How viable is scepter ele in WvW/GvG?
Dagger mainhand has fare more sustained cleave dps. The poor autoattacks of scepter and the fresh air procs are single target. I guess that’s the main reason; you need cleave or aoes.
Depends. Works in small roaming wvw grps but not in gvgs because mostly of what the guy above said.
In GvG’s not so much, because classes like thieves do the job better generally at bursting targets and surviving and because that is what thieves specialize in and do.
And also ele brings much more to a party than single target burst DPS.
For example if you go staff, you provide a ton of AoE damage, one of the only classes with frequent access to water fields, lots of CC and great support overall. An ele like that brings much more to a 15 man group than a scepter ele can. They will do more damage and support more overall.
D/D eles may be used as well, as they provide lots of AoE damage, decent frontline support. But staff tends to be the most popular for very good reason because they have lots of CC and support and AoE damage all in one.
In small-group roaming, you actually do see scepter eles and they can be very effective. They can shutdown thieves pretty well, have good defenses just in case they do get focused, (S/F at least). Great at focusing down targets, almost equivalent to a shatter mesmer in terms of role, minus the invisibility.
Eles are the backbone to any GvG composition.
(edited by killahmayne.9518)
Scepter fresh-air ele can do just fine in small-man WvW ops, but that is really the only place it fits.
I was watching your stream, and while you were doing a great deal of damage and playing well, it was the fault of the teams you were going against that they didn’t just turn on you and take you out. You have 2 escapes on a long CD (LF and mistform), and then are dead meat if their melee train focuses you due to low mobility. The thief or mes you were working with can help protect you from the other group’s assist team, but there isn’t much a fresh air ele can do if focused by the group. Thief and mesmer also fulfill the job you were better b/c they have stealth to drop aggro on-demand, high mobility, and longer range (especially for mesmer thanks to GS auto).
For solo roaming, scepter just doesn’t really work b/c you lack a necessary thing no matter what. You either get 1-shot from stealth by a BS thief, don’t deal enough damage to overcome condi-spam builds, or don’t have mobility to GTFO when the zerg comes to own. Part of the problem is that, without fresh air, your sustained damage is pathetic on scepter. You can do o.k. with scepter, but you just get so hard-countered in so many builds that it just makes more sense to go with a high-sustain dagger build that leans on greater sustained (and cleave!) damage.
S/F and S/D eles are great roamers and duelers. Personally I’m more a S/F than a S/D type of Ele. S/D has better burst, yes, but you loose out on so much defensive utility that you need in order to survive once you go full glass.
When I roam, i run a mostly zerker, (celestial chest piece, 1 ring, and 1 accessory) Scepter Focus Fresh Air Elementalist, 0/6/0/4/4 (4 in water for condi clears on attunement) It’s very amusing to kill a teef who’s not used to fighting Scepter/? elementalists in 2-2.5 seconds
People don’t use S/F eles in 15v15 GvGs because you can have more specialized gankers with better traits and skills to support that role; without loosing out on support and DPS. some examples being : Leg Specialist + shield bash on Warriors, Confounding Suggestions, +Pistol 5 on Mesmer, Panic Strikes + Sword immob on Teef.
Dont loose heart though! Elementalists are SO good at controlling the flow of a fight with chills (frozen ground) and CC with Static fields and rockwalls that routinely kill more people than hammerstuns.
I’ll re-iterate that what i’ve described above only really applies to 15v15 or higher GvGs. I’ve seen 10v10 teams of 100% light armor classes with D/D front line eles, S/F gank eles and staff support eles with a couple mesmers and maybe a teef win GvGs in the past.
(edited by Hamster.4861)
You can see d/d on gank from time to time, but more times than not, s/x is going to be a liability. Scepter lacks a lot of the group synergy offered by other weapons, and because of that it needs to be played on the glassy side for its burst in order to make up for it. The problem is that in a gvg setting, a well coordinated gank is going to have few problems recognizing that and taking out a scepter ele from the start.
Short Answer is not very. The attacks on scepter are generally too slow and mostly single target. This is compared to D/D ele where the attacks are fast enough to hit. You won’t do pressure unless you can connect your attacks. Air attuned daggers have the best ability to connect attacks for damage.
Long answer is not very. Here’s the long breakdown
Fire attunement scepter is lackluster damage output. True you do get 2 blast finishers. The problem is that they are ridiculously hard to connect an attack with. Dragon tooth will miss any player with half a brain. Phoenix doesn’t do damage enough to pressure. The auto attack is horrible.
Water attunement scepter: The triple shot auto attack actually could do decent pressure. There is no help from either other scepter attack. Scepter 2 is in the same boat as dragon tooth and scepter 3 (water trident) is a heal skill that has practically no damage.
Air attunement scepter: The lightning attack is guaranteed to hit a single target. You can’t pressure as it doesn’t really hit that hard. You don’t get any help from the other 2 attacks either.
Earth attune scepter has a fairly ok burst between the stone shield and the auto attack but not really enough pressure otherwise.
The long answer part 2: what you leave behind from the meta of staff ele is too much to consider taking d/d or s/d for WvW or GvG. Here’s what you leave on the table when you put your staff away:
Static field: bar none the strongest multi target CC in the game. Yes. No silly knockdown but a stun that allows your hammer train to destroy anything caught in it. A good ele can wreck an enemy zerg with just this. It doesn’t have an instant 5 target cap either. It’s more like a 20 target cap from the tripwire effects.
Earth 4 (unsteady ground?): I play my ele yet I don’t remember the name of this, just what it does. What it does is a line of warding that’s basically invisible under most conditions. What doesn’t hit your static field will get hit by this.
Water fields: The holy trinity of MMOs is not dead in WvW, it’s just hiding really well. If there is a reason to take an elementalist it’s water fields. They have 2 ground target fast casting fields which can be blasted to provide healing. This makes eles the healer class of GW2. Don’t bother specing for healing power, blasts don’t heal that way. Yes other classes can provide water fields but they all have to sacrifice a utility to do it. You have it built into your weapon.
Meteor shower: This is one of the strongest AOE dps in the game. Combined with a near 100% uptime fire field on lava font you provide the best weapon based ranged dps. The fire field with 100% uptime means nearly 100% might uptime thanks to blasts from your frontline.
Frost field, projectile reflects, immobilize. There’s more on your staff than just damage, water fields and cc.
Decent auto attacks. The fire auto and air auto do some decent dps allowing you to provide ranged pressure on the enemy zerg when aoes are on cooldown..
Periphery play is all about self-sustain, since you can’t rely on your melee train to save you every time. The reason s/f isn’t popular on the periphery is because it lacks this. It just doesn’t have the same access to mobility, stealth, blinks, evades, invuln, etc. that mesmers and thieves do. If the enemy train catches you without obsidian flesh or lightning flash, you’re probably dead.
My guild runs d/d ele’s, but they’re only slightly more preferable to s/f ele’s. More mobility, more self-sustain, and possibly more group utility with aura share, but still susceptible to being trained down. Our d/d ele’s often spend half the time running with the melee train and half the time picking off lows with the gank team.
Ah I see, so the opinion is mostly the same as spvp haha except it’s seen even less because of the lack of AoE. If Fiery Greatsword is up it could be really troll with 3+4 on very low CDs for mobility, but I think definitely without FGS the mobility is pretty bad, but yeah.
Thanks boiz