Conjured weapons usability

[DrFlausch.4293]

Is there any reason conjured weapons shouldn't function like engineer kits?
I feel like conjured weapons don't see any use in pve ever, even though theys have interesting and fun ablities. most of them even have CC on command, wich is a big problem for ele in most pve modes. Also since kits already exist, I feel like that would be an easy change to make.

I don't play PvP or WvW, so I have no idea if this change would break anything in these modes, maybe some PvP people can give me some insight here.

Also on a side note: do the devs care about these threads? do they answer/read these?

 

[Atoclone.4810]

I use ice bow 5(I think) purely for big cc on bosses and I hate it. Fire sword elite is often the big deeps choice on meta builds but it's such a chew on I refuse to use it.

The shield one is meant to be great for PvP though

[crosknight.3041]

conjures are something i been wanting to have reworked for a few years now. personally i'd love to see them work like guardians spirit weapons.

they way they are now just adds more complexity to an already complex class
 

Edited February 27 by crosknight.3041

[Jski.6180]

Conja wepons hit a lot harder in burst but the classes using them are less able to use the wepon over all. So its the lack of being kit like AND that ele is realty bad in melee ranges then say an eng (sadly all conja weapons are mostly melee with only very minor effect at ranges.)

Its fine not being a kit but anet needs to make the conja use more able to go into melee OR make them more ranged.

[Atoclone.4810]

16 minutes ago, Jski.6180 said:

Conja wepons hit a lot harder in burst but the classes using them are less able to use the wepon over all. So its the lack of being kit like AND that ele is realty bad in melee ranges then say an eng (sadly all conja weapons are mostly melee with only very minor effect at ranges.)

Its fine not being a kit but anet needs to make the conja use more able to go into melee OR make them more ranged.

ele is not bad at melee range, see all the meta builds using sword

[WhimsicalPacifist.2943]

11 hours ago, DrFlausch.4293 said:

Is there any reason conjured weapons shouldn't function like engineer kits?
I feel like conjured weapons don't see any use in pve ever, even though theys have interesting and fun ablities. most of them even have CC on command, wich is a big problem for ele in most pve modes. Also since kits already exist, I feel like that would be an easy change to make.

I don't play PvP or WvW, so I have no idea if this change would break anything in these modes, maybe some PvP people can give me some insight here.

Also on a side note: do the devs care about these threads? do they answer/read these?

 

Attempting to fix them would acknowledge the rank incompetence that led to their current state.  ANET pettily mic dropped on a livestream when announcing the Ice Bow nerf.  You think they would acknowledge that they have borked an entire subset of a class for almost a decade?

[draxynnic.3719]

14 hours ago, DrFlausch.4293 said:

Is there any reason conjured weapons shouldn't function like engineer kits?

Because elementalist isn't engineer. Elementalist already has twenty weapon skills available through attunement-swapping, where engineers need to use kits to access a weaponswap-like functionality at all. It'd be a bit excessive if elementalist could also have an additional twenty skills accessible through conjures without any cooldown, and it would probably end up being balanced so that the conjures either aren't generally worth taking, or are required for top performance resulting in elementalist players having to master kit engineer-style piano on top of existing elementalist piano. Using a conjure needs to require a bigger commitment than no-cooldown engineer kits.

I do think, however, that the 'create a weapon for your allies' functionality is outdated and just makes conjures much harder for the elementalist to use. A simple step would be to scrap that and give conjures half the cooldown: so for the non-elite conjures, you'd be able to keep one conjure up indefinitely if you don't drop it early. Combine that with some adjustments to give each of them a clear purpose (eg: make fire axe a conjure you use on melee builds when you need to do ranged DPS, so the fire axe is entirely oriented towards ranged DPS) and I think conjures would be much more functional.

[Jski.6180]

11 hours ago, Atoclone.4810 said:

ele is not bad at melee range, see all the meta builds using sword

Well ya sword has a lot of effects to let you go into melee and stay alive even staff dose on some level but you give all of that up when you use an conja wepon. That the issues with the conja weapons over all your giving up 20 skills for just 5 and its not always worth it and most of the time its an one and done skill realty questing why its an wepon at all and not just an aoe of that skill that ppl use once and drop the conja wepon right after.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

The initial point of Conjures was to give an ally a weapon as well as yourself.  The dungeon speed clears would load up on Ele's for awhile because they discovered that FGS did immense damage while corner stacking... that Ice Bow did immense damage in a big area... that Lightning Hammer also did immense damage but could also spam blind.  Each of these were scaled back, but for a long time the best technique to burn something down was to have multiple ele's drop conjured weapons and unload on the boss.

