Guild Wars 2

We left in December with a thread where Anet developers clearly stated that they’re currently working on the trait system, soon we should be able to use multiple builds for each profession, let’s leave for now this subject, it’s well known to everybody that eles (IN PVP, no WvWvW or PVE) tend to focus on water/earth/arcane traits, let’s hope that in the near future we can use offensive eles without being blown away the moment we step outside the base with “all those professions” capable of 12k+ dmg almost instant burst.

For now let’s consider some of our utilities and elites that require immediate attention:

Conjures

I really like them: decent dmg, decent secondary effects and overall very useful in specific situation..but they’ve got one absurd design flaw, they currently set in a way that they substitute all your 20 skill for the main weapon.

Why go this way Anet? People playing this profession expect to have 20 skills at disposal everytime, so why go and design an utility which destroy the whole concept of the profession?

The way I see it, no amount of buffs will make me ( and I suspect many other) pick a conjure over a cantrip/signet or glyph; there is a solution and I believe it wouldn’t be that hard to implement, simply make so that each conjure will substitute the respective attunement:

E.G I pick Frost Bow and for 15 charges min, my water skills in whatever weapon set I’m using will change to the Frost Bow skills
A solution that in my opinion will see the development of many new builds, Imagine a staff ele who pick Earth shield and Lightning hammer as utilities, the ele can use staff for range and if the situation become dangerous ( a thief ) He can use both utilities to change both Air and Earth attunement skills; it doesn’t sound half bad to me

-Note- It’ be good to have Fire traits which in this case would increase the usefulness of the conjures

Elites

-Tornado

Seriously UP: The limited range it’s the major flaw of the entire design, a 240-320 radius for an elite that negate the use of main heal and other skills..is simply unacceptable, let’s evaluate the thief elite dagger Storm

-90s CD
-Base damage=244
-Reflect projectiles
-Cripple 2s on hit
-Bleeding 5s on hit
-Stability 8s
-Combo finisher= Whirl
-Range= 900

..with Tornado
-180s CD
-Blowout 600
-Radius= 240
-Base damage =122
-Stability= 15s

The disavantage of Tornado compared to Dagger storm is clear to me..and others

-Conjure Fiery Great Sword

Share the same problems of the conjure utilities, but in this case we need a more radical solution, we need an Elemental Conjure elite, one that change all your 20 skills on the main weapon for 30s, so we’d have a water/earth/air version of Fiery Greatsword and all in a single elite, let’s pus a 240s CD but such an elite would become truly one of the favourite among eles.

For me these conjures and the 2 elites require the most attention before thinking fo buffing/nerfing other utilities, hopefully once the traits get updated, Anet will look more in the matter, now if somebody got something else in mind, I’d like to see it

Your suggestion for normal conjure weapons is actually one of the more practical ones I’ve seen so far. It may be viable for implementation, though for balance reasons I think you may need to make it undroppable for its duration.

On a more general note, I feel that Cantrips as they are now are a bit too strong. Not only are their effects pretty decent, but they also act as stunbreakers (a must have) and they have some of the best traits available to them. This makes it pretty unviable to go with anything that has less than 1 cantrip in it. Maybe the overall balance could be shifted a bit.

That’s a brilliant idea! (the non-elite conjure one)

The problem you have with the non-elite conjure idea is you’d have to balance each and every conjure to each and every weapon set…. Currently it doesn’t matter since it replaces your weapons, but if we went with your idea it’d be much more trickey…

Say I used Hammer, it’d have to be designed so it’d fit in with D/D, D/F, Staff, S/D, and S/F remembering it’d be replacing each and everyone of those set up’s Air Attunement abilities…. I don’t know about you, but it would seem to me like a massive balancing issue.

Your conjure idea is really nice. I was actually thinking about conjures just now and my idea for them is that which everone you pick up, it becomes a weapon you can swap to (10 second cooldown) and then you go back to your main weapons. Maybe it would be OP but I don’t know

Towren.1745:

The problem you have with the non-elite conjure idea is you’d have to balance each and every conjure to each and every weapon set…

Yeah, you got a point there. It’ll be harder to implement than it looked at first glance. Even if it would only work for the elementalist themselves, it would still open up more combinations than Anet seems comfortable with.

I love that conjure idea, keeps gameplay fast and increases possibilities. Contrary what’s atm.
Would be awesome to jump in to the battle with a lightning hammer after doing your fields with staff without the delay.
You could fluidly use LH as a extra kiting tool with the leap aswell. And so on… love it.

I started a post on this a few days ago
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Utility-skills-discussion

My idea was to instead of having 4 different skills for the Conjurer weapons,
reduce it to one skill and the weapon you get is based on the attunement you
cast it from. In other words, it would work the same as the Glyphs. Its nonsense
that they spread those out over 4 skills.

Your idea is just as good. Anything compared to the way they have it now.

You know what else just hit me after playing WvW all night? When the second
weapon drops when you conjure them two things happen:

1) The ele wanted the weapon for when his first one runs out BUT someone else
grabs it

OR

2) The ele has no problem with someone taking the second weapon BUT no one
does because what they have is better.

That is a glaring problem with the conjure weapons in regards to dropping a second
one. The more I think about this, the more I would like to see the Conjurer Spells
change to see them more in practice.

Ok I get you guys, yes if my idea for example would be really implement, I presume they’ll lower numbers there and there and that wouldn’t be much of a problem , at the very least we’d have something similar.
But what about Tornado?

My suggestion would be to leave the radius as it is but add a pull skill with a 600 range, what about it?

Tornado with a pull would be great, and it should pull, Tornado’s suck stuff in. If it pulled in it would already do much more damage with the 1 ability

Tornade really needs to reflect projectiles. A thief can reflect projectiles by spinning fast, but an immaterial tornado can’t? WHAT THE kitten?