Guild Wars 2

Conjured weapons have been getting discussed a lot lately so I thought it was time to put together a detailed post getting to the core of what makes them unique and why they are currently a less viable option than other utilities and how this could be changed to benefit the Elementalist.

Elementalist’s at their core need to change attunements, there really is no two ways about it. Even after traiting for shorter weapon cooldowns we are still plagued with some of the longest weapon cooldowns of any class and as such Elementalist’s will change attunements a lot to keep dps and pressure up on our target. How ever
here in lies the massive issue with conjured weapons.Taking a class that is built around using every tool it has at it’s disposal and forcing it to use 1 weapon and only 1 weapon is a sub par idea at best. It’s not even comparable to weapon swapping on other classes. Not only this but the very way they are currently implemented is
clunky and uninspiring to use. Taking such a dynamic class and shoving it into 1 weapon set for up to 1 minute so they can feel they have used their utility slot to its maximum potential is just plain silly.

In my mind I see conjured weapons functioning in a way that compliments the Elementalist’s chosen weapon set to cover their weakness whether that be melee or ranged combat, but not to the point of a Engineer’s kit. It should function in a way that is dynamic and flows to such an extent that you are able to combo into them and out of them.

The main suggestions I have been seeing are conjured weapon replaces which ever its corrisponding attunement is or having them outright function like an engineer kit.

While both of these are good starting points they are seriously flawed. The first option essentially replaces a viable attunement with another viable weapon which
realistically fails to address the issues of making it dynamic. Having said that though, if the weapons were completely redesigned to give something that a normal attunement is missing that could be a viable option. But at the end of the day that option is going to be a long road with lots of work that Anet probably cant invest in
at this particular point in time.

The second option takes what in my option should be considered Engineer specific class mechanic and gives it to Elementalist’s. Which 1 will severely upset the Engineer community no matter how it is implimented and 2 cuts down on class diversity. We should be encouraging Anet to give each class their own flavor not mixing and matching.

1. Remove the second conjured weapon that drops down, it’s not really needed. I know some people are going to be unhappy because they like dropping a FGS and stacking Fiery Rush and Fiery Whirl into a stationary target to take it down quickly. But for the sake of balance in what I am about to suggest this is something that as far as I see would need to go and I fail to see the point of holding the class back for a situational benefit.

2. Make every conjure instant cast. This will allow seamless transition to the conjure and allow it to function similarly to an attunement swap. This will preserve the fluidity and dynamic feel of the class.

3. Increase the cool downs of the conjured weapons abilities so they are comparable to that of what you would expect to see on an untraited weapon set. I would expect it to look something like this.

Frost Bow

Frost Volley 12 seconds
Frost Fan 18 seconds
Ice Storm 32 seconds
Deep Freeze 44 seconds

Lightning Hammer

Lightning Leap 14 seconds
Wind Blast 34 seconds
Lightning Storm 26 seconds
Static Field 40 seconds

Magnetic Shield

Crippling Shield 12 seconds
Magnetic Surge 18 seconds
Magnetic Shield 34 Seconds
Fortify 50 seconds

Flame Axe

Explosive Lava Axe 12 seconds
Burning Retreat 20 seconds
Ring of Fire 15 seconds
Flame Leap 25 seconds

Fiery Great Sword

Fiery Eruption 12 seconds
Fiery Whirl 22 seconds
Fiery Rush 26 seconds
Firestorm 42 seconds

Now I know a lot of people at this point are going to be saving WHAT! But keep with me while I lay out the remaining purposed changes.

4. Change the VIII trait Conjurer in the Fire line so that as well as gaining 10 additional charges and all conjure weapon abilities gain a 20% reduction. This will allow not only more attack to be made with the conjures but also allow those attack to occur more often.

5. Change the conjure total duration time to 2 minutes. This is to help balance out the increased cooldowns so you can potentially cast some of those longer cooldown abilities 2-3 times.

6. While the conjure buff is still active and the Elementalist still has charges they are able to drop and re use the conjure at will. How ever every time it is re-summoned it will cost 1 charge. This will allow for chaining into and out of the various conjures but also restricts exactly how many times you are able to move into it cast 1 ability and then move out.

7. Conjured weapons have the same cooldown as they do now except that the will not go into cooldown until all the charges have been used or the conjure buff runs out.

These changes will hopefully allow for Elementalist’s to get some coverage on their weak spots. Eg Frost Bow or Fiery Great Sword for D/D or Lightning Hammer for staff ect.

I do realise that this will need a lot of tweaking, most likely in the department of travel distances for Fiery Rush and Fiery Whirl because if that was to be combined with RTL on short cooldown Elementalist Mobility would at short crazy. How ever this would only last for 2 minutes and then would be followed by a 3 minute cooldown.

How ever I believe with these out lined changes conjures can and will become what they should have been from the start as opposed to the clunky way they have been implemented.

I love conjures, don’t touch ’m

If the changes I proposed came to fruition they could function exactly as they do now minus the the secondary weapon and slightly longer cooldowns with the added ability to be able to be chain into and out of the conjure. I see basically zero downside except for 1 particular build. More build diversity or keep it functioning as is for 1 build seems misguided in the least.

I like the weapon swap idea best.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Conjure-Weapons-Weapon-swap/first#post

Caffynated.5713:

I like the weapon swap idea best.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Conjure-Weapons-Weapon-swap/first#post

Agreed it is good but with my method you could use multiple conjures at once giving way to new possibilities if you were able to manage all of them. Also the idea of a permanent conjure seems at least to me OP.

Regardless of what happens with Conjures, we shouldn’t remove the second weapon dropped. Being able to share our weapons is a big part of what makes these weapons cool in a collaborative environment. Restrict the second weapon to other players if you must but don’t remove it entirely.

