Guild Wars 2

Fuzzion.2504:

Gorni.1764:

Sword is completely useless in 1v1-situations.

Disagree 100%. If you are staff and faced by a mean opponent, you hit mistform, hit the elite sword skill and spam 3 at the 1v1 situation hitting the player for 5k in 2 seconds. Hit immobolise on the enemy, spam no.2 and then number 3 to pwn enemy.

I don’t know what you’re doing to get 5k out of Fiery Whirl, but 2k’s about the average I manage – I don’t see the Fiery Greatsword being useful for anything other than mobility unless your target is near a wall, especially seeing as it locks me out of my water heals and such.

Nalar.6523:

Chaosky.5276:

I want reliable ranged damage, not the near-melee combat that the scepter currently promotes.

There isn’t a single ability in the Scepter toolset that promotes any type of melee-play.

You seem to have problems with the skills that come from using an offhand Dagger, which is indeed a near-melee type weapon, by design.The Focus on the other hand is not melee orientated and neither is the Staff. If you don’t want a near-melee experience, I suggest you don’t equip a near-melee orientated weapon :P

Phoenix, might stacking.

The autoattacks range from unremarkable to downright terrible.

Most other skills either aren’t intended for/effective at dealing damage.

That leaves Lightning Strike as the only good ranged attack, which means that the scepter’s only decent ranged damage is dealt via air #1 and #2, unless you want to go for a gimmicky condition build.

The focus doesn’t provide sufficient offense or CC to be worth taking, and the staff just doesn’t work for duels/roaming/etc.

Come to think of it, after guardians, I think elementalists are the most range-restricted class in the game.

DiogoSilva.7089:

I’m against the idea of dumbing down Dragon’s Tooth. Instead, I suggest adding CC to underpowered skills to support it.

Shatterstone is the perfect candidate. Increase its cooldown to 6 or something, and have it add 1s of chill per second while it was building up, and you could get an interesting DT -> shatterstone or shatterstone -> DT combo. Alternatively, have it add any kind of CC upon its activation, like I stun once it blows up. This would be awesome with the grounded trait too.

Ice Shards can live with a damage boost. With air’s auto-attack being the best to generate critical-hit sigils and traits, and earth’s and fire’s auto being about condition damage, ice shards can simply be the damage/ critical auto-attack to go to for pure damage. Especially alongside my suggested change to shatterstone, which would make damage scepter eles switch between fire and water.

I agree that flamestrike is mechanically boring, but I’m not sure what to do about it. Maybe make it a channeling skill (that can be self-canceled easily) that adds 1s of burning the first second, and 2s more of burning in the next second. You know, something that gets stronger the longer it takes. For some reason, I dislike the casting animation for flamestrike too.

Rock Barrier is perfect as it is, and I would suggest that Hurl would be buffed with the addition of bleeding and not with a pure damage boost. Why? Because for elementalists who want to invest in condition damage can get more options for bleeding than spamming earth’s auto-attack until forever. However, I would make each stack of bleeding from Hurl last for a short duration. That would total to 5 stacks for, say, 5 seconds each. This would go hand-in-hand with the scepter’s bursty nature.

Finally, for Dust Devil, as mentioned, it is the second most natural candidate for an extra CC. Being a tornado, it can work perfectly with a knockback effect. Increase its casting time, take the damage out of it, maybe even make the animation slower, should the devs consider the aoe knockback too strong.

The first thing people usually suggest for buffing something, is to make the best skills even better. Dragon’s Tooth and Phoenix do not need buffs, they need support from other skills. They are perfect as they are. Do they have drawbacks? Yes, but that’s the fun of it. Buffing them would make them mindless to play (think: thief’s heartseeker) and maybe even force the devs to nerf them damage-wise, taking away the fun out of the scepter’s burst damage nature. Meanwhile, adding skills that support them makes the scepter’s playstyle more complex and compelling.

I have a few problems with these suggestions.

Firstly, putting CC in the water attunement would mean that I might not be able to use the swap for condition removal and healing when I really need to. Shatterstone would need to be changed so that it encases enemies in ice for 3 seconds or something, which would mean it’d be on about a 20 second cooldown, and even then I’d need to choose between using Dragon’s Tooth or Phoenix when at range.

