Guild Wars 2

Confusing Images and Cry of Fustration is pretty good when mixed together but otherwise its just low damage, non-existent utility.
Overall its anything but great. I’ve been using it purely because I want to use two offhands and I want a ranged option.

nofo.8469:

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.

Disagree. Completely.

There are plenty of reasons to use the scepter. For one, what if I don’t want to engage in melee. I prefer hovering at the edges of battle, letting my friends engage them in melee while I do my striking from a distance out of harms way. This is especially handy with Greatsword in the other weapons slot, cripple anyone that might be eyeballing you, blasting them away, then switch back and hammer them with more confusion and illusions.

I’m not saying it’s better than sword main-hand… but it’s not worse either. I suppose someone could make an argument for a possible few percentage points one way or the other in damage output for instance, but for me, I rely a lot on shattering illusions constantly, its my style, and I need the constant flow of illusions.

Plus, I love using confusion too, which I get more of with scepter.

In other words, you may PREFER sword, but that’s a far cry from being able to justify that sword is flat out better.

Which reminds me: to those who say that in pve the mesmer needs more bursty… what the heck do you think illusion shattering is? combine that with chaos storm, what else do you freakin need? LOL

Yes! I’ll even say it’s great.

After the patch I bought a rare scepter and torch for my 80 mes, and tested around orr. It was horrible. I retraited everything for it and had geared for condition damage from my staff setup, and even so it was sad. The occasional 4k confusion from cry of frustration/confusing images combo was fun, but hardly worth it compared to what you could do with any other weapon in that time.

A few days later, because I love mesmers so much I rolled another one for my alt. I completely ignored scepter until level 20 or so, when a green one dropped and I thought to myself what the hey, all weapons suck at this level, why not give it a go.

Wow. It is fantastic. In these lower levels you do not have any cooldown reduction traits for other weapons until tier 2 unlocks at level 40, save sword – that forces you to melee with your squishy low level mesmer and does not work for offhand skills(bug?).

No cooldown reductions for everything. No illusionary elasticity for extra bounces with greatswords and staves. No reflections for focus. No bleed on crit for your illusions. No deceptive evasion. All locked until level 40 and higher. Forget torch.

Scepter fills all these gaps, especially paired with offhand sword. #1 generates clones fast enough with the patch buff, #2 gives block and high damage counter attack/blind. #3 does great direct damage and with the cry of frustration combo it does great confusion damage(equal to about 6~8 #1 hits from what I’ve seen). #4 Another block. #5 iswordsman does good damage and has decent survivability for a phantasm with its jumping in and out attacks.

2 blocks (works nicely with retaliatory shield trait) + 2 dodges + ranged ensure great survivability. Decent damage from one skill and a nice phantasm. Low cooldowns that you don’t necessarily have to trait for. With this setup I even soloed a group event boss 3 levels higher than me without a problem.

Before I tried it I thought of getting to the mid levels as a chore and tried to speed through it as fast as possible. Now it’s become a breeze. I imagine when our more advanced traits start pouring in I’ll no doubt switch, but until then I’m having a jolly good time doing our dreaded low levels as a mesmer.

Same as Mind Stab update. Was trash, got updated and still is waste of space trash. So no, scepter is my less favorite weapon (including offhand weapons) a mesmer can wield.

They need to make the scepter a condition based weapon. The scepter clones need to apply confusion or burn/poison/weakened/cripple. The staff already has bleed,vulnerability and burn. Another alternative can be… making the scepter and the clones apply boons

I’ve been running two different builds in WvW with scepter lately – one is a staff / scepter + focus glamour build, the other is a staff / scepter + pistol shatter build. I’ve been having great success with them both. Tonight I’m going to play with staff / scepter + sword and see how that feels.

I think the scepter is undervalued. I find the block ability to be extremely handy. The auto attack, while certainly not a greatsword auto attack, can do nice damage with +precision, it generates clones for shatters and it doesn’t draw a big “the mesmer is right here” glowing line to my location. In a build where I’m stacking confusion, the #3 ability is pretty evil.

For WvW, I’m starting to like it more than mainhand sword. I have’t tried in in spvp yet – I’m guessing in the tight close up fights there it might lose some value.

the staff has every condition except fear (which it really should have fear on the chaos armour ability), so thats essentially a moot point.

i think ether bolt should have the confusion ability. It would make scepter clones useful, but not overpowered as the confusion isn’t made through all three bolts. Make the scepter clones cast one ether bolt and two ether blasts to have them go through the chain so that confusion doesnt stack infinitely.

i think that would work to give the scepter some very good use.

Scepter is honestly complete garbage. Hate to say it but it definitely needs a complete rework if it’s going to be decent. The block is a cute idea but in terms of deterring actual damage in an ACTUAL fight its a joke. Even running two blocks with Scepter/Sword you run into the same thing.

The scepter is just so slow and clunky and sacrificing any main hand for it is a waste. Do yourself a favor and don’t use it until it’s significantly changed.

Definitely agree. Scepter is crap.
At least, I mean, Scepter auto attack is garbage. #2 and #3 are absolutely fine.
Now, auto attack must be reworked to be condition based, to synergise with staff and with its #3.
I would stand for dropping the clone factory and add poison or something …. something useful must be done ^^

I run Staff primary with sword/focus for off-set (this is wpvp mind you).

There are times when I break out the scepter to mess around. See, If staff is primary, I don’t mind the scepter because I am swapping to my off set normally for the focus effects mostly. So that means I am at range with nothing to do with sword 1-2-3 while waiting for weapon swap to come up.

With scepter I can drop #3 for ok damage and confusion. #2 if something got on me ("granted not as good as blurred frenzy). By then I am back to staff.

But at least I can use #1 while kiting and waiting to swap back to ranged.

All that said, been playing MMOs since EQ1 and I found early on, I am just a much better player as ranged then melee. Just the way I am wired.

Add Confusion to Ether Clone, allow Sceptre Clones to use the entire Ether Bolt chain except its Ether Clone doesn’t conjure another Clone, change Illusionary Counter to inflict Confusion on Block instead of Power-based damage.

There, now the Scepter fills the niche of 1H condition damage weapon.

It’s still an incredibly situational weapon, therefore it will be underused. Is it viable? Completely. Is it anywhere near as viable as the other weapons? Sure isn’t.

Sceptor will always be viable if you know how to play.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEEp5MATUqs
B]

Delusion.9543:

Sceptor will always be viable if you know how to play.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEEp5MATUqs
B]

yeah in this video you can clearly see how the player is owning people with scepter………… not!

1. mainweapon is staff, used 90% of time
2. he uses scepter because of lack of other “condition”-weapons
3. imo he could do better with a sword/torch combo

you can say that a weapon is fine by watching a wvw-video in which someone is using that weapon……… not!

but: music in that video is awesome

Absolutely viable as a confusion stacker. I wouldn’t try to kill someone full to dead with just scepter, I do swap to staff quite a bit, but when setting up for a confusion shatter bomb… Scepter is by far the best way to go.