Guild Wars 2

Simply put the incoming scepter change with torment.
Now I have played many classes on many mmo’s and this must be the only time I have seen a professions community go against a buff because it would make THEMSELVES to OP. I mean that a community would do that is just amazing and so cool.
I just watched Helseth’s Twitch post about the upcoming changes and he is against the buff. He is arguably one of the best Mesmer’s in the world and he is against this change.
I am no expert on Mesmer I am just a gammer who loves the proffesion and wants to get better at it and likes the challenge of the class.
So I will ask my fellow Mesmer’s what buff should the dev’s give to scepter?

Thanks for reading this

Sweeps

I personally think it’s an awesome buff. We currently only have 2 ways of applying torment: Scepter 2 (hoping they attack us when we use it) and a grandmaster trait. So we really don’t have that many ways of applying a really cool condition in my opinion. I think it will be a lot more fun and give people a reason to use scepter more often. I have ran scepter for a long time anyway, so I am glad one of my main weapons just happens to be getting an extra effect.

dont get me wrong scepter needs a buff but adding torment to every auto attack and then the clones add it also thats like perma torment ant that abit to OP. Its one of if not the strongest condition available

Helseth’s Twitch post is shameful and self-serving. He does not even attempt to present any hard evidence to back his opinion and instead resorts to sensationalism and wild conjecture. That many in the Mesmer community have thoughtlessly bought in to this with little to no free thought leaves me more disappointed in the Mesmer community than ever. He glosses over the buffs to his own build while wildly blowing out of proportion the effects that the scepter buffs will have.

If the community was actually worried about conditions on clone auto attacks being too strong, I would imagine that folks would have dug up some numbers on the effects that the IE change will have on staff clone autos, which btw also give might and fury to Allies. But somehow this little tidbit has fallen by the wayside in the great condi Mesmer debate and was nearly glossed over in Helseth’s video with only a quick mention at the very end.

The fact remains that as is, scepter could use some TLC. The planned buff is unimaginative and won’t fix many traditional Mesmer shortcomings, such as ability to focus clone/phantasm damage in group fights; however, as is there is almost no reason to use the scepter auto attack except as filler. I remember a Mesmer community that used to be filled with intelligent individuals who thought for themselves, and that community might have disagreed with this change but then offered fresh and innovative ideas for improving this weapon. Instead we get “OMG skilless passive 4-4-6 uses this QQ no buffs,” the whole point of this patch is to open scepter as a viable weapon for other builds, but as a community we seem to have become too elitist to see the forest from the trees.

Completely agree with Feaduin. I will say that Helseth, while amazingly good, is a bit of a pompous kitten . I’m pumped for the iLeap, GS 3 and mantra buffs though. And while I don’t like the condi play style, I may have to give it a shot with the torment AA to see if it really will be OP.

Justin.5231:

I personally think it’s an awesome buff. We currently only have 2 ways of applying torment: Scepter 2 (hoping they attack us when we use it) and a grandmaster trait. So we really don’t have that many ways of applying a really cool condition in my opinion. I think it will be a lot more fun and give people a reason to use scepter more often. I have ran scepter for a long time anyway, so I am glad one of my main weapons just happens to be getting an extra effect.

You’re clueless. You see this change as a “cool extra effect” while it will make Scepter totally overpowered. A lot of people don’t realise it and I hope Anet manages to spot the beginners voicing their opinions on this forum.

To answer you, OP, what is stupid is the UPTIME of the condition. You will be able to have several stacks of torment 100% of the time on the target with ONLY spamming 1. The idea of the change is just…

Maybe make that only the last skill of the chain applies a big chunk of Torment aswell as creating the clone. So you actually have to time your autoattack (with dazes, watch your opponents endurance bar etc) so the guy doesn’t dodge/block it.

I agree with Feaduin and FunkyBassline. Though I could copy and paste my response from the Mesmer Poll: Scepter Auto Attack Torment post from Chaos Archangel, I’ll just do a summary instead.