When conjures were nerfed to not scale so well with size, this put them in the awkward position where they were technically the best DPS option, but also were cumbersome to handle in a realistic fight.  It's hard to pick up the second ice bow against something like the Vale Guardian, whom doesn't sit still during the third phase.  It was at this point where we started thinking of them as cumbersome kits instead of their own thing.

In order to get allies to use conjures again, we'd have to go back to the old skills that did immense damage.  Anet is deliberately avoiding this, so I'm not sure that we'll ever see conjures get fixed.  Personally I use FGS in WvW as a second weapon swap, mostly to do ranged damage but also so I can zip around to avoid AoE's and run from fights.  It works quite well in that regard.  

[DrFlausch.4293]

8 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Because elementalist isn't engineer. Elementalist already has twenty weapon skills available through attunement-swapping, where engineers need to use kits to access a weaponswap-like functionality at all. It'd be a bit excessive if elementalist could also have an additional twenty skills accessible through conjures without any cooldown, and it would probably end up being balanced so that the conjures either aren't generally worth taking, or are required for top performance resulting in elementalist players having to master kit engineer-style piano on top of existing elementalist piano. Using a conjure needs to require a bigger commitment than no-cooldown engineer kits.

I do think, however, that the 'create a weapon for your allies' functionality is outdated and just makes conjures much harder for the elementalist to use. A simple step would be to scrap that and give conjures half the cooldown: so for the non-elite conjures, you'd be able to keep one conjure up indefinitely if you don't drop it early. Combine that with some adjustments to give each of them a clear purpose (eg: make fire axe a conjure you use on melee builds when you need to do ranged DPS, so the fire axe is entirely oriented towards ranged DPS) and I think conjures would be much more functional.

that definitly makes sence. 
I guess its not so simple after all. It would probably be best to change them to normal abilities, similar to the guardian spirit weapons, even though that sounds sort of boring.
Still better than them not seeing any use at all.
I think the idea of giving a weapon to an ally is very outdated and drains the power budget of the skill alot, making it ultimately harmfull for the skill itself


 

 

5 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

The initial point of Conjures was to give an ally a weapon as well as yourself.  The dungeon speed clears would load up on Ele's for awhile because they discovered that FGS did immense damage while corner stacking... that Ice Bow did immense damage in a big area... that Lightning Hammer also did immense damage but could also spam blind.  Each of these were scaled back, but for a long time the best technique to burn something down was to have multiple ele's drop conjured weapons and unload on the boss.

When conjures were nerfed to not scale so well with size, this put them in the awkward position where they were technically the best DPS option, but also were cumbersome to handle in a realistic fight.  It's hard to pick up the second ice bow against something like the Vale Guardian, whom doesn't sit still during the third phase.  It was at this point where we started thinking of them as cumbersome kits instead of their own thing.

In order to get allies to use conjures again, we'd have to go back to the old skills that did immense damage.  Anet is deliberately avoiding this, so I'm not sure that we'll ever see conjures get fixed.  Personally I use FGS in WvW as a second weapon swap, mostly to do ranged damage but also so I can zip around to avoid AoE's and run from fights.  It works quite well in that regard.  

Can you explain what you means with Anet avoiding the topic? would they even tell us if they are working on something like this?


Thanks for all your posts guys, I'm reading all of them and it's been very interesting so far 

[Atoclone.4810]

7 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

Personally I use FGS in WvW as a second weapon swap, mostly to do ranged damage but also so I can zip around to avoid AoE's and run from fights.  It works quite well in that regard.  

Yoinking that idea! beats my usual standing and ineffectively waving my daggers at walls

[Azhkanizkael.1406]

On 2/14/2024 at 5:06 AM, DrFlausch.4293 said:

Is there any reason conjured weapons shouldn't function like engineer kits?
I feel like conjured weapons don't see any use in pve ever, even though theys have interesting and fun ablities. most of them even have CC on command, wich is a big problem for ele in most pve modes. Also since kits already exist, I feel like that would be an easy change to make.

