Guild Wars 2

Yes, you read that right. The Sceptre’s weapon trait is actually DETRIMENTAL to the Sceptre!

Okay, not really; but the point still stands. There’s currently two issues with Malicious Sceptre and its interaction with the Sceptre itself (the Sceptre’s own issues notwithstanding):

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1. Ether Bolt’s projectile must hit the target before the next skill in the chain is available for casting. This means the further away you are from your target, the longer the aftercast for each attack, and this is not affected by Malicious Sceptre’s attack speed increase.

TL;DR: Ether Bolt’s DPS is increased by much less than 15% depending on your range to your target.
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2. Malicious Sorcery reduces the duration of Illusionary Counter.

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So the result is Malicious Sceptre improves your DPS by much lower than 15% if you use the Sceptre at any range, and actually reduces the effectiveness of 33% of your Sceptre skills.

NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

So what’s the solution? Well the obvious one would be to remove the weird “there’s a projectile in flight” aftercast for Ether Bolt and make Malicious Sceptre not reduce the duration of blocking skills.

In the case of the former there might be compromises made because of Ether Clone, so perhaps it’s harder to fix than we’d imagine. For the latter, it should be an easy fix of just giving blocking skills a duration increase with MS to negate the speed bonus (if giving certain skills exceptions is technically challenging).

Okay, so now to tack my real agenda to this topic. The Sceptre needs buffs. Not just fixes, buffs. I like the concept of a mid-range hybrid weapon, but it falls into the “jack of all trades, master of none” trap and being 50% of the Mesmer’s MH options this cannot be ignored. So onto my suggestions:

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ETHER BOLT

Projectile speed increased. Sceptre Clones use the full Ether Bolt chain with a modified version of Ether Clone that doesn’t conjure a Clone.
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If fixing the “there’s a projectile in flight” aftercast issue isn’t possible then I’d settle with this. If it is possible then I’d still advocate this. Ether Bolt’s projectile is so slow you can outrun it. This is okay for Winds of Chaos as the Staff is really meant to be a close-ranged defensive weapon, but not for the Sceptre which is meant to be more mid-ranged offensive.

The second part of this suggestion is to improve the Sceptre’s condition pressure (which is currently really bad outside of bursts) as well as making Sceptre Clones more convincing: not that it really matters as Clones don’t fool anyone, but it’s the thought that counts!

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ILLUSIONARY COUNTER

No longer deals damage, inflict Torment, conjure a Clone or have a casting animation when Block is triggered. Now conjures a Phantasmal Tormentor on Block which fires a projectile that inflicts Torment on the target. Counterspell now also conjures a Phantasmal Tormentor on the first target it hits.
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There are a few reasons for these suggestions. First, the casting animation for the counterattack following the Block leaves you open to further hits, which goes against the defensive nature of the skill. An instant, animationless counterattack might be too much however, hence my suggestion to offload it to a Phantasm à la Echo of Memory.

Now, this obviously creates a problem: the Sceptre becomes the only weapon to give you access to two Phantasms in a set. However, I believe this is fine because 1. the Sceptre is meant to have superior Illusion generation, yet between DE, IR and CP Ether Clone is basically negligible; and 2. it’s a condition damage-based Phantasm, and we don’t really have many of those that are good so stacking them won’t do much.

As for making Counterspell also conjure an Illusion, this is to maintain the usefulness of the skill if the Block doesn’t get procced, again à la Echo of Memory.

I’d also like to suggest making the same changes to Illusionary Riposte with Phantasmal Swordsman, and replace Sword 5 with a new skill. Just for consistency’s sake (and a buff of course).

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CONFUSING IMAGES

The beam now penetrates your target. radius of AoE around the beam increased.
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The AoE nature of this skill is rarely apparent because 1. you need to target the furthest enemy to hit multiple enemies in a line and 2. the AoE “column” around the beam is extremely narrow, if you’re targeting a tall enemy it won’t hit short enemies no matter how perfectly they’re aligned.

I’m not sure how difficult it would be to make the beam penetrate through your target, if that’s not possible then whatever. But the radius of the AoE column needs to be increased. And of course I’d suggest these same changes to all beam attacks that can hit multiple targets (e.g. Spatial Surge).

I’ve found Malicious Sorcery bad in PvP and go with the [Ineptitude] trait instead.

I agree. This trait does feel pretty weak, especially considering it is a grandmaster. Speedy stomps are nice, but other than that it feels more like a QoL trait (gogo fast gathering!) more than a ‘build defining’ one.

For the scepter, I’d say a cloneless AA that applies a decent amt of condition pressure would be great and update the block so it summons a clone at the end of the channel regardless if you block something. That would make the increased speed meaningful, and make the scepter less of a niche weapon (kitten clones overwriting my phantasms in PvE!).

Then maybe tack some condition damage back onto the trait… Those changes would make me happy.

Mikkel.8427:

For the scepter, I’d say a cloneless AA that applies a decent amt of condition pressure would be great and update the block so it summons a clone at the end of the channel regardless if you block something. That would make the increased speed meaningful, and make the scepter less of a niche weapon (kitten clones overwriting my phantasms in PvE!).

I don’t think that a second Phantasm is the way to go and prefer something similar to this. To compensate for the loss of Clones on AA it could be (similar to Shield):

• Summon 1 Clone after channeling your attack.
• Summon 2 Clones when hit while channeling and apply Torment.
• Get rid of #2.2

Regarding the attack speed… I didn’t get it when they introduced it. It might be nice for #3 but that aside it doesn’t make any sense. Especially since they wanted to make Scepter a ‘tricky defender’.

They probably should have slapped the Scepter cooldown on Ineptitude so they could create a Phantasm GM trait. ‘staring at Rob’

I wouldn’t be opposed to removing Ether Clone and leave Illusionary Counter with Clone on Block + Clone on Counterspell. But I don’t think Ether Clone going away is on the table, and I like having more Phantasms: particularly condi ones.

Also, it’s a cunningly subtle suggestion to buff OH Sword as well.

This topic isnt going to get much traffic, its been talked about to death. Its not just mesmers either, every profession that can use a scepter complains about their obvious design flaws. Robert has commented on the Necro forum about improving their scepter and axe skills at a later date… maybe he’ll have a look at our scepter (again) also.

I think it’s more the fact that most people discount the Sceptre as a condi weapon, while people who play Condi Mes already use the Sceptre because they don’t have any other options.

In reality though the Sceptre is a hybrid weapon, equally effective in Power and condi builds. If more Mesmers understood this I think there’d be a greater push to fix/buff it.