Guild Wars 2

you spend a nontrivial amount of time casting that you could have spent attacking or using some support or disable, and it does absolutely nothing until you cast again

Adding stat bonuses to them is cool and all, but if you really want to make them useful, reduce the time investment

making it more fluid also makes it a whole lot more fun

thanks

im only on lvl 34 so keep that in mind lol, but i’ve built my char around conjures since the beginning. I think they make up for no effects and taking a bit to conjure. The fire ones inflict a nice amount of burning, and now they even give you stats. If you’re soloing, it can be a bit of a problem but not much of one. just start out the fight by conjuring it on the way up to them and open up the fight with conjures(best is ice bow for the deep freeze→ ice storm combo which is amazing, even with the confusion change :/ ) and then change out to your real skills to finish them off as their chilled, vulnerable and bleeding. If you’re not soloing this is a non-issue

i think 5 new skills is more than worthy of a little inconvenience at not being instant, especially with the new stat boosts which makes up for not being instant like an engi’s kits

Conjures aren’t objectively bad, they’re merely situational. Busting out a conjure at some random point is only going to hinder you due to the loss of all your other weapon skills. When going through the Fractals of the Mist last night, however, I actually found a few situations where I’d switch one of my utility slots to a conjure. to great effect.

It’s mostly how Frost Bow’s #4 works so well against structures and other things with big hitboxes, but Fiery Greatsword’s 3 and 5 achieves similar effect when used well. The CC in Frost Bow and Lightning Hammer are also quite valuable.

Mostly, though, they’re the sort of thing you cast, fire off a few shots and then discard. You don’t want to have them out all the time, or even to their natural conclusion in most cases.

conjures are useful if you cast them before you engage battle. A lightning hammer build is great for leveling and controlling mobs which primarly do melee damage because of the aoe blind. I imagine with the increased stats they would be even more useful. Like above posters have said, frostbow skill 4 is king for getting rid of structures that need to be destroyed.

The problem with casting them before I engage is it’d be better to open with one of my awesome weapon skills instead. like light my opponents on fire and lay down a combo field before I start hitting them with my hammer.
The two ranged ones are better about this because, well, they’re ranged. Especially frost bow since it has skills with long channels, which are nice to use before things get messy, making opening with it better. But the melee ones don’t have that benefit, and they have longer cast times. They’re the ones I was thinking about when I made the topic. I mean, would they be OP if they had the same cast time as the other two?

MrQuizzles.6823:

Mostly, though, they’re the sort of thing you cast, fire off a few shots and then discard. You don’t want to have them out all the time, or even to their natural conclusion in most cases.

Exactly. That’s why they need to come out faster: so you can swap to them mid battle more effectively

Why don’t Conjures work like the Engineer’s bundles?
Before playing an Ele I’d always thought they would.

Pretty much my whole build centers around conjure frostbow & lightning hammer. It works out rather well. I don’t find the cast times to really be as much of an issue as I do having some random person come up and grab my extra one. I don’t mind sharing my weapons for dungeons and events with party members & guildies, but when you’re out questing solo and some stranger grabs your weapon it can be really frustrating.

conjures are bad because other people can take your conjures which is stupid.

Plus they loock you out of all your other attunements. They should let you swap to other attunements and just lock the one the weapon is associated with out.

Conjures:

- Need to be available for the elementalist only
- Need to act as a weapon kit (engineer)
- Need no cast time

Problem solved. Remove that kitteny stat bonus.

Conjures:
- Need to last the duration of the charges not 60 seconds as well

- Need to have a second skill replace the main skill on summon that when used halves your current charges left to summon one for a friend

- Need to have double charges default (see above)

- Need smaller cds on their skills, like I’m going to auto attack for 8 seconds and waist my already low charges or just do nothing (fiery gs is in a good place atm)

- Would like a system where you summon an elemental weapon and on changing attunement you gain a different weapon (with the same charges left). E.G. you summon an elemental weapon in water and get a frost bow, changing to fire gives you an fiery axe etc. Fiery GS would stay as elite.

All this talk about the conjures(so far my favorite util to use), and we forgot one. Magnetic shield is in desperate need of a buff. a CD to be exact. like someone just said, waiting for the cd’s sucks, especially on Magshield. At least reduce the cd on some of them.

Also, does anyone ever use Flame Axe? I’ve seen it once, and it was a lv 7.

Allies being able to pick our conjures is a cool idea, and it makes the skills stand out more from kits, but I’d change how it would work. Either it would be:
a) Optional – requiring a specific trait to create one/ two conjures for your allies;
b) For your allies only, meaning you wouldn’t be able to pick your conjure on the ground.

I think this would allow the devs to balance around one-usage only, so that builds don’t rely on allies NOT picking your own conjures.

I would then propose:
a) Keep their cast time, but after being cast, the utility skill would be substituted by a swap, which would allow you to change back to your 20 skills and back again to your conjure.
b) No duration, only charges. After charges are used, weapon is put on a cooldown. If another conjure is cast, the former conjure is put on a cooldown too. (= You would only be able to have one conjure cast at a time).
c) Have the conjure buffs inherent to their weapon, and have the weapon stats at level 80 be on par with level 80 top tier weapons. Split for pvp so they would have no/ less stats.

gymdawg.6347:

All this talk about the conjures(so far my favorite util to use), and we forgot one. Magnetic shield is in desperate need of a buff. a CD to be exact. like someone just said, waiting for the cd’s sucks, especially on Magshield. At least reduce the cd on some of them.

