Guild Wars 2

As everyone who plays ele in pve, pvp and wvw knows that scepter has some of the worse skills in the game in all game modes. In fact there are many skills that cannot be used because it does little to no damage, has unreasonable casting/channeling time for what it is, and has little to no utility. Basically most of the scepter skills are very situational or has no uses other than swag.

The skills that I feel as if they have unreasonable casting/channel time for what they do are:
Flamestrike, Ice Shards, Stone shards, shatterstone, and occasionally, dragon’s tooth.

Skills that I find lackluster and unrewarding are: Flamestrike, Ice Shards, Stone shards, shatterstone, rockbarrier, and dust devil

Basically out of 12 skills, 3 auto attacks and 2 main attack skills in my opinion are mostly out of touch. While rockbarrier and dust devil may have their uses, the auto attacks of scepter is miserable and weak. Most of the times casting these skills are a waste of time as they literally don’t do anything other than triggering Fresh Air trait, and even then eles are stuck in air for a long time.

In Pve, before the existence of Phanlanx warrior, Scepter/focus ele was a thing. The idea was that s/f ele will pre might stack, and use lightning hammer auto attacks to continue blasting the fire field the other ele provided to maintain high might stack. Even then the scepter skills were mostly disregarded. In PvP things become worse as eles were forced to rely on that short burst damage in air, occasionally using focus skills to set up bursts for phoenix and dragon’s tooth. In WvW, due to huge group support, most of the eles run staff, which is fine, but still shows that scepter is lack luster compare to other weapons.

I know that anet won’t care, but if it was possible, ele’s scepter auto attacks could be shown some love and tweaked for more damage or at least less channeling time. also some of the cds such as water trident, dust devil, and rock barrier should be lessened for what they do.

Don’t get mistaken, people have been calling for scepter buffs for ages. It’s just the fact they never listen.

What you said is totally true. I have been playing scepter more than a thousand hours and it is always surprising how the auto attack in fire and earth are ridiculous compare to the auto attacks in water and air. The problem is that water is a "defensive " element for healing a dispel… so the only auto attack that can be played is the air one.

TheFamster.7806:

As everyone who plays ele in pve, pvp and wvw knows that scepter has some of the worse skills in the game in all game modes. In fact there are many skills that cannot be used because it does little to no damage, has unreasonable casting/channeling time for what it is, and has little to no utility. Basically most of the scepter skills are very situational or has no uses other than swag.

The skills that I feel as if they have unreasonable casting/channel time for what they do are:
Flamestrike, Ice Shards, Stone shards, shatterstone, and occasionally, dragon’s tooth.

Skills that I find lackluster and unrewarding are: Flamestrike, Ice Shards, Stone shards, shatterstone, rockbarrier, and dust devil

Basically out of 12 skills, 3 auto attacks and 2 main attack skills in my opinion are mostly out of touch. While rockbarrier and dust devil may have their uses, the auto attacks of scepter is miserable and weak. Most of the times casting these skills are a waste of time as they literally don’t do anything other than triggering Fresh Air trait, and even then eles are stuck in air for a long time.

In Pve, before the existence of Phanlanx warrior, Scepter/focus ele was a thing. The idea was that s/f ele will pre might stack, and use lightning hammer auto attacks to continue blasting the fire field the other ele provided to maintain high might stack. Even then the scepter skills were mostly disregarded. In PvP things become worse as eles were forced to rely on that short burst damage in air, occasionally using focus skills to set up bursts for phoenix and dragon’s tooth. In WvW, due to huge group support, most of the eles run staff, which is fine, but still shows that scepter is lack luster compare to other weapons.

I know that anet won’t care, but if it was possible, ele’s scepter auto attacks could be shown some love and tweaked for more damage or at least less channeling time. also some of the cds such as water trident, dust devil, and rock barrier should be lessened for what they do.

Sceptre needs some serious love. Chain lightning being the focus of my assertion, followed by dragon’s tooth. Swirling winds also needs to last longer, and have a chance to block siege attacks in WvW/PvP.