Secondly, you’re suggesting even more condition damage (which eles are pretty poor at when it comes to PvP) on a weapon intended for burst damage – why? Also, I’m pretty sure condition specs can get more out of 250 extra toughness than 5 stacks of bleeding every 15 seconds.

Finally, what use would Dust Devil serve as a knockback? With your suggestions, I’ll still really only be effective at close range, so aside from knocking enemies of cliffs in WvW, I don’t see the purpose of a slow-moving AoE knockback.

I want reliable ranged damage, not the near-melee combat that the scepter currently promotes.

I could certainly go for a greatsword – I’ve always liked the idea of channeling spells through weapons, and it’s a sword, so I’d look more like I could handle myself in melee than I would if I were to use a staff.

Whatever happens, though, eles really need an effective ranged single-target option.

blackgoat.5172:

The problem I see with a baseline of 10s on Attument cooldowns is this: Attunement swap is our weapon swap, so we already have twice the skills of other classes (how anyone feels about said skills you still cannot argue the fact). So everyone else has a 15s cooldown on their weapon swap and if we trait for it we can get as low as 9s. Giving all Eles a base 10s cooldown on swaps would just simply be OP.

“During combat, swapping has a cooldown of 10 seconds, but you can swap repeatedly out of combat.”

Making Dragon’s Tooth ground-targeted isn’t going to solve the issue of it never hitting – frankly, I don’t see why it takes a full 3 seconds to drop when Burning Speed deals its damage in a mere 3/4s of a second. Is it because it does more damage? A fair point, but we already have a ranged weapon that is reliant on opponents not moving to deal its damage, we don’t need another one; lower the damage if that’s what it takes to get it to drop once the 1 second activation time is complete.
I don’t think the short cooldown would be an issue due to the extreme lack of sustained damage in the fire attunement, meaning that there’s no reason to stay in the attunement when the hard-hitting skills are on cooldown.

Regarding Phoenix, first I want to point out that it does not travel directly up or down, meaning that it will often miss if its target is at a different elevation. This is even more of a problem when it is traveling upward than downward, as it will completely disappear into the object it is supposed to climb.
Now, on even terrain, Phoenix is a great skill aside from one flaw:

IT’S REALLY SLOW.

It actually travels slightly slower than I do running while out of combat, and I don’t think I need to tell you that that makes it pretty terrible at range. I’d like to see it move at the speed of Water Trident.

It’d be nice if Shatterstone did more damage, chilled, and had a shorter delay – the recharge time would need to be increased due to the chill, of course.

I’d like it if Water Trident healed the user when cast and only healed others when it hit the ground, so that I might have a reason to cast it at an enemy rather than my feet. (This isn’t really an issue, though.)

I think Dust Devil should be replaced with another skill that is more damage-oriented – maybe just remove Hurl from Rock Barrier, increase its damage, and put it in Dust Devil’s place.

Finally, I’d like to see all the autoattacks scale better with power.

Ohai Theongreyjoy.

…And yeah, the female animation looks more like you’re concentrating on healing, and less like you’re trying to keep your head from exploding.

Provost.6210:

Sorry, where is it saying that the cantrip d/d is being nerfed?

Here, for one.

Edit: Ninja’d

katniss.6735:

I would love for them to change Arcana VII to increased range with scepter to 1200 on at least the auto-attack abilities.

On the one hand, increased range would be great – on the other, I wouldn’t be able to take Arcane Mastery or Renewing Stamina if I took extra range, while d/d specs would have no such problem, so it’d probably still be an unused trait.

covenn.7165:

Personally, i don’t find a single reason to build around conditions as an ele. We don’t have enough ways to both put on conditions and maintain them to make it worth the effort.

Well that was my thought, too, but I really wanted ranged damage.

Ah well, it’s always worth experimenting.

covenn.7165:

You really aren’t seeing everything that is going on if this is your comment.

First you have to understand that this poster has been spamming this in numerous topics and people began with civility when responding. He initial response to this civility was namely aggressiveness and name calling. Then he followed it up by admitting that he doesn’t even play the class correctly with how it was designed.

Hopefully that clears it up for you, because I am not so sure why you are blindly defending him.

I haven’t seen any insults from him, am I missing something?

