Guild Wars 2

Seems like the animation time before the channel is unnecessarily delayed before the damage/confusion begins. Is this on purpose?

It’s always been rather slow, unfortunately. It used to only be single target, but sometime earlier this year, Anet made it a line AoE. I hope that casting animation time would shorten in the future.

Everything about the scepter feels just a touch to slow. The auto-attack travels slowly. The block has a delay before the clone triggers. And the channeled attack has a pretty long delay before it starts doing it’s damage.

Still, it’s my preferred weapon to pair with the pistol because I prefer to fight from range. So it’s a matter of getting used to it, but it would be awesome if it were just slightly faster.

If you have a condition damage build, the torment on block can do a lot of damage.

As much as I love the Scepter for that torment block and not being lumped with main-hand sword all the time, it sometimes does feel like I’m wielding a rather sparkly feather duster. Ether Bolt chain is ridiculously slow, easy to dodge and incomplete (there’s been no compensation for the confusion removal). Confusing Images is also far too slow for potentially just 5 stacks of confusion if your opponent happens to not dodge the great big pink beam slapping them in the face. The piercing beam affect is interesting but buggy and also wholly impractical compared to traditional AoE effects as it’s very rare that 4 people will line up in front of your target so they can soak up some of that confusion (unless you’re PvEing). It doesn’t particularly help that confusion damage is so pathetic in both WvW and sPvP now.

I still consider Mesmer Scepter a work in progress. It has quite some way to go before it’s as solid as Necro or Guardian scepters.

The attack is also divided in five hits, each one triggers retaliatation.
If the enemy has enough power, you’ll probably receive more damage than you deal (this is especially true if you run a condition build with rabid, killing the raw damage of the skill for a condition that can be cleansed or avoided by doing nothing).
The skill is probably better with power gear than condition damage.
Also, as you said, the slow animation. This skill should need some love.

The entire weapon is sluggish, that’s why it sees so little use.

1. Slow flying missiles with an extreme arc that are easy to dodge, along with the 3rd attack having a very long animation.

1. A channeled effect that prevents you doing any other attacks and then has a very slow counter-attack animation (and it used to be even slower).

1. A slow wind-up/delay on a channel.

So not only do all if the skills involve a slow animation, but also similarly sluggish methods of delivering the effect (slow high arcing missiles & channels).

This is on top of being a rather disjointed weapon so far as it’s role.

The pace of the weapon is slow, yes. It’s simply a matter of getting used to it.

Once you do, and if you build right, you can wreck absolutely any class and build with it. There is a large gap between an initiate to the weapon, and a skilled user. Once you ascend that “slowness” becomes irrelevant.

eldenbri.1059:

Everything about the scepter feels just a touch to slow. The auto-attack travels slowly. The block has a delay before the clone triggers. And the channeled attack has a pretty long delay before it starts doing it’s damage.

Still, it’s my preferred weapon to pair with the pistol because I prefer to fight from range. So it’s a matter of getting used to it, but it would be awesome if it were just slightly faster.

If you have a condition damage build, the torment on block can do a lot of damage.

I agree with everything you mentioned. It is just kind of slow overall, and I wish that Anet would take a look at it and clean up the animations or reduce the cast times on the #1 chain/speed up projectiles. I also prefer to attack from range so I’m limited to this weapon as the only ranged MH we have.

Ross Biddle.2367:

The pace of the weapon is slow, yes. It’s simply a matter of getting used to it.

Once you do, and if you build right, you can wreck absolutely any class and build with it. There is a large gap between an initiate to the weapon, and a skilled user. Once you ascend that “slowness” becomes irrelevant.

You can use that exact same argument with pretty much everything. It ignores balance and feasibility in lieu of “if you play well”.

You could use the same logic to justify never using your utility skills or swapping weapons. Neither is a balanced game approach but it’s entirely feasible for someone to do well despite because they are a good player.

