Guild Wars 2

I want to play to the classes strength and fill different roles when needed, I also like to switch it up and actually use melee and magic and no dagger/dagger feels nothing like melee im sorry.

You did not mention game mode, so my advice here is primarily for PvE (apologies if this is not what you were looking for).

If you are looking for a melee magic user but D/D is not melee enough for you then you’re not really going to have a good time with ele (although ele, primarily D/F ele, is probably the most versatile class in the game, able to fulfill nearly any role).

Respectfully, I disagree that D/D or D/F is not a true melee build. Are you perhaps using the Water or Earth auto attacks often? Because when played properly you are pretty much only using the Air auto attack, which has only a little more range than standard melee weapons. When played to its strengths, D/D or D/F dances between the attunements, using Fire/Water/Earth for big hitting cooldown abilities and swapping back to Air in between each to use the Air auto attack while waiting for attunements to recharge. Just in case you did not have it, here is a link to the PvE D/F build (note that D/D is really only useful in PvP or when playing by yourself):
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Elementalist_-_D/F

Regardless, that is just my opinion. If you disagree then I apologize for ele not being what you were looking for. Unfortunately, to answer your question, most conjures are not super useful, and the ones that are useful are only used for one or two abilities and then are dropped completely.

If you are just looking to have fun and not looking to bring the most out of your class then you can definitely get away with using the old Scepter Lightning Hammer build. This build used to be very powerful, but after the specialization update it has fallen quite a bit behind the Staff and D/F builds (not to say that is bad, just that it is not nearly as strong as it once was). It prioritizes the Lightning Hammer conjure (obviously lol) which has a very powerful auto attack chain and is a melee weapon. When the LH is not being used however, you are left with the mid-range scepter as your weapon. A link to the build can be found here:
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Elementalist_-_S/x_LH

Of course, if you really don’t care about optimizing your build, then you could do a D/D Lightning Hammer setup. That would be about as melee as ele will ever get, though you will be very sub-optimal in group settings.

Unfortunately, if none of these builds are to your liking then the melee aspect of ele may just not be for you. If this is a deal breaker, then I would recommend trying out the mesmer. The optimal mesmer builds are almost all completely melee oriented. Necromancer would be another solid choice because the optimal build prioritizes the dagger, and once HoT arrives necros will get another powerful melee weapon in the form of the greatsword.

What I meant by melee is using real melee moves not just dashing into enemies and staying in melee range there are not melee connected hits to the mobs, anyways so what your saying the only half way decent conjuration is lightning hammer? Well thats very disappointing. Thank you though.

Ah, I see your point. Yeah ele does not really hit things with its weapons themselves. Lightning Hammer does, but as I said it’s not optimal at all.

Sorry again for ele not being what you wanted, but I would definitely encourage you to check out mesmer or necro, because they do actually hit enemies with the weapons as opposed to only using magical attacks in melee range.

In terms of PvP, I actually think conjure axe is quite handy when used right in D/D. Decent damage and burn and superior blast ability, to me its exchangeable with cleansing fire if opponent has no condi heavy foes.

Prism.5649:

Ah, I see your point. Yeah ele does not really hit things with its weapons themselves. Lightning Hammer does, but as I said it’s not optimal at all.

Sorry again for ele not being what you wanted, but I would definitely encourage you to check out mesmer or necro, because they do actually hit enemies with the weapons as opposed to only using magical attacks in melee range.

I do not get it, why can we conjure all these weapons but not use them? I do have a mesmer but really it is only 2 melee skills, and necro I hear are to stationary for my tastes.
Thank you for the awesome suggestions though.

Ryou.2398:

Prism.5649:

Ah, I see your point. Yeah ele does not really hit things with its weapons themselves. Lightning Hammer does, but as I said it’s not optimal at all.

Sorry again for ele not being what you wanted, but I would definitely encourage you to check out mesmer or necro, because they do actually hit enemies with the weapons as opposed to only using magical attacks in melee range.

I do not get it, why can we conjure all these weapons but not use them? I do have a mesmer but really it is only 2 melee skills, and necro I hear are to stationary for my tastes.
Thank you for the awesome suggestions though.

