Guild Wars 2

As the title asks, what’s the state of scepter ele right now? I keep hearing it’s been nerfed and that it’s semi unplayable, but still see quite a few rolling it.

Not an ele main (least favorite class TBH) but if I could could take a stab in the dark,…
Scepter never really had any nerfs to itself directly since release. In fact its gotten quite a number of minor QoL buffs and bug fixes here and there over the years, and if i remember correctly, was consider pretty strong early on in the game’s life.

D/D was always strong as well, but became stronger when Celestial became more available in PvE/WvW.
Scepter is design to be more of a focus aoe power spike weapon, with little sustain damage. Meaning it has poor condi’s damage application, making the condi’s stats from the gear sort of dead.
A problem dagger doesn’t have

I do believe the big change came from the trait line update, a few things happen with that that pushed people away from the weapon. Scepter wasnt in a good spot before, but this update really didn’t help any.

First was the endurance regen; There was trait that gave 50% endurance regen while welding a scepter that disappeared with the update, along with the vigor nerfs (50% endurance regen down from 100%). There’s not whole lot of mobility in scepter to begin with, and while the weapon does grant you some vigor and defenses, the lose of endurance regen made the set slower, pushing people towards the faster dagger sets.

Then there was the stats from traits to gear.
Before, eles were using the stats from the trait to help augment their defenses while they were using more DPS focus gear, most eles in PvP (no matter what weapon) usually went into water and arcane, giving them an extra 300 vitality, 300 healing power, and 30% boon duration. Those stats were moved to the relevant gear sets, sets that for the most part eles weren’t using. (healing power gear not being really popular).
It doesn’t really help with the fact that the update in turn buff celestial builds further with the added offensive stats from the trait lines eles don’t typically use in combination with each other. (more power, crits, and condi’s).

Added with the fact that condi’s (fire to be specific) became stronger, pushing dagger even more and leaving scepter further behind. With the meta more about high mobility and sustain damage and less about high spike damage with a slow set up, scepter just doesn’t appear to an attractive option anymore. Not that it’s scepter fault, the game is changing and moving forward while the weapon hasn’t moved that much.

TL:DR
Scepter hasn’t been nerf directly
Dagger does celestial better
Nerf to endurance regen hurts the slower mid range weapon more then the faster melee pbaoe weapon.
Stats change benefited celestial gear while hurting other sets.

That my take on it at least (from the outside looking in), Im sure some ele mains would be able to explain it better/ have more accurate info. I don’t play ele much, but when i do, it usually with a scepter ;P.

Current state of scepter/X builds for PvP:

Burst: This was HEAVILY hurt by the change to the air traitline (they may have decreased the instant damage from air-swaps too) as it just doesn’t do much burst at all now. Even landing a phoenix/lightning flash + air swap + air 2 + air/fire sigil procs just doesn’t seem to hit that hard anymore. Combined with the fact that mesmers were given way more sustain against condi + blinds + baseline invulns (via IP) and you are now worse than burst memser in every way. S/D will just get destroyed by any other burst build b/c you have no defense, and S/F just can’t keep up with their damage or survivability anymore.

Celestial: S/D works pretty well in sustain fights if you make just MINOR modifications to the standard d/d build (fire/water/arcana). Having -33% CD reduction in fire REALLY helps as that is a large portion of your damage (via phoenix + ring of fire). Has a higher skill-cap than d/d (due to being slighly more complex) and is about as strong because you can stack more might and contribute to larger fights with more healing and ranged damage. S/F probably wouldn’t work well due to complete lack of mobilty and damage, plus longer CD on fire-field.

Overall: Scepter is a little clunky and still has some dead skills. It doesn’t really work great as a ranged weapon due to having so many slow-cast skills (like Dragon’s tooth, which only works when fighting in melee to make someone eat it/stack might) and a few dead skills (like water 2). The auto-attacks are still insanely weak and would benefit greatly from a buff to fulfill a mid-range brawler role.