P.S. One tip I’ll give the OP is that in sPvP you can use the Torch or Decoy stealth to cover the wind-up animation of skill #3. Though, personally with Torch in sPvP I almost always swap to staff during the stealth so I can drop Chaos Storm and do AoE Chaos Armor.

5 Stacks of Torment. Enough said. That’s sadly what Scepter is about, and that’s about it, but quite frankly it’s probably enough.

I do hope they fix the speed and flow of the auto-attack and #3 channel, but you can bet your bum it’ll be combined with a nerf to our 5 stacks of Torment. It just wrecks people in 1v1.

I think that was ANets quick fix for Scepter basically. I expect they will improve the other 2 Scepter abilities in the future, and then tone down the Torment to ~3 stacks.

Its so slow i wish they removed this skill completely and replaced it by something useful, especially since confusion nerf. No skills in this game should have such a slow casting time… didn’t anet want gw2 to be fast paced and those long casting time skills seen in gw1 gone forever? For such a long casting time, i wouldn’t even take the skill if they added poison and torment to it, no1 is stupid enough to not dodge/teleport out of range on this crappy skill. That plus im wasting time activating this skill instead of multiple others.

The only way to make this skill useful is add immobilize with each hit (or at least daze) but then it will make everyone qq

Windwalker.7421:

5 Stacks of Torment. Enough said. That’s sadly what Scepter is about, and that’s about it, but quite frankly it’s probably enough.

I do hope they fix the speed and flow of the auto-attack and #3 channel, but you can bet your bum it’ll be combined with a nerf to our 5 stacks of Torment. It just wrecks people in 1v1.

I think that was ANets quick fix for Scepter basically. I expect they will improve the other 2 Scepter abilities in the future, and then tone down the Torment to ~3 stacks.

The absolute only place i use a scepter is when defending a keep in wvw. GS as main damage and Scepter/Focus to annoy with pulls and free torment. I cannot see a single other place in the whole game where this weapon would be a better choice than a sword or staff

Its attack is almost as telegraphed as a big Warrior hit, with nowhere near the same impact. A big wind-up for a slow, mid-range, multi-hit attack is pretty frustrating.

That said, it deals really nice damage if you can get every one of its damage hits to land. It’s just a pity that this will rarely ever happen in most PvP / WvWvW settings unless you’re attacking someone who doesn’t or can’t dodge.

I run a condition damage/duration build, and I love my scepter/pistol combo. That said, yes, it is rather slow. It probably helps that my mesmer is PvE; if I went into WvW, I would probably take a staff either in place of or in addition to scepter.

Dastion.3106:

Ross Biddle.2367:

The pace of the weapon is slow, yes. It’s simply a matter of getting used to it.

Once you do, and if you build right, you can wreck absolutely any class and build with it. There is a large gap between an initiate to the weapon, and a skilled user. Once you ascend that “slowness” becomes irrelevant.

You can use that exact same argument with pretty much everything. It ignores balance and feasibility in lieu of “if you play well”.

You could use the same logic to justify never using your utility skills or swapping weapons. Neither is a balanced game approach but it’s entirely feasible for someone to do well despite because they are a good player.

P.S. One tip I’ll give the OP is that in sPvP you can use the Torch or Decoy stealth to cover the wind-up animation of skill #3. Though, personally with Torch in sPvP I almost always swap to staff during the stealth so I can drop Chaos Storm and do AoE Chaos Armor.

Right. So you’ve correctly identified that it’s a L2P issue, and a legit one at that.

I always find it funny when people gripe about scepter 3’s auto chain being dodgeable, either completely or partially. Yet all players now know that when facing a mesmer with a sword, it’s essential to dodge sword 2’s iLeap to shut out the mesmers burst. I always see enemy players pull this off without so much as a yawn.

Funnily enough, a point blank iLeap from stealth can help catch an enemy off guard, which was Dastions solution to landing a good confusing images.

In conclusion, if built right there’s nothing wrong with the scepter in general, only with the player.

