Guild Wars 2

I’ve noticed just from thread titles that it seems a lot of elementalists focus on staff or dagger. What is it about scepter that keeps it from being in the same “league”? I confess I haven’t tried dagger myself since I’m still a green-around-the-edges elementalist, but the idea of having to be up close with how squishy elementalist is kinda turns me off from the idea. I don’t really PvP so maybe that is part of the reasoning too.

How high level are you btw?

At lower levels Scepter is one of the stronger weapons due to how squishy eles are. Dagger doesn’t become stronger until you have the traits to synergize the different elements of the build.

Scepter is not used as much due to most of the skills being fairly cooldown heavy. The strongest skill, dragon tooth is so easily dodged that it is pretty much the cornerstone of any argument against using scepter. For PvE this isn’t much of an issue since you can herd mobs easily enough.

As for builds and so on, I’ll leave that to eles that actually use scepter since they would know the pro/cons more.

Two reasons:

Main reason: Off hand dagger is generally seen as much better than offhand focus… pretty much in every way. And as off hand dagger is a close range weapon, the advantage of scepter’s range is lost.

Second reason: Scepter has too many attacks with a cast delay, making it harder to connect. So while it has a bit higher burst potential than mh dagger, these delays regulate pretty much to PvE. Add in mh dagger handing you two more mobility moves for your close range fighting, and you can see why.

Focus’ gale needs some deep love to allow people to use scepters skills more reliably, and this will help make it a much more likely option. Until then you’ll pretty much see:
- Staff for dungeons or WvW zergs where people can nuke from safety
- Scepter when mobs won’t move from DT/etc
- Focus when defending a hold point from trebuchets/catapaults
- D/D for everything else ever until the previous are unnerfed or daggers are nerfed to oblivion

I tend to rotate my weapons when doing PvE and dungeons. Especially in fractals. Scepter/dagger is lethal if you know the encounters and you know how to use them. You have very good burst. High dps. Good group support and some escapes. The best thing is that you alone can stack your group to full might with it. And while doing so, do kittenloads of damage.

You need to connect it so you need to know what the boss will do and where he will be for a full might stack chain. When mastering this elementalists can do very high amount of damage. Our main problem is autoattacks. They all suck on the scepter.

Scepter is strong. It performs well in any aspect of the game. People just prefer Dagger main hand.

Scepter auto attacks are abysmal. Once everything is on cooldown, you’re shooting BBs at a freight train. Lightning whip can do more damage in 1 second than 3 1/2 seconds of arc lightning. Scepter autos are also single target. The fire auto attack is laughable on a power build. It’s very slow casting and only hits for ~500 damage. It exists to put burning on a target for fire grab and is useless otherwise.

Auras are an ele class mechanic and a lot of what we do is built around them. Dagger has two more auras to triple your Zephyr’s Boon procs giving you more fury and swiftness.

Scepter has no burst damage outside of fire. Once you leave fire, you’ve essentially conceded that you’re not a threat to anyone for the next 10+ seconds.

Phoenix is worthless beyond point blank range because it moves slower than a running player.

I use it in sPvP as a specialist burst weapon, and occasionally in dungeons to keep everyone with capped might. Otherwise, dagger or staff is better in every other scenario.

I use the scepter just because I can’t stand not having a ranged weapon, but it’s pretty lacking. For example:

• Dragon’s Tooth takes so long to land that enemies can simply walk out of its radius, and even a 2 second CC still gives an opponent enough time to get up and dodge it.

• Phoenix is nearly useless at range due to its slow travel time, and it won’t hit elevated targets because it flies upward diagonally and disappears into the platform it was supposed to rise above. (You CAN cast it on targets at lower elevations, but it won’t return to you.)

• Shatterstone is useless for anything other than stacking vulnerability because of its long activation time, and even then its AoE radius is so small that it’s quite difficult to hit targets with it.

• Dust Devil travels very slowly. Frankly, I’d much rather this be replaced with a more offensive ability, because the scepter’s earth attunement is quite lacking in that regard.