That being said, I run S/F in PvP and I love it. In my opinion, staff is the weapon that requires more attention at present. S/F, S/D, D/F, and D/D builds are all versatile and good at 1v1 or group fights. Staff just can’t handle it. It needs a teleport (like mesmer Phase Retreat), and condition management. Focus gives you Magnetic Wave, which cures three conditions… staff needs something like this. Alternatively, a condition transfer like necro’s Putrid Mark could work, but I don’t think it fits the theme for elementalists.

Staff is useful in literally every scenario. Don’t you dare call for buffs. It’s meta in WvW and PvE and a viable alternative in PvP.

As soon as you are going to keep battle staff ist it.
I use scepter in romaing and swap to staff at keeps.

Maybe some skill swaps will do better.

Swap D fire breath with D fire grab.
Swap staff flame burst with scepter dragon tooth.(exchange ranges)
Swap scepter rock barrier with D ring of earth.

After 3 years my conclusion is resources. They don’t often change animations for anything, but more tweak what effects it might have. They don’t mess with attacks all that often larcenous strike was changed into 2 attacks, warrior gs burst skill took a while, but they did change it, though it’s more looks like they took a part of whirlwind slowed it down and added some effects on it. Other than that I can’t think of many weapon attacks they really overhauled maybe added a condition to something usually.

Fire 1 is just awkward looking the attack its self is good because it is guaranteed burn, but how slow it kind of comes out just feels off.

Water 2 should just be a field you laydown and explodes immediately maybe a 1/4 sec before explosion if you keep the vuln stacks on it.

I think earth 2 is strange and I never really liked it. I’d prefer something else for earth 2 the active attack of it is to similar to earth 1 imo. Maybe change the second part of it to a cripple

Earth 2 is a bit strange to use. As an instant but hurling wit hcastign time it would be great.
But i would prefer a condi instant. Air has ligning. Earth could have:

poison shard: 6s cooldown low damage 3s posion.
or searing stone: moderate damage with 1 stack 3s burn.
both projectile finishers.

this would make earth more offensive with a condi adon.

I just want scepter skills buffed/fixed but even in the bug notes no one mentioned anything about elementalist scepter skills… =(

I don’t think scepter is that bad off, but i do agree that it could use some buffs. Starting off with buffing AA on fire would hopefully be the first step.

Scepter could use fixing on shatterstone, but is honestly pretty good besides that.

Honeslty, I think S/D ele is the strongest pvp build atm, because it benefits MOST from X-Alacrity traits. Being able to take aquamancer’s alacrity with a cleansing-water ele means you get to cast water trident basically EVERY rotation. Because you have a rediculous amount of sustain, dragon’s tooth basically never hitting isn’t a problem, because it is a free blast finisher for might every time you go to fire.

Because you can take fresh air, cleansing water, AND all the arcana traits, you can basically remake the performance of s/d ele near the start of the game: amazing point-holder with heals for days. Aeromancer’s alacrity allows you to not only get more air-bursts/blinds off, but also gives you RtL CD that is reasonable and updraft way more often. Aquamancer’s alacrity not only gives you water trident CD’s, but also insanely low CD’s on frost aura and cleansing wave (OH dagger 5).

Phoenix, air-swaps, RtL, earthquake, rock barrier (if you have it precast and ready to fire) and lightning flash give you amazing burst capability. Dust devil, air dodges, and air 3 give you lots of 1v1 control. Water heals make fights against burst builds favorable when combined with burst.

Honestly, I think s/d ele is the best ele build atm, people just haven’t really figured it out.

What I like about Scepter is that Dragon Tooth is completely unless your foe is immob of knockdown for 3 seconds. Makes the combat feel really dynamic. /sarcasm

No seriously, scepter need a range increase to be viable in WvW.
Then it’s just a question of fixing the useless auto attacks, water skills and improving Dragon Tooth.

