Guild Wars 2

The ele scepter has always been a rather weak weapon. Between slow, awkward cast times and low damage, it’s just not particularly good at anything. I decided to take a look at each one of its skills and come up with ideas that I think would increase the viability of scepter builds.

Flamestrike
Reduce cycle time to 1 second
Increase power coefficient to 0.45
3 target aoe with radius of 180
Base 3 second burning, increased by 1 second for each target that already has burning

It’s extremely telling that I can more than double the power and condi dps of this skill without it looking overly powerful. The idea here is to give the ‘aoe and burning’ attunement some sustained aoe and burning.

Dragon’s Tooth
Ground targetting
Reduce cast time, leave the time between completing the cast and the impact the same

Nothing much to say about this. Gives the player slightly more control.

Phoenix
No changes

Ice Shards
New effect: deals 33% more damage to foes with less than 50% endurance

A simple change to make the skill slightly more dangerous.

Shatterstone
Increase recharge to 8 seconds
Increase power coefficient to 1.2
New effect: foes struck lose a large amount of endurance

Increased damage makes the skill worth hitting with and the ability to strip endurance synergises with my ice shards change. I’m not sure how much endurance it should strip, though.

Water Trident
No changes

Arc Lightning
Normalise all strikes to 0.25 power coefficient

Currrently arc lightning does bad damage even if you complete the channel and with such a long channel time that’s not likely to happen.

Lightning Strike
No changes

Blinding Flash
No changes

Stone Shards
Reduce the gap between each projectile launching to decrease the cycle time to 1.5 seconds

This skill feels a bit slow and unwieldy currently. This would make it a bit nicer to use.

Rock Barrier/Hurl
No changes

Dust Devil
No changes

So what do we think? A drop in the ocean? OP plz nerf? Any other suggestions for improving the scepter?

Huh? You must have never met a skilled S/D fresh air specialist..

I wonder why they’re so uncommon. Could it possibly be because anyone playing to win wants to use weapons that aren’t worthless one trick ponies?

Coldtart.4785:

I wonder why they’re so uncommon. Could it possibly be because anyone playing to win wants to use weapons that aren’t worthless one trick ponies?

Spot on! 100 pts!

Fresh air S/F is one of the strongest dueling specs out there. This is not a deniable fact.

However, it is likewise true that most of the power on the build comes from how ridiculously OP focus is for a zerker build. 90% of the active defense built into elementalist is on the focus.

Buff Scepter, buff OH dagger by all means, but you better do it by moving active defense from the focus over to those other kits, or S/F is just going to straight up OP. Honestly moving defense off of focus would need to happen even if scepter were good; focus simply shouldn’t be as mandatory as it is for anybody that wants to play zerk.

Maybe they’ll rebalance scepter once warhorn comes? So we’re not stuck only with dagger mainhand.

…

Nevermind, who am I kidding?

I play S/F an realy like it. Scepter has weak spots, focus has strong earth, good air and OK fire. Scepter phönix ist good (auto and dragon toth so/so), air is averal good, earth OK (Auto a bit weak), and water meh. General. Water is weak, i use it rarely. Just swap trough when a bit healing is needed for the team.
So against guards/npc or when friends are up front i start fire, usually i go earth for the fight, and swap to air for direct assaut/finishing someone off.
I am a S/F Build in dire armor with some power/vitality in the trinkets. Earth rune and acuracyin the weapons. Traveler in the armor.

Linnael.1069:

Fresh air S/F is one of the strongest dueling specs out there. This is not a deniable fact.

That’s the one trick pony aspect I was talking about, and as you say, it’s mostly playable only because of the focus. The only thing that the scepter is really contributing is phoenix and lightning strike for the burst. If it wasn’t for those it would just be inferior in absolutely every way to D/F.

Furthermore, I don’t consider its viability in dueling to be relevant. GW2’s pvp modes are team games, so everything should be judged on its ability to contribute to a team. S/F fresh air contributes a burst and some moderate support, but is severely outclassed by medi guard and D/P thief which have much better support and much better control and mobility respectively, while both have much better sustained damage as well. There is nothing the scepter can do that isn’t outclassed either by another class using a similar build or the other weapons ele can use.

I’d be happy with just the arc lightning change. It is one of the worst skills in the game imo.

I love these changes! The only thing I would add is a massive change to Air and Earth auto attacks because I personally hate channeling.

