Guild Wars 2

When HoT comes out, I plan on rolling a scholar class that would be useful for groups. (Either mesmer or elementalist since I already have a necro.)
I’m leaning towards mesmer (for clones, shatter and being able to portal) and I wanted to use the scepter for conditioning, but I’ve been hesitant about it after all the criticism it’s gotten.

I plan on using my mesmer for PvE and PvP. So tell me, are there no useful mesmer scepter builds? Please let me know.

For Condi it is works…Your block Skill ( #2) can be blocked when you use the counter ability and it is pretty slow moving. And only block once. So it is a pretty weak defensive skill over Sword, the auto-attack is pretty slow and applies low amount of torment without 3 clones.

But mesmer’s skills are mainly for Time-Warp and FeedBack & Reflect-Focus. Rather than damage. With Chronomancer, you just get more support via Alacrity & more easy access to quickness & Slow (Well & Shield 5) and with F5, you can have a aprox 45sec CD on Time Warp.

And in General. Since Scepter applies mainly torment which is weaker than Bleed if the target don’t move. it’s not really worth it over Sword & Power build. Or it applies confusion which doesn’t do much on NPCs as they don’t attack often enough to warrent its usefulness.

In pve, well yes, its pretty bad at applying conditions, but its not the end of the world. You can start in scepter/pistol (or shield), summon phantasms, and swap to staff to autoattack, only swapping back to scepter when you need to block or resummon. It works, not nearly as good as a power build, but its the best we can do. The main drawback is that the autoattack summons a clone, which is bad if you have 3 phantasms up, so you have to be careful or you will lose dps from the 3rd cast.

In pvp its a really good weapon in some builds but there are better threads about it and pvp builds in general if you want to look them up (check the stickied threads on this forum first)

It’s not terrible against single targets, it probably falls behind sword for even sinister/carrion builds against 2-3 targets though.

Something to keep in mind with the scepter: The third part of the AA chain (the clone summon) has a significant aftercast that slows down the whole chain, apparently based on when the third attack projectile connects and the clone is summoned.

So, even though it’s kind of a range weapon, the AA is much more effective in melee range.

It is garbage and only a complete rework will save it.

So bad that in pve sword 2 off hands is meta. Worse case staff or gs with sword/focus but scepter needs some love. I reluctantly use it in wvw/pvp (no other option)because I hate the sword swap but that’s me.

Condi mesmer with a scepter can be VERY powerful. You can very often apply 20-25 stack of confusion instantly and the chronomancer will make that way more broken.
Question is how ?
Well the answer is easy. It’s all about combinations. There is tons of traits allowing to apply a ridiculous amount of conditions, the “Duel” grandmaster trait applying confusion in aoe when you interrupt a foe is by far the best for the chronomancer wave (and still very potent without it). Going runes of perplexity is a MASSIVE help (though it’s not really cheap).

I won’t spend too much time demonstrating how powerful it is, but it really is extremly powerful. It’s not because people prefer zerk greatsword because it’s braindead to play that condi mesmer is useless. Condi mesmer can be very powerful and at the same time help the team a lot (mostly by blinding ennemies every 2 seconds and interrupting them in addition).

Sombrero.9204:

Condi mesmer with a scepter can be VERY powerful. You can very often apply 20-25 stack of confusion instantly and the chronomancer will make that way more broken.
Question is how ?
Well the answer is easy. It’s all about combinations. There is tons of traits allowing to apply a ridiculous amount of conditions, the “Duel” grandmaster trait applying confusion in aoe when you interrupt a foe is by far the best for the chronomancer wave (and still very potent without it). Going runes of perplexity is a MASSIVE help (though it’s not really cheap).

I won’t spend too much time demonstrating how powerful it is, but it really is extremly powerful. It’s not because people prefer zerk greatsword because it’s braindead to play that condi mesmer is useless. Condi mesmer can be very powerful and at the same time help the team a lot (mostly by blinding ennemies every 2 seconds and interrupting them in addition).

Do not listen to this person, they are wrong.
The only time you’ll get 20+ stacks of confusion with Mistrust is when you hit a group of Mordrem Menders with Magic Bullet in the middle of healing, because they get interrupted by every shot.

Other than that, Mistrust just doesn’t do the job right now, and has far less versatility than Deceptive Evasion.