Mithfir.1038:

Agreed it is good but with my method you could use multiple conjures at once giving way to new possibilities if you were able to manage all of them. Also the idea of a permanent conjure seems at least to me OP.

You’d think that, but we’re already pretty much at that point with the current system. Cast a Conjure and you get two weapons lasting up to 60 seconds each for a skill with a 60-second cooldown. My suggestion didn’t remove charges, so you still couldn’t sit in Lightning Hammer and autoattack indefinitely — you just also wouldn’t feel like you were wasting a bunch of the skill’s potential by firing it a few times and dropping back to your other skills.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Regardless of what happens with Conjures, we shouldn’t remove the second weapon dropped. Being able to share our weapons is a big part of what makes these weapons cool in a collaborative environment. Restrict the second weapon to other players if you must but don’t remove it entirely.

Mithfir.1038:

Agreed it is good but with my method you could use multiple conjures at once giving way to new possibilities if you were able to manage all of them. Also the idea of a permanent conjure seems at least to me OP.

You’d think that, but we’re already pretty much at that point with the current system. Cast a Conjure and you get two weapons lasting up to 60 seconds each for a skill with a 60-second cooldown. My suggestion didn’t remove charges, so you still couldn’t sit in Lightning Hammer and autoattack indefinitely — you just also wouldn’t feel like you were wasting a bunch of the skill’s potential by firing it a few times and dropping back to your other skills.

Agreed in it’s current form it is a massive part of them. However I am trying my best to propose the least powerful way of changing them to draw the attention to the fact that they can and should be changed. If that means we lose the second weapon so be it. It will give us as a class more possibilities which is never a bad thing. But then on the flip side if Anet by some miracle sees this and agrees it is a good idea but feels it’s too under powered they could possibly keep the secondary weapon.

I know what you were trying to achieve and it is a good idea don’t get me wrong at all. I like it and if it was done I would have no complaints. However having said that I would really like to see the possibility of multiple conjures being used at once. The plays that could be made would be amazing!

Whatever happens with conjures, they should get rid of EITHER timer OR charges. As of now, having both makes the skills extremely restricting and unfun, if not frustrating to use. Having duration of 2 minutes is fine and dandy, but it will never last so long with measly 25 charges, which are quickly eaten away by auto attack.

As for the support element of sharing the conjure. Tell me, Blaine Tog, how many times your group mates used your conjure weapon for purposes other than novelty factor of swinging it few times and dropping it off? The idea of giving allies new weapon might sound great on paper, but the reality is it simply does not work in game. 90% of people won’t bother picking it up the second time.

Now to you, Mithfir. You say you don’t want conjures to be the same as kits. However, your suggestion of dropping and re-casting is basically that; a less elegant and more restricted version of Engineer utilities, only with limited duration, charges and long cooldowns. Not mentioning it would be nightmare to balance, for reason stated below.

Now to your critique of my* suggestion of having the weapon tied to specific attunement. You say it replaces a viable attunement with another viable weapon. I fail to see where is the problem with that? Doesn’t weapon swapping of other professions work exactly like that? You swap your weapon for a second one, and can’t return to the first one for few seconds. It can’t be more dynamic than that. Having conjure weapon on top of 20 other skills would be too much. There has to be a tradeoff, just as with other professions’ swapping.

The current mechanic of conjure weapons can be described in one word: clunky. The core issues: long cast time, limited duration, restricting charges promoting cast-and-drop playstyle, losing all your attunements for 5 skills that seemingly never left the work-in-progress status. All that mades conjures weak and unviable in general play, apart from few very specialised and limited builds. Your suggestion is nice, but it builds around these core problems instead of solving them. Conjure weapons need to be redone completely, not just increasing duration and cooldown and forcing us to take even more traits to make them viable.

Ill break it up in bit’s so its easier to write.

Red Jay.2516:

Whatever happens with conjures, they should get rid of EITHER timer OR charges. As of now, having both makes the skills extremely restricting and unfun, if not frustrating to use. Having duration of 2 minutes is fine and dandy, but it will never last so long with measly 25 charges, which are quickly eaten away by auto attack.

The point is if you can swap out of it freely you wouldn’t be chewing it up with auto attack and if you were it would function exactly the same as it does now. Conjures by their nature are intended to be limited which is fine the class is already so versatile some restrictions need to be implemented. If this be in the form of charges on our abilities that let us further expand our skill base then to me that is balance and it is fair.

Red Jay.2516:

As for the support element of sharing the conjure. Tell me, Blaine Tog, how many times your group mates used your conjure weapon for purposes other than novelty factor of swinging it few times and dropping it off? The idea of giving allies new weapon might sound great on paper, but the reality is it simply does not work in game. 90% of people won’t bother picking it up the second time.

Agree 100% it is currently not offering us as a class anything besides very situational benefits.

Red Jay.2516:

Now to you, Mithfir. You say you don’t want conjures to be the same as kits. However, your suggestion of dropping and re-casting is basically that; a less elegant and more restricted version of Engineer utilities, only with limited duration, charges and long cooldowns. Not mentioning it would be nightmare to balance, for reason stated below.

The limit is there for a reason. Could you imagine if I had of made the same suggestion without charges or restrictions it would just be too OP. Having 20 weapon skills and then another 5 with little to no restriction? That doesn’t sit well in my mind. So within my suggestion I believe this is how balance would or should be achieved.

Red Jay.2516:

Now to your critique of my* suggestion of having the weapon tied to specific attunement. You say it replaces a viable attunement with another viable weapon. I fail to see where is the problem with that? Doesn’t weapon swapping of other professions work exactly like that? You swap your weapon for a second one, and can’t return to the first one for few seconds. It can’t be more dynamic than that. Having conjure weapon on top of 20 other skills would be too much. There has to be a tradeoff, just as with other professions’ swapping.