I would turn Arc Lightning into a three step attack chain, each cast basically a weaker version of Lightning Strike. Then change Lightning Strike into a self buff that increases the damage of your next three air auto attacks by 30% and apply short duration weakness.

Stone Shards could be changed into a three step attack chain as well. The first two casts would be identical, each flinging a single barrage of stone shards, inflicting 2 stacks of bleeding. The third in the chain could apply cripple.

Basically, I would do anything to get rid of the awful arc lightning and stone shards animation.

Linnael.1069:

Fresh air S/F is one of the strongest dueling specs out there. This is not a deniable fact.

Well the game isn’t balanced about 1v1 and there’s also not a single 1v1 game mode so this point is moot basically. Scepter is pretty bad in teamfights and almost always loses out against dagger mainhand in pvp/wvw.

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Linnael.1069:

Fresh air S/F is one of the strongest dueling specs out there. This is not a deniable fact.

Well the game isn’t balanced about 1v1 and there’s also not a single 1v1 game mode so this point is moot basically. Scepter is pretty bad in teamfights and almost always loses out against dagger mainhand in pvp/wvw.

While obviously not the end-all-be-all of the mode, the ability to 1v1 people is a very large part of how effective you can be in conquest, and is undoubtedly mandatory to play as a periph or a roamer in WvW as well. In addition, ANet has proven their willingness to nerf strong dueling specs even if they are ineffective in actual modes, simply because they are not fun to encounter, and games are about fun. See to shadow infusion d/p thieves. If you had bothered to read and respond to the entirety of the post you quoted you would have seen that my concerns about the strength of S/F fall along those lines.

The reason i use scepter is the range and the blinds. The dagger offers good fire and much better water but air/earth in cepter does what i want with the sugar of phönix on top. I am a roamer and prefer small group fights avoiding zerg. So i build around that. My build is good at pining down a single target as active support, does moderate damage and has a high survivability. I love active support. I even dash trough 2-3 oponent to get their attention. I know i will survive that for at least 10 seconds even when all fire at me, and that will do funny things like reflecting back attacks, cripling them, burn all when i cleanse … The oponent fires his burst and initial CC on me and it goes pooof. Hoooray my teammate(s) zerker thief finishes the first one. I fire my healing (+protection) turn round an pin number two. Moving eles are great. Battle perception and keep moving. I usually die when someone unexpectedly shots in my back mid fight, especially when i just swaped attunement out of earth. But guess manny do ;-).
But i am still training to handle my ele. I am not long in Gw2, but the more i use him the more fun do i have with it. I don´t regret taking ele as my first character. What i love so much is, i can build heavy conters to the meta. Ele is adaptable. I might perish agains medicore players in power builds, or not being able to take down bunker builds, but i destroy zerker and the new burn builds with ease.

Arc Lightning needs to hit harder. Right now, it does all the damage of a wet noodle. I don’t care if its a trait that does it, base damage, or a mechanics change. More damage the closer you are? Anything. Please make it happen.

I just want Stone Shards’ cast time to be reduced, or at the very least the projectile arc to be lowered. It is just sad how often that attack misses even when the target is well within range. A little Swiftness is all it takes to dodge it.

Ice Shards is also a bad joke.

Yeah, all the auto-attacks suck.

I like stone shards, but its a bit weak, a faster more direct arc would be nice. And yes all the scepter auto feel weak, but the non auto phönix, blinding flash, lighning strike and dust devil are good.

I expect ANet to wait until the dust settles before considering fixing the Scepter, but I agree that it could use improvement to compete with Dagger.

Koviko.3248:

I expect ANet to wait until the dust settles before considering fixing the Scepter, but I agree that it could use improvement to compete with Dagger.

IMHO if they didn’t change ANYTHING about our weapon skills in the recent update (where they changed like 50% of mesmer weapon skills and utilities for example) they think we’re fine and don’t need any more changed.

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Koviko.3248:

I expect ANet to wait until the dust settles before considering fixing the Scepter, but I agree that it could use improvement to compete with Dagger.

IMHO if they didn’t change ANYTHING about our weapon skills in the recent update (where they changed like 50% of mesmer weapon skills and utilities for example) they think we’re fine and don’t need any more changed.

But hey they buffed Shatterstone before, that should make us shut up for some time, right? Right?

Coldtart.4785:

Linnael.1069:

Fresh air S/F is one of the strongest dueling specs out there. This is not a deniable fact.

That’s the one trick pony aspect I was talking about, and as you say, it’s mostly playable only because of the focus. The only thing that the scepter is really contributing is phoenix and lightning strike for the burst. If it wasn’t for those it would just be inferior in absolutely every way to D/F.

