Guild Wars 2

Am I the only one who loves conjured weapons? I think all of them look amazing, but with the exception of the fiery greatsword and maybe the lightning hammer I haven’t found any use out of them yet.

They disappear when you are downed, which I guess kind of makes sense, but in WvW this pretty much destroys all chances of a non-squishy elementalist getting a full use out of the fiery greatsword or lightning hammer.

There seems to be only one universal trait that effects all conjured weapons and it’s twenty points into fire which is a pretty hefty investment, it’s very hard to work twenty points into fire without being a very squishy berserker build. All of the other conjured weapon traits are a huge joke and don’t actually do anything useful.

Maybe I’m just very low on healing power, but the frost bow does terrible healing, the only good thing is the AoE from it’s number four ability.

The earth shield seems fairly underwhelming, but I could see it having some potential for a tank since it gives passive stats, but again you could only use it for 15 casts unless you trait into fire, a damage tree which destroys your tankiness.

The lightning hammer is pretty amazing, crit damage and precision is very strong and it synergizes well with the damage boost you get from twenty points into fire. The only problem is there seems to be a lack of CC that hammers just should have, being forced to stand still to cast the static field is kind of a joke and the launcher has only been useful to me when I’m trying to knock people off of the EB jumping puzzle (not even sorry).

The flame axe seems like very pointless. the fiery field you plant doesn’t seem to synergize well with it at all considering all your abilities are ranged with that thing.

Love the fiery greatsword, no complaints there, just wish there were more traits that lined up with it.

Sorry for wall of text, please give me your opinions as well on this matter because I’ve always wanted to know what other eles felt about the four unused skills we have collecting dust.

The first thing conjured weapons need to become viable would be to be able to switch in and out of them while active, and/or for them to only replace their respective attunement instead of all 20 weapon skills.

cheshirefox.7026:

i use frost bow constantly >_> #1 on it is useless, but then again so is #1 in regular skill water attunement
as for not having enough “charges” or whatever conjured weapons work on
remember you get two, if someone doesn’t steal it.. it just doesn’t help the recast when you pick up a new one

i know what you mean about a knockdown, it completely steals the skill away and puts it on an obnoxious cool down, but that doesn’t happen too often

as i mentioned the charges, i think that fire trait is a rather redundant one
and i personally don’t see the conjured weapons needing any fixes
possibly tweak the earth shield by adding damage to #1 or 2
earth shield adds defense but functions in a tanky sort of way “not many tanky elems out there”
so i think a subtle offensive buff on that weapon would make it worth while

as for what you mentioned with the flame axe.. at has a medium ranged attack, and aoe ranged attack.. the close range fire circle is a Field.. and you have access to your other utility skills during conjured weapons.. you can burst Might, at melee range.. use burning retreat, and then there is that hop forward skill to again close ‘short’ distance if needed… i think you get a random flame aura, so if you sink some trait points into fire it’s probably a good weapon

sry, if i don’t agree with your post.. i’ll agree if you say conjured weapons need some practice :p
anyway, at the very least they are fun conjure/ share with someone as a gimmick

You can pretty much do everything the flame axe but better with a scepter/dagger, so there really is no point to it, that’s why I pretty much said it’s terrible because it’s outclassed in every way, and if you’re in a WvW environment you’re never going to be able to pick up the conjured weapon unless you’re really lucky. Also, in PvE environments I notice my charges drain incredibly fast because I’m always casting, I’m not complaining that there aren’t enough charges though with the trait, as long as someone doesn’t pick up my weapon I’ll have 100% uptime with it as long as I have the conjurer trait.

someone always steals the other conjure.
every. single. time.

i’d rather have a single conjured weapon, with no charges, to last a set period of time (and be traited to last longer, or cooldown reduced), and it doesn’t get destroyed if i drop it (allowing others to use)

if i have to drop the conjure to use any skills on my main weps, i can choose to do so, and then pick up the conjure after (if it’s not covered in aoe or has anyone camping it, which it fine considering it stays on the field instead of getting instantly destroyed on drop).

as long as someone doesn’t take my conjure.
but someone always does.
they always do.
always.

Silver Universe… Aren’t you the guy who makes those Downfall parodies on youtube?

Would be cool if they worked more like Engi kits, just with a bit more restrictions.

But having already 4 attunements, i doubt anything like that is going to be done..