On a side note, I’d like to see a new ranged weapon. (Greatsword, anyone?)

All the autos are awful for DD, for starters. Fire is only good for burning, water and air are awful, and earth is for bleeding.
Then, Dragon’s Tooth can’t even hit PvE enemies half the time because it’s so slow, similar story with Phoenix, Shatterstone isn’t even good enough to bother dodging if you somehow can’t get out of the AoE before it blows up (and was drastically nerfed since the beta when it was ALMOST worth using, for reasons unknown), Lightning Strike and Blinding Flash aren’t good enough to make up for the pathetic autoattack, and then Rock Barrier is a defensive skill (and an extremely weak one at that) on a ranged weapon, and Hurl is DD on a CD attunement, whose only real value is a 5x 100% Projectile finisher.

So, in short, DD is awful except for extremely missable fire attacks (while the auto is CD), Water and Air are completely worthless, and Earth’s defensive but only just barely.

scepter is mechanically flawed, no skill should cast so slow that a player walking can completely evade it, making dragons tooth ground targeted would barely fix the issue

its actually easier to hit people with churning earth, dragons tooth and shatterstone are just that slow

Too many D/D eles in this thread. S/D when built properly has reliable burst with arcane utilities that you can land from a safer distance than with D/D ele builds. It also has great self-sufficiency with the help of rock barrier, and good burst heal with water trident to help you or teammates. You just give up the control, team support with auras and constant swiftness provided by aura traits with D/D specs.

I tried S/D for a few weeks in WvW, and the main reason I went
back to Staff is the following:

1) The Scepter has a very powerful combo in fire attunement,
ill give it that. When things are on CD though, everything else
is lackluster (Im referring to the combo RtL – Updraft – Dragon
Tooth – Ring of Fire – Phoenix – Fire Grab).

2) When CDs on fire are down, nothing with the Scepter impresses
me. With the Staff, you can rely on auto attack air when
CDs are down for allot of damage over 3 targes (specced the way I
am.)

3) A big problem with S/D is that it is a range/melee hybrid. Yes you
have a taste of both formats, but its doesnt do either well, unlike
Staff which excels at range or D/D at melee.

4) When you analyze every ability in S/D, there are actually very few ways
to deal damage outside of the fire attunement combo.

This is unfortunate, because I liked the idea of having some range along
with melee, depending on the situation, but in reality it doesnt do well
at least in WvW compared to what else you can be doing.

HOWEVER, it is very good in PvE when played well. IMO, any spec works
in PvE though, so I dont even consider this.

My fellow bros let my enlighten you about S/D burst.

At least have 20 in air for bolt to the heart, electric discharge, and Air training. Grab Vital striking from water to also maximize the damage. Have utilities Arcane Blast and Arcane Wave.

Then proceed Hurl Rock Barrier-Switch Lightning Attunement for discharge-Hit lightning strike with auto-Arcane Blast. If possible follow up with RtL followed by Arcane wave for extra burst.

Mmmm, enjoy dat damage.

condiments.8043:

Then proceed Hurl Rock Barrier-Switch Lightning Attunement for discharge-Hit lightning strike with auto-Arcane Blast. If possible follow up with RtL followed by Arcane wave for extra burst.

Bolded the 2 skills of your 6 skill rotation which are unique to scepter. The main source of damage in your burst is also available on D/D

The reasons can be listed:

1) Dragon tooth = too slow
2) shatterstone = no damage
3) Gale= 2s KD on 50s CD is too much
4) Dust devil= slow, no dmg, whirwind fnisher removed
5) Hurl = very low dmg
6) No swiftness on focus

Solutions:

1) Dragon tooth = 20% lower dmg, 30% faster dropping
2) Shatterstone = 700 base dmg, 30% faster explosion, 6s CD
3) Gale= 3s KD and 50s CD or 2s KD and 35s CD or 2s KD-50s CD and 1.5k base dmg
4) Dust Devil= remove blind and add 3s cripple, 22% faster movement, 580 base dmg
5) Hurl = 450 base damage ( for stone )
6) Swirling winds= apply 10s swiftness

condiments.8043:

Too many D/D eles in this thread. S/D when built properly has reliable burst with arcane utilities that you can land from a safer distance than with D/D ele builds. It also has great self-sufficiency with the help of rock barrier, and good burst heal with water trident to help you or teammates. You just give up the control, team support with auras and constant swiftness provided by aura traits with D/D specs.