Furthermore, I don’t consider its viability in dueling to be relevant. GW2’s pvp modes are team games, so everything should be judged on its ability to contribute to a team. S/F fresh air contributes a burst and some moderate support, but is severely outclassed by medi guard and D/P thief which have much better support and much better control and mobility respectively, while both have much better sustained damage as well. There is nothing the scepter can do that isn’t outclassed either by another class using a similar build or the other weapons ele can use.

Dueling isn’t the only thing it’s good at. It’s a pretty good set for roaming. It might not be as powerful as D/D for solo roaming, but it’s nice if you like a more bursty approach than D/D celestial.
It’s also pretty nice in small group roaming, where it allows you to do spike damage quite often. Sure a thief could do the same, but they don’t have the utility of elementalists focus or trait lines like Water or Arcane (depending on what you run in your S/F build).
It doesn’t have to be on pair with the best weapons in-game. A lot of weapons are only available in one of the game types, be it PvE, PvP or WvW, and that’s fine IMO. A lot of ele loves it for roaming and find success with it, and that’s enough. We already got D/D as alternative roaming set and PvP and staff for PvE and WvW zergs, I’d rather they make staff PvE more fun than the current fire camping playstyle.

With all that being said, I do like some of the changes you suggest – they would certainly make the weapon more interesting – really like where you are going with some of them, but it’s not necessary to make scepter useful. Right now there is a lot more pressing issues to be fixed. And if it’s just a matter of make it more interesting I’d say other professions weapons are more pressing (thief P/P or warrior rifle), so IMO it should wait till Anet got a lot of “free time” for such stuff.

Fresh air S/F zerker is great for 1v1ing mediocre players. Better players know to dodge the lightning flash + phoenix combo and to kite when obsidian flesh is up.

Fresh air s/f has always had the same two issues holding it back from high-level play: all your defense is on fairly long cooldowns (obsidian flesh, arcane shield, lightning flash), and you rely on landing targeted bursts to do damage because your sustained damage is terrible. Zoose tried running fresh air in one of the World Series tourneys once and spent most of the game running away or eating dirt. I don’t think we’ve seen any other WTS teams run fresh air.

Scepter is definitely “viable,” but it’s far from optimal. The sustained damage is simply too low.

Thats it. Scepter needs a bit more condi damage.
Swap flame burst from staff with dragon tooth from scepter (exchange ranges). This will fit both styles.
Increase bleeding duration from stone shards to 10s.

Well from a wvw perspective, scepter sucks major kitten . The main problem being that AOE dmg is hard to land.

I’d like to see DT with either a faster drop time, or preferably being ground targeted. Shatterstone is a good candidate for a 1sec chill.

All the auto-attacks are really crap as well. would be nice to see the earth auto pierce.

Scepters across the game aren’t all that great besides necro and the 3 on necro scepter is kind of debatable.

The mesmer scepter’s auto sucks even with the new attack speed trait. The block is decent and of course 3 is good for confusion stacking.

Guardian Scepter auto isn’t that great and easily dodgeable the scepter 2 is meh unless they are afk the scepter 3 is good of course.

Ele scepter at a minimum is better than most classes scepter skills, if you take the heal in water, phoenix, earth 2, earth 3, air 2 and 3. So a debatable 5-7 skills. They just aren’t all good.

I’d prefer a better fire auto and remove the burning component to compensate.

Honestly, I think s/d ele fresh air cele ele might be the strongest ele build (for pvp). With the cooldown-reduction traits, scepter gets a lot better (fire cooldown is great for more phoenix, air cooldown is great for all air skills, and water cooldown is great with scepter b/c water trident can be cast pretty much every water rotation for ANOTHER heal and condi cleanse (it gives regen). It can bunker against almost anything, stacks might as well as anything (5 blasts – dragon’s tooth, phoenix, earth dodge, earthquake, and churning earth), has good burst damage (air swaps + phoenix + lightning flash), and heals INSANE amounts (you can drop 6K heals regularly, and 8k every other rotation).

Being able to take fresh air and 2 other complete lines helps scepter more than any other ele weapon.

Here is my current build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJArYhcMoyh9MwzB0RM0AY0RoI8DkKQA4DWZhb4UA-TJBFwALeAAt2fAaZAAnAAA

We all know scepter has good non auto and fresh air supports that.
But if you don´t want to use fresh air you need better autoattacks.