Guild Wars 2

The simplest of requests,please could you lower it’s range to 900 and make the projectiles move as fast as either Ether Bolt or Vital Shot?

I personally rather it do splash damages in a 250 radius or so.

But tbh if they start altering Weapon skills, an item set they have never touched, they’ll have to change other classes weapon abilities too.

An autoattack like druid’s staff or ele lightining scepter would be nice. The problem lies in the description though “Fire a SLOW moving orb…”. Hopefully it gets looked at, or made an offhand which probably won’t happen.

Saiyan.1704:

I personally rather it do splash damages in a 250 radius or so.

But tbh if they start altering Weapon skills, an item set they have never touched, they’ll have to change other classes weapon abilities too.

Not true. Off the top of my head, just somewhat recently they reworked the warrior’s entire rifle.

holychampion.7386:

An autoattack like druid’s staff or ele lightining scepter would be nice. The problem lies in the description though “Fire a SLOW moving orb…”. Hopefully it gets looked at, or made an offhand which probably won’t happen.

That’s the whole purpose of the post,to ask the devs to make it so that scepter AA stops firing slow moving orb and starts firing proper fast ones! The description becomes a non issue if/when they do this request, because they can change it. LoL logic.

Fashion Mage.3712:

Saiyan.1704:

I personally rather it do splash damages in a 250 radius or so.

But tbh if they start altering Weapon skills, an item set they have never touched, they’ll have to change other classes weapon abilities too.

Not true. Off the top of my head, just somewhat recently they reworked the warrior’s entire rifle.

Yeah they did…I think the new rifle for warrior is about 4 months old now….not sure…all I know for sure is that it was reworked after HoT released, so tweaking the AA of a good cc weapon shouldn’t be the end of the world.

I’d rather the orbs stay slow (or maybe move slower), but have the attack speed rise drastically. Like, over +100%. It would probably have to fire a burst of a few orbs power skill use to alleviate animation concerns. The Scepter auto, compared to other projectile autos, is designed to create a bullet hell effect. Saturate the field in hurt, and some will hit. At the very least you can use it to deny area by virtue of “there’s hurty stuff over there”.

The other problem is that if there’s a sudden massive increase in projectiles being created, it could have an adverse effect on the game’s performance, so there’s that to consider. But if that’s not a problem, bullet hell is the direction is like to see the Scepter move towards.

Ghotistyx.6942:

I’d rather the orbs stay slow (or maybe move slower), but have the attack speed rise drastically. Like, over +100%. It would probably have to fire a burst of a few orbs power skill use to alleviate animation concerns. The Scepter auto, compared to other projectile autos, is designed to create a bullet hell effect. Saturate the field in hurt, and some will hit. At the very least you can use it to deny area by virtue of “there’s hurty stuff over there”.

The other problem is that if there’s a sudden massive increase in projectiles being created, it could have an adverse effect on the game’s performance, so there’s that to consider. But if that’s not a problem, bullet hell is the direction is like to see the Scepter move towards.

Let’s agree to disagree, because the damage of Scepter is so low that by the time the projectiles even reach the target….someone else would have killed your target…and Scepter AA does not provide the kind of pressure you would expect to see in a bullet hell scenario.

I ran Scepter and Shield in PvP and while it did over decent single target control and aoe dps + supportive features…..no one felt the pressure of your alleged bullet hell that is the Scepter AA…Guardian was never capable of making such an effect.

You know who gets bullet hell right?Ranger longbow 2 & 5, it’s fast, it’s loads of projectiles (bullets) and it actually applies a sense of presure. Guardian Sword 3 and Sword Primal Burst does bullet hell right…f@k even Fire Overload and Warrior Riffle 3 does bullet hell better than Scepter AA.

If the devs actually do something to it, rather than just simply increasing the projectile speed, I hope they make the skill do something more interesting than “fire off generic projectile at a slow velocity that does nothing special”. I dare say it’s the most boring skill in the game right now, right after the staff’s auto-attack.

