Guild Wars 2

I had a few hours to try out the scepter changes and here is what I found:

Scepter 1: With the changes + Lingering Curse the changes work out to a small DPS loss. Faster ramp up time is not at all noticeable unfortunately in PvE. Enemies either die to direct damage burst too fast, or the fight is long enough that the slight change in ramp up time is not noticeable.

Scepter 2: Again with the changes + Lingering curse the changes work out to no change at all. Nothing changed here so nothing to say.

Scepter 3: Average LF gain went from ~15% down to ~12%. Not sure how 3 years of telling you that condition specs need more LF gain gets us a LF nerf…

Scepter 3: Torment is a good change. It allows us to get some more condition burst and slightly better dps. Unfortunately the up-time is not enough. Even with Lingering Curse + 40% food + 10% utility + 10% runes I was only able to get 90% uptime of this skill. Increase the base duration up 1 more second and the change will be perfect. Good dps boost and better overall skill.

Suggestions:

1. Give dagger 4 3% LF per condition transferred. This combined with Scepter 3 would give condition specs better LF generation.

2. Make the bonus of Lingering Curse baseline, and change lingering curse to 30% bonus duration for the whole group. This gives us a use in raids, gives us group utility, makes the trait worth taking, less boring, and brings our dps up to competitive levels in group PvE.

Note: all feedback is related to PvE. This is a raiding game now, time to balance it as such.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Note: all feedback is related to PvE. This is a raiding game now, time to balance it as such.

unfortunately, devs have made it clear they will never balance anything with pve in mind, if it might upset pvp in the slightest.
this is only reinforced by the very small/safe changes made to balance 2 or 3 times a year.

Just because raids will come out as a single component of a very diverse and large game mode which itself is only one of three game modes doesn’t mean the game is now a “raiding game”. They aren’t going to, nor have they attempted (nor would it be reasonably possible) to balance every single thing every profession has in every game mode. This leads PvE balance to be fairly “general”, with them only addressing things that are way too powerful (Ice Bow, FGS, etc.), and bringing up professions who aren’t taken (their attempts at making Necromancer better). PvP however is a much more “fine” balance, which is why most of their efforts tend to go there. And it is very unlikely that they will stop balancing the game primarily with PvP in mind. This is why we got these changes, which don’t really do anything to PvE but greatly improve Scepter in PvP.

From PvP standpoint, regarding Feast of Corruption I just have two points I came up with today playing condi scepter:

1. The cast time should be 1/4s faster
2. It should give 2% bonus LF per condition instead of 1%.

Relshdan.6854:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Note: all feedback is related to PvE. This is a raiding game now, time to balance it as such.

unfortunately, devs have made it clear they will never balance anything with pve in mind, if it might upset pvp in the slightest.
this is only reinforced by the very small/safe changes made to balance 2 or 3 times a year.

They really just need to split the balance. In one mode you are facing active defenses against enemies with 10-20k hp, while in the other mode you are facing no active defenses with 5-10 million hp. The two game modes have literally nothing in common except balance for some reason.

The Life Force nerf is weird. Honestly, it would be pretty cool if there was a 1% Life Force gain at the end of the Scepter Auto. 2%, if we want to be generous. I feel like Lingering Curses should also effect the offhand condition duration. Offhand dagger needs some love.

I tested the scepter in PvP and while the condi build felt better, the LF generation is still so weak I couldn’t enter DS for a second time. Tried it in combination with dagger/WH, but then I needed to be in melee and this build dont give me any defense, so I kept dyeing.
Without really good LF generation… you know the drill…

PS: And this build suffers even more form the “THE Vital Persistence” paradox…

Don’t mind me if I’m a little out of the subject, but we used to have a curse trait that was giving us 1% life force on crit (33% chance). Maybe, they could reintroduce this effect as either being baseline or part of a current trait like Barbed precision or Lingering curse. This could be a way to fix this lack of LF that condition spec suffer.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Reaper's_Precision

Don’t remember this, but its removed.
Ah well back to dagger I guess :/

Well I tried it out in PvP last night, here was my experience:

Pretty much worthless in PvP compared to D/WH. The skills take so long to cast that I was dead before I finished casting a single skill for the most part.

The conditions were so short duration and took so long to cast that I rarely got more than 1 or 2 conditions to stick on an enemy at a time. They were either cleansed before my next cast or just fell off on their own without notice.

No one cares if you are putting 1 bleed stack a second on them. It would take like 20 minutes to kill someone that way. We either need to be putting 5 stacks a second on them, or they need to last 30 seconds, not 4.5.