I like them a lot but skill recharge on all but FGS needs to drop. I figure they’re this situational weapon you bring in and an ally can also take part in it, but the recharge is soo…soo long. If they need to remove the whole ally share thing and make them for only 1 person at a time thats fine for me but those recharges…

SilverUniverse.7103:

i’d rather have a single conjured weapon, with no charges, to last a set period of time (and be traited to last longer, or cooldown reduced), and it doesn’t get destroyed if i drop it (allowing others to use)

This. Its such a simple change. Such a huge drawback to conjures is that basic attacks waste the charges that youre trying to save for the 2-5 skills.

Over all though, I think its a lost cause. The only thing they are really good for is killing yellow objects. The idea was to break the range lock, that staff ele’s could have access to a melee weapon or that d/d eles could have access to a range weapon, but then they made those weapons so weak. If the Frost bow lasted 1min and didnt use a charge system (maybe 1200 range?), D/D ele’s would definitely use it on walls or bosses with range fights. Staff ele’s might even use lightning hammer on melee fights.

Most use I’ve gotten out of them is as a true weapon swap, so you can have longer range, unlike attunement swap which is all the same ranges.

But the damage is pretty awful, most people who have picked up my conjures have asked me why it does so little damage, or asked if its bugged when someone else picks it up because of that.

Firey great sword is the only one thats truly good.

Maybe have the conjured weapon become our weapon swap while active, so cast skill → weapon swap becomes available, allowing us to swap between the conjure and our weapon swap for the duration.

I’ve seen this suggested before, but making the conjured auto attacks not use any charges would be a huge buff. We could spam our number 1 skills while everything else was on cooldown without worrying about eating up valuable charges. You know, the thing auto attacks are in the game to do.

I’d also like to see damage all around increased. In my mind all the conjures should have a damage output comparable to the greatsword, and the greatsword should be buffed to some crazy burst potential. This seems to be what the weapons were designed for. They replace twenty skills with five for a very short window of time. They should be much, much stronger than normal weapon skills as a result. It also explains the point of sharing them with others. Why would a warrior pick up our flame axe if it has a lower damage output than his normal set? Being a staff ele and carrying around the flame axe or lightning hammer or even ice bow for a sudden single target burst would massively improve the profession’s performance all around. And the Fiery Greatsword is an ELITE skill. Whipping it out should be a major pants soiling moment for the enemy.

Granted that’s how elites all around should be, which only a small number of them actually succeed in regardless of profession.

How to fix Conjured Weapons, when you use the conjured weapon as an ele anytime you “drop” it (or switch attunements) the conjured skill switches over to " Draw <insert weapon name here> and you can bring it back out with the current charges, bam, useful.

In one of the previous sotg, it was already mentioned that conjures are not playing out the way Anet intended them to be, which I take as they could be buffed or completely reworked at a future date, though that’s likely to be in a few years at this rate. They originally wanted the conjures to be dropped for teammates to pick up and start using. The abysmal damage, limited uses, and losing them when you switch back to your main weapon make conjures far less popular.

MagisterEpic.2340:

Maybe I’m just very low on healing power, but the frost bow does terrible healing, the only good thing is the AoE from it’s number four ability.

Both the staff and frost bow autos are actually pretty good healing. The base heal is 370 on the staff and slightly higher on the bow with the bonus healing power. The difference is that the water auto heal radius can be increased with blasting staff, and the frost bow attacks faster. At around 7 auto attacks every 10 seconds on the staff, that’s 2590 healing on top of water 3 and evasive arcana. There’s more I could say but that could be left for another topic.

Frost bow 5 is also the longest CC in the game. That’s a 5 second CC at least every 30 seconds and can sometimes be taken for that skill alone, although that kind of defeats the purpose of conjures. Combining it with lightning flash can “increase” the range of this skill or make it much easier to land since the projectile doesn’t track. Just be careful about reflects.

or you could buff the Conjurer trait to something like “10% cooldown to all conjured weapons and conjured weapons you use do not use up charges when using skills” this way conjurer builds can go 20 on fire trait

Frost Bow is the best, unless you are immobilized beside your target. Ever seen a theif melt? He immobilized me, then took a full FGS 3 to the face.

Frost Bow 5 is an unmovable (unless fixed or physically destroyed) stun for 4 seconds.

2 people with Frost Bow 5, 4 and 3 is ridiculous in both pvp and pve.

TGSlasher.1458:

Frost Bow is the best, unless you are immobilized beside your target. Ever seen a theif melt? He immobilized me, then took a full FGS 3 to the face.

Frost Bow 5 is an unmovable (unless fixed or physically destroyed) stun for 4 seconds.

2 people with Frost Bow 5, 4 and 3 is ridiculous in both pvp and pve.

