Guild Wars 2

Don’t get me wrong I am grateful for these buffs to underwater combat. But every other class is getting their slowest weapons (long bows) velocity buffs and it just makes me wonder why won’t they increase scepters velocity speed. :-(

Forget scepter…look at what they did to AH

I just saw . . . WHY!!!

Actually Scepter DID get buffed. The immobilize applies more stacks of vulnerability now. In fact, if you go into the Zeal tree, the immobilize will put up 8 stacks of vulnerability.

It may not be the buff everyone wanted, but it is a buff. I’m trying to work a zeal/radiance build for a heavy spike. Focus blind and Scepter immobilize into Sword Teleport then Virtue of Justice and Zealot’s Defense. If you’re quick enough, you’re looking at a 35% damage boost on the attacks.

Kami.7369:

Actually Scepter DID get buffed. The immobilize applies more stacks of vulnerability now. In fact, if you go into the Zeal tree, the immobilize will put up 8 stacks of vulnerability.

It may not be the buff everyone wanted, but it is a buff. I’m trying to work a zeal/radiance build for a heavy spike. Focus blind and Scepter immobilize into Sword Teleport then Virtue of Justice and Zealot’s Defense. If you’re quick enough, you’re looking at a 35% damage boost on the attacks.

Its still worthless.

And I don’t know why people make posts asking why stuff was changed. Anet doesn’t care, they don’t read the guardian forums at all. And even if they did, its unlikely that they would change anything based upon our feedback.

So far:

Great sword nerfed.

Now AH nerfed.

What is next? I can’t even guess since the other options aren’t very good.

they will nerf our hp 14k is too much for OP guardians, make it 8k that will be awesome, running with skirt and flowers, bringing joy and happiness to everyone

Aza.2105:

Kami.7369:

Actually Scepter DID get buffed. The immobilize applies more stacks of vulnerability now. In fact, if you go into the Zeal tree, the immobilize will put up 8 stacks of vulnerability.

It may not be the buff everyone wanted, but it is a buff. I’m trying to work a zeal/radiance build for a heavy spike. Focus blind and Scepter immobilize into Sword Teleport then Virtue of Justice and Zealot’s Defense. If you’re quick enough, you’re looking at a 35% damage boost on the attacks.

Its still worthless.

And I don’t know why people make posts asking why stuff was changed. Anet doesn’t care, they don’t read the guardian forums at all. And even if they did, its unlikely that they would change anything based upon our feedback.

So far:

Great sword nerfed.

Now AH nerfed.

What is next? I can’t even guess since the other options aren’t very good.

There’s a post from Jon Peters from LAST WEEK answering a question about Faithful Strike, so don’t give me that “Woe is me the devs hate us” crap.

Learn to adapt to changes in the game.

Last week? That was 3 days ago.

Kami.7369:

There’s a post from Jon Peters from LAST WEEK answering a question about Faithful Strike, so don’t give me that “Woe is me the devs hate us” crap.

Learn to adapt to changes in the game.

Sorry man, but really, the L2adapt things, its just crap. I can adapt when someone explain me why something its massive changed, and why they change is so RELEVANT.
But simply mindlessy accept a change, when we know that is really a relevant change without say something because we have to adapt, is just stupid, its against the logic of game development and feedback.

You can’t always expect a red response to everything, especially when guardians haven’t suffered much from not having a decent ranged weapon. I cannot remember the last time that a ranger could out DPS my heal without messing up their kiting enough for me to turn it into a melee superiority battle.

Just because it doesn’t happen at the exact same time doesn’t mean its not going to happen.

Elementalists got weapon stats applied to their Conjures. Engineers didn’t get stats on their kits, but some people assumed it was going to happen in the future and indeed now its been actively said that kits are going to get stats down the line.

Same thing may apply here. Bows have gotten fixed, but there still remain other projectiles too slow to connect reliably (Guardian Scepter, Necro Staff, ect). Those will hopefully get addressed in the future.

If anything, I view the change to bows as a positive thing (not just because I play a Ranger either). The change means the devs are aware of the problem with projectiles and inability to hit moving targets at range. The fact that they’re aware of the major issue hopefully means they’ll address all of the offenders in time, even if they aren’t fixed instantly and all at once.

I think that the greatsword nerf was ok, they originally wanted retaliation to be a pre-emptive response to taking a lot of hits, not to have it almost permanently up.
Greatsword remains one of the best, if not the best Guardian weapon.

Altruistic Healing wasn’t nerfed, it wasn’t even touched. The Vigourous Precision change is ok with me too as it retains its original purpose of giving us Guardians vigour whilst keeping the altruism in Altruistic Healing.

