Guild Wars 2

“Scepter Skills: Projectile skills for the scepter have had their velocity increased by 33%.”

The activation time isn’t faster the projectile just goes faster. It is still trash weapon.

I feel scepter is viable as a backup weapon if you are heavy into condition damage. It offers a nice way to stack a good deal of confusion and a blind/block.

Brutal when applied proper in PvP, and nice results in PvE as well if you give it a chance.

scepter is viable for my gs mantra build where i have to keep my distance.

Scepter was always viable for me – Extra speed is a bonus.

‘Lets just make the staff worse and then add a lame buff to the scepter, then they’ll HAVE to change! muhahahahhahahahahaha’ – Love the logic.

It isn’t for me. It will remain in my bank, the only place it actually belongs.

zexion.5842:

The activation time isn’t faster the projectile just goes faster. It is still trash weapon.

But scepters attackspeed was depending on the projectile speed, wasn’t it ?
It was a “big” issue, that scepter’s #1 recharge (CD) was depending on the distance to the target. With +33% speed it should boost the scepter quite a bit. Gotta test this later.

It absolutely feels that the scepter attack speed (not just projectile travel time) is faster. I used it occasionally in WvW, and have wanted to use it more. I used it a lot last night and was having good success.

Nretep.2564:

zexion.5842:

The activation time isn’t faster the projectile just goes faster. It is still trash weapon.

But scepters attackspeed was depending on the projectile speed, wasn’t it ?
It was a “big” issue, that scepter’s #1 recharge (CD) was depending on the distance to the target. With +33% speed it should boost the scepter quite a bit. Gotta test this later.

Yes.

I am a scepter/focus user as primary (staff back up)..

It is a big improvement if you have used it a bunch before. The is an overall dps increase in the weapon now.

But if you did not like it before, you might not jump to it now. Doubt it will get sword users to swap over.

But for the few of us scepter lovers, it is a nice improvement.

I love the scepter and use it more often than the sword. First of all, I like using confusion a lot, and the parry ability is nice too. Add on continually restacking illusions… the one thing I DONT like is that it might end up overwriting my phantasms.

But I’m constantly spinning out and shattering illusions, so its been preferable to the sword for me. Especially since I try to keep my distance, usually using greatsword to keep the foes off me.

Now, that being the case, if I expect to be doing a lot of close quarters combat, then yeah, I’ll switch to sword main hand. But regardless, I’ve always preferred the scepter.

I thought phantasm could overwrite clones but not the other way around? In that case I think your phantasms are safe. I’ve recently started to really love the benefits of confusion in pvp so this is tempting, but the scepter was so underwhelming when I last used it that it’s hard to shake the feeling. It doesn’t seem like I have time in pvp to to wait for every 3rd strike for clone generation.

I believe if you have 3 phantasms a new clone will overwrite a phantasm.

For me though in general I’m trying to throw more and more shatters in. If you have a couple illusion skills cooled down it’s basically free damage to shatter and then toss them out.

Scepter/Sword defensive build is my personal favorite. To me, it’s an extreme active build that I really enjoy. Not active as in.. mash this button get this result, but active as in knowing when and how things work and how to best act and react. I don’t find that as much in the other builds.

This upgrade is a real bonus to me. It’ll allow me to do a few interesting things such as get an extra illusion out for a shatter before the mobs close in (in the case of a melee style mob) or to be able to get an extra shot in and illusion out before hitting the first block in the case of ranged.

I know it’s probably not the popular way to play.. but I enjoy it massively. So the point is, to each their own. You payed for the game, play it the way you want. The scepter buff is a good thing to us scepter"ers." But then again.. it was always viable to us.

Scepter is still a useless weapon in pve since you need burst damage in open world pve and sustain damage in dungeons but I believe that it is now a very strong weapon in WvWvW.

The scepter is not a worthless weapon. I do just fine with it, and that before the buff it just received.

Its not worthless but its far from optimal for everything.

It needs a redesign or a buff.

You can do “just fine” with a scepter

Or you can do more than “just fine” with every other weapon combination.

Just thought I would chime in here real quick.

Regarding clones replacing phantasms; clones will never replace a phantasm unless there are no clones up at the time. E.g., if you have 2 phantasms up and 1 clone up, the scepter skill will replace the current clone. However, if you have 3 phantasms up but no clones, the scepter will replace one of the phantasms with a clone.

Hope that clarifies things a bit.

You’re forced into a 1h weapon to use the focus.
In a condition build, esp for wvw where range is king, I’d choose scepter over sword. If you’re in PvE and you’re not yet 80 so you likely have mismashed gear and traits the sword is probably better.