People are following this belief that we will be able to keep up 3 scepter clones that will keep up torment stacks. This is in part to Helseth who made a video showing 3 scepter clones auto attacking a golem. If you are able to keep up 3 clones constantly, why is every mesmer not running signet of the ether that has much higher sustainability than ether feast? Because in practice, you will never have this optimum set up unless you are facing AFK people. Are you going to only stay in scepter to have this maximum uptime? No, of course not. Lets say that it is not the clones who have the high uptime in torment stacking but the mesmer. Really you are spending 2-3 seconds spamming auto attacks to get 2 stacks of torment that will last 2 seconds after your chain. What happens if they have any condition removal? You just wasted 2-3 seconds doing nothing and that is assuming that your opponent isn’t doing anything this whole time.

Really it is very disappointing to keep hearing some iteration of “Helseth said so” for all the reasons that Feaduin pointed out.

I swear, people playing our class forgets how easy it is to create clones. You won’t have 3 Scepter clones up at all times, but you will constantly have some of them up, creating a stream of short-duration Torment on your target. You will switch weapons roughly every 10 seconds, at least if you’re effective, though things like stealth may affect that enough for you to stay on a single weapon for longer. Not everyone against the change is basing it on some guy named Helseth saying something about it though.

Having Torment applied on 2 out of 3 attacks is stupid. It won’t last forever, no, it’s short in duration, yes, but it’s enough to be overpowered. You can dodge up clones instantly, don’t forget that.. it’s not like you must wait for that third hit of the Scepter. There are also ways of increasing the duration. Plus this is something that just makes PU even better, and we don’t need that. PU builds were already strong enough.

Justin.5231:

I personally think it’s an awesome buff. We currently only have 2 ways of applying torment: Scepter 2 (hoping they attack us when we use it) and a grandmaster trait. So we really don’t have that many ways of applying a really cool condition in my opinion. I think it will be a lot more fun and give people a reason to use scepter more often. I have ran scepter for a long time anyway, so I am glad one of my main weapons just happens to be getting an extra effect.

Torment is unique condition that was first interduced for necros,it is extreamly stupid that mesmers apply it like common bleed,and even better spammable than warrior sword AA thanks to the clones….this is broken….much broken…you shouldnt have it more than the scepter 2..the trait is okish since it forces you to use other build,but the AA is just stupid.

Aluren.1896:

I agree with Feaduin and FunkyBassline. Though I could copy and paste my response from the Mesmer Poll: Scepter Auto Attack Torment post from Chaos Archangel, I’ll just do a summary instead.

People are following this belief that we will be able to keep up 3 scepter clones that will keep up torment stacks. This is in part to Helseth who made a video showing 3 scepter clones auto attacking a golem. If you are able to keep up 3 clones constantly, why is every mesmer not running signet of the ether that has much higher sustainability than ether feast? Because in practice, you will never have this optimum set up unless you are facing AFK people. Are you going to only stay in scepter to have this maximum uptime? No, of course not. Lets say that it is not the clones who have the high uptime in torment stacking but the mesmer. Really you are spending 2-3 seconds spamming auto attacks to get 2 stacks of torment that will last 2 seconds after your chain. What happens if they have any condition removal? You just wasted 2-3 seconds doing nothing and that is assuming that your opponent isn’t doing anything this whole time.

Really it is very disappointing to keep hearing some iteration of “Helseth said so” for all the reasons that Feaduin pointed out.

What does it matter if you mainting clones or not ?!?! it requires one AA from a clone to apply dmg better than any other clone in our ar-[s]-enal.You can spam clones all day and kite ppl and kill them like that without using any attack of your own!

@aluren
Arguing that “if you spend 2-3 sec spamming aa torment is cleansed you’ve wasted 2-3sec” is like those arguing that you can dodge glassbow ranger AA to avoid 4k auto attacks. Sure you can, however it is a Auto Attack. If you cleanse the mesmer will instantly reapply and most likely nuke you with a million confusion stacks while at it. Any effect or output on a AA without a caveat is extremely strong.

Case in point – warrior sword AA. No probs keepin up 800bleed/sec even in celestial. Wanna kite the warrior? Sword 2 + zerk stance says “not happening anytime soon”.

