I know sometime ago shifters were changed so that they'd be more useful for ranking early on in life. I was wondering if there were any plans to add in maybe mini conjurations so that conjurers weren't more or less completely useless pre-elemental. Wasn't thinking anything spectacular, just maybe some weak conjuring that they could get at rank 10 to make things a bit easier. Magic missile is decent, but its hardly desirable groupmate material and even with elementals, conjurers make horrible groupmates until about 27.

Just curious about your thoughts on that.

Once they get elementals they're not bad at all. I'd put them on the same level as invokers, shifters and utility-spec warriors. Probably superior to necros and thieves, though thieves bring detect hidden to the table.

Prior to elementals, yeah, they're pretty weak. This is mitigated somewhat by the fact that most conjurers are human and the class has no experience penalty. I could still see some sort of slight boost, on par with the partial shifting and those druid snake-sticks. This wouldn't add much spice, but lowering the mana cost of magic missile would at least allow them to spam it more before having to rest.

Once they get elementals they're not bad at all. I'd put them on the same level as invokers, shifters and utility-spec warriors. Probably superior to necros and thieves

I would agree with you there. As soon as you get elems (at 20) you should be able to conjure a tier 2 elem without too much problem, whos damage output is comparable to most warriors of equal rank, even better in some cases as you can conjure an elemental type that takes advantages of racial vulns (eg, ranking in akan with a water elem).

though thieves bring detect hidden to the table.

As long as you have a familiar with detect hidden, its all good. When i was ranking one of my conjurer experiments I would just have my raven fly, and have my script churn out where pk commands to it. The raven also picked up elves, drow, thieves, assassins, basically sneakers (on where), and I'm not sure if this is a bug or by design, but since I'm not playing conjurers anymore I thought I'd mention it. So really, in terms of detects a conjurer with a raven is far superior to a thief, especially given the raven's scouting ability.

Personally, I thought that conjurers made excellent groupmates from 20+, but that a fair few people were quite apprehensive about ranking with one.

I don't know, I tend to hit a bit better than elementals around that rank but I suppose you're right. The real downside is the downtime.