What needs to be done to make the weapon more complete:
- Increase attack rate on scepter autos (to synergize better with Signet of Restoration) while improving net dps
- Decrease cast time on dragon’s tooth, keep same time for skill to drop. 1s cast for a throw-away blast or area of denial is INSANELY long ontop of the long wait.
- Rework Water 2 completely to apply damage on each blast, or make it a blast, or make it do just about anything, even if increasing cooldown.

BlackBeard.2873:

What needs to be done to make the weapon more complete:
- Increase attack rate on scepter autos (to synergize better with Signet of Restoration) while improving net dps
- Decrease cast time on dragon’s tooth, keep same time for skill to drop. 1s cast for a throw-away blast or area of denial is INSANELY long ontop of the long wait.
- Rework Water 2 completely to apply damage on each blast, or make it a blast, or make it do just about anything, even if increasing cooldown.

I am pretty sure that these statements were made by ANET to actually improve the current state of Scepter. But as always HoT has priority. Scepter NEEDS A LOT love.

But “HEY”, it took them 2 years to fix the FGS so let’s wait another 2 years and they will maybe change it somehow, most likely for the worse.

Scepter isn’t weak as some people make it to be. It has really good support ability in the fire attunement with rapid procing blast finisher and decent condition damage which works well in the dungeon and low level fractals. However, Scepter has the worst sustainable damage out of the 3 weapon and many people fail to see that. I’m basing this assumption on the many PvE scepter condition builds I seen which often use utility that offer no sustainability. Anyways, dagger/focus is often the better choice for condition builds since fire skill 1 to 4 has a very high hit rate which makes it easy to proc, stack, and sustain burning.

DarkyAnime.4531:

Scepter isn’t weak as some people make it to be. It has really good support ability in the fire attunement with rapid procing blast finisher and decent condition damage which works well in the dungeon and low level fractals. However, Scepter has the worst sustainable damage out of the 3 weapon and many people fail to see that. I’m basing this assumption on the many PvE scepter condition builds I seen which often use utility that offer no sustainability. Anyways, dagger/focus is often the better choice for condition builds since fire skill 1 to 4 has a very high hit rate which makes it easy to proc, stack, and sustain burning.

Scepter is so bad in PvE, that peoiple use it to stack might before a pull and shortly before initiating combat, they switch weapons.

Scepter has always been kitten by terrible autoattacks, gutting its sustained DPS, and the huge delay on their lack luster skills like Dragon’s Tooth and Water 2. Dragon’s Tooth at first looks powerful, and then you realize that it’s a delayed Lava Font tick. In fact Lava Font over its duration does far more damage and serves as a permanent fire field.

Zenith.7301:

DarkyAnime.4531:

Scepter isn’t weak as some people make it to be. It has really good support ability in the fire attunement with rapid procing blast finisher and decent condition damage which works well in the dungeon and low level fractals. However, Scepter has the worst sustainable damage out of the 3 weapon and many people fail to see that. I’m basing this assumption on the many PvE scepter condition builds I seen which often use utility that offer no sustainability. Anyways, dagger/focus is often the better choice for condition builds since fire skill 1 to 4 has a very high hit rate which makes it easy to proc, stack, and sustain burning.

Scepter is so bad in PvE, that peoiple use it to stack might before a pull and shortly before initiating combat, they switch weapons.

Scepter has always been kitten by terrible autoattacks, gutting its sustained DPS, and the huge delay on their lack luster skills like Dragon’s Tooth and Water 2. Dragon’s Tooth at first looks powerful, and then you realize that it’s a delayed Lava Font tick. In fact Lava Font over its duration does far more damage and serves as a permanent fire field.

This is why I state that it has its use in low level fractals which pretty much mean it won’t work in high level fractals where being flexible with utility slot and sustain dps is important.

Which is a shame because my meteorologicus, which I made for my ele, is sitting on my guardian instead who in the expansion won’t even use it either because of longbow.

Scepter’s autoattacks are pretty bad but its other skills are solid (most of them; Water 2 is terribad). Personally, I prefer S/D over any other weapon set (except Staff in big long-range fights).