Also, I didn’t really get a “bullet hell” vibe from the auto-attack either. Like the rest of the weapon, it just feels very generic to me. Like it was a prototype for ranged weapons when they just started making the game or something.

Saiyan.1704:

I personally rather it do splash damages in a 250 radius or so.

But tbh if they start altering Weapon skills, an item set they have never touched, they’ll have to change other classes weapon abilities too.

They have changed weapon skills before.

Mesmer sceptre, ranger sword, warrior rifle, etc.

Bullet hell is more about the sheer number of projectiles rather than any amount of speed. They’re supposed to be dodge-able by proper movement, and hurt when you get hit. It was one of the most damaging ranged AAs, but that’s since changed. Anet themselves have said the design idea behind Orb of Wrath was to have high damaging orbs that were balanced by how often they actually land. Most of that is done by their flight speed, but also explains why they don’t home in on target.

If I had my way, if like to expand on that idea. Something that would make it more unique and interesting. We can both agree it doesn’t do is job well enough. I’d like to see it in a state where both it’s purpose and is performance are undeniable.

Also, unrelated fun fact: Scepter was 900 range at conception. It was changed to 1200, along with Torch 4 and Focus 4, during the public betas because Guardians didn’t have enough skills with range.

OP, I like your suggestion, it would definitely make me pick up scepter again. However, I’d have to agree with Ghosti on the design/style of scepter. The projectile speed works just fine at around 300-600 range and does indeed create a field of hurt. Well, it definitely used to before HoT power-creep. Scepter is an okayish weapon but could use some improvements:

1. Low damage. This could be fixed by either upping attack speed as Ghosti suggested, or increasing attack power. Increasing attack speed would also reduce the effect of mini-strafing essentially nullifying scepter auto attack (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSJ0pqRwjuU).

2. Scepter 2 isn’t a symbol. It also doesn’t do much damage against other players for a few reasons, but I believed this could partially be fixed by making it a symbol. This is more of an overarching problem though; I think guardians should have access to at least 1 symbol no matter what their weapon-set is. This means either attaching a symbol to offhands (unlikely) or having every main-hand weapon sport a symbol.

3. Cooldown on scepter 3 is a bit too high. Single-target, non-projectile, mild cast time, 900 range immob for 2 seconds. If you just gave me those stats, I’d guess the cd to be about 15 seconds (untraited) in accordance with HoT skills out there.

Arcaedus.7290:

2. Every weapon set should have a symbol

3. Cooldown on scepter 3 should be 15s

Yes. Yes to both.

Make it unblockable, and let it pierce.

Reduce the range to 900 and make it like Ele Scepter – Arc Lightning

Smite becomes Symbol of Might.

Chains of Light 15s cooldown.

@Arcaedus.7290 & Ghotistyx.6942, here is where I do not get you guys…how is having twice as much or 4 times as much slow moving orbs,which are easy to dodge because they come from one location and lack any means of tracking it’s target considered bullet hell?

When I think bullet hell I think about the images in the article bellow
http://www.usgamer.net/articles/ten-great-bullet-hell-shooters

The reason why those games are competent forms of bullet hell is because they apply pressure of some form (they either deal buck ton of damage,come at a scary speed and shred your hp or both). Scepter AA fails miserably at being a threat and I don’t think it’s a vaild concept for a class focued on front line support via the means of defensive magic.

You know who got manage bullet hell.Mesmers.Give them a projectile based weapon ( any form of bow,rifle, main hand pistol, or main hand axe as ranged weapon – cuz rangers ffs) and give those weapons the ability to create a field you can’t escape and a spamable fast traveling bullet which bounces of the field of that impassable dome…that would be bullet hell done alright (impressions may vary based on travel speed of projectile and damage of projectile).
Give Mesmer clones the ability to generate more bouncing projectiles in said dome…that can become a hard core bullet hell minigame.

