Guild Wars 2

As a ranged weapon, the Sceptre has a problem. And that problem is the fact that the further you are from your target, the weaker it gets.

The reason for this is because the Ether Bolt chain is weird. As most of us know, Ether Bolt is unique in that its chain progresses even if you use it out of combat, but a lesser known anomaly is that the chain only progresses if there are no Ether Bolt projectiles in flight. What this means is the longer it takes for the projectile to hit your target (i.e. the further away you are), the longer it will take for the next projectile to become castable.

This is very noticable when you compare Ether Bolt at melee range to Ether Bolt at maximum range. Melee Ether Bolt is smooth with a RoF comparable to Mind Slash, while Ether Bolt at long range has an obvious aftercast and animation stutter after each attack, resulting in a much lower RoF.

I understand that the anomalies with Ether Bolt are likely concessions to make Ether Clone work. This, however, kills the Sceptre’s DPS potential as a ranged weapon: I’d much rather sacrifice Ether Clone if it means having a ranged MH that is competitive with the MH Sword.

Too long has the Sceptre been held back because of its supposedly superior Clone generation, and while things are getting better; I feel like this is an issue that has mostly been overlooked but is crucial to making the Sceptre viable for DPS.

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TL;DR: Sceptre’s broken, Anet plz fix.

I would love the scepter AA to be improved for every profession that can use a scepter. IDK what the concept behind scepters is supposed to be that anet feels the AA has to be ridiculously lame… Mesmer’s AA bothers me the most out of all of them though, and the trait update didnt do anything to change this. I abuse malicious sorcery for the increased speed on everything else (fast stomps weeeee!), but its impact on the actual weapon is unnoticeable to me.

I’d love if the scepter’s AA got some improvement. I feel that the attack speed on the trait should be the normal speed and then the trait would have 15% faster onto it. Or, have its damage increase and/or projectile velocity go faster.

Or just make it not be way slower at range compared to at melee, because its attack speed in melee is actually fine. The problem is once you put even a bit of range between you and the target your DPS plummets.

If that’s not possible for whatever reason then yeah, greatly increasing the projectile speed might help.