I love D/F+D/D, and that’s since closed beta not FOTM op as hell bandwagon speaking.

The animations for ele dagger are so pretty, and come to think of it all of them.

S/F Fresh Air is still beast against anything that isn’t running a sustained build. It’s not meta, but it’s definitely a lot better than people say it is. Also: a lot more sustain compared to pre patch.

I really don’t like being able to chose 3/5 traitlines, but for S/F FA it did wonders.

s/f fresh air is more or less the worst dps build you can play in pvp. the damage is low and you’re a walking sheet of paper with no use for your team.

DarkyAnime.4531:

Zenith.7301:

DarkyAnime.4531:

Scepter isn’t weak as some people make it to be. It has really good support ability in the fire attunement with rapid procing blast finisher and decent condition damage which works well in the dungeon and low level fractals. However, Scepter has the worst sustainable damage out of the 3 weapon and many people fail to see that. I’m basing this assumption on the many PvE scepter condition builds I seen which often use utility that offer no sustainability. Anyways, dagger/focus is often the better choice for condition builds since fire skill 1 to 4 has a very high hit rate which makes it easy to proc, stack, and sustain burning.

Scepter is so bad in PvE, that peoiple use it to stack might before a pull and shortly before initiating combat, they switch weapons.

Scepter has always been kitten by terrible autoattacks, gutting its sustained DPS, and the huge delay on their lack luster skills like Dragon’s Tooth and Water 2. Dragon’s Tooth at first looks powerful, and then you realize that it’s a delayed Lava Font tick. In fact Lava Font over its duration does far more damage and serves as a permanent fire field.

This is why I state that it has its use in low level fractals which pretty much mean it won’t work in high level fractals where being flexible with utility slot and sustain dps is important.

I run S/F fresh air in PvE content a lot and still find it a lot of fun and rewarding. For more difficult group content I tend to stick with staff for it’s group utility but I find S/F a great change of pace.

S/F I find is great for maintaining might for your party if you need a might stacker. Running CM will reward you for having all those reflects. Running around in lvl 80 open world content and none of my other ele builds can obliterate a single target as fast as my S/F can. One does have to carry Glyph of Storms and Ice Bow though for much needed AOE.

If your good at attunement swapping and can pick up on the might stacking and landing your Dragon’s Tooth then I find a S/F ele can do very well in certain group compositions.

Post Fresh Air nerf (where they moved Bolt to the Heart up to GM) it’s pretty much lost it’s usefulness as a burst weapon. I mean it’s still serviceable and you will kill stuff with it, but it’s not as good as it used to be post change.

Only real uses for it these days are destroying siege through walls in WvW with Dragon’s Tooth and Might Stacking for PvE.

laquito.5269:

S/F Fresh Air is still beast against anything that isn’t running a sustained build. It’s not meta, but it’s definitely a lot better than people say it is. Also: a lot more sustain compared to pre patch.

I really don’t like being able to chose 3/5 traitlines, but for S/F FA it did wonders.

I have not had this experience. I used to play mostly S/F FA, but post-patch it just doesn’t feel like it did ANY damage. When I ran it a few times, I apologized to my team b/c I thought I was running cele amulet, but it turned out to be Marauder.

Post-change to air/fire sigils + change to traits (either less damage for us or more sustain for everybody), s/f just doesn’t apply enough pressure to force the opponent into mistakes. I have unloaded a FULL phoenix + Lightning flash + air swap + air 2 onto many players and barely gotten them below 50%.

S/F used to play like a shatter mesmer that traded in inferior access to portal/stealth for better condi-cleanse and more invulns. Now, it just has inferior damage, equivalent condi cleanse (if they are inspiration they actually have more), the same number of invulns (thanks to illusionary persona + blind on shatter), and still portal/stealth. It no longer has any +’s and -’s. It is strictly worse in every way.

Well you cant play bolt to the heart with fresh air anymore and without fresh air scepter isn’t particularly good.

Between the loss of dps, almost impossible to land dragon tooth and bad auto attacks I just got bored of it. I know some people still have fun with it.