Now watch as we make this bunker disappear!! TADAH!! It’s gone!!

Durzlla.6295:

TGSlasher.1458:

Frost Bow is the best, unless you are immobilized beside your target. Ever seen a theif melt? He immobilized me, then took a full FGS 3 to the face.

Frost Bow 5 is an unmovable (unless fixed or physically destroyed) stun for 4 seconds.

2 people with Frost Bow 5, 4 and 3 is ridiculous in both pvp and pve.

Now watch as we make this bunker disappear!! TADAH!! It’s gone!!

D/D Burst Ele + S/D Condition Ele +2x frost bow = 8-10 second stun and well, in 8-10 seconds isn’t all that much you can do.

I think the issue with conjured weapons is that there’s is not many viable builds around them. Also, there are some useless skills like Magnetic shield 5; sure it’s an invulnerable but you can’t move and you can’t do anything so what’s the point?

Also, I think they should just remove the charges unless they intend to significantly buff the overall weapon damage (frost bow 1 and magnetic shield 1 comes to mind).

I use FGS as my elite and love it, Frost bow aoe is one of the best we have and overall the bow is great in certain circumstances and lightning hammer as well.

More should be done to improve their usability though such as making the no. 1 attack not use charges and a reduction in the time to summon.

I don’t see the conjure weapons as something to work a build around, but more something you can add to open a few more doors. E.G. S/x burst, open with frost bow 5, then drop and start dragons toothing.

A friend of mine tried to make a build around conjure weapons. 1 build was a flame axe condition bunker, the other was an all conjure build. The first was pretty strong, the second was so lame the he abandoned it after 1 match.

I would like to see the conjure weapon either take over its respective attunement until you drop it with weapon swap key.

Or for it to be a weapon swap ability. So it rocks up, pressing swap weapon will stakitten and give you your normal attunements back, swapping again will pull it out. Summoning a different weapon, or picking up another item will remove the original.

I can say that 1-2 conjures in a build is pretty strong, but using all conjures is, well… too many skills lol, it gets a bit overwhelming, i mean i guess you -could- make it work… but… yeah…. don’t see that happening.

I gotta say the only weapon which has real lacking skills would probably be the earth shield, it’s like they couldn’t decide what they wanted it to do, i think they should be more defensive oriented, give more boons to the user, like vigor and/or protection, the 5 is fine though.

The most important fix that can be done to make all conjured weapons viable is to make the 1 skill only take 1 charge per full combo (this is already the case with FGS, which is why it’s so good), Lightning Hammer is decent but burns charges way too fast with the autoattack. Frost bow people just turn off the autoattack because it burns charges too fast and is underwhelming, and nobody uses earth shield because it simply just doesn’t seem to have a point. You can charge in, pull all the mobs/players to you, and then … autoattack them or go invuln. What it’s missing is a way to cast sandstorm.

Nobody just tanks in GW2, so no, simply pulling and going invuln doesn’t cut it, not when the mobs immediately go for another target when you’re invuln.

I don’t turn the Frost Bow auto off. I just use 5 3 4 then drop it. Holding it any longer and it is certain death. Sometimes I go 3 4 5 massive non frost bow combo.

@slasher

did that player not know what FGS #3 does?

Here is a way to balance conjures:

Conjures have a 10-15s cooldown after swapping out (like a regular weapon). When holding a conjure, the swap skill is replaced with an summon skill (for a friend). This puts the weapon on a longer (40 s cooldown). When swapping into a conjure, all attunements but the current one go on a cooldown (you can only swap back into your regular weapon attunement you were in before).

This makes conjures behave more like a regular weapon swap (it is a utility weapon) without just giving an ele access to even more skills to be op.

I’m running a pure lightning hammer conjure build, and I’d have to agree with cheshirefox, I haven’t seen this sort of dps on any of my characters before, and for open world pve it’s amazing, 25 stacks is more than enough, I’m shocked if i need more than 3 attacks for any non-vet mob (full zerker), even running all my cof runs with it, just takes some time to get used to having to recast every minute and very little in the way of survivability outside of aoe blinds. In saying that, I would LOVE for the conjures to work the same as engineer’s kits…

Also, blast finishers on tap… it’s great.

sorrychief.2563:

@slasher

did that player not know what FGS #3 does?

I assume that is directed at: “Ever seen a theif melt? He immobilized me, then took a full FGS 3 to the face.”

It was someone from my guild lol, but dunno if they knew what FGS 3 did. I pulled it at the same time as they immobed me, but unfortunate for them.