Scepter roots me while I wait for the other guy to hit me…It roots a Mesmer..Think about that for a second :/

Usable but not useful. I’m still waiting for main hand pistol.

MH pistol would be so sexy, I would like a ranged 1h weapon that does damage.

Scepter feels much more comfortable now.
The loss of attack speed from being at range is no longer as punishing.

Cempa.3645:

Scepter roots me while I wait for the other guy to hit me…It roots a Mesmer..Think about that for a second :/

Scepter doesn’t root a mesmer at all. You can move during all three of the skills. You can’t dodge while channeling confusing images (without prematurely ending the skill), but that’s about it.

Personally, I love the scepter, but I recognize it could use a buff. Not necessarily something as over-the-top as adding confusion to ether bolt (unless it’s only a 1s stack), but maybe a bit more damage.

Ether bolt needs at least something to make the clones worthwhile. Currently every clone has an ability to do something, except scepter clones unless I am missing something. Sword clones stack vulnerability, GS clones are decent with SI, and staff clones are just sick. Not only that, but even with the change, GS and staff can spawn clones just about as fast as the scepter, too.

GS is hardly a speciality to phone home about, it shouldn’t be so indirect (more so since GS trait is in Domination, not Dueling).

So to sum it up, our Clones which have no secondary function:

• Scepter
• Greatsword

Our clones which have extremely marginal secondary functions:

• Spear

As far as adding something to Scepter clones goes.. how about, you know, if they summoned clones? And I don’t mean clones under my control which I shatter. I mean extra clones bound to them (and no, those in turn do not summon more clones :P ), which just disappear if the Clone is shattered away.

That way in theory you could have 12 Clones out with Scepter. Sure you can only shatter 3, but imagine the amount of confusion you could cause.

GS is hardly a speciality to phone home about, it shouldn’t be so indirect (more so since GS trait is in Domination, not Dueling).
So to sum it up, our Clones which have no secondary function:
Scepter
Greatsword
Our clones which have extremely marginal secondary functions:
Spear
As far as adding something to Scepter clones goes.. how about, you know, if they summoned clones? And I don’t mean clones under my control which I shatter. I mean extra clones bound to them (and no, those in turn do not summon more clones :P ), which just disappear if the Clone is shattered away.
That way in theory you could have 12 Clones out with Scepter. Sure you can only shatter 3, but imagine the amount of confusion you could cause.

Hell yes that would be awesome, it would make my on clone death build much better!

I still use sword/pistol and staff.. Even with the cooldown increases/nerfs, I still get great results in spvp. Managing cooldowns is the name of the game.

Looking at our traits I can come up with a healer / support build with scepter and mantras. Looks to me that is one way of using it if you want to heal and remove conditions!

Hmmm …

About time I consider working Scepter into a few of my specific builds.

Seems like it would be much less tedious with a smoother attack.

Tken.1986:

Usable but not useful. I’m still waiting for main hand pistol.

^ this, a gazillion time THIS!

I want to be able to equip both Lyss an Ilya as they simply scream Mesmer to me.

zexion.5842:

The activation time isn’t faster the projectile just goes faster. It is still trash weapon.

QFT

Since I have rebuild my traits (from 30 – 0 – 0 – 10 – 30) to 0 – 25 – 0 – 15 – 30 the scepter became a bit more useable.
It can kill enemies around the same time as my staff (using focus as secondary), sometimes incredibly fast and sometimes a bit slower. Granting my clones fury makes the bleed stack, getting them killed stacks confusion and finally blowing them up gives another 6 stacks of confusion. Combined with the scepter skill 3 this quickly results in the death of mobs. Using the scepter block to stay high hp and possibly throwing in a warden for extra damage/block or even using it as a suicide phantasm.

Tweek.3190:

Since I have rebuild my traits (from 30 – 0 – 0 – 10 – 30) to 0 – 25 – 0 – 15 – 30 the scepter became a bit more useable.
It can kill enemies around the same time as my staff (using focus as secondary), sometimes incredibly fast and sometimes a bit slower. Granting my clones fury makes the bleed stack, getting them killed stacks confusion and finally blowing them up gives another 6 stacks of confusion. Combined with the scepter skill 3 this quickly results in the death of mobs. Using the scepter block to stay high hp and possibly throwing in a warden for extra damage/block or even using it as a suicide phantasm.

I’ll be running 0/15/20/15/20. I think the trick to sceptre is taking Debilitating Dissipation (Chaos 15) in addition to the Sharper Images/Fury combo. Overwriting a clone also counts as killing it, so the 3rd strike has a chance to apply all sorts of nice things.