I think the elementalist is just balanced in consideration to d/d.

Xillllix.3485:

Well you cant play bolt to the heart with fresh air anymore and without fresh air scepter isn’t particularly good.

Between the loss of dps, almost impossible to land dragon tooth and bad auto attacks I just got bored of it. I know some people still have fun with it.

TBH, the dps loss from bolt to the heart is pretty much evened out by Ferocious Winds. Losing air training hurt, but aeromancer’s alacrity makes up for it with extra precision and lowering CD on air-2 procs to partially keep it even.

I am not entirely sure where the damage loss came from, as if you play fire you get even MORE damage modifiers. Perhaps everyone else just has way more sustain while still putting out a lot of damage.

BlackBeard.2873:

laquito.5269:

S/F Fresh Air is still beast against anything that isn’t running a sustained build. It’s not meta, but it’s definitely a lot better than people say it is. Also: a lot more sustain compared to pre patch.

I really don’t like being able to chose 3/5 traitlines, but for S/F FA it did wonders.

I have not had this experience. I used to play mostly S/F FA, but post-patch it just doesn’t feel like it did ANY damage. When I ran it a few times, I apologized to my team b/c I thought I was running cele amulet, but it turned out to be Marauder.

Post-change to air/fire sigils + change to traits (either less damage for us or more sustain for everybody), s/f just doesn’t apply enough pressure to force the opponent into mistakes. I have unloaded a FULL phoenix + Lightning flash + air swap + air 2 onto many players and barely gotten them below 50%.

S/F used to play like a shatter mesmer that traded in inferior access to portal/stealth for better condi-cleanse and more invulns. Now, it just has inferior damage, equivalent condi cleanse (if they are inspiration they actually have more), the same number of invulns (thanks to illusionary persona + blind on shatter), and still portal/stealth. It no longer has any +’s and -’s. It is strictly worse in every way.

Well, I can only talk about my experiences with fresh air.

Pre-Patch it felt a lot more “kill or be killed” like, I wouldn’t say it did more damage, but things dropped a lot faster, because there were not that much passive procs that could save other classes (thanks ANet btw – Casual Wars 2)

Post Patch it might not be as bursty anymore, but I have no issues surviving at all (passive defense ftw), I’d even go as far to say that I’m confident against anything 1v1 that isn’t sustained (pretty much anything besides D/D).

As I said, I can’t complain about the damage, the nocd on FA allows for far more air procs than pre patch, only thing thats been nerfed is spike power, anything else is buffed, thats why I simply don’t get the whine. It’s obvious that D/D shouldn’t be your reference point, as its straight out OP, but no wonder some players are starting to belive that, seeing that its been like this for well over a year already.

air training and bolt to the heart gone, some other traits came to “make up for it”. other classes’ dps got buffed significantly while fresh air dps remained about the same. you’re not particularly doing less damage, it’s rather that you were not allowed to jump on the power creep train.

Thats a matter of overall balance though, not because Fresh Air is underpowered. Some things just remain to be overpowered, because ANet apparently doesn’t care to balance. One of those specs is Cele D/D though, a spec that completly outshines any other build.

Of course Scepter could use some minor tweaks, like water 2 or air & earth auto, but it most certainly doesn’t need a damage boost. I’m sorry to say this, but Eles are whining on a high level, considering that my favorite build S/D thief got straight out trashed by ANet.

Bandit.8279:

DarkyAnime.4531:

Zenith.7301:

DarkyAnime.4531:

Scepter isn’t weak as some people make it to be. It has really good support ability in the fire attunement with rapid procing blast finisher and decent condition damage which works well in the dungeon and low level fractals. However, Scepter has the worst sustainable damage out of the 3 weapon and many people fail to see that. I’m basing this assumption on the many PvE scepter condition builds I seen which often use utility that offer no sustainability. Anyways, dagger/focus is often the better choice for condition builds since fire skill 1 to 4 has a very high hit rate which makes it easy to proc, stack, and sustain burning.