BlackBeard.2873:

Honestly, I think s/d ele is the best ele build atm, people just haven’t really figured it out.

That is not true actually d/d celestial 6 0 0 6 6 does more damage than fresh air because of the insane burning it does and because you are perma 25 stacks of might. And, with a d/d celestial you survive more than with a fresh air: even with 3sec of super speed in air the fresh air doesnt have the 2 mobility skills ( burning speed and RTL) that actually cant be slowed… And staff ele is better than scepter because it tanks a lot and you support alies with a control and healings so you are more team play than a fresh air who have only a single target burts…

Actually the scepter/dagger is too risky when you see that you can be easelly one shotted by all mesmer/guardian around. These tow classes have more survivality and invulnerability than S/D. Moreover you dot have a high range in scepter ( 900 ) and if you take ythe dagger off hand that will nerf you range again. So pls how do you wanna kill mesmers buffed afther pacht with your close combat zerker ele…

GLOR.2489:

BlackBeard.2873:

Honestly, I think s/d ele is the best ele build atm, people just haven’t really figured it out.

That is not true actually d/d celestial 6 0 0 6 6 does more damage than fresh air because of the insane burning it does and because you are perma 25 stacks of might. And, with a d/d celestial you survive more than with a fresh air: even with 3sec of super speed in air the fresh air doesnt have the 2 mobility skills ( burning speed and RTL) that actually cant be slowed… And staff ele is better than scepter because it tanks a lot and you support alies with a control and healings so you are more team play than a fresh air who have only a single target burts…

Actually the scepter/dagger is too risky when you see that you can be easelly one shotted by all mesmer/guardian around. These tow classes have more survivality and invulnerability than S/D. Moreover you dot have a high range in scepter ( 900 ) and if you take ythe dagger off hand that will nerf you range again. So pls how do you wanna kill mesmers buffed afther pacht with your close combat zerker ele…

Pretty sure he meant celestial s/d.

Flame Strike should be 0.75 with 2s burning
Shatterstone should be 0.5s cast + damge 4s cd
Dragon Tooth should be either AOE or 1s casttime + damage

everything else is fine.

I don´t give up condi ele. :-). I tired goning F/E/W with cantrips but i felt my damage was too low. Now i am using arcane skills (F/E/A) + cleansing flame. I go down often, but i always feel that i loose because of bad play. I am in Gw2 for about two month now and still have to learn my controls. The only class i feel is not doable is necro … And mesmer is so anoying, but i can survive.
General i think builds in soldiers with good condi cleanse is very bad for me :-).
But zerker is very bad against me (which was what i wanted). That exta punch from arcane is great and while my healing is limited i give good boon support and have added protection.
I recognized manny oponents come into meele, and when a zerker does that his life is gone faster then he thinks ^^.
An example of a fight two days ago:
It was late and i was left back alone in WvW. A thief jumped on me out of stealth propably thinking i am easy pray. Within 10 seconds i was at 50% and he below 20% with deadly condies on him.
I coud feel his surprise …
But then he cloked and cleared the main condi.
I fired one AE to decolak him but failed, he jumped on me a second time.
And failed again cloaking.
I fired reaper aura (had this up instead of my usual FSG ..)
He sat it out in stealth coming for a third strike.
He failed again, cloaked and i did hit him out of stealth.
He dodged away and cloaked again … How anoying.
At that moment i was below 50% nearly all on cooldown.
He came again … And now he got me, but it was my fault, i still had obsidian flesh as emergency button up, but did´t fire in time.
He was definitly a good player and i failed due to lack of training, but it was a good fight. I get better which each of it and feel my condi build with mainly arcane skills for added burst damage works.
I use S/F as my main weapon set, currently with F/E/R exotic rabid armor, dire+rabid trinkes and a bit power. I use arcane healing, shield and blast with traited arcane surge maintaining the precision boon from it.
I can constantly maintain about 2k dps stream in earth (if not cleasned to much) and add bursts either from arcan as from swaping air/fire when the situation calls it (still need to get that timing better …)
Only the scepter auto attacks seem a bit weak but i like having more range than only close up. I perform well in small fights roaming with a friend. For keep/zerg i swap to staff.