Also, does anyone ever use Flame Axe? I’ve seen it once, and it was a lv 7.

MS: I like the idea of this one, but the default attacks stinks, the #2 CD is way too long or the cripple is way too short. 3 and 4 are nice but CDs too high. 5 would be better if it didnt need you to stand still. In short, I’ve tried to use it multiple times, but it’s just not that great, and I’m even running a conjure build right now.

FA: I used this quite a bit when I was a D/D auramancer because I could open w/ a leap attack fire aura (gaining prot, quick, fury), hit 2 for aoe, then 1, then 3 back out of range, drop the axe and then Fire 3 leap back into the fight again. I could also use it for ranged attacks since I was D/D. That said though, I have no use for it in my S/F conjure build now. This made for some fun acrobatics.

oflow.2157:

conjures are bad because other people can take your conjures which is stupid.

Plus they loock you out of all your other attunements. They should let you swap to other attunements and just lock the one the weapon is associated with out.

Other people taking your conjures can be wicked awesome. That said, I could see the frustration if you didn’t want it to happen.

I agree that locking you out of attunements can be annoying, but I still get utility slots and I can drop the weapon real quickly if I have to. Only thing I could think of is adding an F5 conjure slot once you have one out or to have the weapon replace its proper attunement (Frost bow replaces water, hammer replaces air, etc).

Another idea I had that I like would be for the conjured weapon to replace that attunements spells.
E.G. Frost Bow would replace water skills and changing attunement would allow you to use your other skills still, and then you could change back to water for your bow.
Thier for if you ran, FB, MS, LH and Elite FGS you could use all 4 at the same time by switching attunements. Or you could just use 1 or 2 and have your normal skills in the other attunements.

PlatypusRex.3428:

I agree that locking you out of attunements can be annoying, but I still get utility slots and I can drop the weapon real quickly if I have to. Only thing I could think of is adding an F5 conjure slot once you have one out or to have the weapon replace its proper attunement (Frost bow replaces water, hammer replaces air, etc).

You beat me to it.

TGSlasher.1458:

Another idea I had that I like would be for the conjured weapon to replace that attunements spells.
E.G. Frost Bow would replace water skills and changing attunement would allow you to use your other skills still, and then you could change back to water for your bow.
Thier for if you ran, FB, MS, LH and Elite FGS you could use all 4 at the same time by switching attunements. Or you could just use 1 or 2 and have your normal skills in the other attunements.

PlatypusRex.3428:

I agree that locking you out of attunements can be annoying, but I still get utility slots and I can drop the weapon real quickly if I have to. Only thing I could think of is adding an F5 conjure slot once you have one out or to have the weapon replace its proper attunement (Frost bow replaces water, hammer replaces air, etc).

You beat me to it.

Woot, do I get cookies?

Removal of the ability to give someone else a conjured weapon would kind of suck (it can be really useful at times). If it would help them make conjures actually usable outside of some leveling situations then oh well. As far as conjures replace your attunements, dunno. I think something like the eng kit system would be better (that and we wouldn’t lose 3 utility skills).

DiogoSilva.7089:

Allies being able to pick our conjures is a cool idea, and it makes the skills stand out more from kits, but I’d change how it would work. Either it would be:
a) Optional – requiring a specific trait to create one/ two conjures for your allies;
b) For your allies only, meaning you wouldn’t be able to pick your conjure on the ground.

I think this would allow the devs to balance around one-usage only, so that builds don’t rely on allies NOT picking your own conjures.

I would then propose:
a) Keep their cast time, but after being cast, the utility skill would be substituted by a swap, which would allow you to change back to your 20 skills and back again to your conjure.
b) No duration, only charges. After charges are used, weapon is put on a cooldown. If another conjure is cast, the former conjure is put on a cooldown too. (= You would only be able to have one conjure cast at a time).
c) Have the conjure buffs inherent to their weapon, and have the weapon stats at level 80 be on par with level 80 top tier weapons. Split for pvp so they would have no/ less stats.

This would be pretty amazing
except part 2 b. I do agree with the only one conjure at a time though

THAT ground targeting effect is about useless and easily adds .25 to a full second delay depending on how good you are at ground targeting but it always adds a delay.

id like that to be removed and just have it cast on target or at my feet.

Its so much easier to use these things with fast ground targeting.
however im told its better to spend your experience points to add skill levels to normal ground targeting as learning to use it fast is very useful. its just that on the conjures its a detriment.

I would like to remove them from eles and transfer to engineer. Might function better with them, wouldn’t you agree?

If conjures were instant it would add a whole new ‘element’ to elementalist gameplay

See what I did there?

In all seriousness.. I think people would definitely use the conjures more if they were instant..I know I would

I must say, I use the frost bow much more than the FGS, if only because the bow is instant-cast while the FSG is a relatively long cast time.