There was a point when no one knew what frost bow did, and currently not many know what focus does.

Frost Bow is pretty good. Skill 4 does amazing damage (abotu 3K per hit on my Warrior I think). I think the auto-attack should be faster though

Lightning Hammer does great DPS and the blind is good support

Flame Axe doesn’t a whole lot of damage..better after using Fireball. Needs help I think

Earth Shield, decent damage on the auto-attack other skills could use some help though. Possibly just a damage increase on 2-3-4. And allow the ability to move while using Fortify. If need be make it like Endure Pain instead of Mist Form.

Fiery Greatsword is fine. 3 and 4 (with no target) do great damage and 5 is good too.

I wouldn’t mind seeing some traits for the Conjure weapons. Possibly a Grandmaster Trait in each tree?

Fire Magic: Fiery Greatsword/Axe additional damage to burning foes and give 50 more power and condition damage

Air Magic: Gain 3 seconds of quickness on Critical Hit with your Lightning Hammer. 45 second cool down

Earth Magic: Interrupting a foe with Earth Shield gives 5 seconds (benefit is gained for each foe affected from the pull)

Water Magic: All Frostbow Skills heal allies (auto-attack stays the same. Other skills heal for ~200 for each ally they hit/passthrough). These were made up on the spot, whether some are OP or UP is up to debate

Flame axe inflicts a 24 second burn if the summoned weapon directly hits an enemy.

I wish Earth Shield was a better weapon. I like the invuln but that’s about it….

?flame axe inflicts burn? :o add burn off of FGS and go all out condition

Before release and before even the betas, when the devs mentioned the conjured weapons, I always envisioned that the skills would do what the corresponding element couldn’t do. Example: conjure flame would have been about crowd control, or conjure earth causing lots of single target damage.

DanteZero.9736:

Before release and before even the betas, when the devs mentioned the conjured weapons, I always envisioned that the skills would do what the corresponding element couldn’t do. Example: conjure flame would have been about crowd control, or conjure earth causing lots of single target damage.

I thought they’d be like engi kits myself.

DanteZero.9736:

Before release and before even the betas, when the devs mentioned the conjured weapons, I always envisioned that the skills would do what the corresponding element couldn’t do. Example: conjure flame would have been about crowd control, or conjure earth causing lots of single target damage.

The point was kind of the reverse, i.e. you could use the features of one attunement while remaining in another by using a conjure themed to that attunement (e.g. you can get the defensive and condition capabilities of earth attunement by using the Earth conjure, regardless of whether you’re in Fire, Air or Water)

That said, it falls somewhat flat. The water conjure is mainly a direct damage weapon with a little CC and some condition damage, the earth conjure has no condition access. The air and fire conjures keep fairly in-theme, but flame axe’s damage is a little too weak to meet up to expectations.

In my opinion one small change that could make a huge difference would be to just double the amount of charges and get rid of the second weapon, then make the ‘Conjurer’ trait cause a second weapon to drop. Or don’t, since dropping one on the ground is rarely useful anyway.

A bigger (and in my opinion better) change would be to make it overwrite an attunement. The atunements all do different things, and every build except a full on arcane has at least one attunement (usually air) that is largely useless. Just cause conjured weapons to override the current attunement for their duration, and you solve not only a lot of problems with conjured weapons but so many problems with builds that focus more on one or two attunements.

I would totally spec into it if they made some nice changes on Conjured Weapons, like someone said, make it similar to kits (Engineers)

Conncept.7638:

In my opinion one small change that could make a huge difference would be to just double the amount of charges and get rid of the second weapon, then make the ‘Conjurer’ trait cause a second weapon to drop. Or don’t, since dropping one on the ground is rarely useful anyway.

A bigger (and in my opinion better) change would be to make it overwrite an attunement. The atunements all do different things, and every build except a full on arcane has at least one attunement (usually air) that is largely useless. Just cause conjured weapons to override the current attunement for their duration, and you solve not only a lot of problems with conjured weapons but so many problems with builds that focus more on one or two attunements.

Giving a conjured Ice Bow or Greatsword to a Warrior by your side is some serious damage. There’s great benefit to having a second conjured weapon for people. One person just had an idea that picking up the second conjured weapon right away just doubled the timer on your current one and gave you double charges, so if you want to get full use, then you’d just pick it up right away rather than the current system where you have to use up the charges on the first, then pick up the second way back where you cast it and probably someone else picked it up already.

