18 replies to this topic

[Featherman]

I recently decided to give my Elementalist another chance after the 11/15 doomsday patch and it seems frost bow, as well as other conjure weapons, received a substantial boost in their attack power. What's more is that the new Fractals dungeons provides the perfect setting in which Frost Bow can shine. Yes, Frost Bow. It's crazy, I know, but for some fractals stages Frost Bow can wreak some unexpected havoc.

Volcano Stage: The infused shaman at the end has a big hitbox so the ice chunk from Ice Storm are more likely to hit. With 1900 power (~2500 attack overall with the frost bow) and 20 crit damage each chunk was hitting for 1200 damage and critting for 2k damage, with an average of 7-8 hits. The chill from Frost Fan and Freezing Shot help keep the boss from moving out of the aoe and also increases the downtime between his dodge attacks.

Ascalon Searing: Ice Storm tears down siege, gates and oil making it very useful for the first part of the stage. One ice storm is enough to take down a pot of oil, so with 2 ice bows you can take out both oils. Ice storm does a substantial amount to Dulfy and the gate as well so don't toss it after killing the oil pots.

Sons of Svanir Stage: Ice Storm does a wonderful job at taking down the colossal Ice Elemental and it also gives a means for the primarily melee classes to damage it. Ice storm and freezing fan are useful for tearing down the ice walls in the boss room.

Bonus Stage: One to two ice storms is enough to tear down a regular boss tentacle while doing a decent amount to veteran tentacles. It's also quite useful for classes that have weak ranged abilities.

Asuran Lab Stage: Ice Storm and frost fan are useful for the second stage of the boss fight as the four robots are very close to one another.

Edited by Featherman, 21 November 2012 - 05:07 PM.

[Nonlinear]

Ice bow is good in quite a few dungeons situations, e.g. breeder borrows in AC 1.

[Featherman]

Nonlinear, on 21 November 2012 - 05:51 PM, said:

Ice bow is good in quite a few dungeons situations, e.g. breeder borrows in AC 1.

That's true. It's still nice to know that we have some utility in the new dungeon which everyone seems to be running.

[Zoreye]

I've been loving the Ice Bow too. Ice Storm is fantastic, but it actually provides a solid amount of utility outside that. In combination with Frozen Ground, it allows you to stack ridiculous amounts of chill. Throw down a Frozen Ground, summon Ice Bow and immediately use 2 which fires a volley of 5 arrows that cause vulnerability - in addition to all being projectile finishers that stack chill from the ice combo field. Finish with a Frost Fan for even more chill stacking. This is helped even more by the recent patch granting Frost Bow +20% condition duration.

I find the Ice Bow really useful in a number of situations. Not something that you should keep up or main, but just something to summon and quickly unload all the goodies and drop it, picking up the other one in ~30 seconds or so for another batch (or when your useful attunements are on cooldown).

[BZeeB]

Yea I spouted Frost Bows uses day 1.  But now a days going 0/25/0/20/25 I have a hard time deciding between that or glyph of storms (10 sec blind w/ earth on a 48 sec cool down w/ quick glyphs) in dungeons.

Edited by BZeeB, 21 November 2012 - 10:44 PM.

[DOSGAMES]

I love the Frost Bow. I can't seem to leave home without it.

Nothing has been mentioned about Deep Freeze, which is my favorite skill on it.  A 5 second CC which not only snares but stuns is incredible. The most important part is having a Profession that can strip through stacks of Defiant though and thieves seem to be the best at it. In my dungeon group, we have a Thief that breaks through defiant uses and Basilisk Venom, when you add 2 people using Deep Freeze, you can keep a boss locked down for like 15 seconds.

Edited by DOSGAMES, 22 November 2012 - 10:49 AM.

[Darkobra]

In the Ascalonian Fractal, another player cannot pick up your conjured weapons. I've reported it so it will be fixed by February. I found out the siege one by utter boredom and experimenting. The rest are new to me.

