Guild Wars 2

I have played several builds to nice effects in sPvP. But as with several other professions being pigeon holed into only 2-3 viable builds has caused my interest to wane.

I had always wanted to make a Conjure Build but there is no way currently to utilize these skills in PvP. That being said.. Simply put “What if it was?”
There’s no disputing the Conjure Weapons lack of usefulness, particularly in PvP. But what exactly would need to be done in order to allow this mechanic into the strict gates of Tournaments and other SPVP?

If the developers resources where not an issue, and a change to Conjure Weapons was possible and realistic what would you suggest to make Conjure Weapons into a PvP viable utility skill?

-Without stepping on any other mechanics that currently exists I’d say allowing Conjure weapons to at least refund charges on hit/crit if not just removing the charge mechanic (from yourself only) all together would be a great start.

-A problem with Conjure weapons currently, is that their use is very limited and not usually applicable for attrition based combat. Once you have gone through several of the skills rotations it is more practical to drop the weapon and continue using the various “utility-like” weapon skills. Usually from the fact that if your time isn’t spent mitigating damage it’s usually taking it, and no Elementalist build can face-tank even with all the cantrips combined. So my proposition, is allow conjure weapons to give some form of protection giving incentive to the fact that you just lost 15 of your weapon skills and a majority of your survivability. Not to mention the fact that if you would run 3 Conjure Weapon Utilities you would have no way to avoid bursts.

-My next concept is to make dropping your currently equipped Conjure Weapon (Either from activating a new Conjure Weapon or simply Dropping the Bundle) would place the Weapon at your feet, this would appear like any Conjure Weapon but would be unable to be picked up by anyone else but yourself. Having it persist for the Conjure Weapons Cool down while laying on the ground. The idea behind this is that you could essentially drop your Flame Axe in favor of a Ice Bow to do ranged damage then once your target closes the distance you could drop your Frost Bow and pick back up your Flame Axe and continue. Essentially you could deploy all three Conjured Weapons in an area and fight around them picking them up and dropping them when the situation arises making for a very innovative PvP experience while not stepping on the design toes of the Engineers and their Kits.

-Lacking the Utility and Survivability of the “oh so popular” cantrips is a daunting prospect. Not having the much needed oh crap buttons in place of Conjure Weapons currently is suicide in meta PvP. But there could be a remedy or at least an alternative. Perhaps Giving Conjure Weapons a secondary Ability while active would create some versatility and although, would make an additional learning curve (but nothing like that of an Engineer) it would make it much more promising. These Secondary Abilities could act as much needed Utility when desperately trying to dance from Attunement to Attunement. For Example:

-Conjure Earth Shield:;Return Earths Gift:The Shield pulls you beneath the earths surface while destroying your Shield gaining 2 seconds of invulnerability. Actions besides movement cannot be preformed. Breaks Stuns
-Conjure Flame Axe* :Molten Fury: Erupt all your Axes fury into a single projectile and hurl it at an opponent causing massive damage. Destroys your axe in the process Removes 2 boons from an opponent.
-Conjure Frost Bow* :Shatter Bolt: Fire a frozen bolt with enough force to shatter the bow. Curing all conditions and Stunning the target for 1 second.
-Conjure Lightning Hammer :;Titan Step: Unleash you Hammers wrath teleporting to target location but dispelling the Hammer in the process. Dazes nearby targets at both points of the teleport. Breaks Stun
-Conjure Fiery Greatsword* :Offering of Ashes: Channel your Greatsword for 5 seconds Burning nearby foes for 2 seconds every second. *Also Reduces its cooldown by 10 seconds every second channeled.

IMO up the damage on all the conjures by around 20%. Make them instant cast. Give some conjures a stun break like earth shield for example and make them work like engi kits except they have a five to ten second internal cool down (preferably 5). If conjures worked like this the amount of combos and moves available to elementalists would be incredible.

The idea of leaving an underlying utility (perhaps only while equipped) is actually very interesting and could make them useful in certain cases. As it is, I see 3 things holding conjures back:
1. If I need a utility/skill, I need it NOW. I don’t have time to cast a conjure, then cast the ability, especially if it doesn’t add any special utility that isn’t already on a weapon skill. The shield and lightning hammer have some interesting potential uses for controlling the field a bit, but are simply too slow to justify the loss of other skills. This could be solved with instant cast, perhaps putting them on a 40s timer when dropped (it is bringing 5 utilities to the game then). Perphaps allow us the option to “charge” the ability and call down a companion.