Agreed that there needs to be a trade off. How ever if we were to go the route of having it exchange it for it’s corresponding attunement you would ultimately find that it would only benefit specific weapon sets and on top of this would cause certain weapons to need to be redesigned. Which then turns into a full redesign which is what I am trying to avoid with my suggestion.

Red Jay.2516:

The current mechanic of conjure weapons can be described in one word: clunky. The core issues: long cast time, limited duration, restricting charges promoting cast-and-drop playstyle, losing all your attunements for 5 skills that seemingly never left the work-in-progress status. All that mades conjures weak and unviable in general play, apart from few very specialised and limited builds. Your suggestion is nice, but it builds around these core problems instead of solving them. Conjure weapons need to be redone completely, not just increasing duration and cooldown and forcing us to take even more traits to make them viable.

100% Agree that they are clunky and should be redone from scratch. But the reality of the situation is that for this to happen we may be waiting a very very long time. I would much rather see a work around happen in a shorter time span to see if they can be salvaged or made useful before the entire thing is scrapped. I do feel that if these changes were made they could and would be viable in every build and have some merit to a point. I don’t think the trait would be necessary how ever it would be very nice which is the point of traits.

Wishful thinking, wishful thinking everywhere .. Get real, guys!

The core mechanic of elemetalists is indeed to swap attunements. It is very well done, but tricky. In fact if you look at it generally, in terms of damage:
-fire: direct damage + condition
-air: direct damage
-earth: conditions
So whether you go for condition damage or direct damage, somehow you have two attunements that are optimal for you. Attunements have a base recharge time of 15s. So, theoretically, the recharge time of your optimal damaging state is 15/2=7.5 seconds, which is lower than the other classes recharge times. The issue is that when we are not in those optimal attunements then we are quite suboptimal, that’s why many elementalists prefer to be tanky and faceroll attunements with arcana.
What I mean is that we do not need a weapon swap. We do not need conjures to be similar to engineer’s kits either. This would be extremely redundant.
However I am not saying there are no issues with conjures.
You just need to be realistic and keep in mind the core concepts of the game.
Their wish is to give us group utilities, that’s why the conjures drop a second weapon, it’s not necessarily just for us. There are utilities, so think of them as such.

A realistic idea:
When you have a conjure utility slotted, you will drop the conjured weapon at your feet (with less charges and time) when you swap out of the corresponding attunement.
This would solve the problem of their clunkyness, keep the group aspect of it, and act in in a similar way as fresh air if you see what I mean. Actually I love my idea.

Zelyhn.8069:

Wishful thinking, wishful thinking everywhere .. Get real, guys!

The core mechanic of elemetalists is indeed to swap attunements. It is very well done, but tricky. In fact if you look at it generally, in terms of damage:
-fire: direct damage + condition
-air: direct damage
-earth: conditions
So whether you go for condition damage or direct damage, somehow you have two attunements that are optimal for you. Attunements have a base recharge time of 15s. So, theoretically, the recharge time of your optimal damaging state is 15/2=7.5 seconds, which is lower than the other classes recharge times. The issue is that when we are not in those optimal attunements then we are quite suboptimal, that’s why many elementalists prefer to be tanky and faceroll attunements with arcana.
What I mean is that we do not need a weapon swap. We do not need conjures to be similar to engineer’s kits either. This would be extremely redundant.
However I am not saying there are no issues with conjures.
You just need to be realistic and keep in mind the core concepts of the game.
Their wish is to give us group utilities, that’s why the conjures drop a second weapon, it’s not necessarily just for us. There are utilities, so think of them as such.

It may be wishful thinking but hey got to throw it out there if you want change right?

Oh no doubt there is a team aspect to it but really what does it offer to a team? Realistically? If we were to look at it purely from a team perspective they are just sub-par. Other classes can build for the same effect all the while doing it far better.

Really for what it offers us and a team you can get far more out of a different utility.

I thought for what they have already implemented my suggestion was quite fair and in keeping with the current theme of conjures with changes that make it more useful to us. How ever if you have any other ideas I’m all ears, class analysis is something I love to do even if I don’t play that particular class I love to have a deeper understanding of mechanics within the game.

Yes I edited my post with an idea

Oh and also, once they fix lingering elements I’d like to see this trait grant the attunement bonuses to conjure’s spells and its wielder for a duration. But now that’s wishful thinking!

Zelyhn.8069:

Yes I edited my post with an idea

Just saw it =).

Zelyhn.8069:

A realistic idea:
When you have a conjure utility slotted, you will drop the conjured weapon at your feet (with less charges and time) when you swap out of the corresponding attunement.
This would solve the problem of their clunkyness, keep the group aspect of it, and act in in a similar way as fresh air if you see what I mean. Actually I love my idea.

It’s not a bad idea its a realistic option. The only flaw I can see with it and in my opinion probably the killer is in mobile fights. If you happen to drop it while on the move you may not be anywhere near it to pick it up again when you want it. Which is kind of a bummer.

From a PvE perspective I could see that being a very viable and logical solution but then on the flip side within PvP content I cant really see it working as well.

How ever I can also concede that it would open up more of a thought process when involving conjures in relation to when and where you drop it so you can easily pick it up if you want it again.

But then there is the aspect that Anet has gone out of the way to make this game layered but still are its core simplistic so it can be enjoyed by everyone and adding such a feature I also fear would complicate the use of conjures further.

Could I make it work for me? Yeah probably could. But would it be the optimal decision for the larger community I’m not so sure. That said I really like the idea and if it could be made into something well fleshed out I would be all for it.

Zelyhn.8069:

Oh and also, once they fix lingering elements I’d like to see this trait grant the attunement bonuses to conjure’s spells and its wielder for a duration. But now that’s wishful thinking!

God I hope they just do something with lingering elements that is more useful to the class as a whole rather than a few specific traits.

