Guild Wars 2

Let me preface this by saying that I don’t think scepter is as bad as people are making it out to be. It gets kitten on by condi builds and bunkers, but does fairly well against other burst builds. That said, let’s get to it.

Everyone knows scepter autos are really weak. But how weak exactly? I had a look at some of the other ranged weapons in the game. I’ve normalized the listed values as damage coefficient/second (the combined damage coefficient of the auto-attack divided by the time it takes to complete it) to approximate a dps coefficient. Here are the numbers.
(This does not take into account trait modifiers and boon uptime etc., but I think it still tells a rather interesting story)

Pure power damage relative dps modifiers (sorted):
Ranger longbow: 0.735 – 0.84 – 0.945, depending on range
Guardian longbow: 0.89
Engineer rifle: 0.89
Revenant hammer: 0.84
Guardian scepter: 0.83
Necro axe: 0.81
Mesmer greatsword: 0.43 – 0.53 – 0.64 – 0.75, depending on range
Ranger staff: 0.73
Warrior rifle: 0.72
Fireball: 0.67
Guardian staff: 0.66
Chain Lightning: 0.62
Thief shortbow: 0.58
Warrior longbow: 0.58
Ice shards: 0.54
Necro staff: 0.53
Thief pistol: 0.49
Arc Lightning: 0.48
Stoning: 0.41
Water Blast: 0.24

I’ve left out autos that also have condi damage because scaling makes it difficult to compare them. However, suffice it to say that Flamestrike (0.26) and Stone Shards (0.24) have some of the lowest pure damage modifiers in the game (only beaten by Mesmer staff and Water Blast).
The above should be most of the pure power based ranged attacks in the game. I may have missed some but I think the trend is clear enough. The ele scepter autos are at the bottom in terms of average dps. Meanwhile, the skills which are most similar in functionality, namely necro axe and guardian scepter, are almost twice as strong.

Now, I’m not a big proponent of strong auto-attacks. I think they ruin the pace of the game and devalue the dodge mechanic too much. However, I am realistic, and it’s far more realistic to imagine a buff to these auto-attacks than a nerf to everything else. So what could be done to improve the scepter in this aspect?
I think it’s perfectly fair that the water and earth skills are weak compared to fire and air, so I’ll focus on the latter two.

Air: Make the damage the same over the entire channel. The backloaded damage on this is a major hindrance as you’ll rarely use it long enough to get to stage 3.

Fire: This is possibly one of the single worst weapon skills in the game. Do away with the burning damage. I’m pretty sure that’s the justification for the super low modifier, but let’s be real; condi damage has no place on scepter. If burning goes, the modifier and the rate of attack can be massively increased.
A big strength of scepter ele is that almost none of the skills require you to face your target. This allows for a lot of kiting and freedom of movement. I suggest adding this to Flamestrike. In turn, the dps can be slightly lower than Arc Lightning.

Note: I do NOT think that auto-attacking should surpass the damage output attainable when cycling attunements. That would be silly. But sometimes it would be very helpful to be able to stay in an attunement for more than 2 seconds without losing all your pressure.
One of the reasons why tempest is such a massive improvement for scepter builds is because it gives a source of high sustained damage (Air Overload) as an alternative to the bursts.

Thought? Other ideas for improvements?

Also, a few “fun” facts:
The water auto is the strongest on scepter ele.
In terms of only direct damage, Arc Lightning is inferior to mesmer and necro scepters, both of which are condition based weapons.

edit: corrected my “dps modifiers” to account for weapon strength.

nice list. thx for it.

i think the autos rnt the problem in the first place allthough it seems kinda unfair.
similar bursty roles to s/x ele like mesmer, dh, rev, thief have just some very ecxellent dmg negations up their sleeves while still doin dmg be it evade, block or stealth. in best cases they have it all and scepter esp cant deal with stealth.

Thief auto attack is getting buffed

I would trade stoning for Stone Shards anytime. You also need to consider the chance to hit on the auto-attack, the auto-attack rating, the speed of the projectile, is it even a projectile?

I like stoning… I think it takes time to pick up a pebble and throw it glamorously like a diva, allowing your ennemy to be awed before it hits.

I want fire scepter auto to get buffed by cast time. Damage is fine.