Best argument I’ve heard not to use scepter yet.

Pretty simple to explain:

Dagger offhand > focus

=> Dagger main hand > scepter since you need to be really close to your enemy to properly use all your dagger offhand skills.

Besides that you only have 1 aura instead of 2 and a basically useless fire 2 and water 2 skill (for PvP) if you are using a scepter.

Nothing is wrong with scepter. It is a mobile casting weapon. It does a lot of single as well as AoE dmg. DT and Phoenix both have decently big AoE so it is not that easy to dodge them in SPvP. Both of them have really good dmg scaling so they are high reward skillshot skills. Water 2 is probably bugged right now because I think it is intended to have no delay/casting. Air provides good undodgeable single target dmg and control from 900 range. And Earth has good defense/control option.

The fire in Scepter is fine. It’s strong, but requires skill to use. You won’t always be able to hit with Dragoon’s Tooth, but when you do, you can set up a pretty big burst. Also, excellent might-stacking with OH dagger.

The problem with Scepter is the other attunements, especially water and earth. When you use fire, successfully or not, and it is put on cooldown, you start to lack some meaningful options. Air is pretty cool to start the battles and set up the air-> fire bursts. But water only has Water Trident, and earth only has a good auto-attack that relies on bleeding, which doesn’t do much in a weapon used for bursting.

Hurl should be more relevant at helping up the burst, Dust Devil should be stronger (maybe have it last a few seconds, dotting up damage twice or thrice?), and water’s #1 and #2 should be meaningful at setting up bursts – or at doing anything else, as they are currently useless.

Vanillea.5764:

DT and Phoenix both have decently big AoE so it is not that easy to dodge them in SPvP.

You’re joking, right?
If you hit a DT on someone that wasn’t CC’d it means it was the first time they EVER played against a scepter ele.
It’s hard to hit the brainless PvE enemies with DT except in melee range (because they won’t move), so why would you think it could ever hit a player without CC?

so many replies about DT missing a lot or debating about how dagger > focus as an offhand… when it’s not even question of focus anywhere in OP post.

did some even read OP post in the first place? he clearly stated he doesn’t PvP all that much…

it’s fairly easy to use DT and land decent Aoe in PvE using scepter as your main weapon.
D/D does a good job too in terms of dps, but then again, as a melee, a good defense (via gear/traits/utility skills) is necessary to not get downed everytime you engage a pack while it will undoubtly be easier to play in glass-canon gear at a range using S/D or staff.

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Vanillea.5764:

DT and Phoenix both have decently big AoE so it is not that easy to dodge them in SPvP.

You’re joking, right?
If you hit a DT on someone that wasn’t CC’d it means it was the first time they EVER played against a scepter ele.
It’s hard to hit the brainless PvE enemies with DT except in melee range (because they won’t move), so why would you think it could ever hit a player without CC?

I usually fight on point as I should. Even if it doesn’t hit, it pressures people. In a big team fight, it is not too difficult to hit people with Dragon Tooth. It has 900 range, only 1 s cast and doesn’t root you in place. I would say it is pretty free. Of course you wouldn’t expect to hit a thief chasing you but there are other skills for different situation.

Most of the skills on most of the attunements for S/D aren’t bad but they are simply lackluster by comparison to Dagger MH. The only attunement worth anything is Air in Scepter and the rest you usually just swap to blow cool downs then go back to Air. It’s usable like this and more or less in theme with Ele game play but it’s hardly ideal either.

It’s the same scenario that you see with Focus and Dagger OH. It’s not that Focus is really all that terrible it’s just completely out shined in every way by Focus except in some very rare scenarios. Can you really compare Ring of Fire and Fire Grab to Fire Wall and Fire Aura with a straight face?