Thanks, I appreciate your appreciation

The grounded part of the conjures has to remain, it’s core in the concept. The issue with this idea is that it removes the conjuring-into-your-hands part, you are right.
I could actually see this used in PvP quite a bit!
For example I sometimes use the shield when I am wielding the focus, this is because the focus provides no aoe interrup (unlike the dagger), so the shield allows me to prevent mass stomps by aoe pulling my foes. But I have to plan for it so much that it fails half of the time …
Notice that all conjures have a movement spell included in their arsenal (apart from the bow but it is ranged anyway), so having to walk back where you dropped it is somehow compensated by its availability and fluidity: you can use more of these movement spells.
Also teammates would be more likely to use them, since they could expect the conjures to pop on a regular basis. People would learn to play with them.

Zelyhn.8069:

Thanks, I appreciate your appreciation

The grounded part of the conjures has to remain, it’s core in the concept. The issue with this idea is that it removes the conjuring-into-your-hands part, you are right.
I could actually see this used in PvP quite a bit!
For example I sometimes use the shield when I am wielding the focus, this is because the focus provides no aoe interrup (unlike the dagger), so the shield allows me to prevent mass stomps by aoe pulling my foes. But I have to plan for it so much that it fails half of the time …
Notice that all conjures have a movement spell included in their arsenal, so having to walk back where you dropped it is somehow compensated by its availability and fluidity: you can use more of these movement spells.
Also teammates would be more likely to use them, since they could expect the conjures to pop on a regular basis. People would learn to play with them.

I could see it working it would be very difficult to pull off but it could be very rewarding. It is a interesting idea.

It actually gave me an idea. How do you feel giving the Elementalist the ability to pull the conjure weapon to them once they have summoned it say in a 300-600 range? It would still offer group utility but makes it easier for the Elementalist to use for them selves in a solo scenario.

Good suggestion it has actually got me thinking about different possibilities.

Ah yes very nice!
So the passive of the utility would be the conjuring part, and the active would pull the weapon right into your hands!
This is brilliant !!
So the active could have a medium cd, maybe even a cast time or whatever.
I really like this!

they could even make different type of pulls for each weapon.
The hammer could be pulled very quicly to you, no cast time
The axe could take a cast time but leave a fire trail on its path to you
The shield could pull you to it instead
The bow could leave a water field in its place
something like that

Some many cool possibilities!

Zelyhn.8069:

Ah yes very nice!
So the passive of the utility would be the conjuring part, and the active would pull the weapon right into your hands!
This is brilliant !!
So the active could have a medium cd, maybe even a cast time or whatever.
I really like this!

Yeah possibly have the range of the pull tied to the range of the weapon. For instance have the Longbow’s pull further than the Hammer.

Zelyhn.8069:

they could even make different type of pulls for each weapon.
The hammer could be pulled very quicly to you, no cast time
The axe could take a cast time but leave a fire trail on its path to you
The shield could pull you to it instead
The bow could leave a water field in its place
something like that

Some many cool possibilities!

That would be very cool and allow for some pretty nice plays, though I feel that if that were the case pulling the weapon to you would have to consume a charge or at least have some kind of significant cooldown. But it is a very interesting idea. Thank you got me thinking about some pretty neat things.

Let’s just hope some dev reads this and gets inspired!

We could make a suggestion post, but we would need many people to back it up in order to make it stand out

I just can’t wait to see my hammer RTL towards me

Zelyhn.8069:

Let’s just hope some dev reads this and gets inspired!

We could make a suggestion post, but we would need many people to back it up in order to make it stand out

I just can’t wait to see my hammer RTL towards me

Well that’s what I’m hoping for that it gets enough views that someone looks at it. Just need more people to post to keep the thread healthy and constructive. More ideas the merrier.

I agree
So let’s talk about this idea
I see an other problem: the theme.
There is a conflict between conjuring something automatically when swapping out of attunement and the idea of attuning. This is because attuning is considered a strong active action (all the effect occur on attuning in, not out), and the only trait that triggers on attuning out is lingering elements. So maybe the best way to trigger the weapon conjure would be so that after spending 3-4 seconds in the relevant attunement then the weapon is conjured. What do you think?
This would also prevent the hammer spam from fresh air, although I’d love to see that
But technically speaking I’d much rather have them be conjured when attuning out.

Edit: actually I don’t see how hammer spam from fresh air could be a bad idea if the time and charges of the hammers were sufficiently low (15s, 12 charges for ex)

It is an interesting idea. I would keep the conjure times to 1/4 of a second personally, that includes FGS currently the long cast time and lack of being able to move stops me from using it in a combo effectively. Though I have been able to pull off Updraft + Summon FGS + Fiery Whirl when I have had things on cooldown to finish someone off which can be really cool and satisfying.

How ever what I was thinking was either have the pull effect on the conjure only trigger when you’re in the corresponding attunement or have the cooldown for the pull lowered if you’re in the corresponding attunement. Either I think would be fitting.

I don’t know for FGS, because it is an elite it should remain something extraordinary, so I wouldn’t consider changing this spell just yet.

As for the conjure times, if it was 1/4 of a second then it would trigger everytime you would switch to that attunement (attunement change cd is 1s) so in effect that would be a conjure on attunement swap with a delay, instead of rewarding the player for staying a bit longer in one attunement.

Actually I would gladly make it so that it triggers after spending 6 seconds in an attunement, so that lingering elements help a lot with it.

Your initial suggestion (where you can resummon so long as you have charges/buff) basically makes them into timed duration Kits which doesn’t really address balance concerns brought up by them being turned into kits in the first place. To repost:

Kodiak.3281:

The easiest answer why they don’t (or won’t) work as kits is you have to look at the class where they do work like kits, the Engineer. The engineer gets 1 weapon because he has the ability to equip a kit instead which acts like a second weapon in addition to their utility bar giving them additional abilities. The elementalist gets 1 weapon because he has the ability to change attunements and effectively gets four weapon sets (instead of just two) plus these temporary conjures which can alter our play style.