Anyway, I don’t think he doesn’t know how to use the staff effectively, but rather he refuses to do anything but straight DPS – he’s posting here in the hopes that he’ll get a ranged option more suited to his tastes. I imagine he wants a ranged weapon with more offensive skills, arranged so that each attunement is capable of good damage, much like the arrangement of d/d skills.
Since the staff obviously isn’t intended to function like that, it would likely have been more prudent to tell him to make suggestions for the scepter, rather than repeatedly tell him that he’s doing it wrong.

(Unless civility was tossed out the window in a thread I’m not aware of, in which case I won’t defend him.)

Addendum: I finally ran into some good HGH condition engis and condition necromancers, and found that I just didn’t have the sustainability necessary to effectively utilize condition damage. Maybe someone else can make it work, but I guess I’ll just go back to Valkyrie s/d.

Scrambles.2604:

Chaosky.5276:

Geez, you people sure get mad over someone wanting better ranged options.

There is a difference between asking for reasonable changes and asking for a complete weapon redesign because you don’t understand the mechanics.

I’m not going to say staff is perfect but the changes OP has been advocating are not only outrageous but are based on a narrow perspective of how the game mechanics work and how the class is played.

I’m not saying they’re good ideas, but the general reaction in this thread seems to be, “Shut up nub, if you wanna 1v1 play d/d or play another class.”
Y’all could direct the OP to work on the scepter, or even suggest traits that modify the staff to be more focused on single-target damage.

Geez, you people sure get mad over someone wanting better ranged options.

Arheundel.6451:

2) Lack of viable ranged damage ( scepter/dagger practically require you to play at mele range to land the overly slow moving phoenix..while landing dragon’s tooth still remain impossible without a min of 3s CC)

You sound like me.

Scrambles.2604:

well look at any of the 4 threads eldain has made and you will find plenty of reasonable suggestions and rebuttals.

edit; and staff is an excellent ranged option. The general consensus has been: faster projectile speeds would be nice, and AoEs that did the initial dmg tick immediately would also be cool.

I only care about 1v1 scenarios, and I’m pretty sure the consensus is that the staff is pretty sucky in that regard. I get that the staff probably isn’t intended to be a 1v1 weapon, though, so that’s why my complaints are focused more on the scepter.

I did find something that works, though, so that’s nice.

Scrambles.2604:

eldain stenlund.4306:

Iam asking for Options. Is that too much for some of you players ??

not only are you the only one complaining, but you keep making new threads about the same thing.

I’m complaining, too!

Chaosky.5276:

If you really think it’s worth building for condition damage, though, I’ll give a 0/0/20/30/20 build a shot.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhEmYbzR5gjDAkHvYCLDFcoRRxM5A;TsAAzCuoay0koJbTumkNNq4UxsAA (copy/paste)

…It wasn’t bad, actually. Can’t compare to my condition engi, but… Yeah, wow, would not have expected the results I got knowing how poor signet condition builds are. Sure, air’s pretty useless for damage now, but it has better utility than earth anyway, so I prefer it to be the weak one, and I can’t say I’m upset that I don’t need to rely on fire as much.
Ether Renewal was extremely useful due to my lack of burst damage, too – I’d say it really helped hold the spec together.

So, while this isn’t the sort of ranged combat I’d prefer, I may have found a viable ranged option for my ele.

paleeshi.1924:

Well.. If you are looking for a single target ranged magical DPS and feel disappointed with how staff on Eles doesn’t fulfil such purpose, why do not roll, say… GS Mesmer? I think it comes much closer to what you are looking for. Why not play it instead?

(Imma butt in because this applies to me.)

I would, but I really dislike the illusionist aesthetic of the mesmer. In fact, for roleplaying reasons, the only classes I can bring myself to play are ele and engi.

Weird, I know, but still, I just don’t see why the king of versatility can’t be as good at range as a warrior. A melee-oriented class.

Ralathar.7236:

I did not tell you to neglect crit damage. I didn’t think I’d even have to mention it, especially since air is a precision line. Also, really what stops you from dodging the RTL combo? This leaves you with those skills on CD and them without those skills on CD, since they possess them as well. Do not judge viability via a player misplaying. Nor should you assume just because they are a condition build that they can’t do DD damage back to you when provided the chance. Kitten payed right they would have dodged and earthquaked you.

