Guild Wars 2

Scepter 3 takes 2s to cast. Auto attack is bad, and scepter 2 is defensive skill.
If you use Scepter 3 and sword 5 or focus 5. What do you do for next 7s, until weapon swap? AA on scepter? You said yourself it is bad.

SloRules.3560:

Scepter 3 takes 2s to cast. Auto attack is bad, and scepter 2 is defensive skill.
If you use Scepter 3 and sword 5 or focus 5. What do you do for next 7s, until weapon swap? AA on scepter? You said yourself it is bad.

Well, yeah but I was thinking maybe I could use it for some opening burst perhaps. Maybe drop 2 iSwordsmen and Sc#3 and just dps as normal with Sw/Sh. Considering I don’t intend on Raiding or anything like that, this should be a viable tactic(or at least I’m hoping it is).

What sort of PvE are you talking about? Open world? Dungeons/fractals? Raids?

In open world, sure, go for it. It’ll be miserable because the autoattack is purely single target, but it’ll work I guess.

In dungeons/fractals/raids, it can be potentially optimal to swap to scepter while casting wells, use skill 3, then swap back to sword. Other than that, no.

Its definitely a fun little weapon to use for open world play both because I don’t see anyone else running it and because I just like the feel of 3 on scepter. But there are better options for fractals. Dungeons it doesn’t really matter honestly unless you are going for a speedrun

Fay.2357:

What sort of PvE are you talking about? Open world? Dungeons/fractals? Raids?

In open world, sure, go for it. It’ll be miserable because the autoattack is purely single target, but it’ll work I guess.

In dungeons/fractals/raids, it can be potentially optimal to swap to scepter while casting wells, use skill 3, then swap back to sword. Other than that, no.

Basically everything other than Raids, as I don’t intend on doing that for a while.
I mostly got past the single target problem with the Scepter while leveling by just grouping mobs with Focus 4 and just using Scepter 3 on them, it’s takes more effort than it should, but I really do like this weapon. I just wish Anet would give the auto some love.

Catastro.8410:

Fay.2357:

What sort of PvE are you talking about? Open world? Dungeons/fractals? Raids?

In open world, sure, go for it. It’ll be miserable because the autoattack is purely single target, but it’ll work I guess.

In dungeons/fractals/raids, it can be potentially optimal to swap to scepter while casting wells, use skill 3, then swap back to sword. Other than that, no.

Basically everything other than Raids, as I don’t intend on doing that for a while.
I mostly got past the single target problem with the Scepter while leveling by just grouping mobs with Focus 4 and just using Scepter 3 on them, it’s takes more effort than it should, but I really do like this weapon. I just wish Anet would give the auto some love.

They’ve already buffed the auto pretty substantially. It’s not a bad autoattack anymore, you’re just trying to put the proverbial square peg into the proverbial round hole. The scepter is not a weapon designed to be able to do a lot of aoe, that’s just how it is.

In any case, knock yourself out using it in open world PvE and dungeons. Low level fractals wouldn’t be an issue either. However, if I ended up with a mesmer in my party in a 50+ fractal using scepter, I’d kick them. It’s not worth the hassle of towing along a dead weight.

Fay.2357:

Catastro.8410:

Fay.2357:

What sort of PvE are you talking about? Open world? Dungeons/fractals? Raids?

In open world, sure, go for it. It’ll be miserable because the autoattack is purely single target, but it’ll work I guess.

In dungeons/fractals/raids, it can be potentially optimal to swap to scepter while casting wells, use skill 3, then swap back to sword. Other than that, no.

Basically everything other than Raids, as I don’t intend on doing that for a while.
I mostly got past the single target problem with the Scepter while leveling by just grouping mobs with Focus 4 and just using Scepter 3 on them, it’s takes more effort than it should, but I really do like this weapon. I just wish Anet would give the auto some love.

They’ve already buffed the auto pretty substantially. It’s not a bad autoattack anymore, you’re just trying to put the proverbial square peg into the proverbial round hole. The scepter is not a weapon designed to be able to do a lot of aoe, that’s just how it is.

In any case, knock yourself out using it in open world PvE and dungeons. Low level fractals wouldn’t be an issue either. However, if I ended up with a mesmer in my party in a 50+ fractal using scepter, I’d kick them. It’s not worth the hassle of towing along a dead weight.