(Disclaimer: I’m speaking pretty broad terms here, there’s a lot that really goes into the balancing of a class so lets not dissect too closely)

This means you can’t really change the Conjures to kits without offering a clear and direct advantage to the Engineer mechanic. Each one offers us an additional weapon set up to 8 (4 more conjures on top of 4 attunements) which would be insane for one class to have.

They’re just not going to give us more permanent weapon abilities or choices. The entire idea that allows Conjures to continue at all on our class is the fact that they are temporary. Ignoring that point or coming up with ideas and ways to skirt around that fact (the temporary nature) likely will not happen. Your idea also opens up some ridiculously powerful combinations. For example Conjure a Fire Axe and spawn a Fire Field anywhere then “drop” it while in Earth Attunement and do a series of combo fishers as a result without wasting attunement timers. The game play would quickly become use one powerful utility (such as Ice Storm) then switch back till the cool down was up.

Personally I’d like to just see a real simple fix and make it so we can pick up our second conjured weapon and have it’s charges added to our total. It’s simple, effective and eliminates the most annoying aspect to using Conjures (everyone else wants to pick it up even if you didn’t want to share it…but maintaining the ability to do so). I leveled 30-80 on Lightning Hammer build two times on my Elementalists and this by far was the biggest issue.

Mithfir.1038:

Agreed in it’s current form it is a massive part of them. However I am trying my best to propose the least powerful way of changing them to draw the attention to the fact that they can and should be changed. If that means we lose the second weapon so be it. It will give us as a class more possibilities which is never a bad thing. But then on the flip side if Anet by some miracle sees this and agrees it is a good idea but feels it’s too under powered they could possibly keep the secondary weapon.

I think it’s important to keep the professions as distinct as possible. Being able to share our skills like this is a cool, unique thing the Ele can do and unique edges like that should not be smoothed out if at all possible.

Mithfir.1038:

I know what you were trying to achieve and it is a good idea don’t get me wrong at all. I like it and if it was done I would have no complaints. However having said that I would really like to see the possibility of multiple conjures being used at once. The plays that could be made would be amazing!

Yes, I play an Engineer too so I am aware of the possibilities created by swapping between kits rapidly. I really think this steps on the Engi’s toes much too directly, though. Even constraining it with charges doesn’t really help.

Red Jay.2516:

As for the support element of sharing the conjure. Tell me, Blaine Tog, how many times your group mates used your conjure weapon for purposes other than novelty factor of swinging it few times and dropping it off? The idea of giving allies new weapon might sound great on paper, but the reality is it simply does not work in game. 90% of people won’t bother picking it up the second time.

Sharing the Lightning Hammer is a staple of CoF p2 skips. Without the Lightning Hammer sharing, the only group (to my knowledge) that could do that would be all-Warrior-and-Ele groups.

But you’re right, most professions would rather stick with their own weapon skills for serious fights. This is more a symptom of a lot of conjure skills being kinda bad combined with the generally low number of Eles who pack conjures (which means nobody else ever knows the benefit from grabbing a conjured weapon). Conjure Fiery Greatsword could be a massive boon to roaming parties in WvW; the Ele could drop a Greatsword for his Necromancer so they could both stand a chance of escaping from a big group.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Sharing the Lightning Hammer is a staple of CoF p2 skips. Without the Lightning Hammer sharing, the only group (to my knowledge) that could do that would be all-Warrior-and-Ele groups.

But you’re right, most professions would rather stick with their own weapon skills for serious fights. This is more a symptom of a lot of conjure skills being kinda bad combined with the generally low number of Eles who pack conjures (which means nobody else ever knows the benefit from grabbing a conjured weapon). Conjure Fiery Greatsword could be a massive boon to roaming parties in WvW; the Ele could drop a Greatsword for his Necromancer so they could both stand a chance of escaping from a big group.

Rangers (Sword) and Guardians (Greatsword) also have leaps.

That said, ignoring a more exploit oriented focus, the Frost Bow sharing is a staple of any physical object destruction. There was even a period of time there where people thought Elementalists were “mandatory” to destroy the Graveling Pits in AC Explore.

Keep current charge+timer system.

Lightning Hammer- lightning storm- increase radius to be equal to a shard from ice storm

Ice bow- Double auto damage attack and increase projectile speed by 33%. Maybe replace healing with a 5 sec stack of confusion.

Lava axe-increase auto attack damage by 25%, makes skill 2 a blast finisher, replace ring of fire with the /d variant

Earth shield-increase auto damage by 20%, add 1 sec weakness (remember its a single target skill and 130 range, and autos chew up charges)
Crippling shield- increase damage and cripple duration by 50%,
OR reduce cripple duration from 2 sec to 1 sec and make crippling shield the auto attack. Double shield smack damage and add 5sec weakness.

magnetic charge- it has a weird clunky pause if you use it on an enemy at less than maximum range, but otherwise okay
Magnetic shield (pull skill)- reduce cast to 1sec

They are perfect the way they are now imo.

The only thing I would do is making them instant casts.

take away charges please…just common sense. Timer is fine. If you really need the kitten charges on then don’t let auto-attacks take away charges!

I like Conjures and I like the charges.
I wish Conjures were more like the Initiative System and so that Skills had Low Cooldown time justified by the use of Charges.
Actually wtf.

Rework conjure skills to consume different charges and lower the cooldown time.
Auto attack would consume 1 charge. Most of the 2’s could consume 2 but have 3/4s CD’s. Deep freeze could take 6 or 7 charges and be on 10/12s…

One thing I’d like to see is the conjure weapon Not disappear when you drop it.

