve your dmg and mantain regen and use a conjure to provide high dps.

There are uses for conjures, just not as great as going your usual meta builds.
LH used to be meta in PVE…

What could make conjures better:
– Change conjurer trait to improve the stats they give and the charges
– Make it possible to pick up the second conjure to increase the time and charges on yours
– Make skill CD reduction work on conjures when you use them on that attunement
– Make LA auto attack bounce

This could open up possibilities to playstiles like:
– Fire spec ele with earth shield (great burn and bleed condi application and good defense)
– Earth ele with LA (a tankish ele in earth for crit immunity and using lava axe for might stack and burn without leaving the defense of earth att)

Would those be meta? probably not, but would be viable in certain scenarios.
(at least more viable than now)

Conjure needs to behave like kit for ele, which means:

• for ele, allow weapon swapping for the conjure
• for teammate, swap weapon lose the conjure
• still keep the time, so it’s not like kit.
• remove the number of charges

Then we would see conjures get used.

I highly doubt Conjures will ever be kits because we already have permanent access to too many weapon sets with Attunements. The whole concept of flipping another weapon set on, using a cool down or two, then flipping back to your weapons/more kits is really what the Engie play style is all about currently.

Conjures need an entire overhaul because currently they don’t work very well. They’re either good enough that they supplant our base weapons creating that Engineer scenario (Lightning Hammer) or they are bad and used as throw away weapons where you use 1-2 cool downs then ditch them (Ice Bow). If you nerf the former scenario, you reinforce the second scenario. If you nerf both scenarios, you make other options clearly superior (IE: Glyph of Storms in favor of Ice Bow 4) and there’s no reason to use Conjures. There are many ways to overhaul Conjures keeping with the concept of a cool effect for you and your group without impeding on any other class mechanics.

That said, if they are going to leave Conjures in their current state what they should allow at the very least is for you to be able to pick up your second weapon and simply add Charges to the existing timer. Nothing is more frustrating than trying to use your Conjure weapon and having some random dude come along, pick it up, swing it once or twice and then despawn it entirely. This preserves the options for sharing while not having to camp an area to pick up your other Conjure when your current on wears out while soloing.

They need a heavy mechanical change that’s for sure, but turning them in to kits isn’t the answer. They need a mechanical change that fits the ele, and we are less based on utility skills than any other class, so slotting a weapon in our utlities, whether it be some timed pseudo environmental weapon, as kits, or with a true weapon swap, are all bad ideas that do not fit our class.

I have a suggestion I’ve made many times that I believe would greatly help with conjures viability and simultaneously help the elementalists’ abyssmal build paths.

Conjures should operate like attunement overrides.

What I mean by overrides is that you when you used one, were the system to be put in place, it would replace the attunement you are currently in, staying there until you remove it, and count as an attunement of the element fitting the conjure, fire for fire axe and water for ice bow.

As an example: A condition tank ele has no use for air attunement. So he slots earth shield, attunes to air, then casts earth shield to overwrite his air skills with the earth shield skills, giving him a second earth attunement at the cost of a utility slot and his air attunement skills.

This would allow for builds more themed around a single attunement without nullifying attun’ing’ as the class mechanic, as well as addressing the giant mechanical flaws currently inherent to conjures.

I just thought to myself that conjured weapons should change their skills based on what attunement you’re using, just like our normal weapon sets do.

Example; When you conjure the Hammer it will have 5 different abilities for each attunement that change when swapped and you can still drop the weapon all together like you can now. Reduce their durations from 60 seconds down to 30 so they’re not faceroll good, and remove the stat bonuses you get from them. This would undoubtedly include losing the ability to cast conjured weapons onto the ground for others to pick up as well, as it would no longer work for non-eles after this change to these skills.

But Park why would I want to do that? Good question, because if you look at the current conjured weapons, they’re all weapons that the elementalist can not normally use. Using conjured weapons is meant to change the distance you fight at and offset the limitations of your standard weaponset, kind of like how it works on Engi’s and how their kits provide abilities that there normal weapons can’t provide. This is my opinion of how they SHOULD work at least. Obviously the 20 new abilities you gain from each of these conjures would have to be balanced around what that weapon would be best at and also to keep it from being OP. Should probably combine Lava Axe and Earth Shield into a single conjure so you gain that Axe/Shield weapon set instead of having 5 abilities for single handed weapons.

The hope in making such a sweeping change to the design of conjures would hopefully give eles a more “Battlemage” style of build where you become a sort of Pseudo Weapons Master that can change weapon styles in order to control fights better. Like Conjuring a bow to combat a longbow ranger kiting you, because you happen to be using daggers, and now summoning the bow and all of it’s corresponding abilities has just leveled the battlefield for a player that was outmatched trying to fight a long range enemy with melee skills.

Obviously this is a hard request for the designers to attempt to achieve at this stage but it would probably be worth it if it were to do what I think it would,

MAKE CONJURED WEAPONS (or Conjurer/Battlemage builds?) VIABLE AT LAST!!!!!!!!!!

Even Chuck Norris approves of this idea guys, so jump on the bandwagon already! I’m done ranting on changes that are destined to never arrive now.