DeusVolt.3298:

condiments.8043:

Too many D/D eles in this thread. S/D when built properly has reliable burst with arcane utilities that you can land from a safer distance than with D/D ele builds. It also has great self-sufficiency with the help of rock barrier, and good burst heal with water trident to help you or teammates. You just give up the control, team support with auras and constant swiftness provided by aura traits with D/D specs.

Best argument I’ve heard not to use scepter yet.

Depends on what your team needs really. While you can’t discount the utility of spreading buffs and auras to your teammates, you still have to operate around melee range to be effective making you more susceptible to AOE cleaves and burst attempts by the enemy team in larger team fights. This is why most D/D eles edge away from focusing more fully in damage traits and utilities as the danger of being locked down and killed is very possible. While some of the attacks in the scepter/dagger require you to be at close range like in the fire line the range of the other autos and skills allow you pick opportunities to engage fully with your damage abilities without putting yourself out of position.

Also for roaming dps S/D is much harder to spot if you’re trying to burst someone coming onto a point. Burning speed, while incredibly powerful, is pretty easy to spot and dodge. With S/D if you catch someone unawares fighting on a point you can easily shave off 1/2 to 3/4ths of their health before you even enter the point and lay the smack-down with your fire line.

So it comes to play-style and composition really.

it’s bad. that’s pretty much the main reason.

you can’t hit ppl in stealth with the scepter is what stopped me using it.

@Sacrypheyes.6043

The OP was asking why most people use the dagger as the mainhand weapon instead of a scepter. If you want to explain why you need to mention the synergy between off hand and mainhand weapon skills and PvP too. Besides that some scepter skills are just bad compared to the dagger ones.

You can use any weapon in PvE and PvP but why would you choose an inferior weapon? There is no reason and that’s why most players choose the dagger or staff. There are only very few scenarios where a scepter is the best weapon choice.

condiments.8043:

DeusVolt.3298:

condiments.8043:

Too many D/D eles in this thread. S/D when built properly has reliable burst with arcane utilities that you can land from a safer distance than with D/D ele builds. It also has great self-sufficiency with the help of rock barrier, and good burst heal with water trident to help you or teammates. You just give up the control, team support with auras and constant swiftness provided by aura traits with D/D specs.

Best argument I’ve heard not to use scepter yet.

Depends on what your team needs really. While you can’t discount the utility of spreading buffs and auras to your teammates, you still have to operate around melee range to be effective making you more susceptible to AOE cleaves and burst attempts by the enemy team in larger team fights. This is why most D/D eles edge away from focusing more fully in damage traits and utilities as the danger of being locked down and killed is very possible. While some of the attacks in the scepter/dagger require you to be at close range like in the fire line the range of the other autos and skills allow you pick opportunities to engage fully with your damage abilities without putting yourself out of position.

Also for roaming dps S/D is much harder to spot if you’re trying to burst someone coming onto a point. Burning speed, while incredibly powerful, is pretty easy to spot and dodge. With S/D if you catch someone unawares fighting on a point you can easily shave off 1/2 to 3/4ths of their health before you even enter the point and lay the smack-down with your fire line.

So it comes to play-style and composition really.

So you’re saying Burning Speed is easy to spot, and much harder to spot is Fire Scepter, which uses Dragon’s Tooth.
DT is so easy to dodge you don’t even need a dodge to get out of it.

gimmethegepgun.1284:

So you’re saying Burning Speed is easy to spot, and much harder to spot is Fire Scepter, which uses Dragon’s Tooth.
DT is so easy to dodge you don’t even need a dodge to get out of it.

No DT is mostly used for zoning or general application while point fighting. Landing it can be done through team-work(my guardian bud will often pull multiple people into the DT blast zone with his binding blade pull), or just luck. Its icing on the cake compared to your main area hitters phoenix, rof, arcane wave and fire grab. What I’m talking about applies to the burst phase I listed above in another post:

“Then proceed Hurl Rock Barrier-Switch Lightning Attunement for discharge-Hit lightning strike with auto-Arcane Blast. If possible follow up with RtL followed by Arcane wave for extra burst.”