I like it, I never have to worry about reflects. kappa

I only disagree on condi. Fire and earth autos are condi autos and this is good. While air should be buffed for power fire is hybrid and earth condi. And so should be the buffs. Earth if possible faster aftercast and the last hit poison or torment not bleed. Fire shorter castting time. And air as you said damage distributed eavenly and also shorter channel.

Fire should be condition damage.

Scepter imo isnt made for autos more like fast attune swap still its best forte we’ll keep praying for ele scepters aa to get reworked until then well get by…

You can run the all numbers you want, I stopped playing my scepter elementalist (which was my main) because it damage output was underwhelming.

Your comparing the scepter against other ranged weapons. Melee weapons do considerably more damage. Other classes (safe engineer) have there melee weapon to swap into for the real damage. If lightning hammer worked like engineer tool kits their wouldn’t be an issue.

If we followed that list it would appear guardian scepter is better than Fireball which is not the case.

There is more than just the damage modifier, there is also the base damage ; the number of targets , the range , speed at which an attack hits, etc.

Infusion.7149:

If we followed that list it would appear guardian scepter is better than Fireball which is not the case.

There is more than just the damage modifier, there is also the base damage ; the number of targets , the range , speed at which an attack hits, etc.

While this is true, it still doesn’t change the fact the scepter AA’s are bad. They have insanely long cast time with really low base damage and damage coeficient.

For the record, I don’t disagree scepter on elementalist is bad.

Its simply not an auto attking wepon it has then more for show. Scepter is about swapping fast and using low cd attks other then its auto attk. So scepter is not a dps wepon auto attks are about dps and scepter is more of a burst dmg wepon or its 2 and 3 skills.
Your simply not going to see its type of wepon switch from a burst to more of a dps over night its going to take a lot of updates.

Just gonna throw in that I’ve always hated it’s targeting mechanics as well. Makes it annoying to fight anyone stealthed. One of the reasons I don’t like using it. Staff can do it just fine with how it’s projectile can be aimed anywhere and aoe explodes.

They are utterly incompetent at balancing autoattacks across classes.

I mean, revenant autoattack for sword was not only the highest autoattack in the game by a mile, but it pierced in a line as well and applied a metric ton of vulnerability.

On the other hand you have mesmer main hand sword, which is their best autoattack DPS, it was behind thief sword auto DPS by 30%, and with thief changes now mesmer mainhand sword is 55% worse than thief sword which just got buffed.

Necro axe was terrible, got a measly 10% buff, and now ele scepter didn’t even get touched.

They wouldn’t know PvE DPS balance if it punched them in the face.

But scepter is not bursty enough. The main burst comes from phönix and you have to land it perfect to realy hurt. Aditional damage then comes from swaping air and instant bolting, with fresh air twice like air bolt, swap fire, phönix, trigger fresh air, swap back and bolt again. But this damage is not killing someone. If you land your phönix for five hits then its realy hurts and maybe the oponent panics and you land gale. With arcane skills you can kill someone, but an active player? He might dodge phönix + fire a defensive skill and you have not much left for the next 10 seconds …..
The best example is a daredevil played well. You scare him with air overload but won´t land your fire hits.
So without resonable sustained damage in fire (hybrid)/air(power)/earth(condi) scepter will stay at the bottom. Buffing burst to make it viable might lead to ranting, because then full burst builds might kill within 3 seconds ….

Besides all numbers about auto attacks, All of the auto attacks requires selected target to hit unlike lets say dagger auto attacks.

If you dont have any target selected, attacks automatically fail to hit.

rhodoc.2381:

Besides all numbers about auto attacks, All of the auto attacks requires selected target to hit unlike lets say dagger auto attacks.

If you dont have any target selected, attacks automatically fail to hit.

Yes at least one aa that would look like guardian staff aa to fend off in cone. Or aa with so meany projectiles threw all around that somebody must be hit at least once.

Enemy is dead after one burst combo anyways so why you even need autoattack?

Which enemy ? 11k Thief that did not move ? Shure he´s dead …..

Fire aa is at target.
Air aa is channeling at target and is a beam.
Water aa is multiple projectiles.
Earth aa is channeling and multiple projectiles.

I understand and appreactiate that they tried to make different autoattacks.

Flaws I point are: Fire aa being so long when its should be 1/5s. or 1/4s. Ofc decrease burning singificantly.

Earth aa being channeling and multiple projectiles – when it should be channeling at target. Grasping earth applying bleeding and dmg and imobilize or cripple at succesful full channel. Channeling time like 2 and 1/2s. Or eventualy single projectile.