Also, you mention Arcane Wave and Arcane Blast. Did you think of Signet of Fire for condition build? Glyph of Elemental Power? Lava Axe? No these are not burst damage. Conditions are, duh, not about burst damage.

Additionally since he was in Earth Attunement was the noob you were facing even using Rock Armor? Did he place down his own rings of fire to self combo projectile finishers with his stone shards? Did he ever blind you to mitigate damage? A quick trip through water for healing/chill/condition removal?

Scepter Condition builds have alot of potential but it DOES require you to use that potential and build for it. EVERYONE should know how to dodge burst, that should go without saying.

I assumed that since you said to switch between earth and air that you were suggesting a power and condition damage build, which is why I brought up that other ele, as they were some sorta power-condition damage build.
Also, they did dodge and they did switch to water, but they were at half health and I was using fast/instant activation attacks that don’t really give the enemy a chance to react to them – they dodged when I used RtL, probably expecting Updraft, mispredicted their dodge on Phoenix, and didn’t have interrupts like Earthquake available because we’d been at it for a while. They’d switched to earth from air to attempt to stack bleeds on me, but I quickly forced them to abandon that pursuit by pressuring them.

Since you’re not trying to defend ranged power-crit-crit damage, let’s look at conditions. Now, I’ll admit that I’ve only played condition builds with 30 points in the Earth Magic trait line (they were all terrible due to a lack of healing and/or a slow attunement recharge rate). However, the main problem with building for condition damage is that I suffer a fairly massive DPS loss whenever I switch away from the earth attunement – eles just don’t have optimal options for condition damage like necros and engis do.
If you really think it’s worth building for condition damage, though, I’ll give a 0/0/20/30/20 build a shot.

Ralathar.7236:

Chaosky.5276:

Hey.

Hey, devs.

Would you mind giving us a good ranged option for 1v1s?

I’d like that.

Scepter/dagger. You have a condition damage options and power damage options. Utility skills should include arcane blast. Run air attunement most of the time and switch to earth attunement on need. Water/Fire for utility or ring of fire/flame grab.

Admittedly they need to give some small love to fire and water scepter, but it is certainly a viable option and I use it all the time.

I really don’t think that making heavy use of the air attunement and taking Arcane Blast is a good idea without crit damage. Also, condition damage only affects Flamestrike, Dragon’s Tooth, and Stone Shards, only one of which is both worth using and will hit. (Not counting the offhand dagger skills because they’re not ranged.)

I can zap and bleed all I want, but I’m not going to kill anyone competent at 900 range. I fought a s/d ele that attempted to use Stone Shards for damage today – know what I did?

RtL-Ring of Fire-Arcane Wave-Arcane Blast-Phoenix-Fire Grab

They lost 50% of their health, while I’d taken next to no damage, and just removed the bleeding after I’d finished the combo. (We’d been fighting for a bit, so they didn’t have an interrupt like Earthquake handy, and they were at half health, so they died.)

You may notice that that combo is my most reliable and best burst damage as a s/d ele, and only one of the skills used (Arcane Blast) is effective outside of melee range. The only reliable ranged burst damage I have is Lightning Strike (Electric Discharge trait)-Lightning Strike-Arcane Blast.

Personally, I dislike any non-cosmetic grind in MMOs.

I’m not about to say that this complaint isn’t a bit silly, though.

morrolan.9608:

Chaosky.5276:

Hey.

Hey, devs.

Would you mind giving us a good ranged option for 1v1s?

You can spec scepter for that. I would agree though that what is badly needed is a weapon set that gives more flexibility in terms of range, especially if they aren;t going to give us an out of combat weapon swap.

Just posted this in another thread, ironically enough:

Tell me what causes you to think that it makes its wielder an effective ranged combatant.