Back on toppic:If bullet hell is the theme for the Scepter’s offensive capabilities (I will never understand why Anet would want this sort of effect on a class whose primary focus is frontline support,based on official website description),then we need to make a way for scepter to apply pressure, and what I would recomend is this. Buff Scepter #3 with the ability to apply a debuff to the target which attracts the projectiles generated by party members and caster and buff the travel speed of Scepter Orbs or their damage in some way.

Final note…in a world with Guns and Bows….why don’t we have repeater crossbows?

Jack Skywalker.5674:

@Arcaedus.7290 & Ghotistyx.6942, here is where I do not get you guys…how is having twice as much or 4 times as much slow moving orbs,which are easy to dodge because they come from one location and lack any means of tracking it’s target considered bullet hell?

When I think bullet hell I think about the images in the article bellow
http://www.usgamer.net/articles/ten-great-bullet-hell-shooters

The reason why those games are competent forms of bullet hell is because they apply pressure of some form (they either deal buck ton of damage,come at a scary speed and shred your hp or both). Scepter AA fails miserably at being a threat and I don’t think it’s a vaild concept for a class focued on front line support via the means of defensive magic.

You know who got manage bullet hell.Mesmers.Give them a projectile based weapon ( any form of bow,rifle, main hand pistol, or main hand axe as ranged weapon – cuz rangers ffs) and give those weapons the ability to create a field you can’t escape and a spamable fast traveling bullet which bounces of the field of that impassable dome…that would be bullet hell done alright (impressions may vary based on travel speed of projectile and damage of projectile).
Give Mesmer clones the ability to generate more bouncing projectiles in said dome…that can become a hard core bullet hell minigame.

Back on toppic:If bullet hell is the theme for the Scepter’s offensive capabilities (I will never understand why Anet would want this sort of effect on a class whose primary focus is frontline support,based on official website description),then we need to make a way for scepter to apply pressure, and what I would recomend is this. Buff Scepter #3 with the ability to apply a debuff to the target which attracts the projectiles generated by party members and caster and buff the travel speed of Scepter Orbs or their damage in some way.

Final note…in a world with Guns and Bows….why don’t we have repeater crossbows?

We’re arguing semantics here. “Bullet hell” may mean something different to Ghosti than to you or I. Scepter did used to apply pressure. It was a constant source of dps in close to mid-ranged fights and while not particularly deadly, it often forced opponents to reposition themselves or else charge in with a large chunk of their health gone. It was one of the reasons that thieves used to hate fighting medi-guards so much. You can dodge the ‘bullet-hell," of rangers with two or maybe one dodge. For scepter AA, you’re going to be eating it eventually. It may not be at the moment that the guardian starts chucking the orbs, but it will be eventually if you stay and fight. That’s how scepter worked pre-HoT.

You may not like the design of scepter’s auto attack (I don’t either, believe me), but the game devs have already decided the direction in which this weapon has moved /will continue to move. I was trying to make suggestions that would improve the situation for us without asking devs to completely redesign a weapon.

Arcaedus.7290:

Jack Skywalker.5674:

@Arcaedus.7290 & Ghotistyx.6942, here is where I do not get you guys…how is having twice as much or 4 times as much slow moving orbs,which are easy to dodge because they come from one location and lack any means of tracking it’s target considered bullet hell?

When I think bullet hell I think about the images in the article bellow
http://www.usgamer.net/articles/ten-great-bullet-hell-shooters

The reason why those games are competent forms of bullet hell is because they apply pressure of some form (they either deal buck ton of damage,come at a scary speed and shred your hp or both). Scepter AA fails miserably at being a threat and I don’t think it’s a vaild concept for a class focued on front line support via the means of defensive magic.

You know who got manage bullet hell.Mesmers.Give them a projectile based weapon ( any form of bow,rifle, main hand pistol, or main hand axe as ranged weapon – cuz rangers ffs) and give those weapons the ability to create a field you can’t escape and a spamable fast traveling bullet which bounces of the field of that impassable dome…that would be bullet hell done alright (impressions may vary based on travel speed of projectile and damage of projectile).
Give Mesmer clones the ability to generate more bouncing projectiles in said dome…that can become a hard core bullet hell minigame.

