Change Conjure Earth Shield

[Knote.2904]

Coming from a tempest support.

 

3 second invulnerability skill changed to a 3 second block 

Allows unblockable to counter and weaker to condition damage.

 

Magnetic aura on dash removed

Other conjured weapons don't provide auras. Cata/Temp have plenty of magnetic aura access already. This just overloads the utility further, it's a cc/dash.

 

Slightly lowered damage on autos, provide extra barrier on attack chain

It does decent damage, but should be more of a defensive weapon. Having extra barrier over time incentivizes sitting it in instead of using it only for the super high value cooldowns and immediately discarding it.

 

Earth Shield ground item duration changed to 10s duration

Easily and conveniently getting a full double shield every 48s/60s is crazy. This lets it still give a shield to allies, as well as swap it in and out within that 10s window if you need to bounce back n forth like an engineer kit.

 

Even after this, the utility still provides 2 ccs, 2 strong blocks, toughness/vitality and a lot of barrier for turtling, but w/o being ridiculous.

 

[Stallic.2397]

No, no, no. 

 

Don't nerf conjures. Earth conjure is just one lucky example of what conjures should be. The other four are examples of what would happen after earth shield nerfs. The base mechanic is incredibly clunky. 

 

The damage on Shield auto attack is high, because without it, Ele's damage output drops to near zero. 

 

A three second block should be on Shield #2. If that change is made, then maybe you could justify removing the invuln that is very necessary at the moment. 

 

Magnetic aura exists on #3 because the weapon has no combo finishers. Every other conjure has a finisher. Look at lightning hammer for example. It's auto attack can provide auras ever three seconds. In comparison, shield 3 is laughably less valuable. 

Edited September 19, 2022 by Stallic.2397

[Sahne.6950]

Earthshield is singlehandedly carying Elementalist builds..... and the class needs that! 😄

If Eartshield will see any more nerf, because remember... it got nerfed not long ago...., we will see ele in the dumpster faster than you can say: "but i only wanted a small nerf!"

Remember its anet... they dont nerf... they kill something.

 

Concerning your ideas more specifically:

change of invuln to block.  This would actually be a buff, because it allows you to turtle on a Node and actually keep it. Tempest struggles to keep a node because obsidianflesh and the Shield are straight invulns, resulting in you loosing the node should you use them. With blocks this is not true. So it would actually benefit the Tempest.

removing the magaura.   Bro no XD the fireaura from the conjurertrait should you take it, and the magaura are one of the main reasons to use the shield.

lowering dps but increasing barriergen. Again a straight buff. Who uses the shield for the AA damage!? The barrier would make turtling and just keep holding the shield more benefiting.

lowering time that you can pick it up from the ground. This would make the shield even more lame. Right now, a good ele will use the shield, use the skills, and then drop it. Then you cycle another element or two and pick it up again. You change would promote just holding the shield for 30 seconds.

 

So your suggestions would(from top to bottom):

Be a straight buff in the setting of Conquest.

would completly kill the shield.

yet again a straight buff.

would completly kill the shield and actually encourage people to just sit in it for 30 seconds.

 

 

Conclusion: BIIIG NOPE.

 

If anything the range from the 4 needs to go down and it needs a better visual. They can scrap the statbonuses it gives and go from there.

Edited September 19, 2022 by Sahne.6950

[Swagg.9236]

Conjures are a completely failed concept hyped up by a bunch of naive developers who thought they were being groundbreaking and innovative when they added rocks on the ground that you could pick up as weapons and throw at enemies.  Consumables are all nerfed into oblivion.  Forced interactions with objects are generally super clunky in most cases in GW2.  The idea of environmental weapons is cool, but the execution in Tyria is trash.  You'd be way better off dumpstering the whole skill type and cannibalizing the few good pieces as skills for actual weapons or as their own individual utilities.

Come at me with your confused faces.  I'm vindicated by the fact that you silly lot will never stop having these worthless, reoccurring threads.  You know what would end them?  Culling the bloat and streamlining the classes down to unique roles with some basic fundamental mechanics to tie their interactions together.

Edited September 19, 2022 by Swagg.9236

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

Conjure Earth Shield is bloated as hell and needs large nerfs.

[Shao.7236]

Conjures should be an elite based on the current attunement. Does feel like having one spare to pick up plays in the overpowered aspect of having strong skills too, should be either spawning in the hands or on the aoe target for either owners or teammates to pick up, not both.

Wouldn't care if GS or Axe has to picked. Condensing it while improving skills will make the thing less annoying and earned instead.

