Guild Wars 2

Right now I think Conjured weapons still need a little help so I’ve come up with a few changes. Most of the big changes are overall issues with conjured weapons but there are a few weapon specific tweaks as well.

Overall Changes:

Increase the baseline charges on conjured weapons to 20. This means 30 charges with trait. The current amount of charges is a bit too limiting and certainly cannot be spammed by any means. This makes it clunkier and less reliable in combat. Especially considering cast and pickup time.

Switch the http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Conjurer and http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Burning_Fire trait order This makes Conjurer a 10 point trait and Burning Fire a 20 point trait. Conjured weapons have a variety of uses and they shouldn’t be hidden deep into the might line JUST so you can get more frost bow, lightning hammer, and earth shield charges.

Modify the Burning fire to give 1 second of burning on all Lava Axe and Greatsword attacks that currently don’t cause burning For multi-hit attacks this only procs on the first hit for balance purposes. This also helps condition builds use them viably.

Fix the bug on the recent buff adding stats to conjured weapons. Make sure that the second weapon you pick up also gives you the bonus stats. This stats addition was a great big step in the right direction but now we need it reliable.

Make sure that any channels conjured weapons use apply http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Obsidian_Focus trait Currently I believe there are a smattering of channels not benefiting and I believe conjured channels are among these.

+Remove ground targeting.* Make conjured weapons placed at your feet. This is an impediment that slows down their quick use that stacks with the cast time. Elementalist are mobile and can place weapons near allies themselves if needed.

Weapon Specific:

Lava Axe

Skill #1 – Lava Axe: Give this skill a projectile finisher. It begs for it and it only makes sense.

No other changes, Lava axe is useful if a bit underwhelming. Still a solid all arounder with good combo field potential. The mentioned changes to burning fire and the projectile finisher on Lava Axe is all this weapon needs to be viable.

This would also make the fire line a bit more synergistic with having conjured weapons traits as well as Persisting Flames.

Ice Bow

Skill #1 – Water Arrow: This skill needs to heal in a 180 radius. This shares the same issue as staff water blast. The radius is too small and often you can melee an enemy without being inside the heal radius. This should be a reliable heal for people in melee range of the mob.

No other changes, Frost Bow is viable and it’s only real issue is the too small heal radius on Water Arrow.

Lightning Hammer:

Skill #4 – Lightning Storm: This skill needs a bit of a boost. It needs higher damage, a bigger radius, an added blind, etc. SOMETHING. Right now there isn’t much reason to use this skill at all instead of the auto attack.

No other changes, Lightning Hammer is viable and give a reason to actually use Lightning Storm it should be in a good place.

Earth Shield:

Add condition damage to the stats buffs. I’ll be adding bleeds to this weapon because earth is about bleeds AND defense. This lacks bleeds and even the vestiges of damage.

Skill #1 – Shield Smack: Add 2 seconds of bleeding and 2 seconds of weakness. Lower the direct damage slightly but leave the overall damage higher than it is by a good bit. This skill needs some serious help. It’s slower and lower damage than all of the others with no saving grace. It’s melee range to boot. The bleed helps the damage and provides a use for condition builds. The weakness fits with the defensive nature and must be spammed to be effective so it’s not OP.

Skill #2 – Crippling Shield: Add 4 seconds of bleeding. This adds a bit of damage, helps make an earth weapon useful for condition builds, and gives you a reason to use it outside of the cripple.

Skill #3 – Magnetic Surge: Add 3 seconds of reflection. This is intended to be a gap close that disables and positions you for your PBAOE pull in skill. As is it’s definitely lackluster with low damage and range to achieve a daze. Adding reflection keeps in theme with magnetic powers reflecting projectiles and gives you a little bit of help survive closing the gap you desperately need to close to make use of this conjured weapon.

Skill #4 – Magnetic Shield: Fine as is. Alternatively you can give the reflection to this skill instead of Magnetic surge, but I felt staggering them was a bit better.

Skill #5 – Fortify: – Add 1 second of bleed damage every time someone attempts to strike you. This is a nice little invulnerability but it forces you to be immobile and channel it. Even considering the synergy with the other skills this is underwhelming. Considering the limitations a damage return wouldn’t be horrendous and would again make this an EARTH weapon which synergizes with condition damage.

As you can see shield is in desperate need of help to be a viable weapon. Hopefully all or at least most of these changes will be considered.

Fiery Greatsword:

Skill #2 – Fiery Eruption – This should gain a short lived (2 second) fire combo field. It only makes sense for this skill and it would allow a little synergy including using Fiery Whirl on it.

Fiery Greatsword is in a good place, the Fiery Eruption fire combo field is more of a small thematic touch than anything. My change to the burning fire trait would also leave condition damage users slightly less hosed on this compared to power damage users as well.

Well that’s it. Some fairly significant overall changes, minor tweaks to each weapon, and major help for Earth Shield. I feel like conjured weapons are close to being viable and this would accomplish that. Let me know what you think.

are you an expert at the conjures currently? do you have some vids to show how you use them now?

Crunchy Gremlin.5798:

are you an expert at the conjures currently? do you have some vids to show how you use them now?