I cannot look right now, but doesn’t sharper images only apply to phantasms, not clones?

All illusions .

I’m more of a PvP guy, but I feel that the scepters would be much more interesting to me if Ether Clone ended up actually confusing and giving you a clone that cast the same rotation but with confusion at the third attack.

Tweek.3190:

It can kill enemies around the same time as my staff (using focus as secondary), sometimes incredibly fast and sometimes a bit slower. Granting my clones fury makes the bleed stack,

You can give your clones fury by using the staff, not the scepter. The Trait only affects Phantasms (and even that on a buggy way).

The problem is that sceptre’s clones are still useless for anything by shatter fodder. And if you’re running shatter then you’re probably better off using evasive deception + a more practical weapon option.

In PvP it has always had specialist uses, but in PvE it remains impractical. GS clones are not comparable as some people’ve suggested; GS clones strike the target multiple times per surge, which means they can stack multiple bleeds per cycle. Sceptre clones may only cause 1 bleed per attack cycle.

Ryuujin.8236:

The problem is that sceptre’s clones are still useless for anything by shatter fodder. And if you’re running shatter then you’re probably better off using evasive deception

This, in terms of raw clone generation.

Scepter simply does not fill the purported niche of clone spam except at level 1-6.

1. Deceptive Evasion kitten
2. Autoattack sucks in general; typical Mesmer play involves using as many non-AA abilities as possible.
3. Have to wait until the third AA to get a clone.
4. The ‘normal’ clone generation ability (2) of Scepter has a much longer cooldown than GS/Staff. As a result, Scepter is competitive with but not better than Staff/GS for clone warz.

As a result, Scepter is pretty “meh” if you look at it as a “clone spam” weapon. The block/blind/counter attack damage, and confusion beam have merit in their own ways. So those end up making a decision on Scepter in general.

For me, I still can’t get over the fact that the auto attack’s speed is not dependent on its internal cool down, but rather on travel time. I’ve been playing on other classes, and to my knowledge so far, I have yet to see another skill whose cooldown is limited by that factor. It definitely feels unintuitive to me.

I’m not sure how balanced it would be if this limitation was to be removed (The chain is 0.5 seconds, 0.5 seconds, 1 second, so it’s 2 seconds for a clone to poop out), but then it would definitely feel like a ranged weapon.

This is the main reason that when I start a new mesmer, I buy a sword right away.

I run a 30/20/0/0/30 build, and run it mostly as a shatter build. I pick up Greatsword/Scepter+Focus or sometimes Greatsword/Staff. I’d say both builds are equally viable depending on your play style. With the scepter+focus, I usually open with warden, drop curtain/void if the target/targets run away, then scepter 3 for damage and confusion stack. I’ll use scepter 2 to either block and incoming attack if I take threat, or to blind my target to give the warden increased up time. By the end of this rotation I usually have 1-2 extra clones. I will run in for a shatter (usually cry of frustration if the enemy has a lot of HP left) then weapon swap. I tend to use the scepter in a short-mid range to minimize delay in clone generation (just far enough to avoid direct damage).

I use the staff if I want a play style with more defensive options and scepter/focus for more offensive and utility options.

I think in the end, it depends on how you like to play.

I’ve been playing on other classes, and to my knowledge so far, I have yet to see another skill whose cooldown is limited by that factor. It definitely feels unintuitive to me.

It’s because Mesmer Scepter 1 is the only ranged chain (or one of the only? I don’t recall another off the top of my head).

Chain abilities require a wait between chains to detect the successful execution of the last step … most chains are in melee so the detection is close to immediate. Scepter … not.

EasymodeX.4062:

I’ve been playing on other classes, and to my knowledge so far, I have yet to see another skill whose cooldown is limited by that factor. It definitely feels unintuitive to me.

It’s because Mesmer Scepter 1 is the only ranged chain (or one of the only? I don’t recall another off the top of my head).

Chain abilities require a wait between chains to detect the successful execution of the last step … most chains are in melee so the detection is close to immediate. Scepter … not.

Necro scepter auto-attack is a ranged chain, but it doesn’t have a travel time/projectile to it.

Yea, I did a quick search on the Wiki and saw that the Ether Clone chain is the only chain that involves ranged projectiles.

I wonder if we can change the scepter chain to shoot smaller beams a la Great sword, or launch purple waves, or remove the hit detection from the chain overall.

However, if they implement this, the next question is to balance the fact that we now create clones every 2 seconds. Frankly, I don’t care if they increase the cool down to 3 or 4 seconds to go through the whole chain, because as long as I can rely on a constant rhythm of clone generation, I can time my usage of other skills better.