Edited September 19, 2022 by Shao.7236

[Downstate.4697]

Change conjures to be non shareable and on like a 40s cd might be enough

[Swagg.9236]

18 hours ago, Shao.7236 said:

Conjures should be an elite based on the current attunement. Does feel like having one spare to pick up plays in the overpowered aspect of having strong skills too, should be either spawning in the hands or on the aoe target for either owners or teammates to pick up, not both.

Wouldn't care if GS or Axe has to picked. Condensing it while improving skills will make the thing less annoying and earned instead.

Delete conjures.  Make two new glyphs.  Done.

[Aktium.9506]

Buff the all of other Conjures and add a Heal skill Conjure.

Ele meta build in all game modes should be 5 conjures.

 

[Knote.2904]

I'm not gonna lie I want it nerfed because I don't enjoy using it, and having it carry ele sucks and prevents other changes they need. How about we make some of the horrible abilities on the base ele weapons better like sceptre/staff, or rework them, instead of relying on an OP conjure weapon for actual useful abilities. x.x 

Edited September 20, 2022 by Knote.2904

[Knote.2904]

On 9/18/2022 at 9:34 PM, Stallic.2397 said:

No, no, no. 

 

Don't nerf conjures. Earth conjure is just one lucky example of what conjures should be. The other four are examples of what would happen after earth shield nerfs. The base mechanic is incredibly clunky. 

 

The damage on Shield auto attack is high, because without it, Ele's damage output drops to near zero. 

 

A three second block should be on Shield #2. If that change is made, then maybe you could justify removing the invuln that is very necessary at the moment. 

 

Magnetic aura exists on #3 because the weapon has no combo finishers. Every other conjure has a finisher. Look at lightning hammer for example. It's auto attack can provide auras ever three seconds. In comparison, shield 3 is laughably less valuable. 

You can't provide magnetic from finishers.

Fire and Frost auras are cute, but they're not 100% dmg denial like Magnetic and Shocking can be. That's where the real support comes from.

Edited September 20, 2022 by Knote.2904

[Knote.2904]

On 9/19/2022 at 12:03 AM, Sahne.6950 said:

change of invuln to block.  This would actually be a buff, because it allows you to turtle on a Node and actually keep it. Tempest struggles to keep a node because obsidianflesh and the Shield are straight invulns, resulting in you loosing the node should you use them. With blocks this is not true. So it would actually benefit the Tempest.

Yeah, so? I didn't propose changes to completely kill it. You can still keep the "can't contest a node" attribute on the ability too btw.

  

On 9/19/2022 at 12:03 AM, Sahne.6950 said:

removing the magaura.   Bro no XD the fireaura from the conjurertrait should you take it, and the magaura are one of the main reasons to use the shield.

No it's taken because of the high uptime on invuln/block/barrier for little time invested and for a low cooldown. Again, cata and tempest have plenty of magnetic access already.
 

On 9/19/2022 at 12:03 AM, Sahne.6950 said:

lowering dps but increasing barriergen. Again a straight buff. Who uses the shield for the AA damage!? The barrier would make turtling and just keep holding the shield more benefiting.

People using it to duel and still maintain pressure 1v1, if there's ever a reason to hold onto it for timing one of the abilities. And yeah that's the point, it's a utility meant to turtle, you should give up damage pressure for that. The overall defensive benefits should be less on the single use abilities and more on sitting in the shield longer. Otherwise you just get 90% of the defensive benefits spamming every skill and dumping it like a Firebrand tome, then doing it again in 20 seconds.

  

On 9/19/2022 at 12:03 AM, Sahne.6950 said:

lowering time that you can pick it up from the ground. This would make the shield even more lame. Right now, a good ele will use the shield, use the skills, and then drop it. Then you cycle another element or two and pick it up again. You change would promote just holding the shield for 30 seconds.

Lame isn't a good argument. And yeah that's the point, conjures aren't meant to be firebrand tomes in the first place, where you just milk every cooldown out of it and throw it's husk in the garbage. You still have 10 seconds to do exactly what you're describing, this but just prevents you from cycling every cooldown including the invuln/block every 24s on average, that's extremely absurd. And yeah if you want to be able to double the shield completely you'll have to sit in it for 20s, you just won't be doing a ton of damage during that if you want to, good.

[Stallic.2397]

On 9/19/2022 at 1:27 PM, Swagg.9236 said:

 

Come at me with your confused faces.  I'm vindicated by the fact that you silly lot will never stop having these worthless, reoccurring threads.  You know what would end them?  

 

All the confusion is coming from those who "main" fotm tempest but know nothing about the class as a whole

 

Like how nerfing a core weapon affects all four different specs and countless builds in pvp rather than just the one that OP is truly complaining about. 