You’d try to kick a mesmer in your party no matter what weapons they were using anyway though.

Eponet.4829:

Fay.2357:

Catastro.8410:

Fay.2357:

What sort of PvE are you talking about? Open world? Dungeons/fractals? Raids?

In open world, sure, go for it. It’ll be miserable because the autoattack is purely single target, but it’ll work I guess.

In dungeons/fractals/raids, it can be potentially optimal to swap to scepter while casting wells, use skill 3, then swap back to sword. Other than that, no.

Basically everything other than Raids, as I don’t intend on doing that for a while.
I mostly got past the single target problem with the Scepter while leveling by just grouping mobs with Focus 4 and just using Scepter 3 on them, it’s takes more effort than it should, but I really do like this weapon. I just wish Anet would give the auto some love.

They’ve already buffed the auto pretty substantially. It’s not a bad autoattack anymore, you’re just trying to put the proverbial square peg into the proverbial round hole. The scepter is not a weapon designed to be able to do a lot of aoe, that’s just how it is.

In any case, knock yourself out using it in open world PvE and dungeons. Low level fractals wouldn’t be an issue either. However, if I ended up with a mesmer in my party in a 50+ fractal using scepter, I’d kick them. It’s not worth the hassle of towing along a dead weight.

You’d try to kick a mesmer in your party no matter what weapons they were using anyway though.

In all fairness he would most likely have been a mesmer in the first place and no group needs 2 mesmers for dungeons and fractals. It’s debatable if 2 mesmers are worth it in raids, most say not…so yeah considering Pyro has had 3+ years of experience playing mesmer and written guides on it I can believe he’d kick a sceptre mesmer and would be better than most mesmers that joined too.

apharma.3741:

Eponet.4829:

Fay.2357:

Catastro.8410:

Fay.2357:

What sort of PvE are you talking about? Open world? Dungeons/fractals? Raids?

In open world, sure, go for it. It’ll be miserable because the autoattack is purely single target, but it’ll work I guess.

In dungeons/fractals/raids, it can be potentially optimal to swap to scepter while casting wells, use skill 3, then swap back to sword. Other than that, no.

Basically everything other than Raids, as I don’t intend on doing that for a while.
I mostly got past the single target problem with the Scepter while leveling by just grouping mobs with Focus 4 and just using Scepter 3 on them, it’s takes more effort than it should, but I really do like this weapon. I just wish Anet would give the auto some love.

They’ve already buffed the auto pretty substantially. It’s not a bad autoattack anymore, you’re just trying to put the proverbial square peg into the proverbial round hole. The scepter is not a weapon designed to be able to do a lot of aoe, that’s just how it is.

In any case, knock yourself out using it in open world PvE and dungeons. Low level fractals wouldn’t be an issue either. However, if I ended up with a mesmer in my party in a 50+ fractal using scepter, I’d kick them. It’s not worth the hassle of towing along a dead weight.

You’d try to kick a mesmer in your party no matter what weapons they were using anyway though.

In all fairness he would most likely have been a mesmer in the first place and no group needs 2 mesmers for dungeons and fractals. It’s debatable if 2 mesmers are worth it in raids, most say not…so yeah considering Pyro has had 3+ years of experience playing mesmer and written guides on it I can believe he’d kick a sceptre mesmer and would be better than most mesmers that joined too.

I was actually referring more to the fact that mesmer is just generally underpowered these days, and has been for ages. Chronomancer replaced them in pretty much every aspect of the game.

That said, when you say Pyro, do you mean Fay? The context leads me to assume so, but it is slightly confusing.

Eponet.4829:

apharma.3741:

Eponet.4829:

Fay.2357:

Catastro.8410:

Fay.2357:

What sort of PvE are you talking about? Open world? Dungeons/fractals? Raids?

In open world, sure, go for it. It’ll be miserable because the autoattack is purely single target, but it’ll work I guess.

In dungeons/fractals/raids, it can be potentially optimal to swap to scepter while casting wells, use skill 3, then swap back to sword. Other than that, no.

Basically everything other than Raids, as I don’t intend on doing that for a while.
I mostly got past the single target problem with the Scepter while leveling by just grouping mobs with Focus 4 and just using Scepter 3 on them, it’s takes more effort than it should, but I really do like this weapon. I just wish Anet would give the auto some love.