He won’t “spend too much time demonstrating” because the only thing he has to demonstrate is the mender killing. There’s nothing else to demonstrate.

The autoattack is bad. It’s slow and awkward. It feels very clunky. The summon of the clones override phantasms which can really hinder a Mesmer dps in PVE. I still enjoy it in pvp though.

The burst can be nice in any build condi or power. But the AA needs to be looked at. It ruins most game play other than shatter focus.

I just spent a few days trying to make Condi Mesmer work in PVP. It is okay, definitely not the weakest – but it feels much worse than a power build. The scepter is part of this… Really a bad AA, poor block.

The other part of the reason is that no runes or sigils that buff Confusion exist in PVP. Overall Confusion is much worse and much harder to use than Burning, for example.

In PvP it works fine. It may not be meta, but condi shatter it’s a perfectly viable build and it uses scepter. Note that “currently” in PvP, mesmer is not so much used in groups but rather in single-target fights. With chronomancer, things will change, but I feel like power chronomancer will be better in terms of support/survivability.

Guys can we just keep posting here so they never forget that scepter needs love? I just see too many swords everywhere. I would love more diversity in our builds! ;_;

(Sorry for being off topic)

I agree with the Auto attack bein blah.
The balls needs to explode on impact at a 240’ radius damaging all with in it.
The block is good but should block all attacks during it’s time.

Vieux P.1238:

The balls needs to explode on impact at a 240’ radius damaging all with in it.

Honestly this. Engineer has better condi application, deeper stacks, burning, and their AA is an AoE that applies better bleed and is faster than the scepter anyway.

Fix the scepter attack slowing down from far away, stop clones from overwriting phantasms, spawn the clone right in front of you instead of on the target, and make the scepter AA an AoE.

Also, rather than tinker with the nature of the block, I’d say reduce the cast+aftercast on it. I can’t count the number of times I was trying to use the block to get out of trouble, and the timing just caused more problems than it solved. Players make too many attacks for it to be a reliable sustained defense, but the animations make it too slow to be a reliable instant defense.

It would be nice if Illusionary Counter (and Illusionary Riposte) worked like Riposte and Counterattack. I guess having weaker versions of other professions’ skills is supposed to be a mesmer thing.

They need to change the scepter block to function like the shield block in BWE1-2: Same functionality it has now BUT if you dont block anything in the time limit you still summon a clone at the end of the channel.

Then they need to revamp the entire AA chain. Faster, no clone, possibly a non-projectile (something like necros scepter?), with decent condition pressure.

All of our condition damage comes from Illusions and shatters. We have ZERO condition-applying utilities. There is no good reason for scepter and scepter clones to not have good condi pressure.

Oh, and I forgot: don’t summon the clone on top of the target anymore :P

Robert Gee clearly admitted the reason for the low speed of the AA is the clone generation. The problem is that there are places (PvE) where the clone generation is actually a bad thing, therefore being a double punishment. What would you feel if the AA was made faster by default (without malicious sorcery) and that malicious sorcery would be “reduce CD on scepter, scepter AA produces a clone”. If the devs think it will still create too many clones, “malicious sorcery” could be exchanged with “mistrust” thereby competing with “deceptive evasion”, but I don’t think it is needed to change that.

Honestly, the main reason that I don’t use the scepter is that it just feels unsatsifying to use.

In terms of raw numbers, it’s not awful if you’re in a situation where you can’t maintain 3 phantasms, but it just feels so lacking. It attacks so slowly, each time firing a slow moving featureless projectile, its block doesn’t give any immediate feedback on its counterattack, and its most powerful attack is just a channeled beam that feels even less impactful than the greatsword’s autoattack, despite actually being more powerful.

It’s just so boring. The sword, greatsword and staff all have skills that have obvious impact to them (i.e. Blurred Frenzy, Swap, Counter Blade, Mirror Blade, Mind Stab, Illusionary Wave, Phase Retreat, Chaos Storm), whereas with the scepter, if you’re not looking at the bars, you’d barely know if anything had happened at all.

Power scepter shatter builds with malicious sorcery are actually pretty decent too. It’s higher sustained damage than greatsword, but lower burst.

The 2 and 3 skills on the scepter are fine and strong. It’s the autoattack that’s the big stinker of the weapon.