I will propably test mainhand dager now.

Greetings

Wolf

laquito.5269:

Flame Strike should be 0.75 with 2s burning
Shatterstone should be 0.5s cast + damge 4s cd
Dragon Tooth should be either AOE or 1s casttime + damage

everything else is fine.

I like the Flame Strike idea. If it can still remain a fluid animation at that point, I’m all for it.
_

I dunno about lowering the cast time on Shatterstone any further before we end up with a skill that has a largely useless animation.

Lowering the massive after cast on it before was a step in the right direction.

In terms of it’s actual cast and cool down, it’s lacking for what it does ATM. That can be fixed without lowering the CD though.

For Shatterstone I think it should cause a 1 1/2s, maybe a 2s chill at the target location within the initial radius of the AoE (very small AoE) before it pops.

This would make Shatterstone an excellent form of CC on the scepter with a little damage and healing for utility.

Water scepter auto attack is underrated. It’s great for procs and something like this sort of buff to Shatterstone would really bring life to this weapon and attunement.

If 2s chill, remove the vulnerability stacks and buff the damage on pop to compensate. If 1 1/2 sec, leave it alone and simply add the chill factor at 1 1/2s.
_

I actually don’t want Dragon Tooth to be AoE. It’s a good pressure and AD skill ATM, I don’t think AoE in of itself would do anything for it besides make it harder to throw out.

I mean I can see it being used strategically this way perhaps, but eh.

Just a personal preference I guess. I’m all for a cast time reduction though, so long as the animation remains viable.

CETheLucid.3964:

snippet

Well If it wasn’t for the terrible long time it takes Dragon Tooth to do damage, I’d say the skill is perfectly fine, but currently its almost impossible to land without a knockdown. I agree its useful for area denial, but making it an AOE spell would also be tempting (no preferance though).

Dragon Tooth AOE:
- Better usabilty infight
- Better Might stacking ability
- Player Can choose Area Denial

This requires an CD increase to at least 8s otherwise it would be too strong (imo).

Personally I would much rather remove the vuln. stacks from Shatterstone and replace it with a 3s cripple. A 2-3s chill is too strong as it is already one of the strongest conditions and cripple would still allow for CC and whats more important imo: It gives scepter more kiteability which it is severly lacking atm.

scepter is fine; every class has certain weapons that are meta in scenarios, and have certain weapons that just arent. That does not warrant an overhaul of everything in order to make one weapon more useful in certain scenarios.

well scepter can be used, but dager or staff usually are just better depending what you want. But there are viable scpeter builds even if they are more fun builds.
Its only a slight push for auto attacks doing more condition damage like longer burn for fire auto and bleed for earth and you have something that is difrent and good to use in small fights.

The only way scepter will take over staff places at least in a wvw setting is to give scepters fields mostly water but other fields will help too.

laquito.5269:

CETheLucid.3964:

snippet

Well If it wasn’t for the terrible long time it takes Dragon Tooth to do damage, I’d say the skill is perfectly fine, but currently its almost impossible to land without a knockdown. I agree its useful for area denial, but making it an AOE spell would also be tempting (no preferance though).

Dragon Tooth AOE:
- Better usabilty infight
- Better Might stacking ability
- Player Can choose Area Denial

This requires an CD increase to at least 8s otherwise it would be too strong (imo).

Personally I would much rather remove the vuln. stacks from Shatterstone and replace it with a 3s cripple. A 2-3s chill is too strong as it is already one of the strongest conditions and cripple would still allow for CC and whats more important imo: It gives scepter more kiteability which it is severly lacking atm.

I agreed with you on the CD reduction in your first post, but I certainly do not agree with a CD increase for the sake of it being AoE.

I don’t agree that it should be an AoE myself.