Am I an expert? No, that would be quite presumptuous at this stage in the game’s life cycle. But I do have a good amount of experience with each as well as all of the elementalist skills. So I presented an informed opinion on what they need, not a perfect or “experts” opinion.

Please be a bit more constructive in your next post. Bring ideas to the table instead of pointless criticism. Share your own experiences or feelings. You know, constructive things.

Not trying to be a jerk so much… Im just saying do you really want to propose changes to something that you don’t use on a regular basis?

Some of the ele abilities are really powerful when used right but look like kitten poo when not used right.

I suggest forcing yourself to use them. replace one utility.
flaming great sword doesnt count as you have to stand still to cast it which makes it highly situational.

lava axe works pretty good.
try…
ax/lightning flash/mist form/greatsword
use the axe whenever the main attacks are on cooldown. basically dont use the autoattack from lightning except to take out illusions.
use the greatsword against objects and occasionaly against groups where you have safe ground.

use the ax with a standard d/d build 0/10/0/30/30
it works better when there is more power and crit behind it though.
0/20/0/25/25
it takes a lot of time to figure it out. I would not call myself and expert at the ele for sure but… i have been using conjures for most of my current learning curve.

I actually use the Conjures alot. I’ve even rolled another elementalist completely built around them. The only one I can’t make work for me too well is Earth Shield, since currently it’s only useful for dive in>>>pull enemies on top of you, invuln. Everything else it does is supremely lackluster and not at all worth it.

That being said, just because I can make them useful doesn’t make them competitive. They still have issues, which I why I made this list. The stats buff help their cause alot, but they still need just a little more as well as vital bug fixes.

i actually find the earth shield to be better in concept than the actual damage dealing weapons. It feels more natural.
Its utility and it makes sense that way. Thats hard to describe.

but i haven’t put a lot of time into figuring it out.
The only weapons i have put a lot of effort into are the ax and great sword. the others are too slow to use or not mobile enough on their face.
lightning hammer keeps me too close to the target for too long for my comfort.
im still at noob in a lot of respects at this.

the main thing i feel that conjures need is to get rid of the ground target.
that extra time to use makes them really hard to learn as that delay can kill the ele.

I would like the FGS to be castable on the run.
No ground target and castable on the run would make that weapon usable in a lot more situations.

making conjuring the shield as fluid as swapping attunements would make everything but the 1 useful. but yeah, I agree with most of this

Crunchy Gremlin.5798:

i actually find the earth shield to be better in concept than the actual damage dealing weapons. It feels more natural.
Its utility and it makes sense that way. Thats hard to describe.

but i haven’t put a lot of time into figuring it out.
The only weapons i have put a lot of effort into are the ax and great sword. the others are too slow to use or not mobile enough on their face.
lightning hammer keeps me too close to the target for too long for my comfort.
im still at noob in a lot of respects at this.

Shield can be useful for that gimmick use yes, but it needs to be an overall useful weapon. Not just useful in only X situation. Frost Bow can be utilized equally for both support and offense, Lava Axe is range damaged, a heavy damage close range move, and good combo field ability. Lightning hammer is a generally solid melee weapon hitting multiple people that bears a useful AOE stun. Greatsword is a downright good ranged/skirmisher weapon. to provides a little defense with the whirl evade along with heavy offense. All of these are incredibly mobile if used right with good timing. Aside from the cast/pickup time of course.

Earth Shield is useful only for that one use, on a long cooldown, and you give up a utility slot for only that. IF it works right. With a comparatively short PBAOE radius with a cast time.

the main thing i feel that conjures need is to get rid of the ground target.
that extra time to use makes them really hard to learn as that delay can kill the ele.

I would like the FGS to be castable on the run.
No ground target and castable on the run would make that weapon usable in a lot more situations.

I agree with this. The burning on the fire weapons summons is minor and I plan to rework it anyways in my ideas. Ele is mobile enough to where a weapon placed at thier feet will not stop them from giving it to allies.

I will add this to my OP.

i like most of the suggestions here in regards to the ax… which is very minor. my shield, bow, and hammer, skills are pretty weak.

this is my $.02 on how to make the casting more friendly

i would like the conjure skill change into a two step skill. like other skills where the first time the key is pressed i get one ability and the next press does something else.
in this case id like:
first press to just give me the weapon.
second press then allows a ground target to put down the second weapon.
this change alone would go a long way to making the conjure faster to bring out and effectively more useful.

the other piece i would not mind seeing changed is the cooldown reduced for the number of charges left on the weapon when “dropped”
this would be a fairly drastic change to how the conjures are used.
basically 1 charge used causes a cd of 4 secs for a total of 60 seconds when the weapon is all used up. this would put the CD at the time the weapon is discarded rather then when summoned.
the ground target version would need some incentive to cast although i never use the weapon to give to other people.
maybe take charges to cast a second version.
or give a 60 second cooldown on the whole skill and add charges to the conjure in hand when cast.
the fire trait that adds charges would make it so not only do i have more charges but only about 2 seconds of CD is incurred for each charge used.