Unless the enemy fighting on a point sees me coming from a distance(900 range) while I’m in earth attunement with rock barrier up he won’t avoid the burst unless he gets a lucky dodge. It happens incredibly fast and does significant single target damage even without having to switch to your fire line to apply more pressure.

all the elementalists weapons are learn to play and when learning the delay of the scepter skills just don’t seem worth it which resulted in people thinking it was a bad weapon. Which it isn’t. Same for the focus. If I don’t bring a focus in my offhand I’m unable to take supply camps solo but in 1v1 encounters against players D/D is way better. General pve I’d say S/D is really good as a mightstacking booner. Staff is really fun in dungeons or in any group-play because of all its combo fields.

Scepter is the worst weapon for the Elementalist. The list of problems with this weapon are so long that it can be safely categorized as useless. It’s slow, weak damage output, clunky mechanics and doesn’t synergize well with any offhand.

On the topic of Scepter: It’s still a decent weapon in small scale encounters, but in bigger group encounters the slow projectiles and unreliable damage of Scepter makes it a very bad choice.

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

If I don’t bring a focus in my offhand I’m unable to take supply camps solo

That’s perfectly doable with any weapon combo. I made a video using D/D since it’s what I use most of the time.

People get really confused and treat the answer like it’s a binary good/bad thing — mostly because the internet kids who say exactly that, but still.

Scepter does fine — the problem is that there really isn’t a situation where what it does is the optimal choice. It’s fun, has situational burst, and good single target damage — it’s just so does d/d and staff, and both offer more than that as well.

So yes, scepter will get the job done — the problem, is the other weapon selections can just do a bit more.

I prefer to use my scepter against the Jade Maw in fractals.

Arguments:
- Jade Shards and Jade Colossus have permanent missile reflection. Fire 1 and Air 1 are single-target scepter auto-attacks that are not projectiles. Air 2 and 3 are also not projectiles.
- Dragon’s Tooth (Fire 2) works like a charm against (stationary) tentacles.
- Stone Spikes (Earth 1) may not deal terrific direct damage, but it DOES apply 3 stacks of bleeding to tentacles and Irukanji.
- Staff is at a disadvantage against Jade Shards/Colossus, because all auto-attacks are missiles. Turning off auto-attack is not efficient, though. Against tentacles, scepter actually outdamages staff.
- Dagger is totally useless against tentacles. You do not want to be in range of those things as an elementalist.
- During the Jade Maw fight, it is very inefficient to run away to drop out of combat, just in order to switch weapons.

I haven’t tried the focus yet in that fractal, but I imagine that Firewall is better than Circle of Fire against tentacles, Comet can be used on tentacles, and Obsidian Flesh can be used to escape a Maw attack if it targets me without a reflecting crystal nearby.

PvE scepter is pretty great if you use elementals. I like using both glyphs of elementals with 20% cooldown on glyphs trait from air, and constantly keep an earth ele up who will tank for you all day, allowing you to dragon tooth mobs consistently without taking any damage. It works well when you turn your ele into a pet class. It is a different playstyle than diving right in with a dagger main, but you can still remain close for off-hand dagger skills and get your ring of fire combos without being touched most of the time.

During The 20 seconds might be waiting for your elemental glyphs to recharge, you can easily face tank any mob without being touched due to your burst and having 2 blinds. I take far less damage using S/D than D/D even when using earth elementals as tanks, you just have to preplan attacks a bit more since D/D is all on the fly.

LordSlack.4685:

PvE scepter is pretty great if you use elementals. I like using both glyphs of elementals with 20% cooldown on glyphs trait from air, and constantly keep an earth ele up who will tank for you all day, allowing you to dragon tooth mobs consistently without taking any damage. It works well when you turn your ele into a pet class. It is a different playstyle than diving right in with a dagger main, but you can still remain close for off-hand dagger skills and get your ring of fire combos without being touched most of the time.