Torment on AA would be great and fair IF there was a requirement. However the way mesmer works you got three choices, move, not move and eat shatter, run. With torment option 1 and 3 is gone. Use rune of torment + lemongrass and you instantly get 4-5 sec torment per attack

Prysin.8542:

@aluren
Arguing that “if you spend 2-3 sec spamming aa torment is cleansed you’ve wasted 2-3sec” is like those arguing that you can dodge glassbow ranger AA to avoid 4k auto attacks. Sure you can, however it is a Auto Attack. If you cleanse the mesmer will instantly reapply and most likely nuke you with a million confusion stacks while at it. Any effect or output on a AA without a caveat is extremely strong.

Case in point – warrior sword AA. No probs keepin up 800bleed/sec even in celestial. Wanna kite the warrior? Sword 2 + zerk stance says “not happening anytime soon”.

Torment on AA would be great and fair IF there was a requirement. However the way mesmer works you got three choices, move, not move and eat shatter, run. With torment option 1 and 3 is gone. Use rune of torment + lemongrass and you instantly get 4-5 sec torment per attack

lol,if the warrior will hacve to waste zerk stance on AA it means it is broken.

“Having Torment applied on 2 out of 3 attacks is stupid. It won’t last forever, no, it’s short in duration, yes, but it’s enough to be overpowered. You can dodge up clones instantly, don’t forget that.. it’s not like you must wait for that third hit of the Scepter. “ – Absconditus.6804

It is NOT enough to be overpowered. As pointed out in:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Mesmer-Poll-Scepter-Auto-Attack-Torment/
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Scepter-AA-buff-is-a-terrible-idea
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Illusionary-Elasticity

by multiple people including Pyro that Staff Clones with IE will be doing more damage than Scepter clones. Scepter projectiles are NOT homing compared to Staff clones which means you will be able to move out of their damage. Torment is also 75% the condition damage of a bleed if the target isn’t moving and you are able to stack way more bleeds than you will torment.

“There are also ways of increasing the duration.” – Absconditus.6804

Currently staff clones do not inherit condition duration. Unless it is a fix that appears with the scepter clones getting condition duration, there will be no way for you to increase the duration of torment.

“Plus this is something that just makes PU even better, and we don’t need that. PU builds were already strong enough.” – Absconditus.6804

Strong enough where?

WvW roaming? You can run away from a PU the same as before. A PU Mesmer putting 1-2 torment stacks on you as you run away is not going to kill you. If you duel a PU Mesmer…well you are dueling a PU Mesmer regardless of this scepter buff and are already at a huge disadvantage.

Hotjoins? Not going to even touch that.

Solo queue? Really this will have no impact of higher levels of Spvp because PU is not able to hold a point while in stealth. If you are thinking “Well with this torment buff they will be able to decap”…a bunker sitting on a point does not need to move, meaning that your torment is doing 75% bleed damage.

Tpvp? Will not impact Tpvp because they have no ability to rotate out and teams will just rotate around you.

“What does it matter if you mainting clones or not ?!?! it requires one AA from a clone to apply dmg better than any other clone in our ar-[s]-enal.You can spam clones all day and kite ppl and kill them like that without using any attack of your own!” Sandrox.9524

Please read what I just posted on clone damage.

“Arguing that “if you spend 2-3 sec spamming aa torment is cleansed you’ve wasted 2-3sec” is like those arguing that you can dodge glassbow ranger AA to avoid 4k auto attacks. Sure you can, however it is a Auto Attack. If you cleanse the mesmer will instantly reapply and most likely nuke you with a million confusion stacks while at it. Any effect or output on a AA without a caveat is extremely strong.” – Prysin.8542

Except for the fact that unlike a glassbow ranger whose attacks are homing, scepter clones are NOT. Just A MILLION confusion stacks? You mean 5 stacks with a 3 second CHANNEL? How does another ability on the scepter add to your argument that the AA is OP? I could also say that Engis can also stack chill/poison/bleed and burn on you in those same 3 seconds with grenades. That is four conditions for you putting on one. (Even just saying they use one ability, that is still poison + burn for your one condition of confusion).

“Torment on AA would be great and fair IF there was a requirement. However the way mesmer works you got three choices, move, not move and eat shatter, run. With torment option 1 and 3 is gone. Use rune of torment + lemongrass and you instantly get 4-5 sec torment per attack.”