Some nerfs are actually required if things are overpowered. Let’s be realistic here, Altruistic Healing with Vigourous Precision made so many crit based build put out a ridiculous amount of self healing with hardly any cost. Be honest, who was using Vigourous Precision primarily for the vigour? It could have been any boon, people were just using it to proc Altruistic Healing, having the vigour boon was just a bonus on top of their self heals.
I think the change is good, it curbs the pretty huge self heals crit based builds could put out whilst still retaining all the trait’s in question’s original purpose and keeps the really nice synergy of the Honour minor traits, all the while keeping Altruistic Healing builds completely viable.

I was really hoping for some good changes to scepter (and sword), it did make me laugh when I saw that not only was Orb of Wrath untouched but other profession’s projectiles were SPED UP!! :O
I’m going to continue to hold onto hope that they’re sticking to what they mentioned earlier about refraining from making huge, sweeping changes to things in a short space of time and to that end have a lot of great Guardian changes lined up for a later (but hopefully soon!) patch.

The scepter has remained untouched because it’s not really broken. [queue complaints]

It was never intended as a 1200 range weapon. It was designed as a mid-range weapon and works perfectly fine in that regard. I admit it’s a little boring, but functionally, it works. The reason it has 1200 range is to address WvW complaints during the BWEs where guardians had nothing to reliably attack forts from a distance. Against static objects, the speed doesn’t matter.

The scepter is actually one of the higher DPS guardian weapons, and the projectile speed is fast enough that when under 600 range, you’ll hit most of the time. Part of the reason it has an immobilize is to synergize with keeping people at mid-range. And considering every other weapon but the staff is melee, if you care about the scepter’s damage damage, do you really want to keep people at long distances? I would wager that the design with the scepter velocity was intentional to keep the guardian themed as a melee or close-range profession.

Honestly, you should complain more about how smite’s damage is completely random or how boring scepter seems.

TLDR: If you’re trying to use the scepter against players at 1200 range and complaining, you’re doing it wrong.

Exedore.6320:

The scepter has remained untouched because it’s not really broken. [queue complaints]

It was never intended as a 1200 range weapon. It was designed as a mid-range weapon and works perfectly fine in that regard. I admit it’s a little boring, but functionally, it works. The reason it has 1200 range is to address WvW complaints during the BWEs where guardians had nothing to reliably attack forts from a distance. Against static objects, the speed doesn’t matter.

The scepter is actually one of the higher DPS guardian weapons, and the projectile speed is fast enough that when under 600 range, you’ll hit most of the time. Part of the reason it has an immobilize is to synergize with keeping people at mid-range. And considering every other weapon but the staff is melee, if you care about the scepter’s damage damage, do you really want to keep people at long distances? I would wager that the design with the scepter velocity was intentional to keep the guardian themed as a melee or close-range profession.

Honestly, you should complain more about how smite’s damage is completely random or how boring scepter seems.

TLDR: If you’re trying to use the scepter against players at 1200 range and complaining, you’re doing it wrong.

I can live with them not buffing sceptres speed as I also knew it was supposed to be a mid range weapon. But the problem here is they gave buffs to the other classes to stay at range.

Guardians have sweet fk all for range and snaring kiting enemies. Now the enemies can kite even better! its lose lose for guardian. Extra damage doesn’t mean much if you can’t hit your enemy.

Use a sceptre, it won’t hit. Try to get close? your snared and they can run away even quicker.

Where is the balance?

Exedore.6320:

TLDR: If you’re trying to use the scepter against players at 1200 range and complaining, you’re doing it wrong.

Except… what else are we supposed to try to use at a range? We either:

1.) Stand there and do nothing
2.) Rush in to melee combat and drop dead because being at a range is CLEARLY the best option (those times when even a Warrior or Thief switch to range).
3.) Try to use the Scepter at a long range and get frustrated.

We all know the Scepter wasn’t designed as a 1200 range weapon. I remember the day it was changed for z-axis capabilities and a range increase from 900 to 1200.

However, ArenaNet can’t have it both ways. They can’t say we have a 1200 ranged weapon, and also say it doesn’t need to be effective at 1200 range because it’s made for close range effectiveness.

Either give us a 1200 range weapon, or make the Scepter one. Not having one in addition to not having the tools to stay in melee range is broken.

Hey, that gives me an idea. Maybe the projectile could be instant out to 600 or 900 range and THEN turn into a slowball for the remaining distance? That’d make the weapon a LOT more viable!

naaaaa at 900 range it still hits often enough. Making it instant is a bit OP because then you can’t see it coming to dodge or block etc

It needs a buff or a change. I don’t care what, but the scepter needs to change in some way, shape or form, because right now it’s mediocre at best.