I love my Scepter and would fancy myself one of those “skilled” users of it but I have a different issue with #3. And that is the angle to the opponent at which point the beam gets cut off or doesn’t activate. I am not saying it should fire off behind you that is silly but it really does seem to me that the angle to the enemy that is acceptable for the ability to fire off is a tad small. I run a stealth healing condition build so usually before I use it I get some distance and stealth myself so I have a more of a chance to hit.

Though speeding it up a bit would not make me angry in any way, shape or form.

Hexxen.7216:

I love my Scepter and would fancy myself one of those “skilled” users of it but I have a different issue with #3. And that is the angle to the opponent at which point the beam gets cut off or doesn’t activate. I am not saying it should fire off behind you that is silly but it really does seem to me that the angle to the enemy that is acceptable for the ability to fire off is a tad small. I run a stealth healing condition build so usually before I use it I get some distance and stealth myself so I have a more of a chance to hit.

Though speeding it up a bit would not make me angry in any way, shape or form.

Speeding up the cast time/animation might be a good thing, but the hit speed would have it’s drawbacks. With a single dodge roll the target would be able to dodge more of it’kittens. As to your problem with the angle, I wholeheartedly agree. It needs to be increased, or adjustments made to better incorporate movement while strafing (The angles become far more unclear at this point).

Hexxen.7216:

I love my Scepter and would fancy myself one of those “skilled” users of it but I have a different issue with #3. And that is the angle to the opponent at which point the beam gets cut off or doesn’t activate. I am not saying it should fire off behind you that is silly but it really does seem to me that the angle to the enemy that is acceptable for the ability to fire off is a tad small. I run a stealth healing condition build so usually before I use it I get some distance and stealth myself so I have a more of a chance to hit.

Though speeding it up a bit would not make me angry in any way, shape or form.

This is just a problem or game design choice with Gw2.

This is the only mmo I’ve ever played that won’t let you keep a right angle to a enemy while attacking. In most mmo’s I’ll kite while having my camera at a 45’ angle from them meaning I’m strafing away while still attacking.

In Gw2 it seems you need to keep almost a 35’ angle to keep some in target. I find this really nerfs kiting in general without the use of blinks stealth etc.

If they made it like other mmo’s where you can have a 45’ angle then I bet you we would see dps rangers become useable.

Rangers needs stealth because they can’t really kite. Hard to kite when you have to be constantly turning inwards. Works on mesmer because we have target drops, blink, etc.

I’m not really sure why I’m the only one who sees this design flaw.

Godmoney.2048:

Hexxen.7216:

I love my Scepter and would fancy myself one of those “skilled” users of it but I have a different issue with #3. And that is the angle to the opponent at which point the beam gets cut off or doesn’t activate. I am not saying it should fire off behind you that is silly but it really does seem to me that the angle to the enemy that is acceptable for the ability to fire off is a tad small. I run a stealth healing condition build so usually before I use it I get some distance and stealth myself so I have a more of a chance to hit.

Though speeding it up a bit would not make me angry in any way, shape or form.

This is just a problem or game design choice with Gw2.

This is the only mmo I’ve ever played that won’t let you keep a right angle to a enemy while attacking. In most mmo’s I’ll kite while having my camera at a 45’ angle from them meaning I’m strafing away while still attacking.

In Gw2 it seems you need to keep almost a 35’ angle to keep some in target. I find this really nerfs kiting in general without the use of blinks stealth etc.

If they made it like other mmo’s where you can have a 45’ angle then I bet you we would see dps rangers become useable.

Rangers needs stealth because they can’t really kite. Hard to kite when you have to be constantly turning inwards. Works on mesmer because we have target drops, blink, etc.

I’m not really sure why I’m the only one who sees this design flaw.

Might be a design flaw but I have only ever noticed a significant problem with the angles on the #3. Everything else I do fine. I honestly think the #3 is actually less than even you say though.