These are some pretty interesting ideas, and there are quite a few I like (and might want despite how they would make us OP :p ), but I think Blaine made a good point with some of the conjure skills being not that great. Most of the time you see people using the 4 and 5, possibly the 3, skills and then just hopping out, so I think if conjures were given a shorter cast time (and I’d say get rid of the ground targeting aspect and just have them drop at your feet when you cast them) and a small buff to some skills then they’d be lesss clunky but still retaining they same idea. It might not be a permanent fix, but it’d make them a lot more enticing to use them if the cast time wasn’t so clunky.

Another idea that I thought would be cool is if there was a way to equip the lava axe and the earth shield at the same time. There could be a trait that replaces those skills with a combined lava axe and shield utility skill that would only be there with that specific trait. The first three skills would be from the axe and the 4 and 5 skills would come from the shield. With some tweaking I think that would be really sweet to do with the conjures, and it would be quite original, seeing as no other class does that. With the other conjures it wouldn’t work as well since they’re all two handed weapons, but the axe and the shield could work great together.

tl;dr
A lot of good ideas. Until a better fix is found, just reducing/removing the cast time/ground targeting of conjures would make them nicer.

Imagine the idea of being able to combine the lava axe and earth shield. :O If people like the idea I’ll expand upon it.

^forget axe and shield, fuse the bow and hammer for ranged aoe blast finishers with blinding

I won’t be happy till I can have Earth Shield on my right arm while gripping a Fiery Axe while my left arm is wielding a Fiery Greatsword with a Ice Bow attached to the arm to fire off like a crossbow while I have a Lightning Hammer to headbutt people with.

Lets make it happen…

@Kodiak.3281

Well currently one can summon the fire axe drop a fire field and go into a blast finisher chain if they wanted to. I have actually used it like this before as well. I have also slotted fire axe and used it to get a killing blow. How ever increasing the cooldowns of more powerful skills so they can only be used 2-3 times for the duration that conjure is up in my mind keeps it balanced.

Having the ability to add charges to the weapon you currently have will still cause the same issue of using it for 1 skill and then dropping it. While I realise that it will be a very close idea to that of engineers kits the draw back would be the charges and the long cooldown on skills. Engineers kits have no charges and ideally would have significantly shorter cooldowns even when our conjures are traited.

@Blaine Tog.8304

I frequently use my FGS as a mobility tool to give to my friend in WvW to assist him in getting away (his a mesmer). The ability for us to give something to other classes that they might not have is very cool, how ever keeping something that could be very useful and useful in many situations in a state that’s for very specific circumstances doesn’t really work well in my eyes. But hey that’s my opinion.

Navzar.2938

I don’t think adjusting the skills so they are more powerful is really going to solve anything but hey any change is good.

Guile.9103

I agree that would be really nice if nothing else was done. I would love to see FGS cast time cut down by 1/4 of a second and be able to be cast on the run as well as the changes you suggested. But I would really still like to see something substantial happen to conjures.

Spiuk.8421

It’s not that they aren’t good. It’s that they are only good in very set circumstances and those set circumstances rarely happen outside of PvE dungeons.

flyingfox.6150

Without charges it has no limit and just becomes a clunky engineer kit with a long cooldown.

ensoriki.5789

I had this idea a while ago however no one seemed interested and really it is a huge re-balance so the time frame on any sort of improvements would be quite large.

JuniorSB.7089

Seems overly complicated but if you feel like elaborating go for it. I agree that removing the cast time more specifically on FGS or lowering it and making it cast-able on the run would be a good start as the others don’t bother me so much. But I would like to see something significant happen.

Kodiak.3281

That picture is EPIC had me in stitches.

I adjusted the skills so that you can actually use them as temporary weapons (hopefully). As they are now, the auto attack is just a waste of charges, so people stand there and wait for cds or they just blast off a few skills and drop it.

I figured if the auto attack was strong, then people good actually use the strong skills and then keep fighting with it while waiting for cds. Of course with this model your major limiting factor is the number of charges.

Navzar.2938:

I adjusted the skills so that you can actually use them as temporary weapons. As they are now, the auto attack is just a waste of charges, so people stand there and wait for cds or they just blast off a few skills and drop it.

I figured if the auto attack was strong, then people good actually use the strong skills and then keep fighting with it while waiting for cds. Of course with this model your major limiting factor is the number of charges.

It’s a solution but here’s where i see the flaw. Elementalist is inherently weak if you stick to 1 attunement, given this the conjures would have to be very strong to compensate where they could offer something that someone would want. Now what happens if for instance they buff lightning hammer and you give this buffed lightning hammer to a warrior? It would be way too powerful on him but okay on us.

Yeah that is true. Maybe they should just have the passive buff from the conjure weapon be for eles only if they were to use that idea. (Although lightning hammer was a skill I didn’t really do much for in terms of buffing) Or try to use traits to make conjures more powerful for eles. ex. conjurer grants +200 armor while using a conjured weapon in addition to it’s current effect, or maybe it could strengthen the elemental passive traits while using a conjure.

The other hope was that people would actually burn through the charges fairly quickly, so they aren’t losing much in terms of flexibility.

The reason I propose these things isn’t because I think they’re better, but rather because I think they would be easier to implement, and thus more likely for anet to seriously consider them.

(Although I’m still hugely in support of things like being able to pick up a conjure again after you drop it, or the initiative type system.)

Mithfir.1038:

@Kodiak.3281

Well currently one can summon the fire axe drop a fire field and go into a blast finisher chain if they wanted to. I have actually used it like this before as well. I have also slotted fire axe and used it to get a killing blow. How ever increasing the cooldowns of more powerful skills so they can only be used 2-3 times for the duration that conjure is up in my mind keeps it balanced.

