Guild Wars 2

This is kinda a huge deal that doesn’t seem to be getting talked about!
if you use a power build you’ll be having a blast with greatsword, but then when you switch weapon…you don’t have any other ranged power weapon! :O

we have several decent power offhands, but the only power based main-hand is sword (which is melee) i don’t know about you guys but i don’t want to be taking my 15k hp zerker mesmer into melee XD

scepter has a single decent skill for power builds (3)
staff phantasm deals nice enough damage (but every other skill is condi)

so what are people using for power weapon besides GS?
what would people like to see? (p/p mesmer?!)

Heya

I have to disagree with the statement. The scepter is a hybrid weapon, yes, but it’s still a great power option for pve. The (single target) dps of this weapon is almost as high as the sword (traited around 80%).

You can’t expect a ranged power weapon to deal the same damage as a melee weapon. The scepter is a great power and condi weapon, I even use it in serval situations in raids! I always use it against Vale Guardian (where my highest crit with #3 so far was 26k – yes, 26k!) and also against Gorsy when we do no updraft (ranged when not breaking). For Sabby I only use it to go ranged in the last phase. You can even use it as a dps increase if you use skill #3, wells, #3, swap back.

There isn’t just “power” or “condi”. Most attacks deal both and even a power profession has 920 condi damage in raids.

Greez!
- Madame Le Blanc

scepter 3 does hit hard indeed, but after that you’re left jumping around with nothing to do (except weak autos) until you can summon your offhand phantasm or switch back to greatsword.

we need a dedicated MH power weapon, so we can atleast auto attack in between the weapon swaps.

i get that not all builds are either power or condi, but for a phantasm build you’re pretty heavily invested in power, if i spec into more condi damage my phantasms will be doing far less damage, undermining the whole point of speccing phantasms.

So:

Fay.2357:

Melee range scepter gets me 10 autoattack rotations in 31 seconds.
Sword gets me 10 autoattack rotations in 24 seconds.

So this means we’ve got .32 rotations/second of scepter and .42 rotations/second of sword.

A full rotation of scepter has a damage coefficient of 1.75
A full rotation of sword has a damage coefficient of 2.3 without boons and 2.1 with boons.

This means that scepter has a total damage rate of .56 coeff/second, while sword has .966 without boons and .882 with boons.

However, now we can work in confusing images. Confusing images has a coefficient of 2.5 over a duration of 2s, for a total coeff/second of 1.25. This does, however, take up the space of autoattacking, leaving us with a bonus coeff/sec during confusing images of .69.

With permanent alacrity, confusing images occurs for 2 seconds every 9.92 seconds. This means that the total coeff over 9.92 seconds for scepter will be 1.25*2+.56*7.92 = 6.9352.

Accordingly, the total coeff over 9.92 seconds for sword will be simply .966*9.92 = 9.582 without boons or 8.74 with boons.

However, this neglects the effect of malicious sorcery! Lets do that now.

Malicious sorcery is a 15% as increase, which increases the scepter coeff/sec from .56 to .644.

It also is a 20% cdr for confusing images, bringing the base cooldown to 9.6, or the alacritied cooldown to 6.336. With MS, the coeff/sec of confusing images now rises from 1.25 to 1.4375, and you’re able to use that for 1.7 seconds every 8.036 seconds.

So with all that, the final coeff over 8.036 seconds for scepter becomes 1.4375*1.7+6.336*.644 = 6.524.

The sword coeff over 8.036 seconds becomes 8.003 without boons, or 7.08 with boons.

So

Assuming all that math is correct, permanent alacrity on scepter with malicious sorcery allows it to get pretty close to sword autos on a target that has boons, while a bit farther from a target without boons. Sword is still definitively better though, assuming you’re able to maintain 100% uptime on actually autoattacking…which is actually a really awful assumption.

Things start to get a lot more complex once you take into account things like dodging, summoning phantasms, or bosses that move around. The less time spent actually autoattacking, the more scepter will gain on sword, since scepter damage is biased towards a skill with a cooldown, and sword is reliant on actual autoattacking. I’m not quite bold enough try and simulate it taking into account phantasm summons and such (I’ll let frifox do that if he wants to), but suffice to say that once all is said and done, sword and scepter are going to be very similar in terms of damage output.