I’m just gonna assume that you don’t play Mesmer. Torment stacking scepter auto attack AND shatter? Torment shatter will not become viable postpatch with a 2 second duration increase on a grandmaster trait. If they are condition damage, their shatters will do no damage. Vice versa with if they are shatter their condition damage will do no damage. Lemongrass is a condition DECREASE not INCREASE. Furthermore, our only other condition clone (Clone) currently does NOT inherit condition duration increase from the Mesmer which means that unless there is a change post patch, Scepter clones will also only have a base duration of 2.5 seconds.

“lol,if the warrior will hacve to waste zerk stance on AA it means it is broken.” –Sandrox.9524

Of course because warriors have no cleaves at all and only stand still.

In this case, Helseth is right, but for the wrong reasons. This is particularly annoying, because it means that everyone who gets annoyed by him being…yeah…immediately decides that he’s wrong.

The scepter change is bad because it was simply a poorly conceived change. It doesn’t fix the problems with the autoattack (unreliable, brutally slow, incredibly boring). It simply slaps on some torment to produce clones that do less damage than staff clones, but it’s still linked to this incredibly poorly designed attack.

The main problem is that with this change being released, it means that the “Changes to Scepter Autoattack” ticket has been removed from the queue of things that the devs are looking to changes. Basically, if we want to have an actually usable autoattack, we’re starting back from square one, and that’s the biggest problem.

watch the video.. ie buff =“this helps my spec, i think its good”

scepter change “this dosent help my spec, i think its bad”

the reason helseth made a big deal about the torment buff is because he is smart enough to take attention away from the ie buff that will end up in much stronger builds.

anything that benefited him.. he just mentions for a split second and says good then moves on. even though the ie buff is just as passive.. represents the same lack of skill game play as the scepter clone auto attack.

i think it is very low class for helseth to try to use any influence he has in game/mesmer community to try to sway future changes. people are quoting helseth over and over saying “helseths is one of the best mesmers and he says” as if that is a reason why something should or should not be changed with no facts or testing.

Sandrox.9524:

Torment is unique condition that was first interduced for necros.

This is simply incorrect. When torment was first introduced, it was given to 3 classes (mesmer, necro, thief). It was not unique to necro at all. See patch notes when torment was first introduced:
It was later on added to warrior oh sword and most recently mesmer is given more access to it by the grandmaster trait Maim the Disillusioned.

Now a lot of mesmers are still hung up on the idea that Confusion should be our signature condition (myself included) but as it stands now, its quite clear that Anet is pushing Torment to be our signature condition instead.

Aluren.1896:

Scepter projectiles are NOT homing compared to Staff clones which means you will be able to move out of their damage. Torment is also 75% the condition damage of a bleed if the target isn’t moving and you are able to stack way more bleeds than you will torment.

Yeah, and it’s so hard to hit players with your Scepter clones as-is, right? Have you even touched Scepter? You spam them up close to your target, not at range. You’re inherently more bunker as a Condition Mesmer, so good luck avoiding clones that’s right next to you. There’s basically no travel time for the projectile. If the clones are cleaved, great, they spread out some conditions. Win-win. And sure, Torment deals less damage if you’re standing still. How often do people stand still in PvP? Really now.. that’s such a pointless thing to mention. Even bunkers move, they move on the point. You don’t just stand still in PvP.. Also, Scepter’s one of the two weapon sets I have been using for the last few months because of the block (which is actually easy to avoid the Torment from, although people fail at avoiding it in most cases—that would have been a better thing to buff/fix than to put Torment on the auto-attack and clones).

Aluren.1896:

Currently staff clones do not inherit condition duration. Unless it is a fix that appears with the scepter clones getting condition duration, there will be no way for you to increase the duration of torment.

Oh yeah, totally.. forgot that you can’t do Torment at all. Right.

“You spam them up close to your target, not at range. You’re inherently more bunker as a Condition Mesmer, so good luck avoiding clones that’s right next to you.”