I don't play PvP or WvW, so I have no idea if this change would break anything in these modes, maybe some PvP people can give me some insight here.

Also on a side note: do the devs care about these threads? do they answer/read these?

 

100% Conjures should be kits! ANet Please.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

11 hours ago, DrFlausch.4293 said:

Can you explain what you means with Anet avoiding the topic? would they even tell us if they are working on something like this?

There's a lot of talk about power creep in this game, but historically nothing we have now compares to what Ice Bow, Meteor Storm, Fiery Greatsword, and Lightning Hammer used to do.  FGS was just changed to function differently, but the others all have that "this skill does reduced damage for each hit."  If we're to compare them on base damage, most big-hit skills are in the 3.0 to 4.0 base damage range, with some exceptions (I.E. Soul Spiral 8.4).  Frost Storm, originally released with all hits, was base 24 damage with equivalent stacks of confusion, which soon got changed to bleeding.  Except... it did this twice, so really it was base 48 damage and unloaded more conditions than the game could handle.  Originally it was balanced around having a wide area, but after we discovered dodge and wall stacking tricks to focus the blasts it became even stronger.

It was overly polarizing.  The conjures made it so the best comp in the game was double ele for every party.  Aside from that, Anet has been increasing the damage of all other utility skills, making ele less dependent on conjures for competitive damage.  This was done to curb the power ceiling, and also to make rotations easier for the average player.  The thing about big reworks to skills is that there's a soft rule in design where you don't step on what other people have already done.  Conjures, however neutered as they are now, are still their own thing, and making them like kits removes the functionality of sharing a weapon.  

Edited February 15 by Blood Red Arachnid.2493

[Dadnir.5038]

11 minutes ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

The conjures made it so the best comp in the game was double ele for every party.

Some parties wanted 4 elementalists, the last spot was left for something that could give stealth to skip adds. I should know, I was doing 10 to 12 dungeon paths + 3 to 5 fractals everyday at that time.

[Coolster.2536]

There's likely a usability issue with Conjures as kits. Elementalists can swap attunements without canceling attack animations. Engineers can swap kits without canceling attack animations. Combining both would allow  you to swap attunements and conjure kits simultaneously without interrupting animations. As an example rotation: Fire Sword 2 -> Equip Flame Axe during animation -> Flame Axe 2 -> Attune Earth during animation -> Flame Axe 5 -> Drop Flame Axe during Animation -> Earth Sword 2 -> Attune Air during animation. While this would allow for a great deal of skill expression, I think the average player would not like how unintuitive such a rotation would likely end up being.

[draxynnic.3719]

21 hours ago, DrFlausch.4293 said:

that definitly makes sence. 
I guess its not so simple after all. It would probably be best to change them to normal abilities, similar to the guardian spirit weapons, even though that sounds sort of boring.
Still better than them not seeing any use at all.

I don't think they need to go all the way down to guardian spirit weapons. Elementalist having access to more weapon skills through conjures is, IMO, a good thing: elementalist can't realistically swap from ranged to melee or vice versa the way other professions can by swapping weapons, so conjures can (and did on initial release) fill that gap. But they really need to be able to be balanced just for the elementalist rather than being balanced around the possibility of an ally picking one up and using it effectively.

[Jski.6180]

When your using an conja wepon you should be getting an pulsing effect/boon maybe stab or even an heal/clear its too much of an risk on there own to use longer then for 1 or 2 skills. The aura on use /pick up seems very out of place that should at the very least be an might generation if any thing. Now i am not sure if anet can program other ppl picking it up getting such effects but conja weapons should be more about the ele getting use out of them not other ppl.

[Sweetbread.3678]

Would probably be impossible to code, but I always thought it would be cool if Conjures worked as a toggle. When they're on, that attunement gains their skills; when they're off, it goes back to normal. Would be a nice way to deal with the inflexible kits of some Ele weapons.

[SleepyBat.9034]

It would be a little unfair if Anet gave Engineers kit mechanic to Elementalist when it already has its attunement mechanic. That said, I do support improving conjuration skills usability.