ATM I use Dragon’s Tooth as something to force the enemy to react to. It’s an area denial skill (AD).

You’re right, if someone doesn’t want to get hit by it, it is very easy to avoid.

But if it does hit, it’s punishing. I like it this way. If anything it should do even more damage and burning.

I feel the same way about Ice Spike on water staff. It needs more damage, more vulnerabillity, chill… something.

These skills are supposed to be easy dodge, but punishing nukes/spikes on low CD’s.

You don’t even really need to spend a dodge to get out of them and because they’re so hard to hit with, it should reward skillful and tactical use.

Making them instant casts or killing the tells for the sake of accuracy I think defeats the spirit of skills like Dragon’s Tooth, Shatterstone, or Ice Spike.

They just need something more to them to justify the inherent risk of using them.
_

Cripple doesn’t make sense in the context of Shatterstone IMO. Chill does the same thing, and you know, it’s an ice skill.

I’m just pooping out numbers. It’s the idea I want to convey, Anet’s good at getting the numbers right.

I mentioned 2s at most. I agree 3s would be OP on that CD. Reflecting on it, even 2s would be a bit much seeing as the skill is on a 2s CD.

1s of chill on the inital Shatterstone cast AoE (which is very small), buff the damage done on pop.

Keep the stack of vulnerability; maybe lower the amount of time it sticks from 15s to ~10s for reason of the addition of chill and damage boost.

Chill is strong, but for 1s of it on a skill that you can walk out of… probably even with the chill (Shatterstone’s AoE is probably among the smallest of AoE’s)… it’s really not so bad.

The play in it would be trying to apply it on that alluring CD.

But between the cast time and the pop, it’s something you’d have to balance between your DPS, staying alive, and actually doing something.

No enemy is going to sit there and let you keep doing that.

You can’t keep casting it under fire without taking it in the face and by itself even with a hypothetical DPS boost to the pop part of Shatterstone, you’d still be grossly lowering your DPS to spam it.

It’d be something that would reward tactful play. It’d instantly go from a lackluster skill to basically improving the entire weapon’s utility IMO.

I think they should make Arc Lightning cleave instead of hit foes in a line. And the channel time should be decreased.

If you’re taking scepter, its probably to blast fire fields. If you dont have LH conjure, your most powerful AA is weaksauce. You’re stuck in that long channel after carefully placing your fields. This makes it difficult to switch targets, and places you in awkward positions just to try to hit more than one thing or get the last hit in.

tldr, make it as difficult for warriors to stack might as it is for eles, and see if it gets fixed.

Personally I think Arc Lightning should spread, spider outward in an arc to all foes within a certain range from each other up to a maximum of five targets.

Add something like the more foes you catch in the channel, the more damage you deal. That’d be fun.

The fun would be if we can localize stealthed players with it … Then the scepter would have a real and mostly unique untility

Why aren’t we calling for an additional weapon slot? Attunements or not- one weapon all the time still isn’t the best for every given situation.

Iozeph.5617:

Why aren’t we calling for an additional weapon slot? Attunements or not- one weapon all the time still isn’t the best for every given situation.

Because that would make eles very overpowered. The amount of burst potential and utility would be nearly impossible to balance, and we would see increases on our already immensely long cooldowns.

Although trolling people with 20.000 cc’s in a row with both d/d and s/f would make me happy.

The question is rather: Why aren’t we calling for additional relevant weapon choice? It’s pretty poor now.

True. As it is, I’d love to have a longsword – where the number one skill would function similar to the warrior’s number one skill.

Ours would apply (or even just have a chance of applying) a condition corresponding to whatever our attunement was.

Say, bleeding for earth, burning for fire, chill for water, or a stun for air. That and have the one skill have a twenty percent chance to trigger a melee-based finisher – seeing as combo fields and finishers seem to be the focus of the latest round of changes.

Yeah…the auto-attacks all suck.

isn’t scepter that silly toy where the water auto attack is the highest dps of them all?

We also need damage buffs on certain skills, such as earth 2 and faster traveling time on earth 3.