I think an easy way to improve conjures in terms of flexibility and fluidity is introducing additional traits that help conjures or changing the existing conjurer trait. It would introduce build flexibility while making conjures fun to use and not as clunky.

For Example:

Fire Adept:
Conjurer

Conjures gain 10 additional charges. Additionally, when a conjure is dropped, remaining charges are refunded as CDR at a flat 1 second cooldown reduction per charge. For example, if you used lightning hammer and dropped it with 22 charges left, the cooldown of lightning hammer would be reduced by 22 seconds. This cooldown reduction would also apply if an ally picks up a conjure and drops it early.

Arcane Master or Grandmaster:
Flexible Conjures

Conjures now shift weapon skill sets based on what attunement the elementalist is in. However when the elementalist switches attunements 5 conjure charges are used. However, conjures do not shift weapon skills until an elementalist swaps attunements. For example: an ele summons icebow while in fire attune and starts with 25 charges. He/she uses deep freeze and ice storm and then swaps to air attunement. The conjure then turns into a lightning hammer. The elementalist now has 18 charges left. The ele uses 9 charges through lightning hammer auto attack and swaps to earth attune. The conjure then shifts to earth shield. The elementalist now only has 4 charges left. Does not apply to fiery greatsword. Additionally, fiery greatsword will not benefit from this trait.

Air Adept:
Bountiful Conjures

Whenever a conjure is summoned or picked up, the player(not limited to the ele that summoned the conjure) gains a boon based on the conjure type.

Fire Axe: 3 stacks of might 15 second duration

Lightning Hammer: 10 seconds of fury

Ice Bow: 8 seconds of regeneration

Earth Shield: 5 seconds of protection

Fiery Greatsword: 5 stacks of might 20 second duration, 20 seconds of fury, 20 seconds of swiftness

Of course tree placement is obviously made up and open to change. However, I chose trees with weak tiers in the specialization patch such as air adept or arcane major as to give them a useful trait.

Piratoz.8627:

I think an easy way to improve conjures in terms of flexibility and fluidity is introducing additional traits that help conjures or changing the existing conjurer trait. It would introduce build flexibility while making conjures fun to use and not as clunky.

For Example:

Fire Adept:
Conjurer

Conjures gain 10 additional charges. Additionally, when a conjure is dropped, remaining charges are refunded as CDR at a flat 1 second cooldown reduction per charge. For example, if you used lightning hammer and dropped it with 22 charges left, the cooldown of lightning hammer would be reduced by 22 seconds. This cooldown reduction would also apply if an ally picks up a conjure and drops it early.

Arcane Master or Grandmaster:
Flexible Conjures

Conjures now shift weapon skill sets based on what attunement the elementalist is in. However when the elementalist switches attunements 5 conjure charges are used. However, conjures do not shift weapon skills until an elementalist swaps attunements. For example: an ele summons icebow while in fire attune and starts with 25 charges. He/she uses deep freeze and ice storm and then swaps to air attunement. The conjure then turns into a lightning hammer. The elementalist now has 18 charges left. The ele uses 9 charges through lightning hammer auto attack and swaps to earth attune. The conjure then shifts to earth shield. The elementalist now only has 4 charges left. Does not apply to fiery greatsword. Additionally, fiery greatsword will not benefit from this trait.

Air Adept:
Bountiful Conjures

Whenever a conjure is summoned or picked up, the player(not limited to the ele that summoned the conjure) gains a boon based on the conjure type.

Fire Axe: 3 stacks of might 15 second duration

Lightning Hammer: 10 seconds of fury

Ice Bow: 8 seconds of regeneration

Earth Shield: 5 seconds of protection

Fiery Greatsword: 5 stacks of might 20 second duration, 20 seconds of fury, 20 seconds of swiftness

Of course tree placement is obviously made up and open to change. However, I chose trees with weak tiers in the specialization patch such as air adept or arcane major as to give them a useful trait.

I like these, but I don’t like that I would have to give up taking the few viable traits left to eles in order to make conjures useful.

Conjure weapon should be one skill that functions exactly as described in the Flexible Conjures trait above (i.e. you’re in air, you get the hammer, you switch to earth, it changes to the shield), but without having to trait for it. Make a non-elite version of FGS for the fire attunement (the elite FGS would not change into different weapons), and add boons for conjured weapons to existing traits.

ex 1. “X” Alacrity (pyromancer’s, geomancer’s, etc.): make this apply to conjured weapon skills, as well (but only within that attunement).
ex 2. Vigorous Sceptre, Blasting Staff, Windborne Dagger: the benefits provided by these traits also apply to conjured weapons.

Also, the charge refund you described in Conjurer should be implemented as well, without having to trait for it.

This is the only way that it would be possible to make a seamless transition into the conjured weapons, as it should be. As it is right now, they’re too clunky and cumbersome, like someone stapled the mechanic onto the class without taking enough time to integrate it.

let me generalise further and say:
conjured weapons should be made not to be pieces of kitten suckitude in WVW/PVP.

Uh Bump bump bump