Guild Wars 2

Disclaimer: I’m a filthy casual. I never got into the dungeons in this game, nor the WvW. I just like completing the maps and getting new skill points/vistas… doing the occasional events.

Prior to this expansion, I couldn’t get into the “proper” elementalist rotations. As soon as I saw things like “switch to [element], then do 5243, then switch to [element] and do 2354, then…”, my eyes would glaze over. I did get one to 80, but I really just wanted to weapon swap and stay in a favorite attunement. I eventually made a build around Conjurer, which basically had me stay in Air attunement 99% of the time and played my elementalist like it was an Engineer.

Fast forward to this xpac, and I figured I’d brush off my Elementalist and try out that sweet, sweet warhorn!

Yuck.

Then I thought “well, some of these shouts are bound to be pretty neat”, only to see that they competed with my precious pseudo-Engineer conjured weapon buttons.

Yuck.

I was just about to give up on this silly abuse of Elementalist until I tried the Overloads. Woooo! 4 fun, moving, channeled aoe spells that don’t interfere with conjured weapons? SO GREAT! Rushing my way into a big event with 20+ people has never been more fun, and I actually WANT to element stance dance now. So awesome.

Run into a big event in Fire stance with my ice bow. Spinny attack of doom! Switch to Air, do Icebow4 while I wait for Overload. Then summon a big electrical storm! Etc, etc. I use my mace and staff+air to keep blind people if I’m by myself, and my third utility is LF, with the elemental for my elite to tank some things.

Perhaps I’m being too much of an optimist, but they basically gave us 4 groupings of things this xpac (warhorn, shouts, new elite, overload), and even though 3 are pretty universally considered to be trash, I need to give a big +1 for the Overload spells. Lots of fun for us filthy casuals.

(Build info: I’m using Fire for Conjurer, Air for Fresh Air, and Tempest, choosing all survivability ones)

So the way to get the tempest to work is by using only conjured weapons and overloads? That… is just not right, but at this point i’m willing to try anything to see if we can get tempest to work. Only success i’ve had was with fresh air/arcana/tempest and d/f or s/f , but it’s kinda terrible to be honest.

Having a conjured weapon with a Tempest is one of the key solution to the elite specialization to deal with the cooldowns of the overloads. Along with that, the regular Fresh Air d/f with Earth Air Tempest.

I am very experienced with conjured weapon in a sPvP environment. I must tell you however that the Conjurer Trait is very mediocre and should absolutely be combined with One with Fire as a single trait. Using conjured weapons =/= needing the Conjurer trait. (And that’s just alright)

How about a quad-conjurer, bare-handed ele? Could well be the best class in game whithout using weapons! Just to be manly, you know…

As much as I love the concept of conjured weapons, the fact that they are a one use only affair once you switch from them is maddeningly frustrating.

I doubt it would ever happen, but I’d be way happier if they could be closer to an engineer’s kits; I’m not suggesting they should be identical to kits, but more comparable in their nature to ‘swap to and swap back’ so we still have access to our basic skills beyond Overloads.

One example would be that swap 1 to the conjure gives you an effect, let’s take conjure earth shield:

Once activated, for the next X seconds you may summon this weapon on demand with a maximum of Y charges.

It would open up the elementalist’s options a lot. Perhaps a Tempest trait could convert conjures to function in this nature… make it more attractive. Ah, we can only dream.

Possible sollution.
When you conjure a weapon, you get a weapon swap to the conjure (no more ground target secons conjure). So now you can swap your current element and the conjure till its discarded. The swap triggers effects like a normal weapon/ele swap or fire aura from conjurer trait).

I actually developed a Conjure/Tempest build yesterday. I can’t test it out, but it certainly looks exciting.

Conjure Boon Bruiser
Just make sure to use Wanderer armor instead of Soldier for the 100% boon duration. You’ve got immunity to conditions above 90%, and essentially permanent protection and high uptime on Magnetic Aura under 90%. Tons of Fire Shield for might, you can get extremely high power while being difficult to kill.

Ghotistyx.6942:

I actually developed a Conjure/Tempest build yesterday. I can’t test it out, but it certainly looks exciting.

Conjure Boon Bruiser
Just make sure to use Wanderer armor instead of Soldier for the 100% boon duration. You’ve got immunity to conditions above 90%, and essentially permanent protection and high uptime on Magnetic Aura under 90%. Tons of Fire Shield for might, you can get extremely high power while being difficult to kill.

Where you ever able to try your conjure build? I’m curious how that goes.

Unfortunately I cannot test anything, which is why I spend my time theorycrafting on the forums

I might give that build a try on my Ele once I unlock tempest on her. Wanderer armour is hard to get though isn’kitten The only place I’ve seen those stats are from leystone armor.