Other things in scepter I have problem with are:
2nd skills in scepter weapons should all have their cd standarized.
Standarized cd for them should be 6s.
Standarized to all of them be hit / land after delay.
delay for dragon’s tooth 1s. and 2/5s.
delay for shatterstone 3/4s and apply chill when enemy pass through it. Dmg increase furhter by 20%.
delay for lightning strike 1/10s. Increase dmg further by 10%.
delay for rock barrier 2s. Ofc I mean rework for that skill. It will kd people that will try to pass it. Dmg on explosion should be like on shatterstone and bleeding and cripple on explosion.

Trident. Water Trident.
Remove regen.
Add: Self heal on initial for like half of amount that it heals on landing.
Add: Remove one condition.

Specific trait for Water Trident to knockback moving targets would be sweet.

Dust evil.
Increase dmg by 10%.
50% dmg increase versus enemies enemies that don’t move.

The damage is a serious problem with the Scepter’s autoattacks, but the bigger conceptual problem is that they all do basically the same thing, forcing them to compete with each other in an extremely uninteresting way.

Fire is condi, no projectile.

Air is direct, no projectile.

Water is direct, projectile.

Earth is condi, projectile.

Whether your build stresses condi or direct damage is decided way before you get to a fight, so before we get into a question of tuning, you’ve already removed half the viable autoattack options out of the gate. Being able to circumvent projectile reflection is interesting but uncommon, which means most of the time you’ll be deciding which autoattack to prefer based solely on the number calculations for which auto happens to have better damage on the current patch, which is also decided ahead of time.

What this means is that while you technically have four autoattacks, you really just have one: the one that has been calculated to deal the most damage of the type you like. There’s no moment-by-moment decisions to be made which spits in the face of what makes the Elementalist so much fun. Your autoattacks compete with each other, but you already go into every fight knowing which wins out, with projectile reflection being the one wrench that might find its way into the gears from time to time.

So before we talk about buffs, we need to come up with a way to distinguish these autoattacks from each other in an interesting way without making them too complicated. Here’s what I’d like to see:

Fire: Unchanged concept; for tuning, reduce the casting time to something more reasonable, or increase the Burning duration by a lot.

Air: add an AoE damage proc originating from your target every time the channel completes; for tuning, increase the damage more dramatically as the channel progresses and cause the particles to increase over the duration as well. This auto should reward completing an entire channel, giving you a better reward for the risk. This also improves its counterplay, which is good since it otherwise has very little.

Water: Each projectile that hits adds a stack of Icy, which convert to a short Chill application at X stacks; leave the damage low, as this should be a utility auto. The Chill should possibly be applied in an AoE around the target.

Earth: No longer applies bleed. Now, each projectile that hits adds a stack of Sliced, which convert to Bleed stacks if the Ele strikes the target with a different skill. Sliced stacks also go away at a rate of X per direct heal (or maybe condi clease) the target receives. For tuning, the damage can stay roughly where it is now.

These changes would give each autoattack a distinct role and make them more interesting overall. It would also specifically push them away from direct competition with each other. Once you’ve done that, tuning would be fairly easy. The only one I’m not really sure on is Earth; I like the dynamic of setting up for a huge condi spike but I dislike the complexity involved.

Blaine Tog.8304:

What this means is that while you technically have four autoattacks, you really just have one: the one that has been calculated to deal the most damage of the type you like. There’s no moment-by-moment decisions to be made which spits in the face of what makes the Elementalist so much fun. Your autoattacks compete with each other, but you already go into every fight knowing which wins out, with projectile reflection being the one wrench that might find its way into the gears from time to time.

So before we talk about buffs, we need to come up with a way to distinguish these autoattacks from each other in an interesting way without making them too complicated. Here’s what I’d like to see:

These changes would give each autoattack a distinct role and make them more interesting overall. It would also specifically push them away from direct competition with each other. Once you’ve done that, tuning would be fairly easy. The only one I’m not really sure on is Earth; I like the dynamic of setting up for a huge condi spike but I dislike the complexity involved.

Agree very much with that. For constant pressure I choose air aa. And it is obvious direction and the most frequent for me. If I would go to choose by what anamination of aa from scepter I prefer it would be water aa.

For earth I suggest to work like Ghastly Claws*(necro axe2). It could apply cripple at final thick.