[Knote.2904]

2 minutes ago, Stallic.2397 said:

 

All the confusion is coming from those who "main" fotm tempest but know nothing about the class as a whole

 

Like how nerfing a core weapon affects all four different specs and countless builds in pvp rather than just the one that OP is truly complaining about. 

Yes I literally only play support tempest in pvp, and I did last season when supp guard was "the good support". And the garbage parts of ele as a whole should be fixed instead of being carried by this overloaded utility I dont want to have to use.

[Shao.7236]

5 hours ago, Swagg.9236 said:

Delete conjures.  Make two new glyphs.  Done.

Logically that'd work, but then they become glyphs.. Not sure if that's a good thing, "lesser conjures" on normal utility slot and actual "conjures" with the elite slot as condensed skills seems like a better choice. Have more weapons if anything added to the mix. Could go with the idea that all elites are the bigger badder weapons while the lesser are the more small oriented.

Honestly there's nothing to lose with such rework, it'd be more content to play with and less of a reason to have super OP skills with the weapons since you'd have many to choose from by default situationally now.

[Stallic.2397]

3 minutes ago, Knote.2904 said:

Yes I literally only play support tempest in pvp, and I did last season when supp guard was "the good support". And the garbage parts of ele as a whole should be fixed instead of being carried by this overloaded utility I dont want to have to use.

 

Overloaded is exaggerated. Oh no, an Ele is surviving my counter pressure! How dare they?? Shield 2 and 5 is arguably 5-6 seconds of survivability. Just to wait for CD's to recharge

 

If someone is dying to the damage of the auto, or constantly getting CC'd by shield 3 and 4, that's called getting out played. Best argument would be to make the tell on 4 more obvious. 

 

But suggesting nerfing a strong utility in order to buff ele elsewhere is a false herring and just an excuse to remove Ele's best abilities

[Knote.2904]

7 minutes ago, Stallic.2397 said:

 

Overloaded is exaggerated. Oh no, an Ele is surviving my counter pressure! How dare they?? Shield 2 and 5 is arguably 5-6 seconds of survivability. Just to wait for CD's to recharge

 

If someone is dying to the damage of the auto, or constantly getting CC'd by shield 3 and 4, that's called getting out played. Best argument would be to make the tell on 4 more obvious. 

 

But suggesting nerfing a strong utility in order to buff ele elsewhere is a false herring and just an excuse to remove Ele's best abilities

It is quite literally, objectively overloaded. We already have mist form and focus offhand for invulns. With how bursty the game is, invulns are way too high value, with teleports being second for damage mitigation. Compared to just any sort of other sustain or defensive. It's not surviving counter pressure, it's surviving potentially infinite amount of focus and cooldowns, combined with other sources of invuln it's kind of ridiculous how much uptime overall we have.

You're better off just going glass cannon on any class and packing it with mobility/invulns/blocks to survive, just how the game is which is getting old imo.

And it's not about dying to the autos, it's about still applying pressure with all of the above.

And no there's nothing wrong with removing a band-aid and requesting a wound to be addressed.

Edited September 20, 2022 by Knote.2904

[Swagg.9236]

8 hours ago, Shao.7236 said:

Logically that'd work, but then they become glyphs.. Not sure if that's a good thing, "lesser conjures" on normal utility slot and actual "conjures" with the elite slot as condensed skills seems like a better choice. Have more weapons if anything added to the mix. Could go with the idea that all elites are the bigger badder weapons while the lesser are the more small oriented.

Honestly there's nothing to lose with such rework, it'd be more content to play with and less of a reason to have super OP skills with the weapons since you'd have many to choose from by default situationally now.

I was thinking more like each glyph was just one skill rather than 20 skills in one button.  Four skills per glyph that actually brought on something unique.  Just dump conjures entirely.

Think about it this way:  we already have glyph of storms; so salvaging the storm attacks from conjures is redundant.  CC attacks are generally very boring because they either delete opponent agency or get passively negated by stab stacking.  None of the conjures have any smooth, meaningful, free-form movement abilities outside of MAYBE the earth dash and GS linear whirl.  The rest of the skills are either autos or vague, lazy reskins of already-existing attacks.  The whole type is GARBAGE.

Delete them and make a glyph that is something like: 

Fire - Flame jet effect which is basically just a glider; 5s CD

Water - Druid staff dash that creates a geyser where it ends; 25s CD

Air - 1200 range, ground-targeted 180 AoE that gives a Celestial Rabbit super jump action ability to allies inside of it; 4s duration; 5s CD

Earth - 1200 range version of the Scourge portal; 60s CD

Have them all recharge independently.  Call it Glyph of Celerity.  Just remove the anti-fun and put in real fun.  If someone is positively desperate to keep parts of the conjure weapon sets, then maybe throw the movement abilities and earth pull into the catalyst hammer (but that whole spec is really more like a lethal symptom of a bigger issue that will likely only get worse with somewhat thoughtless changes).

