Problem... there's too many places where elementals are next to useless. Either there is an area-attacking mob such as a dragon that kills them in two or three rounds, or there is a room full of creatures that waste them when they throw down an area spell. I have a suggestion that could be implemented with little effort and would make conjurers have more options while not changing the PK balance one bit.

My suggestion is to add two new capabilities to the ELEM command, such as:

elem standback:
With this, the elemental will not engage in combat directly. He will stand back and cast targeted spells at a single foe. Instead of fireball, he will wall of fire and/or flamestrike. Instead of geyser, he will engulf or drown. Suitable substitutes could be made for earth and air that I cannot come up with right now.

elem front:
This will send the elemental back into a normal posture where he swings at foes and casts his normal area-attack spells again.

I've played 5 high level conjurers and with each one, I have wished something like this could be done.

I've played several high level conjurers as well and I think it's something you need to become accustomed to, but I don't think it's something that makes them less effective. It certainly makes them not be able to handle EVERY situation, but I don't think we're out to make classes that can handle ANYTHING in the game. The whole idea of conjuring is based on the fact that you can only MINIMALLY control these beings that are yanked from their original plane of existence.

Just my opinion, don't take it as THE IMMORTAL ANSWER by any means.

Desmonn