Guild Wars 2

Rather than flat out giving eles a weapon swap, which would add another 20 skills onto their already long list, what about changing weapon conjures to function as a weapon swap as I suggested in this thread?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Elementalist-Weapon-Conjures

This would give eles the versatility of a weapon swap, but only add 5 skills, while at the same time providing more use for the somewhat dubiously useful weapon conjure skills.

I present two problems with the elementalist, and a proposed solution:

1. Conjured weapons are very cool, but do not see widespread use in a lot of builds due to the reduced utility they give in comparison to other choices.

2. While versatility has always been touted as one of the elementalist’s strengths due to their having twice the skills of other classes, in practice the lack of weapon swap leads to many situations in which they are actually less of a multi role class than others. For example: if an elementalist goes dagger mainhand they are more or less locked into close range combat, or if they go staff they are all combo fields aoe and range. Unlike most other classes, they have no way to equip both a ranged and a melee option, or an aoe and single target weapon set at the same time.

Proposed solution:
Rather than just give the elementalist a weapon swap, which would eliminate, in my opinion, some of the unique flavor of the class, ANet could alter weapon conjures to function as an alternate weapon. Of course, the abilities would have to be balanced around this.

How this would work:
1. Remove the weapon charges, ie make each conjured weapon last forever once summoned. Keep the weapon summoned for other players on a charge system
2. Make them able to be weapon swapped in the same way other classes swap with the “`” key, subject to the same cooldowns.
3. Fiery greatsword could either be changed just like the others or left as is to preserve it’s elite skill feeling.
4. Rework the passive in the fire tree that gives extra charges to provide some other bonus to conjures.

I can think of a lot of dagger eles that would like to take a frost bow or fire axe as a weapon swap, or staff eles that would take a hammer or shield for close range options. Of course, proper balance would need to make it so that the decision to essentially give up a utility slot for a weapon swap is not a no brainer, but I’m confident that this would only come down to numerical tweaks.

What do you think? Personally, I think this would give a more compelling reason to take these less used but fun spells and also give the elementalist some of the multi role capabilities that many people are finding them to lack.