Guild Wars 2

So with upcoming nerfs to Lightning Hammer and Ice Bow to bring them “in line” with Flame Axe and Earth Shield, that basically means they’re being smiter’s booned and taken out of play entirely, because nobody uses Flame axe or earth shield, so OBVIOUSLY the way to deal with ice bow and lightning hammer is to make them not be used too.

Not only does this hurt staff ele PVE (who uses ice bow), but it absolutely cripples Scepter might stacking ele PVE (who uses Lightning Hammer to make up for the terrible sustained damage of scepter)

Why couldn’t they bring Shield and Axe and Greatsword UP to Bow and Hammer’s usefulness, instead of reducing them all to the status of Fiery GS, which is now used for “mobility” great, an elite slot wasted for whirlwind attack and rush, 2 normal warrior weapon skills.

I feel like the desire to nerf Lightning Hammer comes from a place of ignorance, from a player who picks up a Lightning Hammer that isn’t an Elementalist and they think, “Wow this is strong!” It’s only viably used in Scepter/x builds, to fill as the auto-attack of that weapon since Scepter auto-attack is abismal. Piercing Ice is going to be rendered useless if they make Lightning Hammer bad.

There are fundamental flaws with Conjured Weapons in general. They’re meant to be powerful because the Elementalist is giving up 1 Utility slot and all of their weapon skills for this. This means they give up various different Finishers, most of their Fire Fields, and their defensive skills like Obsidian Flesh. The weapon has to make up for losing all of this.

Given the choice, an Elementalist using a Lightning Hammer would make it so that they would use both of them for themselves, because all 50 charges of it can be used within 60 seconds by themselves and it’s important for their Scepter damage rotation.

All I have to say is this: If you think Lightning Hammer is overpowered, then try using those kind of builds in non-faceroll content like Level 50 Fractals on a Berserker Elementalist. Your impression of its “OP’ness” will probably change.

Devildoc.6721:

So with upcoming nerfs to Lightning Hammer and Ice Bow to bring them “in line” with Flame Axe and Earth Shield, that basically means they’re being smiter’s booned and taken out of play entirely, because nobody uses Flame axe or earth shield, so OBVIOUSLY the way to deal with ice bow and lightning hammer is to make them not be used too.

Not only does this hurt staff ele PVE (who uses ice bow), but it absolutely cripples Scepter might stacking ele PVE (who uses Lightning Hammer to make up for the terrible sustained damage of scepter)

Why couldn’t they bring Shield and Axe and Greatsword UP to Bow and Hammer’s usefulness, instead of reducing them all to the status of Fiery GS, which is now used for “mobility” great, an elite slot wasted for whirlwind attack and rush, 2 normal warrior weapon skills.

They want to bring Hammer and Bow down a bit, but they did mention how they want to add more to the other conjures to make them more desirable. So they are not necessarily dropping bow and hammer to the other conjures CURRENT level.

I don’t see how or why LH should get nerfed. I just really don’t understand the thinking behind that one.

Ice Bow I can understand, it has crazy burst potential, I could see wanting to nerf that by a little bi (5-10%?) It’s only when you can manipulate the firing area that it really becomes OP.

I’m curious to see more details about these things, because again I really don’t understand the LH idea.

Yeah well, you can see the treatment when something is “problematic” when you look at Fiery Rush. Nerfed into oblivion.

Lightning Hammer was boring as hell and you only used it for the auto-attack.

Remember that the nerfs and buffs are being considered in conjunction with the Elite Spec. Which we only know is called Tempest and MAY wield a sword that’s an actual melee weapon. Considering that possibility, I can see why LH was brought down.

Fade.1743:

Lightning Hammer was boring as hell and you only used it for the auto-attack.

Remember that the nerfs and buffs are being considered in conjunction with the Elite Spec. Which we only know is called Tempest and MAY wield a sword that’s an actual melee weapon. Considering that possibility, I can see why LH was brought down.

It absolutely kills scepter builds that focus on stacking might though, because scepter sustained damage is A WkittenL.

Conjure weapon damage is too cheesy. Lich Form and Deathshroud 111111 spam are fine though…. :/

Devildoc.6721:

Fade.1743:

Lightning Hammer was boring as hell and you only used it for the auto-attack.

Remember that the nerfs and buffs are being considered in conjunction with the Elite Spec. Which we only know is called Tempest and MAY wield a sword that’s an actual melee weapon. Considering that possibility, I can see why LH was brought down.

It absolutely kills scepter builds that focus on stacking might though, because scepter sustained damage is A WkittenL.

Since the advent of Phalanx Strength, Staff Ele meta, and Zehlyn’s D/F build, what life did Scepter builds have in PvE? They had the burst of LH, but that was not unique to Scepter.