So you’re in Spvp and you are in close combat. Toughness by itself is not going to give you enough durability to continually maintain close range even with its effective vitality with a base health pool of 15k unless you are PU (and have active protection/regen uptime) and then it just goes back to everything I just mentioned in my previous post about PU. Even if you are not PU, then how is scepter torment OP? You no longer have massive defensive boon uptime and can be taken down by other classes.

“How often do people stand still in PvP? Really now.. that’s such a pointless thing to mention. Even bunkers move, they move on the point. You don’t just stand still in PvP”

I will concede that this is an obvious point. But are you saying that smart players wont stop movement if they can to effectively reduce the amount of damage they will take in half? (Assuming they don’t just pop condition removal/ have passive condition removal).

“Oh yeah, totally.. forgot that you can’t do Torment at all. Right.”

3.375 seconds on first Auto Attack (assuming 35% condition duration in Spvp) and 5.4 duration on Second attack. By the time you complete your Auto Attacks (Or stop after the second attack and wait out the duration before you can start your auto attack again) 4 seconds later You will have 1.375 seconds left on one stack and 3.4 seconds left on your second torment. So you just spent 4 seconds to get 2 stacks of torment. And you think this is OP? In that same amount of time you could have 4-5 Winds of Chaos bouncing at “close range” for more damage.

Sigh… Okay, I’ll put it into a popular format.

As to why I am convinced that scepter change won’t change anything, see here.

Let’s widen our horizon beyond the (subjectively) boring “competitive tournament” we got in this game. Why would anyone take us there instead of a better suited profession, such as a Thief anyways? Let’s look at a bit at World vs. World however. Let’s say we’ll go 4 in Domination for boon stripping, so that’s 20% duration increase. We’ll use Runes of Tormenting, another 45% increase. Toss in a Koi Cake with it’s 40% increase, and as an inexpensive option. Now we’re looking at a 100% duration increase. That’s 5 seconds on the first attack, 8 seconds on the second attack, based on the tooltips from Guild Wars 2’s RU stream.

With an attack rotation taking roughly 4 seconds, we’re looking at the first attack replacing itself as soon as we start a new rotation, and there being about 3 seconds left on the second attack as we get to that. In an ideal world, your auto-attacks alone are maintaining 3 stacks of Torment on your target while wielding the scepter.

If you want to throw in Time Warp, for a short while (10 seconds), you should in an ideal world maintain roughly 4 stacks of Torment, from your auto attacks. TW has a hefty 3 minutes and 30 seconds cooldown period though, so that’s not really something to rely all too much on.

But that’s looking at auto-attacks only. What about using the block? That’s another 5 stacks. The clones all apply roughly one stack each as long as they’re alive (and hit). Your heal applies another 2 stacks. Maybe you take a Sigil of Torment as well, for a chance at that one extra stack. Perhaps you even go for Maim of the Disillusioned, and add 3 more stacks. That’s when it starts to get potentially painful. In World vs. World that is.

Players will likely end up using condition cleanses on an auto attack. We’re talking about you running there with up to 6 stacks from just auto attacks alone, something that didn’t cost the Mesmer anything in terms of cooldowns. That’s somewhere around 1260 damage per second (with say a respectable 1950 Condition Damage (which is not exactly maxing out in WvW) from Rabid/Dire gear, Traits, Runes, Sigils, Consumables, etc. (but not even counting potential Might, nor WvW buffs)), on a moving target.

Now, we don’t live in an ideal world, so yes, there will be times where you won’t hit all your attacks, you will be using other skills, you will potentially be in stealth, etc.—a lot of things factor into this. But I still think Torment on a auto attack, is a bad idea. The damage output you’ll be looking at together with the Bleeding, Burn and Confusion is getting a bit ridiculous (that’s not to say we don’t already have these conditions and potential, it’s just getting worse/stronger). It’s also boring. If I wanted to be great at conditions, I’d likely play a Necromancer. I wanted to play Mesmer because it used to be a profession about control.

Although I guess, Torment and Confusion are “control” conditions as well.

Sorry that this is two posts…it wouldn’t let me fit it into one..
“Let’s widen our horizon beyond the (subjectively) boring “competitive tournament” we got in this game. Why would anyone take us there instead of a better suited profession, such as a Thief anyways? Let’s look at a bit at World vs. World however.”