Scepter 3 gives even less LF than before in every PvP situation I tried, so now it is even harder to get into DS.

Scepter 3 also only gives 2-3 stacks of torment at best in PvP due to the speed of cleansing, making it not so great as a burst.

I gave it 3 matches, but switched back to D/Wh after losing all 3 matches.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Well I tried it out in PvP last night, here was my experience:

Pretty much worthless in PvP compared to D/WH. The skills take so long to cast that I was dead before I finished casting a single skill for the most part.

The conditions were so short duration and took so long to cast that I rarely got more than 1 or 2 conditions to stick on an enemy at a time. They were either cleansed before my next cast or just fell off on their own without notice.

No one cares if you are putting 1 bleed stack a second on them. It would take like 20 minutes to kill someone that way. We either need to be putting 5 stacks a second on them, or they need to last 30 seconds, not 4.5.

Scepter 3 gives even less LF than before in every PvP situation I tried, so now it is even harder to get into DS.

Scepter 3 also only gives 2-3 stacks of torment at best in PvP due to the speed of cleansing, making it not so great as a burst.

I gave it 3 matches, but switched back to D/Wh after losing all 3 matches.

My experience was pretty similar. The overall pressure get much better with the use of skills like signet of spite and corruption boon, but the scepter by itself is still weak.
Skill 3 really feels better with the the torment, but the LF generation is next to nothing. It works a little bit better with WH, but the rest of the off hand weapons are worthless.
And I think the LF generation is the biggest weakness of this weapon.
If it gets decent LF and a little bit more bleed on auto attack it will be really useful and I will play with it.

mazut.4296:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Well I tried it out in PvP last night, here was my experience:

Pretty much worthless in PvP compared to D/WH. The skills take so long to cast that I was dead before I finished casting a single skill for the most part.

The conditions were so short duration and took so long to cast that I rarely got more than 1 or 2 conditions to stick on an enemy at a time. They were either cleansed before my next cast or just fell off on their own without notice.

No one cares if you are putting 1 bleed stack a second on them. It would take like 20 minutes to kill someone that way. We either need to be putting 5 stacks a second on them, or they need to last 30 seconds, not 4.5.

Scepter 3 gives even less LF than before in every PvP situation I tried, so now it is even harder to get into DS.

Scepter 3 also only gives 2-3 stacks of torment at best in PvP due to the speed of cleansing, making it not so great as a burst.

I gave it 3 matches, but switched back to D/Wh after losing all 3 matches.

My experience was pretty similar. The overall pressure get much better with the use of skills like signet of spite and corruption boon, but the scepter by itself is still weak.
Skill 3 really feels better with the the torment, but the LF generation is next to nothing. It works a little bit better with WH, but the rest of the off hand weapons are worthless.
And I think the LF generation is the biggest weakness of this weapon.
If it gets decent LF and a little bit more bleed on auto attack it will be really useful and I will play with it.

I did try it with OH dagger, I think you are right in that WH would have been better. But yes, with the low pressure, low LF gain, and slow attacks it just isn’t really worth it still.

With axe now the same range as scepter, having a huge advantage in LF generation, and a power weapon aligned with the majority of builds, the only reason to run scepter in PvE is for bosses with very high defense.

I think Auto attack need to grant something between 3 and 5 LF and 2nd skill 2-3% per foe.
Or make all the Offhands give good LF, not only the WH.

I was having a lot of fun with Scepter last night, but it still has the same glaring issue… TERRIBLE life force generation.

The only problem now is LF gen on S/d. If you aren’t getting the skills off it is because your bad. L2P. The damage is also much better now in pvp. Also, they buffed grasping dead quite a bit, don’t know why people are saying it is weaker.

The trait should be changed to grant 180 condi damage and 20% condi duration for your group while wielding scepter. The base durations could go up maybe a second at most. Certainly not the whole 50%.

For scepter/dagger LF gen, we just need one change. Make enfeebling blood, and therefore weakening shroud, grant 3% LF per target hit. The suggestion to grant 4% LF per condi transferred on dagger 4 would be stupid OP btw.

Mikkel.8427:

I was having a lot of fun with Scepter last night, but it still has the same glaring issue… TERRIBLE life force generation.