In my eyes, the scepter suffers from many issues:

• Flamestrike is about as “meh” as attacks get.
• Dragon’s Tooth won’t hit anyone without a 3 second CC of some sort.
• Phoenix travels so slowly that it can be outrun with swiftness – good luck hitting anyone with that at 900 range. (It also won’t hit targets on elevated platforms due to some sort of bug, it just disappears into said platforms.)
• Shatterstone is useless – it does less damage than Ice Shards, locks you out of your non-instant skills for far too long, and is easy to dodge.
• I don’t know why Water Trident even has a damage component – you have to cast it at your feet to get the heal. (Minor gripe.)
• The earth attunement lacks offense – the only real damage comes from Stone Shards, and it’s absolutely terrible without condition damage. Building for condition damage leaves your other attunements weaker vs. power and crit, so that’s not very helpful, either.

LordByron.8369:

we need an OH or 2H weapon not another main hand.

Scepter and dagger are already decent.

Why do you believe the scepter is decent? Tell me what causes you to think that it makes its wielder an effective ranged combatant.

In my eyes, the scepter suffers from many issues:

• Flamestrike is about as “meh” as attacks get.
• Dragon’s Tooth won’t hit anyone without a 3 second CC of some sort.
• Phoenix travels so slowly that it can be outrun with swiftness – good luck hitting anyone with that at 900 range. (It also won’t hit targets on elevated platforms due to some sort of bug, it just disappears into said platform.)
• Shatterstone is useless – it does less damage than Ice Shards, locks you out of your non-instant skills for far too long, and is easy to dodge.
• I don’t know why Water Trident even has a damage component – you have to cast it at your feet to get the heal. (Minor gripe.)
• The earth attunement lacks offense – the only real damage comes from Stone Shards, and it’s absolutely terrible without condition damage. Building for condition damage leaves your other attunements weaker vs. power and crit, so that’s not very helpful, either.

Hey.

Hey, devs.

Would you mind giving us a good ranged option for 1v1s?

I’d like that.

covenn.7165:

1. Staff isn’t only a support role. I wreck people with my staff. We have two different perspectives here, so ask yourself what you may be doing different than me.

covenn.7165:

However, as I said before…. I would not use staff in PvP, havoc, 1v1, or any other small man engagements. It isn’t designed for those situations and d/d is vastly superior.

I dunno what definition of “support” you’re using, but I consider any weapon with group utility that can’t 1v1 effectively support-oriented.

Once again, there are a lot of people saying that the staff is a support weapon, but no one saying why eles can’t have an effective ranged option for 1v1s. (S/d still requires melee range to be effective.)

I’m mostly upset about the Kit Refinement nerf because it took away condition removal from multi-kit builds.

Deniara Devious.3948:

If Kit Refinement was too powerful, then why do the elementalists still get to have the elemental attunement adept level arcana trait? This gives the elementalists 15 s of might (fire), 5 s of swiftness (air), 5 s of protection (earth) and 5 s of regeneration (water). To make it even more overpowered the elementalist actually gives these boons to its allies* at well without any additional trait. And with boon duration runes and swapping between the attunements it is possible to keep up all the 4 boons up 100% of the time.

Pretty sure only swiftness, fury, vigor, and might can be kept up indefinitely with the standard build, and d/(x) does it best.
Frankly, I don’t find boon duration all that great without a mainhand dagger, because the attunements of the scepter and staff are much more situationally dependent. (For instance, if I were to attack an enemy from range with the scepter, any attunement other than the air attunement would be a terrible choice, because my attacks would either do next to no damage (Shatterstone, Stone Shards if non-condition build) or not hit at all. (Dragon’s Tooth, Phoenix, Shatterstone again))

Anyway, my point is that you should specify that part of the issue you have is mainly with mainhand dagger eles.

WvW is the aspect of this game I like most. It’s not just standing in circles harder than the other guys (although I actually enjoy that in games like TF2, in which I find combat more engaging and a greater number of tactics viable) – it’s the total conquest of another server. It’s not only ZergvZerg and PvDoor, either – you can find plenty of small battles and even 1v1s if you know where to look. (Namely supply camps and caravans.)

Have you ever had a 40-man zerg chase you around a corner and seen them obliterated/flee in terror thanks to the mass of siege weaponry you had lying in wait?

Have you ever held off a force of twenty with only a quarter that number by placing hidden catapults on a distant cliff-side, and seen one of your own commanders arrive to slaughter them just before your position is overwhelmed?

Have you ever been a part of a mere group of six that managed to cause so much havoc that twice that of the main enemy force broke off simply to eliminate you?