Perfect. I agree on the thieves being taken over Mesmers anyways. By WvW I’m assuming you are talking about WvW roaming seeing as that is what is most likely viable.

“With an attack rotation taking roughly 4 seconds, we’re looking at the first attack replacing itself as soon as we start a new rotation, and there being about 3 seconds left on the second attack as we get to that. In an ideal world, your auto-attacks alone are maintaining 3 stacks of Torment on your target while wielding the scepter…What about using the block? That’s another 5 stacks. The clones all apply roughly one stack each as long as they’re alive (and hit). Your heal applies another 2 stacks. Maybe you take a Sigil of Torment as well, for a chance at that one extra stack. Perhaps you even go for Maim of the Disillusioned, and add 3 more stacks.”

So that is 3 stacks on auto attack over 4 seconds (Let’s throw in for fun 3 scepter clones auto attacking within the first 2 seconds so an additional 6 stacks assuming everything is hitting), 5 stacks from the scepter block (assuming they don’t dodge out of the torment), 2 stacks from the torment runes, 1 stack from the sigil, and 3 more stacks from the Maim. That is a total of 20 stacks for 4 seconds of auto attack, some combination of dodge/block for clone generation, a heal, and one shatter (lets assume Cry of Frustration for Maim because it makes the most sense). So after this initial “burst” of torment you can have Confusion, Torment, Bleed (From Sharper Images).

Lets assume that the person has no condition removal in WvW roaming. Well of course they are going to get owned by condition stacking regardless of the number of stacks.

What if they do have condition removal?

Then you no longer have clones up due to shatter (Uptime on potential future torment at that moment), Heal (Somewhere on 13-20 sec cd depending on which heal you use), One or 2 dodges (Depending on how you generated your 3 clones while auto attacking), Block (For the 5 stacks of torment/one clone creation). That gives you at least 8ish seconds of vulnerability where you have no heals or dodges after you did this condition dump to kite around (maybe through some combination of decoy, blink, or mass invis) before your next potential burst. That sounds like an all-in condition dump seeing as you just used at least half of your defensive abilities to stack torment. So they use one condition removal and lets say by luck that they don’t get your torment (usually condition removal is in groups of 2). Well then they die unless they stop moving and try to attack you from range (for the 8ish seconds before you can at least get a block torment up with you having no heals or dodges).

If they do remove torment?

Then you kite around for 8 seconds with no heal or dodge using up your remaining 1-3 defensive cooldowns each giving you at least 30ish seconds of cd. Then you spend at least 4+ seconds to do it all again (assuming that you can get enough endurance that isn’t being used to defend yourself after your all in condition dump). Except this second time if they have any secondary condition removal (through traits or low cd) you have no defensive abilities up, heals up, or dodges.

You have Maim and 20% in Domination which means you don’t have defensive boons through PU and are completely relying on your active defensive skills to keep you alive. Sounds like high risk, high reward to me. Except that in the condition spam scenario you posted you are dead if you don’t kill them in two bursts.

“Players will likely end up using condition cleanses on an auto attack.”

They don’t need to use a condition removal on an auto attack. If (they don’t know they can dodge the scepter block), they could just use it after the scepter block and effectively remove at least half or more of your torment stacks depending on how quickly you stacked it on them.

“But I still think Torment on a auto attack, is a bad idea. The damage output you’ll be looking at together with the Bleeding, Burn and Confusion is getting a bit ridiculous (that’s not to say we don’t already have these conditions and potential, it’s just getting worse/stronger).”

Yes…but because now you are starting to look at builds and the interaction between skills I can also say that condi spam necros and condi spam engis are also ridiculous (except that both necros and engis also spam additional conditions on top of bleeding and burn that’ll make it even harder to cleanse). The all best case scenarios will get owned with 2 condition removal due to using up all of your defensive traits to initiate/maintain a spam. You can’t say the same with condition spamming engis/necros).

“It’s also boring. If I wanted to be great at conditions, I’d likely play a Necromancer. I wanted to play Mesmer because it used to be a profession about control.”