Having the ability to add charges to the weapon you currently have will still cause the same issue of using it for 1 skill and then dropping it. While I realise that it will be a very close idea to that of engineers kits the draw back would be the charges and the long cooldown on skills. Engineers kits have no charges and ideally would have significantly shorter cooldowns even when our conjures are traited.

That picture is EPIC had me in stitches.

Simply increasing the recast timers (and you also mentioned duration) is really just a lateral shift of the current scenario. All conjured weapons have a 60s recast currently. Most of their stronger abilities are on a 20-30s cool down. The more you increase the cool downs the closer you get to using the ability once every 60s which is no different than the current model. The farther away you get from that and the closer you get to it not being balanced because not only will you still have access to those abilities quicker than once every 60s but for the remainder of the time while the conjure abilities you wanted to use are on cool down you now have full access to your normal abilities.

By giving people access to the Conjured Weapon abilities and allowing them to return to their normal abilities you’re undermining that balance aspect to conjured weapons. Your method of balancing it doesn’t really change anything in the current scenario let alone balance it.

Small idea. What if we took the charges and effectively made it into an Initiative thing similar to what thieves have. So you conjure your weapon and you have so many charges to use, and stronger skills need more charges per cast. So you could go in, blow a few stronger moves, then it disappears. Or you can manage the weaker moves to keep your weapon for a longer duration, depending on how you intend to do it.

Keep certain skills from stacking of course. No spamming Ice Bow 5 for a perma freeze on a single target for example.

Kodiak.3281:

Mithfir.1038:

@Kodiak.3281

Well currently one can summon the fire axe drop a fire field and go into a blast finisher chain if they wanted to. I have actually used it like this before as well. I have also slotted fire axe and used it to get a killing blow. How ever increasing the cooldowns of more powerful skills so they can only be used 2-3 times for the duration that conjure is up in my mind keeps it balanced.

Having the ability to add charges to the weapon you currently have will still cause the same issue of using it for 1 skill and then dropping it. While I realise that it will be a very close idea to that of engineers kits the draw back would be the charges and the long cooldown on skills. Engineers kits have no charges and ideally would have significantly shorter cooldowns even when our conjures are traited.

That picture is EPIC had me in stitches.

Simply increasing the recast timers (and you also mentioned duration) is really just a lateral shift of the current scenario. All conjured weapons have a 60s recast currently. Most of their stronger abilities are on a 20-30s cool down. The more you increase the cool downs the closer you get to using the ability once every 60s which is no different than the current model. The farther away you get from that and the closer you get to it not being balanced because not only will you still have access to those abilities quicker than once every 60s but for the remainder of the time while the conjure abilities you wanted to use are on cool down you now have full access to your normal abilities.

By giving people access to the Conjured Weapon abilities and allowing them to return to their normal abilities you’re undermining that balance aspect to conjured weapons. Your method of balancing it doesn’t really change anything in the current scenario let alone balance it.

I agree with your analysis but lets keep in mind not only the original way conjures were made but also the way Elementalists function at their core. A 1 use non instant weapon will almost never be picked over a instant utility except in a very specific set of circumstances. So really there is no change in the current form that you or I could agree on. In your ideal situation how exactly would you like to see them? I’m genuinely intrigued.

I feel like I should also point out that Anet obviously intended for all the charges to get used, but in their current form that won’t happen in most builds bar a few.

Would conjures be horribly broken if the extra conjure was removed and the cooldowns on all the abilities were reduced by 30-50%? (probably shouldn’t do this for greatsword). If this change isn’t horribly broken, would it make someone care if I pull out a conjure?

Mithfir.1038:

Kodiak.3281:

Mithfir.1038:

@Kodiak.3281

Well currently one can summon the fire axe drop a fire field and go into a blast finisher chain if they wanted to. I have actually used it like this before as well. I have also slotted fire axe and used it to get a killing blow. How ever increasing the cooldowns of more powerful skills so they can only be used 2-3 times for the duration that conjure is up in my mind keeps it balanced.

Having the ability to add charges to the weapon you currently have will still cause the same issue of using it for 1 skill and then dropping it. While I realise that it will be a very close idea to that of engineers kits the draw back would be the charges and the long cooldown on skills. Engineers kits have no charges and ideally would have significantly shorter cooldowns even when our conjures are traited.

That picture is EPIC had me in stitches.

Simply increasing the recast timers (and you also mentioned duration) is really just a lateral shift of the current scenario. All conjured weapons have a 60s recast currently. Most of their stronger abilities are on a 20-30s cool down. The more you increase the cool downs the closer you get to using the ability once every 60s which is no different than the current model. The farther away you get from that and the closer you get to it not being balanced because not only will you still have access to those abilities quicker than once every 60s but for the remainder of the time while the conjure abilities you wanted to use are on cool down you now have full access to your normal abilities.

By giving people access to the Conjured Weapon abilities and allowing them to return to their normal abilities you’re undermining that balance aspect to conjured weapons. Your method of balancing it doesn’t really change anything in the current scenario let alone balance it.

I agree with your analysis but lets keep in mind not only the original way conjures were made but also the way Elementalists function at their core. A 1 use non instant weapon will almost never be picked over a instant utility except in a very specific set of circumstances. So really there is no change in the current form that you or I could agree on. In your ideal situation how exactly would you like to see them? I’m genuinely intrigued.

I feel like I should also point out that Anet obviously intended for all the charges to get used, but in their current form that won’t happen in most builds bar a few.

It being instant or not doesn’t really make itself a problem.
The skill recharges are so high that straight up charges basically end up solely on the auto attack. Which is fine if the auto attack is beastly (Lightning Hammer & FGS), but otherwise yeah no. Even then FGS skills outside of the auto are all on relatively short CD’s which just shows why thats a good conjure.