Have you ever had a scout report to your commander that an enemy force was headed their way, and been given the order to lie in wait for them? Seen their fear as they beheld your mighty force drop down from the mountainside to engage them in the camp they were attempting to take?

Have you ever stood high upon one of Stonemist’s turrets, looked toward the stormy horizon, and seen a massive army flanked by siege golems marching forth? Then looked to the next gate, and beheld the advance of another enemy’s forces? Baited what enemies you could into fighting one-another, while others worked furiously to keep them at bay? Witnessed the chaos of all three armies in the center of Stonemist, fighting for control?

WvW offers far more possibilities than SPvP, and also offers an environment in which new players can PvP without fear of impacting their team’s success due to their poor performance. I do wish it offered equalized gear like SPvP, though.

Hellkaiser.6025:

also “golem” somehow became “gollum”

“go-lum” became “goll-um”

every time I hear this I hear “My Preciousssssss…”

stop it game Asura look enough like him already

A dev posted on the engi forum, and immediately got flamed for the recent overall nerfs the class received – I don’t think that gives them much incentive to post.

However, I was glad that they stuck around to confirm that they didn’t think the changes to a very important trait were all that good, either, but that it was too effective for it place as an Adept-level trait, and they avoid moving the locations of traits. I didn’t agree with their justification for not simply moving it, but it was good to see a straight answer, nonetheless.

Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t a shorter delay on Eruption be better for combo fields as well? I mean, it’s not like you can use a blast finisher on more than one field, so wouldn’t it be better to cast the combo field and then switch to the earth attunement for Eruption and Evasive Arcana’s blast finisher? After all, that way I could cast Lava Font and then switch to earth for an Eruption/Evasive Arcana (Churning Earth) combo, which I can’t do currently.

Maxtofunator.5976:

Also, a side note, elementalists are not Gandalf, staff guardians are gandalf, as they can use both a sword… (and a staff.)

This is half the reason I want to see scepter/dagger get better ranged capability. (The other half is that ranged-melee hybrid is my favorite playstyle.)

I use this, although my gear’s rare, not exotic.

Not saying it’s the best, but I like it – pretty balanced between defense and offense.

Signet bunkers don’t offer enough defense, and power/crit signet builds are even worse.

Condition damage (cond/tough/prec with sigils of earth and force, prolly) with scepter/focus would probably be your best bet, but that means that switching from the earth attunement absolutely destroys your damage output, and as a condition build your attunement recharge rate should be pretty low, so that makes it even worse.

“You wanna heal? Welp, have fun only having access to burning for the next 13 seconds!”

Serephen.3420:

Sceptor is still capable of incredible burst if you check out this thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Elementalist-Scepter-Dagger-WvW-1-Vid-4-1-13/first

Eh, that build is extremely gear-dependent, and doesn’t even exist in SPvP.

bombula.2940:

I am not very good at ele, but did you try to Air skill 4, then 5, then switch to fire, cast number 2 or smthn? I do that in spvp when i run scepter.

You mean Blowout (dagger air #4 oops #5) followed by Dragon’s Tooth? Doesn’t knock the target down long enough, and even if it did, Burning Speed doesn’t need a CC to hit its target.

So I was fighting a dagger/dagger ele (standard build with Mist Form, Lightning Flash, and Signet of Air) in the dark room of the Obsidian Sanctum jumping puzzle, and was rather irked at how easy it was for my enemy to dodge my scepter’s primary hard-hitting fire attack, while they suffered no such difficulty.

I lost in the end (after about 5 minutes) because I dodged too many times attempting to avoid Burning Speed and didn’t have the endurance to avoid their next Churning Earth. (I was running 0/20/0/30/20 with Arcane Wave and Arcane Blast, so I took Arcane Mastery instead of Renewing Stamina.)

Anyway, I just made this thread to once again whine about how ask why the scepter’s offensive fire, water, and earth skills are so… bleh. I want this issue to be more widely recognized, dagnabbit!

Goloith.6349:

Thinking about rolling an Elementalist………but what should I know about this profession if I’m a WvW player?

Staff is best with a group, dagger/dagger is best solo, scepter/dagger is decent solo and better for bunkering than d/d, focus is only for blocking siege weapon projectiles.