Scepter is so bad in PvE, that peoiple use it to stack might before a pull and shortly before initiating combat, they switch weapons.

Scepter has always been kitten by terrible autoattacks, gutting its sustained DPS, and the huge delay on their lack luster skills like Dragon’s Tooth and Water 2. Dragon’s Tooth at first looks powerful, and then you realize that it’s a delayed Lava Font tick. In fact Lava Font over its duration does far more damage and serves as a permanent fire field.

This is why I state that it has its use in low level fractals which pretty much mean it won’t work in high level fractals where being flexible with utility slot and sustain dps is important.

I run S/F fresh air in PvE content a lot and still find it a lot of fun and rewarding. For more difficult group content I tend to stick with staff for it’s group utility but I find S/F a great change of pace.

S/F I find is great for maintaining might for your party if you need a might stacker. Running CM will reward you for having all those reflects. Running around in lvl 80 open world content and none of my other ele builds can obliterate a single target as fast as my S/F can. One does have to carry Glyph of Storms and Ice Bow though for much needed AOE.

If your good at attunement swapping and can pick up on the might stacking and landing your Dragon’s Tooth then I find a S/F ele can do very well in certain group compositions.

I agree that scepter is amazing in open world and especially against silver wastes elites where they often move around alot, hit very hard, but easily kited. I do hope to see some quality of life buff and making scepter a stronger condition weapon than dagger.

laquito.5269:

Of course Scepter could use some minor tweaks, like water 2 or air & earth auto, but it most certainly doesn’t need a damage boost. I’m sorry to say this, but Eles are whining on a high level, considering that my favorite build S/D thief got straight out trashed by ANet.

It most certainly DOES need a sustained damage boost. For burst builds, all that scepter has is burst damage but TERRIBLE sustained damage. Since your burst has such a high CD, you NEED some sustained damage so that your opponent can’t just heal back to full the next time you can burst. This is how shatter mesmer plays: you can burst hard, then back off and apply decent ranged pressure while setting up another burst.

Sure, the burst damage is fine, but the ability to follow it up with anything isn’t.

Also, please don’t try to argue “well my favorite build for X class got nerfed, so this doesn’t deserve fixing too!” For S/D thief, they are doing their best to revive the play-style with daredevil. Fresh-air burst ele just continues to slide out of contention as a viable build.

BlackBeard.2873:

It most certainly DOES need a sustained damage boost. For burst builds, all that scepter has is burst damage but TERRIBLE sustained damage.

How would you fare with buffs though? I proposed some changes to scepter some time ago, being the following:

Flame Strike should be 0.75 with 2s burning
Shatterstone should be 0.5s cast + damage; cripple instead of vuln 4s cd
Dragon Tooth should either be AOE or 1s casttime + damage, if both CD raised to 7-8ish
Arc lightning could use a minor base damage buff, considering its long channel

Minor GM trait in air is also terribly bad, should be switched with fericious winds.

BlackBeard.2873:

Also, please don’t try to argue “well my favorite build for X class got nerfed, so this doesn’t deserve fixing too!” For S/D thief, they are doing their best to revive the play-style with daredevil. Fresh-air burst ele just continues to slide out of contention as a viable build.

Nah, that wasn’t my intention, I love playing S/F FA just as much, it’s basically the only thing I’ve played since June. I’m just pointing out that you should be cautious with buffs, because the spec is still fine against any other zerk spec and S/D teef is a perfect example of how a spec got trashed due to constant forum whine.

I play S/F fire/earth an also like it. It has some problems. Mobility and if you don´t go water condi cleanse is very low. But i have no problems doing damage to static targets. Blowing fire 4/2/3/5 swaping earth 4/2/2/3 does a lot of damage and i will blind in the process. Usually i start air 2/3/4 too.
This results is missile defence, 3 blinds, hard direct damage, heavy burn + 3 blast finishers (5 if arcane in the tools), 5 + projectile finishers in the fire flield. In PvE or against guards that is huge.
PvP its diffrent. People move out of the fire flield and damage drops to meh level.
For my playstyle tempest seem to fit an i will try F/E/T setup. But it lacks a bit. I need mobility to free my toolbar for shouts, otherwise i can´t get enough out of the traits to justify giving up water/cantrips or arcane.

laquito.5269:

BlackBeard.2873:

It most certainly DOES need a sustained damage boost. For burst builds, all that scepter has is burst damage but TERRIBLE sustained damage.