Also water 3 should heal a lot more, possibly 2000+ instead of 1444 that we have right now. Eles have the lowest health pull, but has longest cd on heal and least amount of healing.

IMO, with a just a few small tweaks, Scepter could become a really great weapon that could work EITHER as a primary condition weapon OR as a burst weapon.

-I would like to see Flamestrike and Stone Shards become less clunky. You can literally outrun Stone Shards (and Ice Shards) with just Swiftness. Cast time/aftercast reductions would be great, and flight arc reduced for Stone Shards. Ice Shards could use 1 short-lasting stack of Vulnerability on hit.
-Shatterstone needs either a cast time reduction (faster explosion) OR should pulse Chill while charging up OR should be a Blast finisher.
-These changes would help our condi builds, especially if they’re nerfing Burning (as I’m suspecting they will.)
-Arc Lightning is just sad. Air Attunement is supposed to be the single-target damage Attunement, and scepter is supposed to be the burst weapon. Its cast time should be dramatically reduced, and the damage should be front-loaded and slightly increased.
-Water Trident is great, but it’d be awesome if it also did a small AoE knockback, like it used to before launch (maybe only knockback moving foes, similar to GW1?)

Glenstorm.4059:

IMO, with a just a few small tweaks, Scepter could become a really great weapon that could work EITHER as a primary condition weapon OR as a burst weapon.

-I would like to see Flamestrike and Stone Shards become less clunky. You can literally outrun Stone Shards (and Ice Shards) with just Swiftness. Cast time/aftercast reductions would be great, and flight arc reduced for Stone Shards. Ice Shards could use 1 short-lasting stack of Vulnerability on hit.
-Shatterstone needs either a cast time reduction (faster explosion) OR should pulse Chill while charging up OR should be a Blast finisher.
-These changes would help our condi builds, especially if they’re nerfing Burning (as I’m suspecting they will.)
-Arc Lightning is just sad. Air Attunement is supposed to be the single-target damage Attunement, and scepter is supposed to be the burst weapon. Its cast time should be dramatically reduced, and the damage should be front-loaded and slightly increased.
-Water Trident is great, but it’d be awesome if it also did a small AoE knockback, like it used to before launch (maybe only knockback moving foes, similar to GW1?)

Well, the problem is not only the function of the skills, but also the damage. It really makes me want to cry when I hit 220 non crits on flamestrike, it’s just a joke. All of the AA’s needs to be seriously buffed and their cast time reduced, it’s ridiculous. It’s the main reason why fresh air lacks sustained dps so much.

I don’t really think Water Trident needs a knockback, though.

Shatterstone just needs to be removed and replaced by something worth casting.

I’ve been playing with the idea of shatterstone hitting three times, twice while charging and once on explosion. The first two hits would inflict small damage and vuln (4 stacks of 15 seconds each), and the final hit would deal the same damage shatterstone does at the moment but also chill for 2 seconds.

This way Shatterstone would have a small, immediate effect upon placement, and a stronger final effect if not dodged (which is, frankly, not that difficult). The recharge would be increased to 6 seconds. It could also very well become a blast finisher.

What do you guys think? do we want some minor DoT’s on the scepter? Or will these make it feel too much like a staff?

Also, the auto-attacks are indeed a sad, sad sight, and they are the sole reason I thought PvE was difficult when I first started the game. They need a serious buff to functionality and damage output.

Well realy easy solution to autos would be reduce casting times for fire and earth auto to 1s. Not shure it that will already be to much damage increase. If yes i would reduce direct damage a bit.

shatterstone just needs to be an ice field and/or apply chill when it explodes. long explosion time + crap damage just makes it a waste of a skill slot.

Anet have had 3 years of a constant stream of player complaints about sceptre/focus skills, glyphs, conjures, signets, arcane/water dependence and they’ve not done anything worth a kitten .

at this point the only message worth sending is not spending a cent in the cash shop, and not buying the expansion.