They’ve already buffed the auto pretty substantially. It’s not a bad autoattack anymore, you’re just trying to put the proverbial square peg into the proverbial round hole. The scepter is not a weapon designed to be able to do a lot of aoe, that’s just how it is.

In any case, knock yourself out using it in open world PvE and dungeons. Low level fractals wouldn’t be an issue either. However, if I ended up with a mesmer in my party in a 50+ fractal using scepter, I’d kick them. It’s not worth the hassle of towing along a dead weight.

You’d try to kick a mesmer in your party no matter what weapons they were using anyway though.

In all fairness he would most likely have been a mesmer in the first place and no group needs 2 mesmers for dungeons and fractals. It’s debatable if 2 mesmers are worth it in raids, most say not…so yeah considering Pyro has had 3+ years of experience playing mesmer and written guides on it I can believe he’d kick a sceptre mesmer and would be better than most mesmers that joined too.

I was actually referring more to the fact that mesmer is just generally underpowered these days, and has been for ages. Chronomancer replaced them in pretty much every aspect of the game.

Ah yes, that makes sense. Your comment was easily interpreted as being a commentary on my sometimes abrasive nature, as opposed to pointing at mesmer vs chrono. I still use mesmer for talking about things in general, just with the subtext that chrono is sorta understood as being used. It goes without saying that any vanilla mesmer would definitely warrant a kick.

Eponet.4829:

That said, when you say Pyro, do you mean Fay? The context leads me to assume so, but it is slightly confusing.

Long story, but yes that’s referring to me.

lol no. Scepter is a terrible weapon among our many terrible weapons. It is also a condi weapon, not a power one.

Unfortunately as a mesmer our weapons are pretty much all atrocious on the DPS and utility front.

The only truly important weapon is the shield for alacrity (what you’re brought for besides quickness) and focus in case of reflects.

Otherwise the rest of your picks are garbage anyways, sword being the least smelly garbage of the bunch.

When I look at Blurred Frenzy doing 1/3 of the damage a Pistol Whip or Unrelenting assault does while Pistol Whip stuns and UA is a chasing teleport with 8 might stacks drives me crazy.

Heya! Wall’O’Text incoming, but worth reading!

Funny, I just edited the wiki about the scepter, since the datas were outdated, and now this!

However it seems the scepter is still heavily underestimated and so is the impact of “out of range” downtimes on your dps.

Let me elaborate:

I’ve uploaded an image of my Excel document, where I’ve been calculating the differences of the scepter and the sword, both full berserker.
I’m a minmaxing machine, so I would never let such a tasty way of damage improvement go wasted! :P

please open the image now and continue reading

The top half of the image describes the DpS of the sword and the scepter autohits, aswell scepter #3.

Power means the power you have fully buffed in raids, analogous next to it, condition damage. The modifier is a multiplication of things like Sigil of Force, Vulnerability, traits, buffs like the common 2 stacks of Grace of the Land, Crit damage, etc.

Time simply means the time required for a full rotation. Quickness reduces this time by 50%, yet the scepter (as we all know) is a special case:

First of all, Malicious Sorcery does not work with Quickness. In fact, no attack speed mofifier works with Quickness, since Quickness is the attack speed bonus cap.
So without Quickness, the scepter becomes more powerful compared to the sword than with Quickness.

Then there is still the bug (or intended?) that reduces the attack speed on range, so I made a DpS calculation for both, melee and ranged.

Value describes how many % damage the scepter deals, compared to the sword. As you can see, Confusing Images is a beast.

The bottom half of the image shows 4 different scenarios that might happen while using the scepter in a rotation. Each part of the rotation assumes scepter 3 to be casted twice before swapping back to the sword again. The target has no boons, so a stronger 3rd sword auto hit is assumed. More informations to each scenario on the image.

Let me explain each scenario seperately to you:

Scenario 1:

This is the case where the sword really threatens the scepter in terms of damage: Melee and with quickness on a not moving target. Worst case scenario as you may say.

Yet still you’d only have to not use the scepter autohit for 2 full seconds and do something else in the meantime like your CS rota, casting wells or especially resummoning iAvengers wich take a long time in the first place! If you do these things for more than 2 sec each time you swap to the scepter, it was worth to use a scepter.

Scenario 2:

This situation appears more often than you may think. Basicly whenever you are forced to go ranged (this assumes max range for scepter, so the whole thing gets better for the scepter if you are at lets say 600 range instead of 900).