I don’t agree with buff – that you need hit enemy to stack it. Its next effect icon on enemy. I would try to avoid increasing effect icons.

Maybe choose scepter water aa ice shards and do it that way:
send 3 projectiles: 2 of them are to proper projectiles (like now) and third is waste (his flying trajectory is very off, it have a bit increased dmg or apply chill or volunerability).
How it sounds? Will we position to hit with those 2 that are reliable or will reposition in the weirdest ways to hit or not only with that one?

vana.5467:

[…]
Pure power damage relative dps modifiers (sorted): […]

Can you tell me please how you got those numbers? It seems odd to me, if I look at the numbers listed in the wiki, it seems there is no way engineer rifle is the same like guardian longbow. Just curious how this can be….

I have a couple of ideas, although ele isn’t my main so feel free to tell me how off base some of these might be.

The problem I encounter when I play ele (specifically S/F) is that all the autos are weak in different ways because of an attempt to keep them all uniform in range (imo). Since ele lacks a weaponswap, why not make scepter the flexible weapon instead, filling out a niche somewhere between a melee and ranged weaponset?

Earth and water could remain relatively unchanged in damage and range.

Air could be reduced to 600 range on all of the attacks, however the damage of arc lighting could be normalized instead of building and the whole animation could take about 2 seconds, and put it around a 0.85 mult/sec. That would be the tradeoff in reducing the range.

The fire auto could be replaced with something similar to engis flamethrower auto (flame jet). The range could be about 450 and make it a 1.0 mult/sec channel with a tick of burning on the end. Dragon’s Tooth needs a serious reduction in cast time and time to drop. I think using the thief vault as a model is appropriate as that can still be walked out of and they do similar damage. So the cast time should be reduced to 0.25 seconds, the drop time could be reduced to 0.75 seconds, and the range limited to 600 (measured to the center of the placement ring). Phoenix can stay virtually unchanged except maybe limiting the range to 750.

So I know that some of these changes are pretty drastic reductions in range which might not go over well, but the idea is to fill out the entire mid range between dagger and staff in terms of damage and range. The sustained damage recieves a massive uptick as a tradeoff.

Anyway, as I mentioned before I’m not an ele main, S/F ele happens to be one of my favorite alts, so feel free to tell me how wrong my ideas are. I’d sort of like to see the weapon fill a unique and flexible role while not being tethered to fresh air.

Maugetarr.6823:

I have a couple of ideas, although ele isn’t my main so feel free to tell me how off base some of these might be.

The problem I encounter when I play ele (specifically S/F) is that all the autos are weak in different ways because of an attempt to keep them all uniform in range (imo). Since ele lacks a weaponswap, why not make scepter the flexible weapon instead, filling out a niche somewhere between a melee and ranged weaponset?

Earth and water could remain relatively unchanged in damage and range.

Air could be reduced to 600 range on all of the attacks, however the damage of arc lighting could be normalized instead of building and the whole animation could take about 2 seconds, and put it around a 0.85 mult/sec. That would be the tradeoff in reducing the range.

The fire auto could be replaced with something similar to engis flamethrower auto (flame jet). The range could be about 450 and make it a 1.0 mult/sec channel with a tick of burning on the end. Dragon’s Tooth needs a serious reduction in cast time and time to drop. I think using the thief vault as a model is appropriate as that can still be walked out of and they do similar damage. So the cast time should be reduced to 0.25 seconds, the drop time could be reduced to 0.75 seconds, and the range limited to 600 (measured to the center of the placement ring). Phoenix can stay virtually unchanged except maybe limiting the range to 750.

So I know that some of these changes are pretty drastic reductions in range which might not go over well, but the idea is to fill out the entire mid range between dagger and staff in terms of damage and range. The sustained damage recieves a massive uptick as a tradeoff.

Anyway, as I mentioned before I’m not an ele main, S/F ele happens to be one of my favorite alts, so feel free to tell me how wrong my ideas are. I’d sort of like to see the weapon fill a unique and flexible role while not being tethered to fresh air.

