Guild Wars 2

Sure, it was recently buffed. It now does even more condition damage, yay!

But it’s in the Inspiration line, which buffs healing power and vitality. Additionally, no other trait in that line augments the Mesmer’s ability to inflict conditions. Not one. The trait is Master tier in a line whose purpose is antithetical to its own, and with no meta to support speccing for it.

However, since the condition damage bonus only inherently affects attacks which affect one target at a time and the recharge buff only affects one skill for the whole weapon, I guess it’s not that big of an issue. Except that there always seems to be someone on the forums lamenting the mess that is the Mesmer’s scepter, and I guess right now that’s me.

I agree it’s misplaced; tbh I think Malicious Sorcery should be swapped with Cleansing Conflagration. Torch skills removing conditions doesn’t really fit thematically with Domination at all either; swapping them around would make for some very interesting builds, I think.

Or maybe swap with phantasmal haste since there are so many passive traits in the inspiration line to buff phantasms. I think the torch skill is misplaced too.

A lot of our traits are misplaced. This is intentional sadly.

0/20/30/20/0 blackwater variant with apothecary’s gear is very viable and super sustainy, though does less damage without as high crit.

That said, the trait is still completely misplaced.

Valarauka.2719:

I agree it’s misplaced; tbh I think Malicious Sorcery should be swapped with Cleansing Conflagration. Torch skills removing conditions doesn’t really fit thematically with Domination at all either; swapping them around would make for some very interesting builds, I think.

Oh come on, that’d completely break my Scepter+Torch.

(edit)
Torch trait makes sense where it is because it comes with +Expertise from the trait line. Plus Domination needs some reason to spec into it as a condition-build, no? Scepter in Inspiration feels misplaced, but is it really?
For 10 points, I’d pick Mender’s Purity or Medic’s Feedback. They’re great in condition builds as they are in others. 20 point I would then pick Malicious Sorcery, 30 point are again two defensive traits so they work equally well in either build.
That Vitality and Compassion are currently both rather weak is not something which lies with the position of our Scepter trait. This needs a fix at a game level.

Carighan.6758:

Torch trait makes sense where it is because it comes with +Expertise from the trait line. Plus Domination needs some reason to spec into it as a condition-build, no? Scepter in Inspiration feels misplaced, but is it really?

Eh. The Domination trait is generally about damage while Inspiration is about support, healing, and phantasms — the scepter, being a mainhand, doesn’t even have a phant. And adding condition removal (as opposed to condition damage) is definitely defensive vs offensive in nature.

Also, the scepter applies just as many conditions as the torch does, and they’ve got longer base durations so they’d benefit more from the expertise than the torch does. Thematically I think it makes a lot more sense for them to be swapped.

And I can think of some really strong scepter+pistol condition builds with 20/20/10 as a base if that happened.

I find the notion that each line must be fully focused on something really weird, then. Maybe that’s why I think different about it.

I would ideally like a line to be about X, say, Phantasms for Inspiration. Yet assuming I’m not into Phantasms, I should still have reasons to spec into the line, and good ones at that. Stats would be one thing ofc (Domination is yay here, Inspiration is nay).

So if Inspiration is about Phantasms – as per the Minors – then it’s selectable traits should useful independent of whether I’m in a Phantasm-build or not. Check. They are.
Likewise Domination is about direct damage and overpowering. So if I’m not in a high direct damage or interrupt build, it should still be useful. Check, although much less so than Inspiration.

Really, to me the issue is that I want each spec line to offer something to each role I want to build. As in, I want to build a shatter mesmer, then obviously Illusion should be the most appealing to me, but each line should have things drawing me to it. For many things this works, on many classes. Just not always.

What I don’t perceive as a solution is resorting the traits so I can take the one perfect spec because everything is closely coupled and nicely sorted. That just means traits become superfluous, as there’d be no choice involved any more.

But that’s I think the difference. I find it positive that I cannot spec Scepter and Torch together in most builds. That’s a benefit to me, there’s a tradeoff. It’s not quite perfectly balanced yet (Domination is nearly always the better pick, but that’s largely because of the stats being unbalanced at a basic level), but it works out.