This means situations in raids like Vale Guardian tanking (moving), going to green fields, Sabetha when you get a bomb or are ranged (duh), Matthias when you have corruption, poison or a bomb, Keep Construct bombs or green fields, yet also in different content like fractals, at Tom for the fan, the underground facility endbosses, thaumanova endboss, etc, and even open world for hero points when you need some time to regenerate or just safely resummon phantasms.

If you would walk around ranged without attacking with the sword for more than 3s on average, you should have brought a scetper to this encounter.

Scenario 3:

No quickness scenario, best case for the scepter while the sword would also be a dps option (melee). However Malicious Sorcery really pushes the scepter so heavily, you only have to cast Confusin Images twice in around 20s and the scepter would still be more dps than the sword auto in the same time! Hell by then you’d even be able to cast it a 3rd time!

Scenario 4:

Last scenario, again carried by Malicious Scorcery, after casting Confusin Images two times, you have time until exactly 18s have passed before you have to swap to the sword again to not lose damage. Yet again at 18s you could cast it a 3rd time for max dps.

As you all can see, the scepter is not a weak weapon anymore! In fact it’s almost mandatory for a good, proud Chronomancer to be in their inventory!

In my guild I force every Chrono to buy one for Raids, I want them to have one so bad, that I even buy a Superior Sigil of Concentration for each one of them!

Fay.2357:

However, if I ended up with a mesmer in my party in a 50+ fractal using scepter, I’d kick them. It’s not worth the hassle of towing along a dead weight.

Wow… really? I wouldn’t have expeted that from you. You just made me question your hard earned respect from me. :/

In that case, you simply kicked a Chrono who might have had more knowledge about his profession than you, even tough in your case I’d rather say, he knew “one thing” more than you. xP

You also shouldn’t underestimate condi Chrono in high lv fractals. Due to the high armor values, I never go power in T4 ever again.

I hope this whole post was informative for you as it literally took me a full hour to write (and then I found a typo in the image and screened Excel again, while copy pasting it in paint, yet the screenshot is bigger than my screen so I have to … oh nevermind)

Oh yea and if I’ve made a mistake somewhere, please tell me so I can fix it. I hate nothing more than spreading wrong information!

Greez!
- Xyonon

Xyonon.3987:

Fay.2357:

However, if I ended up with a mesmer in my party in a 50+ fractal using scepter, I’d kick them. It’s not worth the hassle of towing along a dead weight.

Wow… really? I wouldn’t have expeted that from you. You just made me question your hard earned respect from me. :/

In that case, you simply kicked a Chrono who might have had more knowledge about his profession than you, even tough in your case I’d rather say, he knew “one thing” more than you. xP

You also shouldn’t underestimate condi Chrono in high lv fractals. Due to the high armor values, I never go power in T4 ever again.

Trouble is you’re completely neglecting the issue of aoe vs single target. The scepter offers a slim margin of damage over sword in scenarios that favor its use. However, the moment more than 1 target is involved, the scepter is instantly garbage. If the mesmer in question swapped on a scepter purely for boss encounters, that would be fine. However, a large part of most fractals is clearing rather tanky trash. If you’ve got a mesmer sitting around with scepter, they’re just wasting time.

Condie chrono runs into the exact same issues as scepter itself. Are you on a boss fight? Great, you’ll eventually do okish damage once you’ve got your duelists running. However, for every single encounter that isn’t a boss fight, you’re nothing but garbage dead weight on the team.

You’re also neglecting the rather heavy need for boon strip at many fractal levels due to the boon stealing. Scepter has none of that, while sword provides a continual strong output of boon strip that can keep your party alive when your guardian accidentally uses a skill.

So uhh use both? this is a good thing to have scepter at a competitive level with sword. It’s good it’s not niche and has uses whoohoo for mesmer community there is literally 0 down side to having scepter be good it’s shocking the lv of bitterness about this.

Fay.2357:

Trouble is you’re completely neglecting the issue of aoe vs single target. The scepter offers a slim margin of damage over sword in scenarios that favor its use. However, the moment more than 1 target is involved, the scepter is instantly garbage. If the mesmer in question swapped on a scepter purely for boss encounters, that would be fine. However, a large part of most fractals is clearing rather tanky trash. If you’ve got a mesmer sitting around with scepter, they’re just wasting time.