Back on toppic:If bullet hell is the theme for the Scepter’s offensive capabilities (I will never understand why Anet would want this sort of effect on a class whose primary focus is frontline support,based on official website description),then we need to make a way for scepter to apply pressure, and what I would recomend is this. Buff Scepter #3 with the ability to apply a debuff to the target which attracts the projectiles generated by party members and caster and buff the travel speed of Scepter Orbs or their damage in some way.

Final note…in a world with Guns and Bows….why don’t we have repeater crossbows?

We’re arguing semantics here. “Bullet hell” may mean something different to Ghosti than to you or I. Scepter did used to apply pressure. It was a constant source of dps in close to mid-ranged fights and while not particularly deadly, it often forced opponents to reposition themselves or else charge in with a large chunk of their health gone. It was one of the reasons that thieves used to hate fighting medi-guards so much. You can dodge the ‘bullet-hell," of rangers with two or maybe one dodge. For scepter AA, you’re going to be eating it eventually. It may not be at the moment that the guardian starts chucking the orbs, but it will be eventually if you stay and fight. That’s how scepter worked pre-HoT.

You may not like the design of scepter’s auto attack (I don’t either, believe me), but the game devs have already decided the direction in which this weapon has moved /will continue to move. I was trying to make suggestions that would improve the situation for us without asking devs to completely redesign a weapon.

1)Yeah, we probably are.

2)I’m not asking for complet redesign,just for the redesign of Scepter AA because it is based on a concept, which failed misserably because it was too strong pre HoT and too weak post HoT…but Scepter #2 and #3 are very good for CC, the purpose of this post is to help redesign Scepter in a better weapon for CC.

3)I did not play GW2 pre HoT so based on your feedback,I think that having Scepter dps and projectile speed go back at pre HoT values but with range at 600 would be the best option…but I would not change anything on Scepter #2 & #3, if anything it makes it more interesting.

4)Using this build and the information you gave me about pre HoT : http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNAreRl8AhWhY1QwXIQQEHxDlNEu3HNvit4MWDgHoeB
I can see why pre HoT Scepter was strong, but based on the performance of Scepter AA and synergies based on the above build, I feel like an AA more akin to Scepter Elemntalist AA while using the fire element would be better….even at 600 range.

I’m definitely thinking of the same bullet hell that Jack is. There are two key things to note in how bullet hell mechanics interact with Orb of Wrath.

1) Projectile count. Look at those screens in the link. There are many projectiles in every screen. Too many projectiles. You literally drown in projectiles. There everywhere. Compared to other projectile weapons, OoW had this capability. You can toss out so many projectiles all flying at the same time. The enemy’s choice is either to move, or get hit with what were some pretty damaging orbs. That brings me to the second point.

2) Motion. In bullet hell shooters, your survivability is largely determined by pattern recognition and physical avoidance. GW2 probably shouldn’t have so many projectiles that pattern recognition becomes important (at least, not from a weapon skill. It already exists as a fight mechanic). But, physical avoidance has been stated by the developers as one if the primary means of balancing OoW.

Imagine you’re fighting a Scepter Guardian, and you have to avoid the orbs. Right now it’s pretty simple. Note imaging there are the Guardians, and three times the orbs. It’s now a whole lot more difficult because there are just so many more projectiles out there. What i would want to see, is sums sort of mix between current OoW and Ele Water Scepter (releases 3 projectiles). I would want the projectiles to be released in such a way that you get a constant stream of projectiles flowing (as opposed to a 3 round burst) and that you can’t just super-strafe the projectiles, like in the YouTube video Arcades linked. I want the opponent to decide between moving, or getting hit by a ton of fairly damaging projectiles. They must be high individual damage to work (I should also mention, Scepter want nerfed in damage, it’s just that other skills like Longbow 1 surpassed it.)