I like the idea but disagree with the proposed implementation. Limiting the range on air AA makes it just a bad version of lightning whip. Instead, I think it would be better to give each auto a purpose like so:

- Fire auto: Good mid-range aoe dps. The flamethrower-like auto would be great for this. This also synergizes with basically needing to be melee range for dragon’s tooth and phoenix anyway.
- Air auto: keep the same beam-like attack, but reduce the cast time/aftercasts a LOT and increase overall dps by a good amount. In a 1v1, or when focusing a target, this should be your go-to.
- Water: Make this mid-range much like fire auto, but make all the projectiles actually hit. Also, every hit should apply 1 stack of vuln, even if dps is decreased.
- Earth: decrease the cast time (pre-cast/after cast) a bit, but add the old effect of that earth trait that gave you +400 toughness while channeling. This would be your go-to defensive/bleeding auto.

I think it is important that scepter keeps its 900 range, at the same time that burst ele gets some more sustained damage and survivability. Taking away the range on air auto would remove one of the key advantages of scepter and hurt the defense (positioning) a lot. As it is, at 900 range this is like a bad mesmer GS auto. With a bit more sustained pressure and defense, a dps play-style could become viable.

BlackBeard.2873:

Maugetarr.6823:

I have a couple of ideas, although ele isn’t my main so feel free to tell me how off base some of these might be.

The problem I encounter when I play ele (specifically S/F) is that all the autos are weak in different ways because of an attempt to keep them all uniform in range (imo). Since ele lacks a weaponswap, why not make scepter the flexible weapon instead, filling out a niche somewhere between a melee and ranged weaponset?

Earth and water could remain relatively unchanged in damage and range.

Air could be reduced to 600 range on all of the attacks, however the damage of arc lighting could be normalized instead of building and the whole animation could take about 2 seconds, and put it around a 0.85 mult/sec. That would be the tradeoff in reducing the range.

The fire auto could be replaced with something similar to engis flamethrower auto (flame jet). The range could be about 450 and make it a 1.0 mult/sec channel with a tick of burning on the end. Dragon’s Tooth needs a serious reduction in cast time and time to drop. I think using the thief vault as a model is appropriate as that can still be walked out of and they do similar damage. So the cast time should be reduced to 0.25 seconds, the drop time could be reduced to 0.75 seconds, and the range limited to 600 (measured to the center of the placement ring). Phoenix can stay virtually unchanged except maybe limiting the range to 750.

So I know that some of these changes are pretty drastic reductions in range which might not go over well, but the idea is to fill out the entire mid range between dagger and staff in terms of damage and range. The sustained damage recieves a massive uptick as a tradeoff.

Anyway, as I mentioned before I’m not an ele main, S/F ele happens to be one of my favorite alts, so feel free to tell me how wrong my ideas are. I’d sort of like to see the weapon fill a unique and flexible role while not being tethered to fresh air.

I like the idea but disagree with the proposed implementation. Limiting the range on air AA makes it just a bad version of lightning whip. Instead, I think it would be better to give each auto a purpose like so:

- Fire auto: Good mid-range aoe dps. The flamethrower-like auto would be great for this. This also synergizes with basically needing to be melee range for dragon’s tooth and phoenix anyway.
- Air auto: keep the same beam-like attack, but reduce the cast time/aftercasts a LOT and increase overall dps by a good amount. In a 1v1, or when focusing a target, this should be your go-to.
- Water: Make this mid-range much like fire auto, but make all the projectiles actually hit. Also, every hit should apply 1 stack of vuln, even if dps is decreased.
- Earth: decrease the cast time (pre-cast/after cast) a bit, but add the old effect of that earth trait that gave you +400 toughness while channeling. This would be your go-to defensive/bleeding auto.

I think it is important that scepter keeps its 900 range, at the same time that burst ele gets some more sustained damage and survivability. Taking away the range on air auto would remove one of the key advantages of scepter and hurt the defense (positioning) a lot. As it is, at 900 range this is like a bad mesmer GS auto. With a bit more sustained pressure and defense, a dps play-style could become viable.

Those are fair points on air. With the lighting auto I was trying to keep it about double the range of lighting whip, but put it at a 0.85 and with air training and lightning strike you would be able to maintain about 1.2 mult/sec which is pretty respectable single target DPS at 600 range. That might hurt though as you said. The thing about how they balance damage is the closer you are (range versus melee) the damage usually goes up. There are exceptions like Ranger LB and Mesmer GS, but that’s the tradeoff I was looking at.

The vuln on water auto is a great idea to set up spikes. If you could maintain about 9 stacks of vuln from the autos I don’t think that would be over the top. It would essentially be necro axe then (with a lower coefficient).