How would you fare with buffs though? I proposed some changes to scepter some time ago, being the following:

Flame Strike should be 0.75 with 2s burning
Shatterstone should be 0.5s cast + damage; cripple instead of vuln 4s cd
Dragon Tooth should either be AOE or 1s casttime + damage, if both CD raised to 7-8ish
Arc lightning could use a minor base damage buff, considering its long channel

Minor GM trait in air is also terribly bad, should be switched with fericious winds.

BlackBeard.2873:

Also, please don’t try to argue “well my favorite build for X class got nerfed, so this doesn’t deserve fixing too!” For S/D thief, they are doing their best to revive the play-style with daredevil. Fresh-air burst ele just continues to slide out of contention as a viable build.

Nah, that wasn’t my intention, I love playing S/F FA just as much, it’s basically the only thing I’ve played since June. I’m just pointing out that you should be cautious with buffs, because the spec is still fine against any other zerk spec and S/D teef is a perfect example of how a spec got trashed due to constant forum whine.

S/D thief was broken as hell; it deserved the nerfs. My S/D thief in WvW was plain stupid.

Daredevil is just a repeat of the same mistake. It’ll either be deficient or stupid OP. Little room for middle ground in terms of the amount of evade/immunity frames a class can have access to while having the highest mobility and some of the highest burst in-game.

There are ways to buff S/D without rewarding people by giving them hard hitting evade spam. People should have to choose between defense or offense not have both things neatly packaged into one mechanism.

Zenith.7301:

S/D thief was broken as hell; it deserved the nerfs. My S/D thief in WvW was plain stupid.

Lets see:

I love D/F+D/D

The animations for ele dagger are so pretty, and come to think of it all of them.

:’D

Why are you even replying? This isn’t the thief forum and we’re talking about scepter Ele.

Balance takes place in PvP, where S/D was already out of meta and you obviously haven’t played Daredevil in Beta, cause as of now, you’ll be better off picking no GM at all. Let the PvP players decide on balance, whilst you can continue to toddle in your wvw/pve crap.

today i logged on my warrior and played a match on gs/hammer because yolo. i was looking at the numbers and i asked myself, why am i even bothering with my 2k lightning bolt or 2,5k phoenix crits. i hit a thief a 8k in the face and gently sent him to heaven with another 6k.

in fact i had so much damage that i destroyed a d/d ele and a pistol engi in a 1v2 on the close point…

to make things even worse i used this not-tornado elite called rampage and killed a couple more people.

how will s/f fresh air ever be viable if even berserk war is only semi-viable..

laquito.5269:

Zenith.7301:

S/D thief was broken as hell; it deserved the nerfs. My S/D thief in WvW was plain stupid.

Lets see:

I love D/F+D/D

The animations for ele dagger are so pretty, and come to think of it all of them.

:’D

Why are you even replying? This isn’t the thief forum and we’re talking about scepter Ele.

Balance takes place in PvP, where S/D was already out of meta and you obviously haven’t played Daredevil in Beta, cause as of now, you’ll be better off picking no GM at all. Let the PvP players decide on balance, whilst you can continue to toddle in your wvw/pve crap.

Out of meta you dumb, negligent amoeba lol, it became that way with the nerfs to it. Clearly you have the memory of one at least, if it wasn’t for the amount of thieves running s/d in in spvp before the nerfs started coming in.

I’ll stay toddling of course, while your barely vegetative kitten continues to undertake enormous amounts of efforts at approaching serious thought.

For someone drumming up the supremacy of spvp you sure seem to be standing out in absence from any meaningful rank in the leaderboards.