Once you have an auto attack that truly forces the enemy to move, the other skills fall into place. Smite (or Symbol of Smite, wink wink) creates another place thy enemy can’t go or eat damage, and Chains of Light forces the enemy to stop moving, or spend a resource to escape. Orb of Wrath just doesn’t quite pull enough weight. If even be willing to take a flight speed decrease. It would help create the flood of projectiles desired of paired with an increase to the amount of projectiles created.

Ghotistyx.6942:

I’m definitely thinking of the same bullet hell that Jack is. There are two key things to note in how bullet hell mechanics interact with Orb of Wrath.

1) Projectile count. Look at those screens in the link. There are many projectiles in every screen. Too many projectiles. You literally drown in projectiles. There everywhere. Compared to other projectile weapons, OoW had this capability. You can toss out so many projectiles all flying at the same time. The enemy’s choice is either to move, or get hit with what were some pretty damaging orbs. That brings me to the second point.

2) Motion. In bullet hell shooters, your survivability is largely determined by pattern recognition and physical avoidance. GW2 probably shouldn’t have so many projectiles that pattern recognition becomes important (at least, not from a weapon skill. It already exists as a fight mechanic). But, physical avoidance has been stated by the developers as one if the primary means of balancing OoW.

Imagine you’re fighting a Scepter Guardian, and you have to avoid the orbs. Right now it’s pretty simple. Note imaging there are the Guardians, and three times the orbs. It’s now a whole lot more difficult because there are just so many more projectiles out there. What i would want to see, is sums sort of mix between current OoW and Ele Water Scepter (releases 3 projectiles). I would want the projectiles to be released in such a way that you get a constant stream of projectiles flowing (as opposed to a 3 round burst) and that you can’t just super-strafe the projectiles, like in the YouTube video Arcades linked. I want the opponent to decide between moving, or getting hit by a ton of fairly damaging projectiles. They must be high individual damage to work (I should also mention, Scepter want nerfed in damage, it’s just that other skills like Longbow 1 surpassed it.)

Once you have an auto attack that truly forces the enemy to move, the other skills fall into place. Smite (or Symbol of Smite, wink wink) creates another place thy enemy can’t go or eat damage, and Chains of Light forces the enemy to stop moving, or spend a resource to escape. Orb of Wrath just doesn’t quite pull enough weight. If even be willing to take a flight speed decrease. It would help create the flood of projectiles desired of paired with an increase to the amount of projectiles created.

I mostly do structured PvP and currently I am taking a break from the game. I never once saw a Guardian with a Scepter…but I did play Scepter in pre hot dungeons and a bit of sPvP, I also did a 1v1 sparring match with a guild mate who ran thief.

What I noticed is that my AA’s from Scepter did very little in terms of damage because it was too easy to dodge, but Smite (Symbol of Strife – come on Anet you know you want to,but just couldn’t find the right name) and Chains of Light were superb and almost compensated for AA shortcomings…but it still felt like I was dual wielding 2 off hand weapons and I agree with you Ghostyx that the Scepter AA does not apply any sort of pressure on to enemies and it may be in part due to the whole bullet hell concept.

Jack Skywalker.5674:

holychampion.7386:

An autoattack like druid’s staff or ele lightining scepter would be nice. The problem lies in the description though “Fire a SLOW moving orb…”. Hopefully it gets looked at, or made an offhand which probably won’t happen.

That’s the whole purpose of the post,to ask the devs to make it so that scepter AA stops firing slow moving orb and starts firing proper fast ones! The description becomes a non issue if/when they do this request, because they can change it. LoL logic.

Fashion Mage.3712:

Saiyan.1704:

I personally rather it do splash damages in a 250 radius or so.

But tbh if they start altering Weapon skills, an item set they have never touched, they’ll have to change other classes weapon abilities too.

Not true. Off the top of my head, just somewhat recently they reworked the warrior’s entire rifle.