[bassanguy]

frostbow rulez in all places, where there are objects to destroy.
i heard from freinds my conjured axe does a large amount of dmg (7k per hit), none of them were eles. myself im doin, like 1,5k per hit with skill 1, and i got >3,5k atk.
lightening hammer, quite funny to play, but significant singletarget dmg only
magnetic shield....never really played with it, maybe the pulling-skill is funny, but not remarkable in total.
fiery greatsword : quite flexible, huuuuuge dmg, had 16k crits on bosses in arah with it, thats what i call an eliteskill^^

[Isms]

bassanguy, on 25 November 2012 - 07:43 PM, said:

frostbow rulez in all places, where there are objects to destroy.
i heard from freinds my conjured axe does a large amount of dmg (7k per hit), none of them were eles. myself im doin, like 1,5k per hit with skill 1, and i got >3,5k atk.
lightening hammer, quite funny to play, but significant singletarget dmg only
magnetic shield....never really played with it, maybe the pulling-skill is funny, but not remarkable in total.
fiery greatsword : quite flexible, huuuuuge dmg, had 16k crits on bosses in arah with it, thats what i call an eliteskill^^

Frost Bow - like you said, large hit boxed bosses/environmental objects/huge aoe fights
magnetic shield - You should really consider using this when a guardian with GS isn't present, makes pulls clean and quick. 3-4-5-2-drop it.
Lightning Hammer - Usuable in alot of situations. if you run 30 water like me, then you can take the +20% dmg to vulnerable mobs while in water, and combing water attunement with this weapon. You'll do HUGE damage while cleaving and blinding in an AOE (did i mention this was a blast finisher? hell yeah!)
fire axe - seriously? fire axe? use if you're using an aura mancer share build for the fire field - leap and then drop it. But mostly just don't use this piece of garbage.
fiery greatsword - useful almost anywhere, hammer still out-dps's it though

Edited by Isms, 27 November 2012 - 01:00 PM.

[Stellarthief]

Isms, on 26 November 2012 - 04:41 AM, said:

Frost Bow - like you said, large hit boxed bosses/environmental objects/huge aoe fights
magnetic shield - You should really consider using this when a guardian with GS isn't present, makes pulls clean and quick. 3-4-5-2-drop it.
Lightning Hammer - Usuable in alot of situations. if you run 30 water like me, then you can take the +20% dmg to vulnerable mobs while in water, and combing water attunement with this weapon. You'll do HUGE damage while cleaving and blinding in an AOE (did i mention this was a blast finisher? hell yeah!)
fire axe - seriously? fire axe? use if you're using an aura mancer share build for the fire field - leap and then drop it. But mostly just don't use this piece of garbage.
fiery greatsword - useful almost anywhere

Are they really worth using over other utilities though? I find often no one is using the bows or anything, and when used no one picks em up.

[Isms]

Stellarthief, on 26 November 2012 - 01:11 PM, said:

Are they really worth using over other utilities though? I find often no one is using the bows or anything, and when used no one picks em up.

Depends on your build. As a staff ele, I almost never use it. When I run d/d (where d/d play has awesome combos, and relatively poor dps/survivability while those combos are on cooldown), I tend to bring atleast one conjure weapon with me to fill in the gaps.

[Stellarthief]

Isms, on 27 November 2012 - 12:59 PM, said:

Depends on your build. As a staff ele, I almost never use it. When I run d/d (where d/d play has awesome combos, and relatively poor dps/survivability while those combos are on cooldown), I tend to bring atleast one conjure weapon with me to fill in the gaps.

Many d/d specs take arcane blast for added blast finisher, earth armor for stability (seems rather necessary in many cases to get the churning earth off) and usually either another cantrip or some survivability.

What would you leave out as d/d in favour of a conjured weap?

[Isms]

Stellarthief, on 27 November 2012 - 01:14 PM, said:

Many d/d specs take arcane blast for added blast finisher, earth armor for stability (seems rather necessary in many cases to get the churning earth off) and usually either another cantrip or some survivability.

What would you leave out as d/d in favour of a conjured weap?

Here is what I run in PvE when I'm not Staff Ele (staff ele imo is almost a requirement in any high level dungeon group, but it's potential is lacking without voice communication for placing water fields, etc.) http://gw2skills.net...5A;TQAA1CoMEZGB

I usually swap the hammer in and out with magnetic shield if we need help pulling mobs together (we don't use guardians), bow if it's a large hitbox boss, or lightning hammer for longer fights against small-medium sized pulls. The +20% dmg in water form while using the hammer is INSANE.