Yeah. Maybe we should get something like 5% LF on scepter auto attack.
Daggers get 8% LF on the full auto attack chain and its attack fast as hell.
Since scepter attacks slower but its also a ranged weapon, i think 5% is pretty reasonable.
Other than that, scepter is doing great now.

zapv.8051:

The only problem now is LF gen on S/d. If you aren’t getting the skills off it is because your bad. L2P. The damage is also much better now in pvp. Also, they buffed grasping dead quite a bit, don’t know why people are saying it is weaker.

The trait should be changed to grant 180 condi damage and 20% condi duration for your group while wielding scepter. The base durations could go up maybe a second at most. Certainly not the whole 50%.

For scepter/dagger LF gen, we just need one change. Make enfeebling blood, and therefore weakening shroud, grant 3% LF per target hit. The suggestion to grant 4% LF per condi transferred on dagger 4 would be stupid OP btw.

If your enemy can’t avoid a 1.5s cast then I think the people you are playing against need to l2p actually… you can literally walk out of range of scepter 2. the 1s cast on scepter 3 is also a pretty easy tell that is pretty simple to block/dodge.

I don’t see how 4% per condition transferred would be OP. with a cap of 5 conditions that is max 20% LF on an easily avoided/blocked/reflected projectile on an 18 second CD. Compare that to main hand dagger which generates a guaranteed 8% LF every 2.1s. 4% per condition would be under powered imo.

how about we get 6% life force on scepter 2

LF generation may not be scepter specific a lot compare it to d/wh which is a worthless comparison. The OH are lacking, focus is would be okay if #5 didn’t have such a cast time and #4 just gave direct healing instead of regen, OH dagger is terrible no LF gain and easily avoidable attacks. My recent scepter experience was with cele and my biggest issue was always what should I pair with, tried just WH and the other two it was kind of enraging.

I do feel the damage but since LF gain got nerfed I hope that means the OH dagger and focus get better WH CD are too high to cover both swaps, the same goes for axe. Help the OH’s then I’ll judge it better. Can anyone explain to me why OH dagger has no LF gain what is the design hold back on that? We got the argument for axe but what about OH dagger?

Guys think about it please. Both Dagger+ WH skills are very fast and almost impossible to avoid, this is the biggest reason the LF generation is so much better. Scepter/off hands skills are much easier to dodge/avoid and this one of the most important aspects that need consideration. Some say add only 1 LF on dagger, but when the 20+ sec skill is dodged we are left with nothing. And most of the time people dont dodge this on purpose, in the chaos of a battle everybody move around and this skills miss.

One of the better solutions is to add LF generation on all auto attacks. Bith Scepter and Axe will benefit greatly from this, this skills are only avoidable by dodging or LoS, so they cant miss often.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

zapv.8051:

The only problem now is LF gen on S/d. If you aren’t getting the skills off it is because your bad. L2P. The damage is also much better now in pvp. Also, they buffed grasping dead quite a bit, don’t know why people are saying it is weaker.

The trait should be changed to grant 180 condi damage and 20% condi duration for your group while wielding scepter. The base durations could go up maybe a second at most. Certainly not the whole 50%.

For scepter/dagger LF gen, we just need one change. Make enfeebling blood, and therefore weakening shroud, grant 3% LF per target hit. The suggestion to grant 4% LF per condi transferred on dagger 4 would be stupid OP btw.

If your enemy can’t avoid a 1.5s cast then I think the people you are playing against need to l2p actually… you can literally walk out of range of scepter 2. the 1s cast on scepter 3 is also a pretty easy tell that is pretty simple to block/dodge.

I don’t see how 4% per condition transferred would be OP. with a cap of 5 conditions that is max 20% LF on an easily avoided/blocked/reflected projectile on an 18 second CD. Compare that to main hand dagger which generates a guaranteed 8% LF every 2.1s. 4% per condition would be under powered imo.

It’s called leading your target, go play nade engi and you’ll see. It isn’t anywhere near as easy to walk out of scepter 2 as you suggest. I land that skill virtually every time (except dodges). Enfeebling blood could maybe use a cast or landing time reduction.

It isn’t easy to avoid reflect or block at all, you can cast it 1 foot away from someone (that’s how you should be using it). You also never mentioned a cap before, 48% LF would be OP. Even the 20% you suggest would be too strong on deathly swarm which is already really really strong. Putting LF on enfeebling blood makes more sense, that skill by itself is weaker than deathly swarm currently.

I hope the OP realizes that raid balance is notoriously unforgiving from a diversity perspective. If each class has a single viable build, then raid balance is a success. If it isn’t a player’s build of choice, that’s too bad (though complaints will happen anyway).

However, I think staking a claim that this is suddenly a raiding game is bombastic at best.