Mithfir.1038:

I agree with your analysis but lets keep in mind not only the original way conjures were made but also the way Elementalists function at their core. A 1 use non instant weapon will almost never be picked over a instant utility except in a very specific set of circumstances. So really there is no change in the current form that you or I could agree on. In your ideal situation how exactly would you like to see them? I’m genuinely intrigued.

I feel like I should also point out that Anet obviously intended for all the charges to get used, but in their current form that won’t happen in most builds bar a few.

I’ve leveled two Elementalists now 30-80 mostly using a Conjure/Cantrip build with Lightning Hammer. The number one issue I had was there was always some shmuck who came along and picked up my second weapon so there was always a period of time where I’d be in S/D waiting for my Conjure timer. On my 2nd Elementalist I gave in and just did D/D full time instead around 60 because it got annoying having some dude random dude find my hammer, cycle it’s abilities to check it out, then drop it entirely wasting it.

The simplest solution to that would be to allow us to pick up our second weapon and add it’s charges to the original total. So this would mean 30 or 50 (if traited) within the same 60s duration. This is functionally no different than the current model as it allows someone else to still pick it up (if you want to share) or if we want to split the uses ourselves (such as cast a bow, use Ice Shards, drop bow…fight with normal abilities…pick 2nd Bow up and cast again) while removing probably the biggest headache of all. It also maintains the disadvantage of limited abilities while using the subset and you can’t just drop it and get those charges back.

If you notice Firery Greatsword’s auto attack is a channeled style attack which allows it to kick out a lot of damage for only a single charge. If they add the ability to pick up your second weapon and add charges I don’t think this will be an issue for the other weapons. For example many times, with Conjurer, I could easily go the full 60s with just two Hammers and auto attacking most of the charges away.

The next step would be looking into the Conjures themselves and determine if they offer anything competitive with our base abilities. For example one of the first things I’d do is look at the after cast time of a lot of the abilities (something they really didn’t do with the last update on Conjures) and adding more mobility to the abilities (Earth Shield really suffers here).

They will not allows us to pick up the second weapon to add charges or duration because this erases the group sharing part of this utility, in a way.
The developers rightfully want us to share the conjures, they want to make the spell optimal for this.
The cooldowns are not that long in fact, just 60s! Yes this means it is not easy to have this weapon permanently, but maybe people should start thinking that it does not have to be permanent?
For example you are about to zerg dive, if you conjure a lightning hammer then you and a friend can dive in and pop two static fields, which is deadly.
It is a utility, and we are not engineers.
Also stop trying to improve the conjures by tweaking the numbers: cooldowns, power, charges, duration etc … the devs have tried this once already: they increased the stats given to the wielder. This hardly made more people use the conjures, it is a bad way to make it more attractive.
Making them instant would be better, but it would require a limitation for a trade-off (and not breaking the theme: again, we are not engineers). That’s why I gave the idea of requiring attunement swap to trigger the instant conjuration.

Zelyhn.8069:

They will not allows us to pick up the second weapon to add charges or duration because this erases the group sharing part of this utility, in a way.
The developers rightfully want us to share the conjures, they want to make the spell optimal for this.
The cooldowns are not that long in fact, just 60s! Yes this means it is not easy to have this weapon permanently, but maybe people should start thinking that it does not have to be permanent?
For example you are about to zerg dive, if you conjure a lightning hammer then you and a friend can dive in and pop two static fields, which is deadly.
It is a utility, and we are not engineers.
Also stop trying to improve the conjures by tweaking the numbers: cooldowns, power, charges, duration etc … the devs have tried this once already: they increased the stats given to the wielder. This hardly made more people use the conjures, it is a bad way to make it more attractive.
Making them instant would be better, but it would require a limitation for a trade-off (and not breaking the theme: again, we are not engineers). That’s why I gave the idea of requiring attunement swap to trigger the instant conjuration.

And how does adding the capability of picking up your second weapon “erase” the ability for someone else to pick up the second weapon? You still cast it on the ground and anyone else or you can pick it up. My idea removes no functionality over the current way it works and solves some of the huge quality of life issues that come with using Conjures.

Furthermore your supposition that because the stat buffs they did try didn’t work no changes would work is flawed. It’s true to say that adding stat buffs to the conjures were not incentive enough for them to be used more but going one step further and saying no changes would help is a huge assumption. When you look at the most commonly used Conjures (Hammer and FGS) you can see they combine a powerful auto with a powerful set of utility. This is compared to say Frostbow which has a weak auto and decent utility or Earth Shield with a terrible auto and potentially great utility (but is ultimately hampered by the fact it’s strong utility roots you in place) or the other extreme with Axe having a decent auto but mediocre utility.

With the ability to cast all Conjures on the run (except FGS) I have never had the cast time ever once be a consideration or thought on the matter despite using them to level from 30-80. I am not sure why you think this is an issue with them.

If you take out the second weapon drop, what will rangers use in dungeons?

What if conjures only had 1 charge but all spells were much more powerful and or reworked. Auto atts would be reworked to be stronger spell. this would give the elementalists a unique type of skill. It gives them access to a single choice of five powerful spells all related by the attunement of that weapon (fire e.g.) and the weapons theme (greatsword e.g.).

This would obviously require a rework in how the second conjure works, so u can’t double chain powerful spells are use 2 separate spells in great conjunction. Havent thought a whole lot on that.

I think this is a pretty unique concept for a class to have. The biggest thing is that this is a large change inn the current concept. That’s obvious. The real question is is this needed? Tbh most of the conjures have at least 2 good spells. Other utilities are only one spell obviously. So there are some benefits to the current conjures, in addition to their stat increase buff recently.

But they still aren’t as optimal as most utilities. Tbh I think they mainly need a change in concept and a rebalance\slight buff in power

Stinson.5972:

If you take out the second weapon drop, what will rangers use in dungeons?

Sword.

Mesmers on the other hand...