Guild Wars 2

I bang around in the PvE world dual weilding sword/pistol / \ scepter/focus. Don’t get me wrong, this combo has all your basic needs. High burst DPS, in-yo-face action as well the means to back off and take a breather.

However, given that my ranged offense is the scepter, I have come to have a love/hate/hate relationship with it.

My love of it stems from the fact that I can hit things at ranged when I need to. I don’t use the 1 auto attack for the clone generation, as my main source of DPS comes solely from my iwarden and iduelist. So, I don’t trait into illusions causing conditions if they are destroyed, and more into cause bleeds on crits, and pumping up my crit chances (as well as crit damage). My illusions bust out nearly 25 stacks of bleeds on their own. ^_^ How I love them.

Now, my beef with the scepter.

The auto attack, as mentioned many times, is slow, and clunky, and often targets the furthest thing away from you, even if that mob in front of you is beating you. I hate manually clicking my targets, but with scepter, and scepter alone, I find that I have to in order to not pull kittens I don’t want.

My other hate with the weapon is the 3* skill. While the ability confusion is almost invaluable without traiting condition damage, what really bites me about the skill is the SLOW ANIMATION.

I hit three…

My girl raises her hand in the air….

Twirls around her scepter just so <mimics a hilarious ebb of a baton twirler>

THEN casts her ray of doom.

Fear me oh mobs who can dodge me!!

Oh yeah, and if the mobs dodge, run out of the way, or out of range, you still cast this animation, at nothing, wasting a precious CD for a skill. Being so slow, in a zerg of…millions, you cannot afford this waste in animation delay.

Please, please, please make it so the characterthrustsoutherwandandannihilatesyouwithconfusion!

Its hard to hate just one thing about the scepter. It’s only redeeming quality is it’s aesthetic appeal. The beams channel and cooldown both are too long for its power. The auto attack is weak slow and feels unresponsive. The clones it produces lack the condition application of staff, or the quick bleed stacking of gs clones w/ sharper images. The block doesn’t fill a specific need and would be better replaced with something else.

The main problem with scepter is that it applies 5 confusion stacks.
This seems to have confused scrubs into thinking that they have a condition weapon on their hands. The confusing images alone deals about the same damage in condition damage or power configuration, but the #1 and #2 skills are completely power based.
They should decide if they want it to be condition weapon or power weapon and redesign accordingly.

You use the scepter (+focus) and complain about the ranged damage ? Why don’t you complain about sword/sword’s ranged abilities ?

The scepter is not a damager, but a clone factory. Effective in midrange when you have “on clone kill” effects. The other skills are nice but minor.
And Focus is also not a ranged weapon. Use Pistol.

So with focus you should use sword, and have absolutely no ranged damage?

I agree with ManCaptain.
I tend to think, that the problem with scepter/focus is the scepter. And using sword with focus really feels awkward.

I am not saying, we only have one build, because I use several. But they all seem to be mainly power+crit with varying clone-factory/abilities and focus on either defensive or offensive purpose … but I just can’t seem to fit in a condition-specc which is effective.

- Sword (MH): Fast close combat
- GS: Sniper (multi-hit)
- Staff: Buff/Debuff & AoE
- Scepter: Midrange & clone factory
- Torch: range confusion phantasm
- Focus: melee-multihit phantasm
- Pistol: range-multihit phantasm & dazeshot
- Sword (OH): melee fast phantasm

The only complaint I have about the scepter is that the #1 skills doesn’t cycle at regular intervals (like Guardian scepter does) but rather waits until the previous attack lands before firing the next. Everything else about the scepter is perfect IMO. I like the dual functionality of the #2 skill (block or blind), and the #3 skill doing direct channeled damage as well as putting a 5-stack of Confusion on the foe is huge.

If I go zerker gear, then Scepter’s channeled ability hits for 450 and 45% of the time for 900. I also get 5 confusion stacks hitting for 70 each, which add very little. Or I can go CD gear and get 5 confusion stacks hitting 170 each, but the channel itself hits for way less, not to mention block skill no longer hits for 2k (4k) and autoattack damage is much less.

So in the end you go zerker gear with scepter, and then that confusion might as well not be there (or rather’s I’d trade it for something else in a heartbeat).

I’m not a main Mesmer, but I really want to like the scepter.

I love how it focuses on defense, clones, and confusion. Too bad the auto attack is a bit weak and slow and while skill 3 may be slow too, at least it has burst! On Necro, I say “What is this burst you speak about?” It has potential.

wow, I did not mean for this topic to turn into a rant about ‘burst’ dps, or dps in general, or clone factories.

This is what I hate about the scepter, the slow, clunky animations that are actualy the hinderment to this weapon. As someone pointed out, the scepter 1* ability does not trigger until the previous hit has landed (missed or evaded/blocked etc)

the 3* skill is slow and under-performing in this aspect as well. From the time I press the 3* key to activate this skill, until it fires off, take approx 1.8-24s. That is huge in animation delay. And for it to be a channeled effect, prone to obstructions and LoS issues, the fact that the beam doesn’t fire off immediately is a huge disadvantage to the mesmer. Don’t get me wrong, the 5 stacks of confusion can be incredibly useful, but the channeled beam is not very strong either for being the burst skill of this weapon.