(Obligatory complaint about how eles have poor solo ranged capability.)

I see a lot of people saying that elementalists aren’t good at ranged 1v1s, but I haven’t seen a single reason as to why that can’t be changed.

Personally, I’d like to the scepter changed so that Phoenix actually hits at range, Dragon’s Tooth hits at all, Shatterstone is useful, and Dust Devil is replaced with something that hits at range and deals decent damage (or is just changed).

I had some good fights with a thief earlier – they were running pistol/pistol conditions, I was a 0/20/0/30/20 scepter/dagger ele with 2 arcane utilities. I held my own the first time we met, but later they showed up with 17 stacks of Corruption, which I blame for doing me in. (I’d take Ether Renewal, but then I’d have to really worry about Headshot…)

We both used summons for our elites, so that was a nice touch. ICE ELEMENTAL VS. THIEVES’ GUILD!

Dynnen.6405:

“Don’t do anything to make zerging less effective!”

- Yams.6082

Fixed that for ya.

It’s a fair point that no AoE cap for skills that grant boons and stealth could be… problematic. Cripes, mesmers are important enough as-is, imagine what it would be like if Time Warp worked on an entire zerg!

Might wanna keep the cap for skills like that, though I think exceptions for boons like regeneration and swiftness would be warranted. It would kinda make sense – regeneration and swiftness are more passive boons, and wouldn’t take as much power to grant as boons like protection and might. It also makes sense that maintaining a sort of forcefield that would make up the protection boon on multiple people would be more difficult than simply spewing fire at enemies.

Romago.1974:

D/D is only for close range S/D is my favorite, its your faults for not trying it and learning how it works with the combo skills which you can stack might on unlike D/D

D/d can stack might quite well with Evasive Arcana, Earthquake, and Churning Earth.
Also, s/d is rather poor at range outside of the air attunement because of the unreliability of Dragon’s Tooth, the slow travel speed of Phoenix, the uselessness of Shatterstone, and the lack of offense in the earth attunement. (Once again, at 900 range.)

This must be, like, the seventh time I’ve posted a variation on ^that.^

ThiBash.5634:

Chaosky.5276:

Stone Shards autoattack, which does pitiful direct damage.

Glad that you mentioned direct damage, because the bleed easily carries it to 2k total damage. That’s quite a bit for an auto attack.

If you build for condition damage, yes, but that leaves a lot of other skills useless. A mix of power and condition damage is better, but even then condition damage only affects three scepter skills, and without a high critical chance you can’t take a sigil of earth to improve that situation.

I think this about sums up the chaos at SM earlier.

So much lag.

Minion of Vey.4398:

Worst problem with scepter is lack of an appropriate 900 range offensive offhand to go with it. Offhand scepter, or pistol, or whatever.

Eh, I’d really prefer it if the scepter was just better, because I’d a ranged/melee hybrid. Kinda like a Rifle + Greatsword warrior.

Lysico.4906:

If you can’t get burst out of your s/d you are doing it wrong. And 900 range is more then enough for all but keep defense (and everyone should have staff anyway).

I am not the only one running it and doing very well wpvp. Just check the first page here. There are posts, videos etc of other players rocking it.

If YOU can’t handle the spec, that is fine. But the tools are there.

I never said that I don’t preform well with it, I said that the scepter does not function properly at its maximum range – scepter/dagger is fairly reliant on the offhand dagger. If I can’t effectively fight my enemy from maximum range, that weapon is not an effective ranged weapon.

Lysico.4906:

s/d has no issues with burst and have range.

There ya go.

Lolwut.

Phoenix is so slow that it’ll only hit AFKers at 900 range, Dragon’s Tooth doesn’t hit at all without a 3 second CC or something, Flamestrike is downright terrible no matter how you build, Shatterstone is useless, and the only real damage in the earth attunement is the Stone Shards autoattack, which does pitiful direct damage.

Only concerned about effectiveness at 900 range here.

Quick Mouse.7635:

Chaosky.5276:

I want solo ranged combat, dagnabbit.

staff ele is actually pretty good solo in pve.
Step 1: Round up some mobs
Step 2: Drop water 4
Step 3: Drop sandstorm
Step 4: ????
Step 5: Profit!

Solo *PvP* ranged combat.