Guild: Moonlit Renegades (Moon)
Highest-Level Toon: Markus Emmerich, 80 Human Scrapper
(edited by Moyayuki.3619)
I recently created a new Elementalist (Human) and got her to level 21 over the weekend. I already have a level 80 Asura Ele as well. However, especially when leveling up, I notice that I struggle with picking weapons, or, shall I say, I feel that I am forced to use certain weapons and elements. And now I wonder if anyone else feels the same, or would have any advice.
Here’s the situation: I am a PvE’r and tend to work on Personal Story, map completion, armor crafting, and a dungeon when I hit the level requirement as I am leveling up, pre-80. With this new toon, I feel like focusing primarily on Air attunement, but of course I will be switching to other elements as is necessary. I currently have equipped Dagger/Dagger, as it does the most damage, particularly with Air. But before that, I was using Scepter/Dagger since there are certain skills I enjoy on Scepter (lots of blinding choices, and can be ranged in comparison to main hand dagger). Sadly, Scepter does far less damage compared to Dagger. Which then makes me feel as if, if I want to do good damage, I must use Dagger and never touch Scepter again. Which, to me, seems unfair. Why can’t Scepter be a viable weapon choice for PvE? Even build advice sites and blogs tend to discourage Scepter use, and instead tout Dagger and Staff. And even then, Staff really pigeon-holes me into using only Fire attunement for pure damage, as the others feel practically worthless.
So that’s my issue with Ele, as much as I overall love the class. I feel that I must use Dagger/Dagger or Staff, and even then, only use Fire to prevent dragging out fights. Therefore, my question is this: Is there any way to make Scepter a viable weapon for PvE Ele? I noticed that Ele’s specs do not improve specific weapons like other classes do, which is also unfortunate. Is there really no way to improve the Scepter beyond always making sure that I have the right power-increasing specs and a good Scepter equipped? It’s made me very frustrated, and feeling like I cannot “play how I want”, otherwise I’ll die easily. =(
(edited by Moyayuki.3619)
Whilist leveling my elementalist (I was f2p at the time and decided to delete him after 30 lvls to try out engi) I found myself using air staff quite a lot for group fights. If I were to start making a new ele now what I would do is focus on leveling the conjurable weapons as soon as possible.
For Scepter/x style I would recomend keeping the thunder hammer as your melee or fire axe as your ranged if using dager/x. This is just my perspective but I consider ele scepter to be fine as it is,its only weakness is that you need a party to make it shine (a caster to give you combo fields to blast,a melee fighter to tank the damage for you while you protect him by spaming blind on the mob that is hitting him).
Also for solo leveling…if you still plan on using scepter, I recomend you keep the fire greatsword on your tab as well as I feel that companion AI is to dumb to make use of the cc you apply on to the enemies it is fighting.
I used scepter a lot when leveling my ele. In fire you have a lot of aoes and you can stack might better than any other weapon. Yeah the air damage isn’t there compared to dagger but it isn’t like scepter is unusable.
Use dagger/focus or dagger/warhorn. You can get 12 stacks of might easy by properly comboing your skills and with fresh air you go back into air for air autoattack DPS.
In a sustained fight, scepter will almost always lose out to both dagger and staff. However, you can still do fine with scepter with the right approach.
Your best bet with scepter, is to bring some burst utilities (arcane wave and maybe blast are good), which allow you to kill trash in short bursts MUCH faster than dagger. Precasting dragon’s tooth, then dodge-in, ring of fire, phoenix (make sure you position it right behind your enemy), into earth dodge, earthquake, churning earth, air swap, air 2, RtL will kill most PvE enemies less than elite. In this way, if you just want to walk around the map and not get bothered in combat, scepter is great. Any fight you get into is over quick.
However, a lot of that “power” really relies on traits to be good. Fresh air helps scepter a lot, as does pyromancer’s training. Phoenix is a really big hitter, and the dagger skills in fire are also good burst.
Like you said, however, even if you just wait around for one of your stupid dragon’s tooth’s to land, you are STILL doing less damage in a sustained fight than dagger. This is one of the reasons there are many requests to buff scepter, and it really is justified.
I changed to scepter while leveling and play it till then. I don´t do much PvE lately but my build is an all around build that kills mobs resonable fast. I know it won´t help you in leveling but i use viper and cele gear hiting hard with hybrid damage. If a dragon tooth lands not only mobs are done… And i also used arcane a lot while leveling. Brilliance, blast and shield on the toolbar traited. All are finishers into your firefield doing good damage.
The last utility is glyph of storms which performs very well in PvE. PvE elite is elemental unless you want to train FSG.
Its a matter of taste and what you like. While my build is solid, it´s not maximized for raid or fractal DPS and thus will be seen less viable by hardcore PvE players. I have fun with it, beat other´s in WvW and thats what counts.
So i play S/F with a mix of Viper/Cele (+ a bit rabid) tempest and have fun with it :-).
(edited by Wolfric.9380)
Problem with scepter as well in PvE is the lack of mobility for getting around the map as well.
Especially since that ridiculous RtL nerf way back then.
eh for PvE running around 25% speed is easy for ele (air traited or signet) and permaswiftness might be anoying with lots of swaping and OL but is included.
OP i believe the optimal scepter build uses conjures, aka combining the scepter burst with the hammer, or something like that
There is a small hope in my heart that tomorrow will bring a rework/fix to my dear scepter. And that hideous taunt bug, which disables the scepter builds.
Why do we need scepter buffs? Is SHATTERSTONE not godly enough for y’all?
Incoming patch notes: shatterstone damage increased by 11%. Shatterstone CD increased by 0.25 s.
Why do we need scepter buffs? Is SHATTERSTONE not godly enough for y’all?
Incoming patch notes: shatterstone damage increased by 11%. Shatterstone CD increased by 0.25 s.
Cast time reduced by 0.001
If i am a dev and read all the shatterstone sarcasm, i would do it just for the LoL ^^.
Why do we need scepter buffs? Is SHATTERSTONE not godly enough for y’all?
Incoming patch notes: shatterstone damage increased by 11%. Shatterstone CD increased by 0.25 s.
Sadly, I find I rarely use the Water Attunement unless I’m doing a dungeon run with other players and want to help heal. I’d rather see the basic skill 1 on Scepter of all elements be increased in damage so it becomes a viable weapon. Because so far Dagger and Staff still are the go-to weapons, with Fire being the be-all-end-all element. :/
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