As many people have mentioned you can use scepter in a dagger fire/water/arcane build and it’s pretty strong. The thing is it’s pointless because you can just put a dagger in it’s place and it’s better.

So you gotta find a build that scepter excels in. That has been fresh air for a long long while now but fresh air hasn’t been strong but I’ve found something I really like.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-o3d;2B2-Y0-5gMkY0;9;413G;0057147146;4Iw0;3IBl3IBl3a0W

Fresh Airs weakness has always been survivability, or in some cases damage if you go for too much survivability.

This build more than solves the survivability problem. Reduced cooldowns in earth when you have a focus is a really insane increase to survivability. Written in stone allows you to use your signet heal which is also a huge increase to survivability. Earth gives way more survivability than water ever could in a build like this.

Use vampirism/air if you are against something like mesmer/thief and use strength sigil/strength rune if you feel you don’t need the vamp proc. Strength/Strength is the highest damage combo I’ve found for 1 rune 1 sigil combination since I believe Energy sigil is essential for ele these days.

more or less what i’ve been running. people laughed at me for taking earth in fresh air. i’m just not a big fan of signet of earth if it’s vs thief or mesmer as it’s basically useless in that matchup. arcane wave does a way better job in those matchups.

Phantaram.4816:

This build more than solves the survivability problem. Reduced cooldowns in earth when you have a focus is a really insane increase to survivability. Written in stone allows you to use your signet heal which is also a huge increase to survivability. Earth gives way more survivability than water ever could in a build like this.

Phanta, why Signet Mastery over Stone Heart though? I’ve played a pretty similar build ever since June:

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-o3d;2B2-P0-5gMkY0;9;431G;0157058046;4IF0;3F-03F-03a0n

Haven’t tested yours yet, but Stone Heart pretty much neutralizes the builds weakness to Mesmers and Thiefs. They can’t stay in stealth infinitely, so you can just wait out their burst by camping in earth and then unleash yours.

Signet heal seems pretty much neglectable due to its low baseline heal and the cast times of signets disrupting the game flow of fresh air. The immob is nice to have, but personally I still prefer insta procs over casttimes, especially as FA Ele.

My variant probably has less overall damage due to being more defensive, but essentially it should be better against your main concerns being thief and mesmer. It sucks against sustained builds tho, dunno how yours fares against them.

This is also my strategy. More tanky with stone heart and then counterattack. I usually blast magnetic wave/cleansing flame immidiately on my S/F build when a thief strikes.
An its all about instants. When trying WH in the beta it felt like riding a snail compared to my focus. And i recently changed to eather renewal, because condis killed me regulary.

Guys, in your opinion, which skills could be changed to make scepter more appealing?

Valento.9852:

Guys, in your opinion, which skills could be changed to make scepter more appealing?

We’ve been there many many times.

All auto attacks needs help – they are to slow and/or do not enough damage
Dragon tooth needs lower cast time + ground targeting
Water 2 isn’t even worth casting atm
Earth 2 and 3 need some help as well

Scepter burst specs do not enough damage with too little survivability compared to other zerkers.

I’d change focus fire 4/5 because these are close to useless in current state(except for might stacking),
comet could use some tuning
gale could use few sec lower cd. It is hard enough to hit any combo with it as it is, seeing how we have no other way to force stun breakers and it has cd longer then most stun breakers in game.

The easiest would be to make scepter even mor instant. So not much reworking.
Dragon tooth, shatterstone, dust devil as instant. Reduce casting time of rock barrier to 1/2.
Flame strike:
1s chanel and 20% direct damage reduction. This wil make it stronger and more condi oriented.

Stone shards:
Increase fligth speed and increase bleeding duration to 8s.
Gorgeous would be to remove chanel and make it like necro scepter attack chain.

Arc Lighning:
Add 3s confusion on the last hit.

Valento.9852:

Guys, in your opinion, which skills could be changed to make scepter more appealing?

1. All auto-attacks need lower cast times and more damage. In a lot of cases, they could clean it up with after-casts and pre-casts. Air, earth, and fire take forever to start striking someone and synergize poorly with signet of restoration. Water auto needs to simply track targets better and not spray out like a bunch of drunken sperm.