I agree with you there. But of course no one will force you into playing this condition type of build. It appears that we can’t even get any interesting control abilities (such as power lock) without it being extremely overpowered (through “bugs”) and then nerfed to uselessness (against thieves).

Why would you burst your whole nut of conditions in the first push. You’d use the auto attacks to force out cleansing, then you would apply as much conditions as you can. With a potential 1200 damage per second from simply auto attacking out Torment, you are likely to be forcing some players to cleanse. If you see your HP drop drastically as you try to move around to avoid damage, you’re likely to cause the opponent to spend some cleanses. What good does that do them, the stacks are instantly building up again, now they have no cleanses for a while, and you can burst out your conditions by actually spending some cooldowns. This is also not taking into account the damage from the Power-attribute of the attacks, nor Bleeds from clones, clones exploding, such things.

We had plenty of Torment from the block as it is. That is easy to dodge however, and fixing the Scepter is not adding Torment to the auto attacks and clones. It’s still relatively slow at attacking, pretty easy to strafe if you create some distance, the proc of the block is still very easy to dodge (though so many players fail at doing so), the channeled skill can be completely avoided with a dodge. It’s not making it magically better, but it’s “fixing” it in the absolute worst way possible. Or rather, not really fixing it at all. It’s tacking on a powerful condition to it. The weapon is able to produce 11 stacks of Torment on its own. 8 of which are from you. Add one more if you use the Sigil. That already starts to hurt.

I guarantee we’ll see cries from other professions about Mesmer and Torment (and we’ll see cries about our new Staff trait fix). And we’ll be nerfed. Again.

Absconditus.6804:

Why would you burst your whole nut of conditions in the first push. You’d use the auto attacks to force out cleansing, then you would apply as much conditions as you can. With a potential 1200 damage per second from simply auto attacking out Torment, you are likely to be forcing some players to cleanse. If you see your HP drop drastically as you try to move around to avoid damage, you’re likely to cause the opponent to spend some cleanses. What good does that do them, the stacks are instantly building up again, now they have no cleanses for a while, and you can burst out your conditions by actually spending some cooldowns. This is also not taking into account the damage from the Power-attribute of the attacks, nor Bleeds from clones, clones exploding, such things.

So what you’re saying is that an opponent that lets you stand around doing nothing but using a brutally slow autoattack for about 20 seconds will die to 1-spam? Hmz, I suppose you’re right.

Fortunately for most of us, we’re a bit more reactive than that, and we won’t let a mesmer stand around casting an incredibly slow autoattack that applies torment. You don’t see people standing around spamming scepter autos now, and you won’t see it after the patch, because the autoattack is still incredibly abysmal.

This change doesn’t make the autoattack any better, it just makes the clones marginally more useful. If you die to a mesmer spamming nothing but one skill, I’m not sure what to say.

“Why would you burst your whole nut of conditions in the first push.”

That is the response you gave on our ability to stack torment. I explained how it can be countered with 2 condition removal. (Depending on your condition removal unlike other condition spamming classes).

“You’d use the auto attacks to force out cleansing, then you would apply as much conditions as you can. “

Well obviously that is what all condition builds will want to do if you can’t continually spam many conditions. How long will you auto attack in Scepter to apply enough torment pressure to force a condition removal without using defensive cooldowns? 5 stacks (6 seconds- assuming you have all clones up)? 10 stacks (10 seconds –assuming your first clone lives through 4 seconds of auto attacking). That is a LONG time spent auto attacking assuming your clones are still up and even longer if they don’t die.
Once you use any defensive ability suddenly your “burst” decreases (minus blink and mass invis) and is up for condition removal before you can achieve this “burst”. If you do use blink or mass invis there goes more active defense for after your burst.

“We had plenty of Torment from the block as it is. That is easy to dodge however, and fixing the Scepter is not adding Torment to the auto attacks and clones.”

I never said that Torment on auto attack was a good fix to scepter. I just stated that Torment on autoattack is not as OP end of the world as everyone is making it out to be especially in relative to staff 1 or other condition spamming classes.

“The weapon is able to produce 11 stacks of Torment on its own. 8 of which are from you. That already starts to hurt.”