So are we talking about power scepter vs sword or condi chrono with scepter in fractals? Because for power it’s no issue to just use it for where it’s needed. I take it you are referring to the condi Chrono since we talk about fractals?

Confusing Images aswell as the warden, shatters, Tides of Time and all wells are aoe. If your teams hasn’t cleared the adds by then or after the 2nd CI hits, then you probably should have been running ahead with a portal in the first place.

• Swampland: Only single target.
• Uncategorized: All harpies are single target, excepft for the two after the first bosses where you runby and set up a portal to Tom for your allies. Tom is single target, endboss is single target and when they all get active again, they die within the CS rota.
• Urban Battleground: First encounter should die within CS, not always the case tough. Dulfy is singlet target. The city gets skpped by triple blink and portal. If not (you’d be “wasting time” in the first place ;D) yea a sword or power for cleave would be nice. Confusion Epi-bounce may be a thing tough. The mobs in the end should also die to a CS rota, however I agree after that you won’t have much aoe for the adds coming from the gates. However this is timegated anyways, so it won’t matter at all aslong as you pull ’em together. Endboss is sinlge target.
• Molten Furnace: Here I’d go power ’til the final encounter.
• Snowblind: Here I’d go power ’til the final encounter.
• Cliffside: All you do here is pulling mobs together and porting people around in the first place. Regardless of if you do or do not use portals here, I’d stay power all the time, even for the endboss, since he’s able to reflect. Therefore just focus on buffing the team with perma Alacrity aswell.
• Underground Facility: Here I’d go power ’til the final encounter. Especially due to the boonstrip.
• Aetherblade: Here I’d go power ’til the final encounter.
• Thaumanova Reactor: A portal fractals again. Longer encounters are condi for sure, especially the endboss where you’ll probably even be top tier (not THE top) dps.
• Volcanic: Power until the 1 first boss.
• Captain Mai Trin Boss: Condi all the way trough.
• Molten Boss: Due to the impact of reflect, power until the final boss.
• Solid Ocean: Depends on tactics. After you have pulled everything and buffed everyone you might aswell start with the tentacles, so either power until the adds are dead or condi right away.

Okay maybe I was a bit prematurely about ALWAYS CONDI WUB WUB! xP
Still – if you are too lazy to swap during a fractal, I’d stay condi for most of them instead of power. Not all, but most of them.

Fay.2357:

Condie chrono runs into the exact same issues as scepter itself. Are you on a boss fight? Great, you’ll eventually do okish damage once you’ve got your duelists running. However, for every single encounter that isn’t a boss fight, you’re nothing but garbage dead weight on the team.

You seem to underestimate A) the “okish” damage of condi Chrono against bosses in high fractals, aswell the high armor values and their impact on power damage and C) you seem to overestimate the overall damage impact of a power chrono in high level fractals.

Depending on your allies aswell on your enemies, you can be more or less valuable for your team as power or condi, even against “trash”. But due to our CS or normal buff and pull rotation and portals, regardless of our specs, we are never garbage aslong as we do what we have been brought for in the first place.

Fay.2357:

You’re also neglecting the rather heavy need for boon strip at many fractal levels due to the boon stealing. Scepter has none of that, while sword provides a continual strong output of boon strip that can keep your party alive when your guardian accidentally uses a skill.

In that case I’d kick the guardian in the first place since he is – as you’d call him – “only dead weight that is wasting time”.

If we talk about pugs where it doesn’t matter what joins your party, you shouldn’t be complaining about a suboptimal Chrono either.

But if you go with an optimal comp at 50+, condis are masterrace. Especially at 75+ where the armor values of trash simply becomes too high for power professions to handle.
What I want to say is that none of them really cares about the stolen boons anyways, since only noticable boon would be protection, wich condis ignore and if you know you’ll gonna have problems with boons, there’s always the Necromancer.

Lalainnia.3598:

So uhh use both? this is a good thing to have scepter at a competitive level with sword. It’s good it’s not niche and has uses whoohoo for mesmer community there is literally 0 down side to having scepter be good it’s shocking the lv of bitterness about this.

I’m not quite sure what you say here except forthe first sentence But yea, never use a power scepter all on it’s own, always use it together with a sword, since that’s the main source of dps. If you want to cleave a lot I wouldn’t take it either, but especially in raids most of the time your cleave means nothing to the 4 Eles next to you :P