Now, remember there are a lot of changes coming to condition builds and Scepter could be retuned to be our Condition weapon (since Burning now stacks as well). We also don’t know the full range of changes made to Ele and the entire game.

Until we get into an actual beta weekend event, there’s NO reason to judge the future of the profession based on changes that aren’t finalized. It’s an exercise in futility at this point. Once a large playerbase gets to interact with everything, THEN we should look to judge and critique how things ACTUALLY play rather than how we THINK they’ll play.

Scepter builds had life in pve. In most dungeons there is no point to run phalanx since bosses die super fast anyways. Its better to just have someone run s/x since it has more damage than d/f and it stacks the same amount of might. Its also easier to pre stack might when you dont have to switch your weapon at the end of it.

LH is not OP in any way and does not deserve a nerf. Its also not that easy to play since you’re stuck with lh which has no utilities.

Ice bow is also not OP for multiple reasons. Bosses seem to get burned to death in seconds because of ice bow, but it has more to do with the buffs the group can keep up rather than the inherent damage of ice bow 4. Its easy to see this if you ever run pugs and organized groups.

This change seems like a lazy solution to the problem that bosses die too fast. Bosses will not die any slower with ice bow nerf, eles will just be less useful. The real way to make bosses harder is to give them a new defiance bar – done, and give them mechanics that makes ice bow and other bursts harder to land, i.e. attacks that force players to cancel the cast or get hurt, making the bosses move and have immob breaks so that not all of ice bows burst land etc.

oh well i guess the same old practice of nerfing damage and increasing mob health.

Fade.1743:

Devildoc.6721:

Fade.1743:

Lightning Hammer was boring as hell and you only used it for the auto-attack.

Remember that the nerfs and buffs are being considered in conjunction with the Elite Spec. Which we only know is called Tempest and MAY wield a sword that’s an actual melee weapon. Considering that possibility, I can see why LH was brought down.

It absolutely kills scepter builds that focus on stacking might though, because scepter sustained damage is A WkittenL.

Since the advent of Phalanx Strength, Staff Ele meta, and Zehlyn’s D/F build, what life did Scepter builds have in PvE? They had the burst of LH, but that was not unique to Scepter.

Now, remember there are a lot of changes coming to condition builds and Scepter could be retuned to be our Condition weapon (since Burning now stacks as well). We also don’t know the full range of changes made to Ele and the entire game.

Until we get into an actual beta weekend event, there’s NO reason to judge the future of the profession based on changes that aren’t finalized. It’s an exercise in futility at this point. Once a large playerbase gets to interact with everything, THEN we should look to judge and critique how things ACTUALLY play rather than how we THINK they’ll play.

We saw how well “just be patient it’s not live yet” worked out for Tornado, Stacking Stability, and Fiery Rush, didn’t we?

Honestly, the way to keep Scepter relevant in PvE is to focus it around conditions since conditions are getting a huge look over as well. The majority of the time I spent on my Ele was playing a S/D FA build. (No conjures.) Was it sub-optimal? Yeah. Did I have fun with a viable build? Absolutely. However, we also need to keep it different from what’s coming in the future. I think conjures should have the role of on-demand burst instead of Scepter.

The thing is that they want to change how LH and IB are used. LH is used to spam autoattack. Boring. Why do we waste a utility slot to spam an auto-attack? Yes, I know that it has AE blind and a blast finisher at the end. That doesn’t mean it’s a cheesy set-up that’s boring. Ice bow (at least in PvE) is usually cast 4 on boss and then drop. Useful on structures, but still…boring.

People complain about no changes to dungeons. The reason there aren’t changes to dungeons is because the entire meta is built around cheesing bosses as quickly as possible. Now there might other changes coming down the road. We’ve got a new Elite spec we know very little about. We should not look at one change in a vacuum.

An expansion is supposed to shake the game’s very foundation. You can’t build a second story on a house whose foundation can only sustain one story. Treat an expansion like almost a new game rather than a feature pack.

Scepter isn’t really a condi weapon though, it has 2 autoattacks that are condi based (earth and fire), water is just weak across the board it’s just low damage, and air auto being a channel is just .. bad.

The rest of the skills are all burst and scepter has great burst damage, it’s just in any prolonged fight its damage falls off because those 2 and 3 skills aren’t off cooldown yet and you’re using terrible autoattacks.

It isn’t in its current form. Seeing as utilities and traits are getting a look over to be more viable, do you really think that weapon skills aren’t as well?

Fade.1743:

It isn’t in its current form. Seeing as utilities and traits are getting a look over to be more viable, do you really think that weapon skills aren’t as well?

Possibly, but if you change scepter into a full condi weapon you kill S/F fresh air builds.

“If your build is still intact by the end of this, let us know so we can break it.”