Devildoc.6721:

Conncept.7638:

In my opinion one small change that could make a huge difference would be to just double the amount of charges and get rid of the second weapon, then make the ‘Conjurer’ trait cause a second weapon to drop. Or don’t, since dropping one on the ground is rarely useful anyway.

A bigger (and in my opinion better) change would be to make it overwrite an attunement. The atunements all do different things, and every build except a full on arcane has at least one attunement (usually air) that is largely useless. Just cause conjured weapons to override the current attunement for their duration, and you solve not only a lot of problems with conjured weapons but so many problems with builds that focus more on one or two attunements.

Giving a conjured Ice Bow or Greatsword to a Warrior by your side is some serious damage. There’s great benefit to having a second conjured weapon for people. One person just had an idea that picking up the second conjured weapon right away just doubled the timer on your current one and gave you double charges, so if you want to get full use, then you’d just pick it up right away rather than the current system where you have to use up the charges on the first, then pick up the second way back where you cast it and probably someone else picked it up already.

Only if they have the right stats, unless I’m mistaken the conjured weapons scale off their wielder not their caster. That makes the usefulness of the second dropped weapon both situational and dependent on factors entirely outside of your own control.

Devildoc.6721:

Conncept.7638:

In my opinion one small change that could make a huge difference would be to just double the amount of charges and get rid of the second weapon, then make the ‘Conjurer’ trait cause a second weapon to drop. Or don’t, since dropping one on the ground is rarely useful anyway.

A bigger (and in my opinion better) change would be to make it overwrite an attunement. The atunements all do different things, and every build except a full on arcane has at least one attunement (usually air) that is largely useless. Just cause conjured weapons to override the current attunement for their duration, and you solve not only a lot of problems with conjured weapons but so many problems with builds that focus more on one or two attunements.

Giving a conjured Ice Bow or Greatsword to a Warrior by your side is some serious damage. There’s great benefit to having a second conjured weapon for people. One person just had an idea that picking up the second conjured weapon right away just doubled the timer on your current one and gave you double charges, so if you want to get full use, then you’d just pick it up right away rather than the current system where you have to use up the charges on the first, then pick up the second way back where you cast it and probably someone else picked it up already.

They could just make the skill cast turn into another skill. E.G. Summon Frost Bow, summon a frost bow for use to rain ice upon your foes. Once summoned the skill would become Frost Splinter: Manifest power from your frost bow to bring forth a second bow on the ground. This move would “splinter” uses from the main bow. So you would start will all uses, using this second skill would halve your charges left from the main bow.

This would allow you to have a metric crap tonne of charges (esp with trait) but also allow you to give it to your friends if you wanted to,

I really like conjured weapons. Dropping down some weapons on the battlefield then swap between elements and conjured weapons for whatever skills you need to respond to the current situation. Its not the current meta build but that doesn’t mean its not fun to play around with because it most certainly is.

Conncept.7638:

Devildoc.6721:

Conncept.7638:

In my opinion one small change that could make a huge difference would be to just double the amount of charges and get rid of the second weapon, then make the ‘Conjurer’ trait cause a second weapon to drop. Or don’t, since dropping one on the ground is rarely useful anyway.

A bigger (and in my opinion better) change would be to make it overwrite an attunement. The atunements all do different things, and every build except a full on arcane has at least one attunement (usually air) that is largely useless. Just cause conjured weapons to override the current attunement for their duration, and you solve not only a lot of problems with conjured weapons but so many problems with builds that focus more on one or two attunements.

Giving a conjured Ice Bow or Greatsword to a Warrior by your side is some serious damage. There’s great benefit to having a second conjured weapon for people. One person just had an idea that picking up the second conjured weapon right away just doubled the timer on your current one and gave you double charges, so if you want to get full use, then you’d just pick it up right away rather than the current system where you have to use up the charges on the first, then pick up the second way back where you cast it and probably someone else picked it up already.

Only if they have the right stats, unless I’m mistaken the conjured weapons scale off their wielder not their caster. That makes the usefulness of the second dropped weapon both situational and dependent on factors entirely outside of your own control.

The stats the wielder gains is based on the casters level, but the damage and effects from the skills are based on the users stats.

That being said THE BEST prof to give conjured weapons to are rangers because all their weapon skills scale like kitten because their pet is supposed to be a large % of their damage, you give a ranger a conjured weapon, and now they have a pet + skills that scale off of their stats REALLY well.

My conjures bring all the rangers to the yard ;D

Aether McLoud.1975:

The first thing conjured weapons need to become viable would be to be able to switch in and out of them while active, and/or for them to only replace their respective attunement instead of all 20 weapon skills.

this would be awesome