In the slightly less amount of time the grenade Engi kit is able to stack Poison, Vul, Chill, Blind, Bleed, Burn procs, and additional bleed procs not only to a SINGLE target but to multiple targets.

“I guarantee we’ll see cries from other professions about Mesmer and Torment (and we’ll see cries about our new Staff trait fix). And we’ll be nerfed, or maybe the whole condition will. Again. Confusion anyone?”

People will cry about anything and everything. PU has been cried about for a long time now and still no “fixes”. If they give torment the same fix that confusion got it would be much less impactful as it would only be tied to three abilities (Scepter 1, Scepter 2, and the GM Trait). The confusion nerf impacted many different builds instead of one weapon.

To quote another user:

It’s crazy that people are so concerned about the scepter buff…look at the base damage numbers:

• Per strike, the scepter AA buff will provide between 64-96 extra damage, depending on if the target is moving

I almost give up.. Yes, sure we’re all idiots and we’ll only use auto-attack. We clearly won’t swap to Staff either, because it’s all about the Scepter. Of course. As a matter of fact, we’ll only use Scepter, not even an offhand, why would we. There is no bigger picture and how it plays into other skills and conditions we can apply. And sure, other professions are poorly balanced when it comes to conditions, so why shouldn’t we be as well. Some would argue we already are, thanks to PU. Also, everyone moves one step forwards and two steps back, and never dodges, so of course we’ll never miss an attack, I know.

But really now, does this not add up on the already decent condition builds we have? Are you saying it won’t? Yes, it’s mainly single-target. Illusionary Elasticity is also better/easier to work with against a single target where you can control the bounce. The IE fix is more than enough, is it not? There’s no reason to throw more Torment into the picture and not actually fix anything about what is making the Scepter less desired currently, its slowness and being relatively easy to dodge when there’s some distance between you and the bolts.

As for how you could potentially apply some Torment pressure relatively fast, to perhaps force out a panic-cleanse, without wasting everything you got? Auto, dodge, block. Two clones generated, ~7-8 stacks of Torment. With 2000 Condition Damage (and that’s honestly easy to hit in WvW and I’m lowballing it here), that’s 1470 damage per second for two seconds (with 7 stacks), dropping off to 1260 for 3 more seconds (let’s say the clones are blown up, not adding more), before dropping to 1050 for the remaining 3 seconds. Total: 9870 damage if not cleansed). It’ll drop off fast, but it’s still painful for a few seconds and it doesn’t take more stacks than that to create panic in someone, or well, to force them to use their cleanse. It’s not like you have to do that as your opening either. Start with Staff, give yourself some defense with Chaos Armor. Bleeds and Burns, Might if you want. You should be more than capable of pushing your opponent into cleansing with the Staff too, most likely more easily. If you’re lucky, maybe you can get Confusing Images off as well on the swap, or you could save it for after the block, in case your opponent counters with a dodge to avoid the Torment, and there’s at least a bit better chance for CI to not just be dodged completely.

Now I’m not saying this will happen all the time, it’s not always going to be perfect conditions, no pun intended, for this to occur. Sometimes you’ll even generate more stacks though, since you continue to auto a few more hits in, the clones maintaining their stack, and so on forth. It’s something that can’t be written in a topic post, it’s dynamic, and happens as we play. People will also stop at times, for multiple reasons, this will halt the damage. But why would they just stand there and allow you to pummel them with more conditions, this is where the forced movement comes in. The combat is based on being agile, and moving. The condition punishes this pretty hard.

Now, in the example above, there’s very little difference from what we can already do. The major contributor to that scenario is the block-Torment, that can be avoided, though it’ll cost them a dodge, which is still a win for me when I wish to apply other conditions and “burst”. The only real difference from as-is today, is 1 stack from the first auto attack, and 2 stacks from clones generated from a dodge and the block. That’s not massive, I know, but it adds up. It’s still 630 damage per second, or around 2520 damage over the course of 5 seconds. If I was able to force out a cleanse while I was avoiding damage with a block and created two easy clones helping out, I’ll take it. I can then apply other conditions. If they got more cleanses, great, it’s still easier to apply conditions than it is to cleanse them.