Yeah they did…I think the new rifle for warrior is about 4 months old now….not sure…all I know for sure is that it was reworked after HoT released, so tweaking the AA of a good cc weapon shouldn’t be the end of the world.

Oh dang I didn’t know that! Guess they were in such a bad state that wars got a “bye”…
RAGE!

it is odd that it is the hardest to land auto, but also not particularly strong,
logically you’d expect the hardest to land auto to also be the strongest.

The problem of scepter AA for me is not the fact it is not that easy to hit, it is the fact it deals so low dmg because there are builds like scrappers with bulwark gyros, retribution revenants (or even without this trait line), druids or tempest that got tons of protection proc or reflects (and not considering the base armor) that makes scepter auto, when hits, to not deal more than 300-400 dmg. I specially feel so frustrated when I fight tanky revenants in wvw, because I am dealing absolutely no dmg (because the perma protection + base armor) while the less they hit with every skill is 2k. And that considering most of them dont run retribution, so the dmg could really be around 200 with scepter AA and around 500 with gs AA if they go retribution. Seems a joke when they go 22k hp and dmg mitigation foods.

This could be solved if we had a decent might stacking.

JackaS.9426:

This could be solved if we had a decent might stacking.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Zealous_Scepter

huh

Ghotistyx.6942:

JackaS.9426:

This could be solved if we had a decent might stacking.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Zealous_Scepter

huh

" when your justice passive effect triggers"

Still
Scepter should be better with rataliation on AA, it lacks :\

Aeolus.3615:

Ghotistyx.6942:

JackaS.9426:

This could be solved if we had a decent might stacking.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Zealous_Scepter

huh

" when your justice passive effect triggers"

Still
Scepter should be better with ratal on AA, it lacks :\

I think he may have meant…fuse scepter AA with Zealous Scepter….also what does ratal mean?

Liewec.2896:

it is odd that it is the hardest to land auto, but also not particularly strong,
logically you’d expect the hardest to land auto to also be the strongest.

I actualy never thought about it like that XD.Still for Scepter AA I would prefer they make it less ghimiky (sh@itey spelling).

Jack Skywalker.5674:

Aeolus.3615:

Ghotistyx.6942:

JackaS.9426:

This could be solved if we had a decent might stacking.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Zealous_Scepter

huh

" when your justice passive effect triggers"

Still
Scepter should be better with ratal on AA, it lacks :\

I think he may have meant…fuse scepter AA with Zealous Scepter….also what does ratal mean?

Rataliation(edited the post).

Merging scepter with zealous would be nice, every AA gain 2-3 seconds of might??
Cause i dont see it working everything 10 sec on AA..

Replace Zealous Scepter, with a explode orb on contact that burn target for 1or 2 seconds.

Aeolus.3615:

Jack Skywalker.5674:

Aeolus.3615:

Ghotistyx.6942:

JackaS.9426:

This could be solved if we had a decent might stacking.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Zealous_Scepter

huh

" when your justice passive effect triggers"

Still
Scepter should be better with ratal on AA, it lacks :\

I think he may have meant…fuse scepter AA with Zealous Scepter….also what does ratal mean?

Rataliation(edited the post).

Merging scepter with zealous would be nice, every AA gain 2-3 seconds of might??
Cause i dont see it working everything 10 sec on AA..

Replace Zealous Scepter, with a explode orb on contact that burn target for 1or 2 seconds.

That’s bascialy half of my old scepter burn-guard spec (3 traits worth of kitten): http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQFALM0HqsNMErBAA

Ghotistyx.6942:

JackaS.9426:

This could be solved if we had a decent might stacking.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Zealous_Scepter

huh

That is not the point. Dropping a must need trait line like virtues for going zeal is not worth. Every of the classes I mentioned can easily stack might on their meta builds, while we need to drop a trait line that is the base of sustain for just getting a few might stacks when the passive efect of f1 triggers… Do you really save f1 that much for making it worth? Its a joke. Most of times we use it in the start for bursting…