I definitely agree that scepter is pretty useless in pve, but confusion itself is pretty useless which may be a bigger issue for the class. I love the idea of having a confusion based weapon. however, generally you pick scepter or sword because you want to use focus (pve) or pistol (Pvp) I think the only two reasons you would pick scepter over sword are

1) its ranged
2) it applies confusion

the real problem is that because it requires autoattack to hit in order to chain its actually sort of a melee weapon that you can use ranged. the further you are from.the target the less effective the auto attack becomes. so realistically you.want to be really close in order to reduce chain time. but if that’s the case you may as well be using the sword as the auto attack is much higher dps, the 2 is in most situations better than a single block, and the 3 is amazing.

I lve tried really hard to make all the Mesmer weapons work but the only one that really feels rock solid to me is staff. my other weapon issues probably belong in another tread but I am pretty sure the scepter is the worst weapon the Mesmer has access to. speeding up projectile time is fine but it definitely doesn’t solve any of the deeper problems with the weapon.

I was thinking, the idea of each weapon having their own “style” is all cool, and I definitely support it, but I wouldn’t really promote it for Scepter/Sword specifically.

Why?
Because these select “attack range”.

The Scepter, being ranged, should lack the cleave-mechanic of the Sword, and probably it’s root.
In turn the Sword, while superior since it hits 3 targets on many attacks, should lack the range (duh?).

Beyond that I’d make the weapons identical, so that the choice of style is in the offhand (I’d use Focus = Support, Torch = Confusion/Stealth, the “trickster” weapon, Sword = Defence, Pistol = Offence).

And for the 2Hers, I’d put GS as a single-target long range sniper weapon, and staff as the Support one. In a way they’d be extrema of Scepter/Pistol → Greatsword and Either/Focus → Staff, for me.

Alas, that’d be a ton of rework.

Short term I’d give the Scepter clones a unique on-death / on-shatter effect.
As a clone-factory the weapon cannot work because it’s clones are so dull they only support a single build (on clone-death, on-shatter or shatter builds in general run better with Clone-on-Dodge due to more control and more burst).

So what can be done?

Ether Clone
Shoots a final bolt at the target, creating a Clone which attacks the target.
Ether Clones are highly unstable, and when destroyed or shattered will cause random conditions on nearby enemies.

Basically a built-in clone of the Trait, although probably with reduced duration since you can get 3 of it up quickly.

They need to increase the grace period for the chain steps so you can better use different skills.

It also still needs a considerable damage boost and the generated clones, like the greatsword one, need to do something.

At least greatsword clones are good at stacking bleed if you take sharper images, which makes them finally useful, but scepter clones don’t even have quick multi-hit attacks.

Counterattack on the scepter just feels wasted most of the time on PvE. It should apply something more than a blind on its alternative chain, and its cooldown should come down.

Torch needs fixes, and phantasmal warden needs some mobility help.

Our weapon viability choices and build choices are just rather limited in PvE at the moment. Illusionary persona shatter build is the only build I feel competitive in for PvE, and our support builds are sort of crappy since stealth rezzing is a waste in most dungeons as bosses love to spam lethal aoe on top of downed players anyways.

And, if you trait for some support from the inspiration line, your damage takes a nosedive into the nonexistent territory while still remaining squishier than DPS specced glass cannon warriors.

I think scepter has some kind of ghetto fix to the attack speed range problem (has been since launch, so may not work properly). What I mean is that it’s the only weapon with which you don’t have to hit anything to open the next step of its combo. Try it, you can use its full combo out of combat, except you naturally won’t spawn any clones.

If you ask me, scepter just has nothing going for it. It’s not a damage weapon since its autoattack is the worst among all the weapons (except maybe greatsword, whose damage lies in the other skills). The mechanic it spawns clones with is pretty much useless since clones are best spammed in stacks of many using instacast abilities, which mesmer has plenty of. The block feels good, but it’s worse than Blurred Frenzy both offensively and defensively. Confusing Images is a condition damage -based ability on a physical-based weapon on a fairly physical-based profession. Not to mention that the confusion from it is useless compared even to traited Mind Wrack, because Wrack is instant AoE and can actually catch someone by surprise.

For it to have some kind of niche, I’d turn scepter into a legitimate condition/harass weapon. Change the chain finisher from clone spawn to 3 stacks of confusion or something. Make Counterspell spawn a clone or two (so you have on-demand clones, a must for a confusion build). Shorten Confusing Images channel and/or have it drop all the stacks at the same time.