All of those people who say scepter is bad…i dont believe you people.

Fay.2357:

The 2 and 3 skills on the scepter are fine and strong. It’s the autoattack that’s the big stinker of the weapon.

I remember like an year or so ago the devs went on to fix the scepter in a balance patch.

They lowered the CD on #2 and #3. -.-

It’s a great ranged weapon for PvE, aslong as you don’t spam the auto attack. 3# is still the strongest mesmer skill.

When they nerfed IR in the second Beta weekend I tried a lot of different ways to replace DE in a shatter heavy chrono build and one of them was using Scepter with the trait and as much Quickness as I could get on me. Even then its clone generation was so low I didn’t feel it was worth it even as an addition to other methods.

If its the clone generation stopping them from improving the Auto then they need to dump the clone generation. Replace it with burning on the third attack increase the speed of the chain/speed of projectiles and I like the idea of making it AoE.

Xyonon.3987:

It’s a great ranged weapon for PvE, aslong as you don’t spam the auto attack. 3# is still the strongest mesmer skill.

That’s the issue though. A weapon you can’t simply autoattack with is still a dip in DPS in pve. Even with the kit 3 burst.

I really enjoy the scepter as a shatter weapon. But at the same time something needs to give. Clones should never override Phantasms.

I really enjoyed this thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Say-NO-to-Pets-A-Reimagining-of-Phantasms/first#post5575532

And this would be a fantastic way to keep clone spawn on the scepter while phantasms are safe to use without worry of conflict.

You know… I’d be able to tolerate Scepter’s kitten AA if they would just make the following QoL change for mesmer:

Clones no longer overwrite phantasms

I hate feeling locked out of using a skill (scepter AA, scepter block, phase retreat, mirror blade, OH sword block) because I dont want to overwrite one of my phantasms in PvE.

Mikkel.8427:

You know… I’d be able to tolerate Scepter’s kitten AA if they would just make the following QoL change for mesmer:

Clones no longer overwrite phantasms

I hate feeling locked out of using a skill (scepter AA, scepter block, phase retreat, mirror blade, OH sword block) because I dont want to overwrite one of my phantasms in PvE.

OH sword block summons a phantasm actually. It’s pretty decent. It’s the only phantasm affected by your damage modifiers.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

Mikkel.8427:

You know… I’d be able to tolerate Scepter’s kitten AA if they would just make the following QoL change for mesmer:

Clones no longer overwrite phantasms

I hate feeling locked out of using a skill (scepter AA, scepter block, phase retreat, mirror blade, OH sword block) because I dont want to overwrite one of my phantasms in PvE.

OH sword block summons a phantasm actually. It’s pretty decent. It’s the only phantasm affected by your damage modifiers.

OH sword 4 (the block) creates a Clone. Sword 5 creates the Phantasm.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Illusionary_Riposte

One of these days I’ll post a vid of why scepter in a DPS shatter build just rocks.

Until then, I love the suggestion of swapping the clone on AA with a better (aka much faster) AA channel PLUS add 1,200 range!

This would put it more on par with GS AA, and overall as a weapon possibly overtake GS as the premiere ranged weapon of choice. The burst from confusing images in a marauder/zerker amulet eclipses what is consistently possible with GS and even ranger rapid fire.

Mikkel.8427:

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

Mikkel.8427:

You know… I’d be able to tolerate Scepter’s kitten AA if they would just make the following QoL change for mesmer:

Clones no longer overwrite phantasms

I hate feeling locked out of using a skill (scepter AA, scepter block, phase retreat, mirror blade, OH sword block) because I dont want to overwrite one of my phantasms in PvE.

OH sword block summons a phantasm actually. It’s pretty decent. It’s the only phantasm affected by your damage modifiers.

OH sword 4 (the block) creates a Clone. Sword 5 creates the Phantasm.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Illusionary_Riposte

My brain just had a fart. For some reason I was thinking it summoned a phantasm even so I remember back in the days using s/s in PvP because I liked the fact that it had two clone sword summons ( this is way back in the day when I thought sword clones were so cool in combination with my weapon ).

Condi Mesmer is all about using shatters on cooldown. Scepter and staff fill that role nicely because they can create clones with ease. Scepter 3 is also pretty nice, just don’t expect your auto attacks to do anything useful.