All this was done with the old alacrity though, so the final numbers on scepter are going to be somewhat lower than what I calculated. With some rough guestimation though, you can reasonably say that with permanent alacrity + malicious sorcery, melee range scepter will do ~70-75% of the damage sword will in a power build. Given that ranged weapons are almost always lower damage than melee weapons, I honestly don’t think this is an issue. The real issue is that scepter damage drops the farther you are from the target, and we’ve been complaining about this forever.

This is one of the reasons why so many mesmers asked for Pistol. Alas, we have a shield.

Thank you fay with the great post – this was with the new MS?

Xyonon.3987:

Thank you fay with the great post – this was with the new MS?

It’s with the old MS, but the difference between old and new MS is incredibly tiny, so it won’t make any noticeable difference. Probably would end up as 1-2% change.

melee weapon are always fater than range weapon regarding power builds

look at thief sb and pistol compare to dagger and sword.

the more you are close the more you are in danger

Fay.2357:

Xyonon.3987:

Thank you fay with the great post – this was with the new MS?

It’s with the old MS, but the difference between old and new MS is incredibly tiny, so it won’t make any noticeable difference. Probably would end up as 1-2% change.

I think I have read that MS affects charging mantras as well. Is that true? Regardless of whether or not it is, in a power build, would using MoP, and recharging on the autos instead of confusing images make a difference? If nothing else, it is ranged AoE instead of single target at least.

Kobeathris.3645:

I think I have read that MS affects charging mantras as well. Is that true? Regardless of whether or not it is, in a power build, would using MoP, and recharging on the autos instead of confusing images make a difference? If nothing else, it is ranged AoE instead of single target at least.

Before the Chronomancer, Mesmers used Mantra of Pain as a replacement for their auto attacks, since it’s higher DpS (aslong as you don’t interrupt the 3rd aa of sword). So yea that’s what you should do, if you have space for Mantra of Pain that is. You also require Duelling for the Mantra trait to make it worth (should be baseline really …), so it’s rather a solo thing nowdays, nothing for Raids (so far) for sure.

Replacing any ranged autos with Mantra of Pain is always a great to make even GS and Staff good ranged options.

Greez!

Kobeathris.3645:

Fay.2357:

Xyonon.3987:

Thank you fay with the great post – this was with the new MS?

It’s with the old MS, but the difference between old and new MS is incredibly tiny, so it won’t make any noticeable difference. Probably would end up as 1-2% change.

I think I have read that MS affects charging mantras as well. Is that true? Regardless of whether or not it is, in a power build, would using MoP, and recharging on the autos instead of confusing images make a difference? If nothing else, it is ranged AoE instead of single target at least.

Yeah, MS affects the mantra, but you’ll basically never be in a situation where you can safely take the mantra without sacrificing too much. If in a raid, you’ve got 2 wells and SoI. If fractals and dungeons, you’ll either want the same or with feedback for reflects. Particularly in dungeons, there are very few fights that will last long enough to even bother thinking about charging antes for dps; you’ll just do your buffing rotation, autoattack a couple times, and the boss will be dead.

I have a genuine question:

Fay, do you have a folder full of text files of all these posts you have written, all ready to just be quoted?

apharma.3741:

I have a genuine question:

Fay, do you have a folder full of text files of all these posts you have written, all ready to just be quoted?

Sometimes if I have the presence of mind to realize I’ll want to quote one again, I’ll bookmark it. In this case, I simply remembered that I made it during a discussion that occurred after/during one of the HoT beta weekends. That gave me a pretty narrow time period to look in, and a quick bit of find in page lookups in my posting history located it.

thanks for the responses guys!
it seems like the 2 best options atm are either stick with my traits and throw Manta of Pain in there (which would be pretty good since i am using the mantra trait already for the heal)
or sacrifice one of the phantasm improving traitlines and take chrono so i can have faster recharge on scepter 3.

for now i’ll try rolling with mantra since it seems to fit my build most, but chrono does seem very appealing (if i decide to shatter more!)

thanks for the numbers Fay! and yes Quadox, MH Pistol would have been lovely XD