During The 20 seconds might be waiting for your elemental glyphs to recharge, you can easily face tank any mob without being touched due to your burst and having 2 blinds. I take far less damage using S/D than D/D even when using earth elementals as tanks, you just have to preplan attacks a bit more since D/D is all on the fly.

Exactly this! Being able to attack from any corner on the fly is what make D/D the better choice when talking about burst, even after you land your burst there still room for mroe dmg on the other attunement, while with scepter afetr using your fire combo and your target not dead..you’ll just be a sitting target

Personally, I dislike the scepter because of the single target aspect of its autoattacks. It feels unnatural to me. In terms of actual utility, it doesn’t work well in crowded group scenarios, because it becomes difficult to single out opponents. Main hand dagger suffers no such problems.

TwoBit.5903:

Personally, I dislike the scepter because of the single target aspect of its autoattacks. It feels unnatural to me. In terms of actual utility, it doesn’t work well in crowded group scenarios, because it becomes difficult to single out opponents. Main hand dagger suffers no such problems.

This for me as well, though its really the autoattacks that I find the problem (I actually like single-target autoattacks for ranged weapons) but just the general lack of AoE in general. Dragon’s Tooth and Phoenix are solid, but none of your other attunements have any major AoE components, not counting Shatterstone because its terrible. And DT / Phoenix are difficult to hit with. Adding offhand Dagger gives you a few more AoE abilities, but all melee range, which doesn’t really sync up with the range of Scepter. Focus works better with the range but adds almost no AoE (and in fact almost no offense period).

I also dislike the fact that its a ranged weapon that is mostly useful only at close range (in PvE, anyway, probably a different story in PvP where people are more apt to stay at range themselves). Dragon’s Tooth isn’t going to hit any enemy unless you’re staying in one place to keep the enemy from moving, which means you have to melee against most enemies who are also going to try to melee. Same with Phoenix and Shatterstone. You also can’t benefit from might combos unless you’re in melee. And if you take Dagger offhand to pick up a bit more AoE, then you definately need to melee to make use of those abilities.

Staff has a similar array of hard-to-hit-with abilities, but its got other abilities to offset those somewhat. Water 4 will lock down enemies long enough for any of your delayed abilities to hit, and both Air and Earth also have abilities to slow down / disable / knockback enemies for a moment to allow slower abilities to hit. Scepter has none of that, the only way to keep an enemy from moving is to make them not want to move, which against PvE melee enemeis means staying in melee range.

I guess people would argue “so just use it in melee and don’t worry about it” but I’m not really a fan of using ranged weapons in melee combat. Figure if I’m going to do melee combat anyway, may as well be using an actual melee weapon.

Did anyone ever try combining the scepter with Glyph of Elemental Power? You’d think those spells would be a lot easier to land if you cripple foes all the time.

I think the worst thing about scepter is it doesn’t really have a sensible offhand to go with it.

If we had an offhand with sensible offensive minded 900 range attacks, the scepter would have a good feel to it.

Minion of Vey.4398:

I think the worst thing about scepter is it doesn’t really have a sensible offhand to go with it.

If we had an offhand with sensible offensive minded 900 range attacks, the scepter would have a good feel to it.

I think you’re right. Scepter/Scepter would be pretty sweet, and could be the solution to fill in the gaps in Scepter deficiencies, as well as build diversity.

LordSlack.4685:

Minion of Vey.4398:

I think the worst thing about scepter is it doesn’t really have a sensible offhand to go with it.

If we had an offhand with sensible offensive minded 900 range attacks, the scepter would have a good feel to it.

I think you’re right. Scepter/Scepter would be pretty sweet, and could be the solution to fill in the gaps in Scepter deficiencies, as well as build diversity.

I think it’s supposed to be Scepter/Focus, but Focus is just so clunky and Dagger is just so good that nobody actually bothers with Focus.

Also, Focus doesn’t have RTL.

For me its the lack of AoE and overall the loss of auras though I like scepters design.