Guild Wars 2

TL;DR- questions are bolded

I’m a long time staff player who has just picked up the scepter with a serious effort to apply it in all modes of play. S/D seems like the only answer to the Elementalist problem of combining long and short range.

Considering PvE, PvP and WvW, in your opinion, is scepter our most versatile main-hand weapon?

The only weakness I can see is the lack of AoE. Not that scepter is completely bereft of AoE, but it doesn’t compare to staff’s and d/d with its pbAoE. How do you compensate for lost AoE?

Lastly, the auto attacks in fire and earth are almost entirely condition damage. I find myself not even using them in most situations because we have enough direct damage elsewhere. In S/D, is it worth it to build anything into condition damage to make use of earth/fire auto attacks—or should they just be ignored/used circumstantially?

I appreciate any and all advice!

xbaunx.6438:

I’m a long time staff player who has just picked up the scepter with a serious effort to apply it in all modes of play. S/D seems like the only answer to the Elementalist problem of combining long and short range.

You can go meelee range with staff, and you can take d/d to mid range. If you want to play s/d effectively, you have to constantly switch between range and meelee (even more meelee than d/d at times) for might stacking and effective use of your control abilities (earth-4, air-3, earth-3 will probably miss if casted on the move or from far away) and high damage skills (fire-5 and earth-5).

xbaunx.6438:

Considering PvE, PvP and WvW, in your opinion, is scepter our most versatile main-hand weapon?

I find every main hand weapon we can use a.t.m. to be versatile in its own domain.

xbaunx.6438:

The only weakness I can see is the lack of AoE. Not that scepter is completely bereft of AoE, but it doesn’t compare to staff’s and d/d with its pbAoE. How do you compensate for lost AoE?

My experience with scepter so far is, that you use it in situations where you either are facing single targets which you want to burst down, or you use it as support to achieve area denial or high area pressure in small groups (concerning WvW and PvP).

xbaunx.6438:

Lastly, the auto attacks in fire and earth are almost entirely condition damage. I find myself not even using them in most situations because we have enough direct damage elsewhere. In S/D, is it worth it to build anything into condition damage to make use of earth/fire auto attacks—or should they just be ignored/used circumstantially?

Ele condition damage is accumulated with might stacks and “by accident” (e.g. FGS), but should not be your primary focus. Get good sustain with defensive attributes, raise your power, crit dmg and crit chance (use the fury and might boons via boon duration and traits), and there is not so much left for additional condition damage.

Fire-1, btw, is nice to set an enemy on fire for your fire grab, and earth-1 puts a lot of bleeds on your enemy which a friendly necromancer will gladly spread across the enemy’s team mates.

1) No, it is not our most versatile. It is simply different. Same can be said for all our weapons.

2) Aoe is fine for melee and short range. dd and staff are different aoe. Each have their own uses and so we swap.

3) Condition damage is substantial from some of our skills, but alot of stats investment seems to be a poor choice. You can try this out in the Mists and I do not have figures in front of me. I do not see a cooresponding percentage difference in damage when increasing or decreasing my condtion stat, even when that is a big percentage difference.

We don’t have any formulas on condition damage either. We do however have formulas on direct damage and critical damage and the change in the stat is multiplicative.

The biggest difference in condition damage I have seen comes from Might generation, and it is substantial. Might generation is something we are very good at, affects all our damage, and something SD is very good at generating btw.

Many elementalists play with no condition damage in their stats, or healing either for that matter. That is how they are able to get such high power numbers. It’s simply a matter of mixing and matching amoung sets of gear and slotting your own runes.

I am currently playing a d/d condition build. I am stupid tanky and put out alot more damage than a typical power bunker. I only have trouble against warriors with – condition duration and high vitality necros.