Necro isn’t stationary, none of the classes in GW2 are to be frank. The reason no one uses conjure builds is that they aren’t very good. They have limited charges, the abilities they have are pretty bad in comparison to normal skills and lose access to all your attunement abilities. On top of that, if you wanted to solely use the conjure, you would have to make sure that no one picks up the conjure you put down.

The only conjure worth using right now is Ice Bow and that is for using Deep Freeze (#5 on ice bow) > Ice Storm (#4 on ice bow) and then dropping it. Until conjures get a rework, they aren’t worth it over other skills.

Hi

I did try a conjure build. The thing is, fire staff felt easier to use and having the same impact not using utility slots :-/.

Its a fun build using flame axe and FSG. It is a strong earth camping and looks like that.
Its quite flexible for support too and can stand some impact. The food is for WvW in PvE use something else. I personaly am a fan of omnombery pie which i also run in WvW most of the time.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFEQFAWnMICdOg9MAmOA8RghBALCARgCw8DiBHRJD8BOBA-TFyDwAKuAAQV+BwEkIdAJeAAIUCKb/hXq/EAABgduzjuzjmMAMjB-w

Well I guess I will be skipping out of this class for now, id rather be able to play with all of my options.

By all means try stuff but the general opinion is that conjures are terrible in pvp/wvw because they’re clunky to use and require you to give up 21 skills to gain 5 mediocre ones.

Ryou.2398:

Well I guess I will be skipping out of this class for now, id rather be able to play with all of my options.

Most classes have something like conjures (read: utilities that are terrible and not used), it’s not just Elementalist only. The reason not having conjures be awesome isn’t game breaking is because the weaponsets for Elementalist cover pretty much all you need, they are all encompassing.

scerevisiae.1972:

By all means try stuff but the general opinion is that conjures are terrible in pvp/wvw because they’re clunky to use and require you to give up 21 skills to gain 5 mediocre ones.

Well I was mostly talking about pve.

I would still give mesmer a shot. Sword/Sword mesmer has three melee abilities, one ability that is designed to teleport you into melee (basically a magic leap), and one ability that summons a melee phantasm. There is nothing NOT melee about it. =p

Plus the meta for mesmer is Sword/Sword and Sword/Focus or Sword/Pistol. The Focus offhand is still mostly a melee weapon because the phantasm it summons is melee and blocks projectiles if you are standing near it (encouraging you to be in melee). The pistol is definitely ranged, but you don’t have to use it if you don’t want to.

If you are looking for a class that is purely 100% only using magic melee abilities, then you are completely out of luck. The only classes that have full weapon sets (both main and offhand) that are STRICTLY melee are warrior, ranger, and thief (and even ranger is iffy). Every single other class has some sort of ability on their weapons that is either a leap or a small ranged ability.

Slightly off topic, the reason conjures have not been balanced is because balancing abilities is VERY difficult. Whenever a dev balances even a single ability, they have to take into account every single possible combination of other abilities, traits, sigils, runes, and the abilities of other classes. If they don’t do this (or don’t do it very well) then it creates the possibility of some ability or trait or sigil/rune combination performing far better than was intended and can very easily lead to overpowered builds. This is why balancing takes so long. Going through every imaginable combination to make sure there are no obscure combos that lead to an OP build takes an enormous amount of time and effort. It’s not as simple as “just increase the damage on x ability!” because that one little change can have dramatic consequences (think butterfly effect).

If that weren’t bad enough, conjures are not single abilities, but five abilities all rolled into one. That means conjures are roughly five times harder to balance than other abilities.

Because eles have other utilities that are very powerful and provide very versatile functions, the fact of the matter is eles do not NEED conjures to be buffed in order to perform excellently in any situation. For this reason, fixing conjures is very low on ANet’s priority list. I’m sure they will be addressed at some point, but not now. This is a good thing. Which would you rather have, ANet fixing utilities that are not needed for ele to perform well, or ANet fixing other balance issues that cause huge disparities in gameplay? The obvious answer is that the big issues need to be addressed first, and things like conjures need to be sidelined.

Ryou.2398:

scerevisiae.1972:

By all means try stuff but the general opinion is that conjures are terrible in pvp/wvw because they’re clunky to use and require you to give up 21 skills to gain 5 mediocre ones.

Well I was mostly talking about pve.

That would have been a good thing to say in your OP…