Edited September 21, 2022 by Swagg.9236

[Downstate.4697]

If earth shield was nerfed to inusability today then you would prob see catalyst and tempest out of the meta. I think it should still be usable and powerful, but less accessable overall.

[Sahne.6950]

10 hours ago, FrownyClown.8402 said:

If earth shield was nerfed to inusability today then you would prob see catalyst and tempest out of the meta. I think it should still be usable and powerful, but less accessable overall.

They could increase the CD to 90 seconds, but let this CD be affected by "Conjurer" trait. Currently the trait doesnt affect the CD of conjuring the earthshield, it only affects the skills of the actual Earthshield.

This way, using the Earthshield close to the current rate, would require the investment of a trait, which SOOOMEWHAT balances it out.

This would mainly hurt the Earth/Water/Tempest build, and hurts the people that camp in Earthshield with Stoneheart. But would still keep the Earthshield close to its current performance should you run Fire/Water/Tempest, aka.... should you not run stoneheart.

 

thoughts on that?

Edited September 22, 2022 by Sahne.6950

[Kuma.1503]

Earth shield is very powerful. I'd start by giving the summoning animation a much more obvious tell. Something you can easily spot at a glance. 

Something like rock shards rising out of the ground surrounding the ele. Then I'd increase the cast time by an additional 1/4 seconds so it's easier to rupt. 

The counterplay then will be pressuring the ele and watching out for this obvious tell so you can deny the shield. The counterplay for the ele will be kiting/hiding behind LoS so they can get off the shield safely, but this still requires that they either pre-emptively use the shield when they expect focus to shift to them or they get somewhere safe in the first place so they can channel it. 

That should be a sufficient nerf that keeps the ability powerful, but gives players a better shot at playing around it. 

Edited September 22, 2022 by Kuma.1503

[Downstate.4697]

7 hours ago, Sahne.6950 said:

They could increase the CD to 90 seconds, but let this CD be affected by "Conjurer" trait. Currently the trait doesnt affect the CD of conjuring the earthshield, it only affects the skills of the actual Earthshield.

This way, using the Earthshield close to the current rate, would require the investment of a trait, which SOOOMEWHAT balances it out.

This would mainly hurt the Earth/Water/Tempest build, and hurts the people that camp in Earthshield with Stoneheart. But would still keep the Earthshield close to its current performance should you run Fire/Water/Tempest, aka.... should you not run stoneheart.

 

thoughts on that?

Not a fan of requiring a trait to make something useful tbh and i think anet wants to move away from traits that lower cds.

The biggest problem it has is its 2x uses. It stalls out 1v1s and allows an ally to survive when they should have died. Some people find this interaction to be fun so maybe it does need its mag aura removed and the invuln becomes a block.

[Sahne.6950]

15 hours ago, FrownyClown.8402 said:

Not a fan of requiring a trait to make something useful tbh and i think anet wants to move away from traits that lower cds.

The biggest problem it has is its 2x uses. It stalls out 1v1s and allows an ally to survive when they should have died. Some people find this interaction to be fun so maybe it does need its mag aura removed and the invuln becomes a block.

They already increased the CD on the skills, if you want to use the "prenerf" version you already have to run the trait, which i do.

Changing the invuln to a block is fine. Personally speaking, this would be a buff, for how i use the Earthshield.  I am playing Tempest as sidenoder, and the only downside is that Obsidianflesh and Earthshield 5 are invulns, thus you will loose the node when you use them. Turning it into a block, would be a buff actually, because it allows me to use the skill when defending a node.

 

If they remove the magaura on the other hand, every supporttempest will drop the Earthshield and instead use aftershock or lightningflash instead. It would offer literally nothing for a Aurashare at that point.

No auras, no invulns.

At this point we can just put Eartshield in the "destroyed content" drawer, where all the other Conjures are in currently.

 

Tackle the damage, remove the invuln, shorten the range of the 4 skill, make the 4 a targeted skill so it doesnt pull the whole team, reduce the duration, increase cooldown to conjure it, increase individual skills CD..... there is alot they could do with it. But removing the magaura, is not one of those things.

i really do not see the need to nerf the shield. What build is overperforming? are we speaking about tempest or cata? Because cata is getting a nerf, and tempest always has a glaring weakness, there is no way around this. Fire/water/tempest will die to powerpressure, and earth/water/tempest has literally no cleanse. Identify what the tempest is playing and you can shut him down very fast.

i would be careful with nerfing ele, we are SOOOO close to being in the "support guard only-meta" again.

Edited September 23, 2022 by Sahne.6950