I’d also add in that I haven’t played S/F and mostly played S/D when I did run around with a Scepter. (And I spent a LOT of time with that build. Also I come from a PvE perspective of this, mostly doing a few dungeons and a LOT of Fractals.)

I honestly don’t think the new air talents would work well with Scepter in general. In any case, I’m just saying that we shouldn’t keep such a negative attitude until we get our hands on things. On paper, this all looks like crap. In the game, it might be completely different.

They want to make IB and LH more in line with the other conjured weapons, ok.

Devs if you are reading this you need to understand that the only reason we are using IB and LH in PvE is because of their damage. Reduce their damage and we won’t use them in PvE anymore than we use them in PvP, that is, we will not use them at all.

Conjures need to be “broken” for us to use them, because otherwise they are almost completely useless.

It is time to face the truth guys. In fact I do not want conjures to be “broken”, but I want even less to fill my utility bar with useless tools.

The problem with conjures come from their mechanics: we give up all our weapon skills, we give up most of our class mechanic, we give up the effect of many traits (alacrity traits already affect so few of our spells, with conjures they affect nothing), and as soon as we want to retrieve any of the many things we give up to use conjures then we completely loose the benefits of the conjured weapon. It simply does not work.

And no, getting a fire aura on grabbing a conjure will not change a thing. Although I applaud the fact that you finally understood we need traits that affect conjures.

Conjures need a buff, not to their damage, but to their mechanics.

I agree with Zelyhn. Conjures are completely broken. I was hoping they’d fix them but apparently only engineers get their bundles fixed. It would be nice if conjures were just rolled into our attunement system (e.g., you turn lightning hammer on and whenever you swap to air you have a hammer instead of whatever you have currently, you can turn it off and on with a cooldown…I’m not sure what to do about the current dropping a conjure for a friend mechanic). Yeah, probably stupid idea but almost anything is better than the current system that requires us exploiting broken mechanics.

Zelyhn is right, and Anet doesn’t understand this. For conjures to have ANY use, they need to do 1 thing WAY STRONGER than any of our regular weapon-skills (LH auto, IB #4) or else there isn’t a reason to give up a utility slot on something that you have to cast (with a cast time), then use skill with its cast-time, and then wait 60s if you have to drop it (which often you do) before you can get back to that 1 skill. It’s sort of how engineers complain “well kits need to be OP b/c we have to give up utility slots (despite having a toolbelt for that purpose)” but multiplied by 2 because of the all the restrictions.

It’s just clear they have no idea what makes eles tick. They are spending a significant amount of time fixing engineers and other classes, but ignorant to the problem that eles have so many dead utilities get pigeon-holed into certain trait-lines due to terrible design. The good news is that the play-style you once enjoyed is moving to our new master-class: ENGINEER. Reroll now and you won’t be disappointed.

We don’t know what Anet is going to do exactly. We know they’re nerfing damage because conjures in some parts just cheesed mechanics. I disagree completely that conjures NEED to be broken in order to be worth the utility slot. We can’t ask for challenging content AND defend methods of cheesing the challenge out of the content.

I do agree that each conjure needs to have a niche. Something that our weapons alone can’t fill. But they don’t need to be broken to do so.

For instance, I think the best way to nerf IB 4 without removing the utility is not allowing it to crit, removing the bleed component, and increasing the base damage to compensate. This way it’s still a good ability against structures and world bosses, but on regular bosses, Meteor Storm will be better for an Elementalist. (Though you CAN still use IB4 between Meteor Storms and get another one from another player).

While you wield a conjure weapon you basically lose your profession mechanics and you can’t swap weapons to use a defensive utility. Therefore, conjures need to offer something potent, either it’s a damage or utility.

bump to attract dev to read this post. time to understand and accept player’s thought and idea.

Conjures are problematic by design but they simply have no good routes to fix them.

They either last too long and become weapon replacements or they last too short and become throw away weapons for their moves. Right now they last too short and are used mostly as throw away weapons (except in the rarer organized group where LH can be used for S/F players without randoms picking up the LH) based on that design.

If they nerf the current uses for the weapons, there’s pretty much no functional reason to use them. No one uses Ice Bow for anything other than Ice Bow 4/5 because there’s no use for the rest of the abilities that you can’t get on your base weapon(s). Even Fiery Great Sword is basically used as a mobility move and is the default Elite for most of PvP/WvW simply to spam mobility and then throw it away.

Really what they need to do is while they are in the design phase is completely redesign Conjured Weapons entirely. If they don’t do this now, they’re just going to have a whole set of abilities that don’t see any kind of mainstream usage.

Personally I think they need to take a page out of their own book and bring back Weapons from GW1’s Ritualist. The base idea would be that they are now GTAE’s that affect up to X targets (so X-1 other targets as it’d always hit Elementalist) that give a Conjured Weapon buff to the people they hit within target cap. These buffs would be one per Utility slot. Ideally they wouldn’t do the standard (and boring) option of just adding a condition/boon per hit but instead add unique effects.