2. Dragon’s tooth needs either: shorter cast time but same delay on landing (a 1s cast is FOREVER for a throw-away blast/zone skill) or ground targeting.

3. Shatterstone (water 2) needs to do SOMETHING. It currently is basically always a mistake to hit 2 when in water. The lone exception is peppering the ground with random aoe when you know a thief got downed inside shadow-refuge in order to prevent them from self-ressing. That is a super-niche use for a skill.

4. Dust devil could use a slightly larger cone.

Better autoattack damage. Reduce the delay on dragon tooth landing.

A lot of the problem as well with the ele is how gimmicky and chained the damage delivery is.

A mesmer mindshatters, a thief lands a backstab. Their burst has the large chunk of damage in one skill.

Ele on the other hand relies on a chain of skills landing to do burst. You gotta land your phoenixes in perfect spacing, land the fire grab with its silly obvious telegraph, take some arcane utility, etc.

It’s very piecemeal, all of the spells have separated crit rolls meaning unlike mindwrack or backstab, who while also traited are very likely to crit, ele “burst” is highly variable and fragmented.

It’s a one trick pony, if the burst doesn’t land the build has no sustained damage to speak of.

It’s got limited mobility compared to dagger, and it doesn’t cleave much either like dagger does. Your advantage is purely the ranged aspect.

Don’t feel too bad about it though. Most scepter weapons in this game are deficient. Neither mesmer scepter or necro scepter are in a good state either, and the guardian scepter is in a sorta niche state — it’s not the primary weapon in any guardian setup.

Scepter occupies the same space shield does currently. Weapon types in need of help.

Phantaram.4816:

This build more than solves the survivability problem. Reduced cooldowns in earth when you have a focus is a really insane increase to survivability. Written in stone allows you to use your signet heal which is also a huge increase to survivability. Earth gives way more survivability than water ever could in a build like this.

What about taking water and dagger offhand? The deffese may be almost on par (with much higher defence against conditions), and is also higher damage wise.

Anyways, I’ll soon be making a thread to gather proper feedback on how to improve this particular weapon.

Äh offhand dagger defence on par with focus? Kidding?
Focus is lightjears ahead in defence. It has no healing but you avoid/absorb damage.
The firewall is harder to use then RoF, but after learnig to use it i prefer it over RoF.
then you have: Fire shield, swirling winds, gale, magnetic wave and obsidian flesh.
Magnetic wave is such a great skill, i know nothing better …

Wolfric.9380:

Äh offhand dagger defence on par with focus? Kidding?
Focus is lightjears ahead in defence. It has no healing but you avoid/absorb damage.
The firewall is harder to use then RoF, but after learnig to use it i prefer it over RoF.
then you have: Fire shield, swirling winds, gale, magnetic wave and obsidian flesh.
Magnetic wave is such a great skill, i know nothing better …

It’s just a different kind of defence altogether. Water Trident+Cleansing Wave with Aquamancer’s Training is a lot of sustain, or you still have your ever good cantrip trait. Let’s not forget you also have Ride The Lightning, which is huge defensively as well. I’m not undermining the focus defensive skills, I think you got that wrong from my post.
I’m also asking a well known and seasoned ele player what are his thoughts on that. I’m genuinely interested in his opinion.

I just don’t think Scepter/Focus with Earth traits is the (only) go to spec as Fresh Air, not that such a thing was stated otherwise, just wanted to make that clear.

I personaly like earth + focus much more then water. I endure and do preassure. If all cooldowns are in bad shape and my HP low i can´t regenereate and die or escape with FSG pulled out (I mess the right moment to pull it often ….).
This is why i look forward to shouts. They support that playstyle and add a bit group support. The wh seems no option, and overloads very situatonal but with recent changes look like a nice addition.

Focus provides more survivability and group utility but loses the offense of offhand dagger and its mobility as well. As scepter/focus you virtually are no better than a mesmer in mobility.