[zeyeti.8347]

On 2/22/2024 at 1:26 AM, SleepyBat.9034 said:

It would be a little unfair if Anet gave Engineers kit mechanic to Elementalist when it already has its attunement mechanic. That said, I do support improving conjuration skills usability.

Well maybe with a cooldown and very specific role for each weapon (thats what ele lack , a weapon who has one specific role , efficient in every attunement).

Bow would be about healing and condi cleanse, axe condi damage , hammer cc and debilating condition (+mobility maybe) , shield about protection skills (kinda firebrand f3 taste) and gs raw power damage (a bit like it is now , but hell on a shorter cd ...) but i needs to be like engi kits cast , without any cast time , like a weapon swap to be reactiv.

They can even add an ammo system like the aa could be used as often as you want but the other skills would have like 1-2 ammo only per cast of the weapon , and then they can rework Conjurer (who is the crappiest trait of the whole game) into "give conjure weapon skill +1 ammo" .

Edited February 24 by zeyeti.8347

[Crystal Paladin.3871]

Wish they added group shared stability in Earth shield conjure... I won't ask anything else... Let heal alac tempest get some decent spot in group content... Or.. increase stability stacks to atleast 3 with 10 sec duration for Eye of storm

Edited February 25 by Crystal Paladin.3871

[raykor.6723]

I wish they were toggle on/off, i.e. permanent, like the engineer's kits.

[draxynnic.3719]

8 hours ago, raykor.6723 said:

I wish they were toggle on/off, i.e. permanent, like the engineer's kits.

I don't think they can be quite as free to use as that, since elementalist isn't engineer. Rejigging the cooldown and duration so that you can have 100% uptime on non-elite conjures without worrying about having to pick up the second weapon (or someone else picking it up...) could probably go a long way. Maybe they could make it so that creating an additional weapon to be picked up comes from a trait?

[WhimsicalPacifist.2943]

On 2/15/2024 at 5:38 AM, DrFlausch.4293 said:

that definitly makes sence. 
I guess its not so simple after all. It would probably be best to change them to normal abilities, similar to the guardian spirit weapons, even though that sounds sort of boring.
Still better than them not seeing any use at all.
I think the idea of giving a weapon to an ally is very outdated and drains the power budget of the skill alot, making it ultimately harmfull for the skill itself

Can you explain what you means with Anet avoiding the topic? would they even tell us if they are working on something like this?


Thanks for all your posts guys, I'm reading all of them and it's been very interesting so far 

Apart from FGS being used asymetrically in a optimal rotation and extant uses in PvP,  the conjured weapons are just an forgotten feature that would take too much developer time to fix and would probably introduce bugs into the game.

1. Have the devs reworked other similarly designed clunky class mechanics in the past?  Yes they did, with warrior banners relatively early on, thief traps, mesmer mantras.
2. If conjured weapons are in such a great state, why were they never "gifted" to other classes' elite specs?
3. Is a new player able to intuitively use a conjured weapon correctly?  Are they able to find the correct use for Flame Axe?  (answer:  none)  What about Ice Bow? (answer:  skill 5)
4. Does the utility/power over time/player input match other classes or even ele's other utility skills?

The overall answer is that it's unintuitive, clunky and they probably don't have the means to fix conjures mechanically.  Sure they can probably tweak the numbers in the code, but modifying the underlying mechanics in the spaghetti code is beyond their abilities or lack of code documentation.  Conjures are listed as "bundles" in the wiki, not as weapons and that probably has something to do with it.

[Jski.6180]

On 2/25/2024 at 6:01 PM, draxynnic.3719 said:

I don't think they can be quite as free to use as that, since elementalist isn't engineer. Rejigging the cooldown and duration so that you can have 100% uptime on non-elite conjures without worrying about having to pick up the second weapon (or someone else picking it up...) could probably go a long way. Maybe they could make it so that creating an additional weapon to be picked up comes from a trait?

I want there to be an trait like eng kit where you get an boon for just holding the conja wepon as your giving up the utility of 20+ skill from your wepon as well as the 1 utility slot. I am thinking at least an stab ever 3-5 sec as well as protection/reg. It would go a long way to making conja weapons more usability. (I am not sure if anet could program the boon effect to other ppl holding the conja wepon mind you but it would be an fun added conja wepon support effect.)