Conjure Fire Weapon – 60s duration – 3 charges – 10s icd – Next hit deals X amount of Area damage.
Conjure Air Weapons – 60s duration – 3 charges – 10s icd – Next hit causes a minor gale to hit the target knocking them back 50 (mostly a small interrupt)
Conjure Water Weapons – 60s duration – 3 charges – 10s icd – Next hit causes a 120 water field under the target.
Conjure Earth Weapons – 60s duration – 3 charges – 10s icd – Next hit on a target within 600 will pull you towards the target hit.
(E) Conjure Arcane Weapons – 60s duration – 3 charges – 20s icd – Next hit causes blast of Arcane damage in a 300 radius. Blast finisher. Damage triggers Arcane abilities from Arcane Spec.

Something cool like that. Maintains the group functionality of everyone gaining something and offers some really competitive advantages for group play. Could always be tweaked to something else as well, just kinda a rough idea to start with and would actually compete for one of our utility slots. The ICD would control the proc rate and limited procs means you can burn them fast but may still have some duration left on to allow for transition to another encounter. Only one conjure on a person every 60s.

Kodiak, that is falling on deaf ears. This forum is actually for venting, you aren’t being heard.

Ele won’t see major changes to its core problems until the class’s name ends with “ngineer”

Oh dude I know 100%. Like most modern day companies I imagine they use metrics where they analyze the usage and go from there. They see the exact numbers of people who are using what abilities, how often they’re equipped, how often they’re used, what traits are taken and what gear is used. People can make impassioned pleas on the forums as much as they want about Elemental Attunement, Conjures or anything else and the simple truth of the matter is that the only thing Anet is going to really watch and “listen to” is what players actually do with the new system. If they play another class, that will be measured. If they play through it anyways, that will also be measured. If they really over nerf things and a huge chunk of people stop playing the Elementalist that’s pretty much the only thing that’s going to really get their attention.

I can claim all day long that Conjures will never get used after this change, but the truth is I can’t tell the future and could be 100% wrong. Metrics of how often they’re getting used post nerf will tell them if they went too far or not cause simply put: Players lie and exaggerate. That said sometimes still fun to have an idea and put it out on the forums even if you know it won’t go anywhere

Also I wouldn’t be too harsh on Engineers. Truth is they’ve been the red headed step children of this game for a long time until recently in PvP with turret spec (which is being nerfed, too).

I don’t know what the hell Anet is doing with with conjure weapons but if they think they need nerf them instead of buffing them then something is really wrong with their numbers or their testers. Conjure weapons, beside Ice bow for PvE, are all terrible.

Xillllix.3485:

I don’t know what the hell Anet is doing with with conjure weapons but if they think they need nerf them instead of buffing them then something is really wrong with their numbers or their testers. Conjure weapons, beside Ice bow for PvE, are all terrible.

No, actually LH is great, only good auto for scepter builds, and in some fracs i even conjur it on my staff set for a guildy to pick it up and blind trash…. btw, blind OP pls nerv
and they just said they will bring it in line… that could mean removing blast and or blind from LH, right now you can just AA and the Elite Gorillas in arah cant do anything, same goes for the 2 big guys that guard lupi. That said id miss both blast and blind but i’d be okay if they’d remove one or the other… as long as they do not destroy scepter im fine with outsourcing the blinds^^

Im sorry to say this but I love all the conjure weapons . I honestly do not mind them being nerfed , but to take them away wich im not sure if they are doing so . This would destroy my purpose in playing my ele for fun . If they take away the Conjure Weapons that will make me feel like im meant to act and be what game elitest wish me to be . Um hello games are meant to be entertaining and fun , not as stressful and serious like reality . There is one reason i do not do fracts because of gamer elitus that get ticked off over tiny little mistakes . I take a game serious to having fun and enjoyng it . If it comes down to them taking away ability from my favored class in the game then I will refuse to sit back and accept that , mostlikey quit the game . This game is fun and its way too fun to require Anet to take away the fun in it for the very little that like it . I know im not the only one that disagree with this but game content that is inside the game on day one release should remain in game . I will not complain if they add somthing in game then take it away but not take away somethign that has been in game since the release .That is how Mmo games lose players instead of gaining them . Sorry just heard alot of nasty rumors that they were all bieng removed so i thought i post my thoughts here . Lets not foget (Directed at Anet) I preorderd this game and got it on day one release so yeah it means alot of to me and others like me taking the conjures away if that is true . :-(

They’re not removing Conjures, just making the only good ones garbage. Don’t worry, you can still use them, but Lightning Hammer and Frost Bow are gonna get nerfed and probably never used in PvE again.