2. As mentioned, conjures lock us out of our other skills, but all of them are so bland that they don’t bring anything special to the table. The ice bow range is 900, that isn’t a significant enough increase for d/d to consider it as an alternative to just staying in melee. The lava axe doesn’t know if it wants to be range or melee. If the bow were made into a proper ranged weapon, it might see some use as a kiting tool. The reason why FGS is actually useful is b/c it brings something different to the table: superior mobility and power on short cooldowns. That is worth giving up our healing for short periods, and even then its a liability to be rooted while casting it.

3. Its impossible to use a conjure as a more permanent weapon as our only defense/survivability is healing. Having some inherent defensive capability (evades, more blocks, or a passive defensive benefit) could mitigate this, as could providing an underlying sacrificial ability as suggested could as well.

I think simply allowing them to be swapped/stowed (on a long cooldown) would be sufficient. They could even make them be “pre-charged” like mesmer mantras if they don’t think weapons appearing out of nowhere makes sense.

(
faster cast
combined charges into one weapon (30-50)
remove charges
only 1 conjure spell that functions like a glyph (conjures the weapon depending on what attunement it is cast it – might function oddly with attunement swaps; making the weapon change with your attunements hurts the PvE LH build, but could be interesting in pve/wvw)

fire axe #2 should be a blast finisher
shield #1 attack half as fast whilst hitting twice as hard
shield #2 pulls enemies towards you on its way back
shield #… icr; but fortify, should either allow movement (adding a tunneling toy like effect to the bottom) or reflect projectiles
hammer #4 instant cast
bow #1 should be buffed to be comparable to water blast (more damage or more healing; or something that makes it not plain worse)
bow #2 pierce

BlackBeard.2873:

They could even make them be “pre-charged” like mesmer mantras if they don’t think weapons appearing out of nowhere makes sense.

really like that idea

I use Ice bow and Fiery greatsword in my pvp Aoe spam build and it works just fine.
Ice bow no. 5 is pretty fun to do and no. 3 has a good chill effect.
Fiery greatsword is fun to run away with I mainly use it for the extra aoe (insta cast)

First change I’d like to see in Conjures (before a total rework or something drastic) is to remove charge usage for skill1 on all weapons, at least in that way they can fill the role of ranged weapon for Eles that lack range, now they don’t even do that…

There’s one build that can make some use of the conjures, and that’s the Elemental Surge build. You may have less skills when equipping the conjure, but you still get conditions on demand, not to mention a good number of boons when swapping attunements.

Well, first thing first, flame axe and magnetic shield seem totally worthless as they are at the moment. It makes you wonder why they even took the time to design them if they were destined to be so under-powered.

Also they need to give the frost bow the range of the ranger’s bow. 900 for a bow isn’t enough.

Xillllix.3485:

Also they need to give the frost bow the range of the ranger’s bow. 900 for a bow isn’t enough.

If frost bow were a proper bow, that did decent damage and had decent projectile speeds from 1200-1500 range, I might take it as a D/D player so that I could kite a bit better or not have to switch to staff before long-range situations. As it is now, I have no incentive other than to situationally use the 4 ability to destroy graveling burrows.

Instant cast.
Don’t lock out other attunements.
Fixed.

The whole idea of giving up 20 skills to gain 5 mediocre skills is terrible.

That’s easy: Allow the Elementalist to slot a single Conjure as their weapon swap.

Swapping weapons would activate the Conjure. The Elementalist could still slot additional Conjures as utility abilities if they desired.

Fiery Greatsword would still be an Elite skill.

I made an in depth thread about it some time back. I’ll provide an updated version for more exposure. More ideas and more exposure is more better? :P

Instant cast
Remove the autoattack from them and add a meaningful skill. Who conjures a weapon to autoattack with it, lol?
Fix the bugs they have

Not many people played in the betas i guess :P
There was in earth a trait that was replaced by geomancer freedom.
It made every conjure a stunbreak as far as i remember.I guess it was too op and they removed it?!
Or maybe it was buggy..i didnt test it but perhaps you could cast the conjure, get the stunbreak and then cancel it before it finishes casting to get it in a small cd??
That would be fun

Simple. Just make them like engi kit. No charge, no timer, no cd on skill. Maybe longer cd on skills.

Yep. Please. Especially Fiery GS and Lightning Hammer, the 10 additional charges should change into 20% faster recharge time. Spamming Rush every 8 seconds… insane

I’ve been thinking about it and to me, it would be a huge improvement if the ground targetting was replaced with ‘appear at my feet’.

Not having to click twice but only once for the weapon to be usable is a fairly minor change balancewise, but would increase the usability a lot.

Also, Fiery Greatsword should be instant-cast.

If possible, the weapons should be either instant cast or have very short casting times (1/4 sec).