[Vecuu]

As an amusing anecdote:

We decided to do a series of Explorable alt runs with our guild through all three paths in AC.  Our group was something like:

80 Elementalist
68 Guardian (myself)
50 Elementalist
36 Elementalist
34 Mesmer

Two of the Ele's brought Conjure Frost Bow and the third brought Conjure Firey Greatsword.

When we did paths 1 and 3 we prepped ourselves with four Frost Bows, and saved the two Greatswords for approximately three or four burrows in.

In path 1 where you have to kill the burrows and protect the NPC, we melted both of the first two burrows before either of them could spawn Breeders.  It was awesome.

Edited by Vecuu, 29 November 2012 - 04:53 PM.

[Chikorita23]

Hey I love Frostbow too!  And I agree with one of the reply here....  Piercing Ice traits work with Frostbow's Ice-Storm skill.  (but I will need to get them all vulnerable with Shatterstone or Ice Spike first.)

I do have one question...  the new extra Frostbow buff.  +healing....  beside Sylvari's racial healing skill, does it help in any other way beside self-heal?   (I also noticed if I pick up the 2nd bow I summon, that additional buff doesn't apply)

[Featherman]

Chikorita23, on 30 November 2012 - 03:26 AM, said:

Hey I love Frostbow too!  And I agree with one of the reply here....  Piercing Ice traits work with Frostbow's Ice-Storm skill.  (but I will need to get them all vulnerable with Shatterstone or Ice Spike first.)

I do have one question...  the new extra Frostbow buff.  +healing....  beside Sylvari's racial healing skill, does it help in any other way beside self-heal?   (I also noticed if I pick up the 2nd bow I summon, that additional buff doesn't apply)

Most classes carry a vulnerability so I often don't need to apply it myself.

The healing buff will slightly boost Healing Mist and it'll help boost the regen from Soothing Wave (why you would pick this skill is beyond me, but it helps!) and of course the heal from swapping to water attunement.

[Chikorita23]

Featherman, on 30 November 2012 - 06:52 AM, said:

Most classes carry a vulnerability so I often don't need to apply it myself.

The healing buff will slightly boost Healing Mist and it'll help boost the regen from Soothing Wave (why you would pick this skill is beyond me, but it helps!) and of course the heal from swapping to water attunement.

Ahh... funny, that's actually the trait I use.  Soothing Wave.  (I run 30 water, 20 air, 10 fire and 10 Arcane)   Is it really that bad as a major trait? I struggle on Piercing Ice or Soothing Wave because I use both Frostbow and Mist form.   (SW should work with Cleansing Water... but I dunno if its really worth for a trait slot, the other water trait I use is Aquamancer's Alacrity)

[Featherman]

Chikorita23, on 30 November 2012 - 08:53 AM, said:

Ahh... funny, that's actually the trait I use.  Soothing Wave.  (I run 30 water, 20 air, 10 fire and 10 Arcane)   Is it really that bad as a major trait? I struggle on Piercing Ice or Soothing Wave because I use both Frostbow and Mist form.   (SW should work with Cleansing Water... but I dunno if its really worth for a trait slot, the other water trait I use is Aquamancer's Alacrity)

With the buff to Ether Renewal it's definitely not as worth it. I run Cleansing Wave and Piercing Shards with no grandmaster and I find it to be enough for PvE. If my teammates require condition removal I use Water Staff 5.

[turkashi]

Stellarthief, on 27 November 2012 - 01:14 PM, said:

Many d/d specs take arcane blast for added blast finisher, earth armor for stability (seems rather necessary in many cases to get the churning earth off) and usually either another cantrip or some survivability.

What would you leave out as d/d in favour of a conjured weap?

I'm a D/D user since the begin of my ele. I can't say I'm using a conjure all the time. Think it depend on which dungeon/pve zone/... are
But I'd switch arcane blast for my lovely bow.

Sometimes I (for fun) even get bow, elite sword,glypf of storm and staff: metoer shower, ice storm, glypf, fire storm, eruption
you can't imaging how laggy my PC will be due the damage number start to pop up