What other professions got huge buffs to staying at range? If you’re talking about the arrow projectile speed, that was more to fix under-performing weapons than a buff the professions.

I rarely have trouble with players kiting in sPvP or WvW. Most of that trouble is because I’m not familiar with how their build plays. If you’re trying to close the gap immediately all the time, a good player will take advantage of that. You may want to instead use a defensive cooldown or retaliation and wait out their cooldown and then close the gap.

I’m not too worried about kiting either. Many of the stronger players use CC such as immobilize or stun/daze/etc in a short window to take you down.

Ive just tested a scepter build with the new VP. They dont need to improve scepter anymore tbh. The new synergy between VP scepter allows for absolute healing and damage mitigation every 5 seconds. Swith to using phantom weapons and its a done deal. You do dmg with scepter and phantom weps whilst gaining vigor from VP to heal using rolls.

Its a new synergy. Very powerfull.

In reality though KensaiZen, it would work with any weapon, scepter (and potentially staff) having the benefit of some kind of range though. I really don’t mind the VP change, I was expecting something for scepter as I’m really not satisfied with it but thems the breaks I guess.

Yes it would work with any weapon but it works far better for a weapon that barely hits to proc a very good boon.

Because guardian is apparently meant to be a “frontline fighter that does maximum damage at close range,” meaning our scepter was meant to be a close range weapons(the only way to get it to hit is standing on top of someone).

Yesh buts its now better seeing as you dont need to hit 100% of the time and still be able to dodge heal every 5 seconds

Yeah, I wish the scepter was a little more exciting. If anything I would want the auto-attack to look less pathetic. (Careful, or I’ll shoot a swirling golfball-sized ball of light at you!)
I find in CoF when you kill the acolytes in P1 my orbs of wrath rarely even reach the enemy before it dies from other classes at range. Also can be frustrating trying to hit enemies moving randomly as it tries to lead and fails because the enemy changed direction.
Smite feels very gimpy because of how random the damage is. Sometimes if an enemy is on the side of the aoe it looks like it only gets hit two or three times. Only hitting 15 times doesn’t really make it a great aoe for large amounts of enemies either. (also this suffers from an entirely unimpressive animation)
I feel like the warrior has better range options for also being a heavy, melee class. If it’s the only thing, they have one 1200 weapon and one 900 weapon where we have one 1200 and one 600. (And which would you rather have, rifle or scepter + offhand?) [rifle.]

Darkinub.6781:

Don’t get me wrong I am grateful for these buffs to underwater combat. But every other class is getting their slowest weapons (long bows) velocity buffs and it just makes me wonder why won’t they increase scepters velocity speed. :-(

To directly answer your question, did you read the description of the scepter’s 1 attack?

Fire a slow-moving orb at your foe

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Orb_of_Wrath

It’s designed that way.

I throw on Superior Sigil of Rage and that quickness buff really makes using Scepter a lot of fun. At least for me. I started out as Sword / Shield + Greatsword Guardian… now I play Scepter / Focus + Staff Guardian. Love it.

Rustypipes.6238:

Darkinub.6781:

Don’t get me wrong I am grateful for these buffs to underwater combat. But every other class is getting their slowest weapons (long bows) velocity buffs and it just makes me wonder why won’t they increase scepters velocity speed. :-(

To directly answer your question, did you read the description of the scepter’s 1 attack?

Fire a slow-moving orb at your foe

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Orb_of_Wrath

It’s designed that way.

And for our 1200 range weapon, it’s poor design.

Only two possible options:
1.) The Scepter is our ranged weapon and is broken
2.) The Scepter is meant to be a close range weapon, and therefore Guardians lack a 1200 range weapon.

Not indicating you, but many people try to say it’s okay that Guardians can’t fight at 1200 range since the Scepter wasn’t mean to be a 1200 range weapon, which is an illogical statement.

The Scepter not being made for 1200 range =/= Guardians shouldn’t have an effective ranged weapon.

KensaiZen.3740:

naaaaa at 900 range it still hits often enough. Making it instant is a bit OP because then you can’t see it coming to dodge or block etc

That’s not the point at all. If it “hits often enough” at 900, then making it instant up to 900 wouldn’t make a lot of difference, right?

The point is that the slow part BEGINS at 900 or 600 instead of starting at 0. That would drastically increase the accuracy between 900-1200.

KensaiZen.3740:

naaaaa at 900 range it still hits often enough. Making it instant is a bit OP because then you can’t see it coming to dodge or block etc

You do realize that is exactly how necro scepter works right? It just hits, there is no projectile.