What's the reason for the Staff to be so much better than the Scepter?

Both condi weps. Before they increased the projectile speed of Chaos Vortex and removed the non damaging condition on staff autos (vuln), the staff was already much better in a condi build. So they made it even better by removing the vuln on autos and increased the speed of the ambush skill. As if this wasn't enough, they decided to nerf Scepters ambush skill which pales in comparison to Chaos Vortex (even pre nerf) and made an already crappy Confusing Images EVEN worse. Was the scepter supposed to be bad by design?

Scepter is straight up bad right now. It has zero real place in the game. Staff will always have a place thanks to phase retreat.

Scepter isn't a bad weapon, it just didn't get caught up in the powercreep over the past couple years

I agree. Scepter is pretty broken currently.

@OriOri.8724 said:Scepter isn't a bad weapon, it just didn't get caught up in the powercreep over the past couple years

I never said that its complet crap. I use it a bunch for solo roaming, but other than iCounter, every skill on the scepter is bad compared to anything on the staff.

I tried scepter but just couldn’t do anything with it. I am sure it has a place but I will leave that to you more experienced players because I suck with it.

@Nuka Cola.8520 said:

@OriOri.8724 said:Scepter isn't a bad weapon, it just didn't get caught up in the powercreep over the past couple years

I didn't say you did say that. I was merely pointing out that it actually has a solid kit, it just hasn't been powercreeped to hell like almost everything else.

Also, I'm not saying that you necessarily are doing this, but I usually find that when people complain about scepter they are trying to use it for a role its fundamentally unsuited for. Unlike staff, scepter is a dueling weapon. That's why it has built in combos like block chaining into a blind. Easy clone generation for lots of things (though, granted, this is significantly less important after the phantasm changes), and a combination of torment and confusion.

Also, right now scepter feels even worse because of its reliance on confusion. But do be careful to assign blame where blame is due. It feels weak because confusion was destroyed as a condition, not because there is anything wrong with the kit.

I do think scepter is one of our better designed weapons honestly

A long time ago, back at release, each weapon wasn't in a good place either but back then we expected the clearly visible design intent for each weapon to be quickly narrowed into a tight focus. And it was rather obvious, Sword for melee, Greatsword for range, Staff for defense and survival and Scepter for clone-spam. That was their use, and while it didn't work well, okay, there wasn't much to do to make it work.

Sadly, like so many reworks / reimplementations / changes / rebalances, nearly 6 years passed with only two big reworks ever happening, the trait change (which honestly made half the problems of the game worse without fixing any :disappointed: ) and now the Phantasm rework.

Scepter and focus are probably the worst weapons of the mesmer right now.

It's not like staff is super powerful anyway - if it wasn't for Phase Retreat, it wouldn't be that great either. The mains thing staff has going for it is "AoE" damage through bouncing auto and radius ambush (as well as clone autos not being useless), mobility from phase retreat, and stomp/res denial from Chaos Storm. Sure the traited chaos armour protection is nice, but not a defining feature of staff.

Scepter suffers from being largely single target in an era where cleave/aoe is everything. Sword cleaves, axe cleaves, GS cleaves, Staff has aoe... Scepter has... a really awkward piercing beam attack that in practice is difficult to hit more than one person with. Aside from that the single target nature of the auto and block doesn't work well in the current state of the game.

Ideally I'd like to see Confusing Images work more like Split Surge - with beams branching out to nearby enemies from the target.The #2 Block ought to be a channeled multi-block (same with Sword 4) similar to how Shield 4 works.

In small scale fights like I typically have while wvw roaming, I like scepter a lot. Confusing Images is underwhelming since the confusion change. Either making it more viable for AOE (as Curunen mentions) or increasing the expected damage from confusion would be nice.

If you're experimenting with scepter, I suggest spending at least a little time testing it with the Malicious Sorcery trait. That makes a big difference.

One thing I like about scepter is that it can help with clone generation. In all the chrono builds I've tested with Chronophantasma (and no Dueling line), there's this tricky part at the beginning of the fight where you're trying to build up clones. If clones are getting cleaved down, it can be a struggle to get to three clones up at the same time. Because scepter can create clones on auto-attack and on scepter block, it gives me a better chance to get three clones up earlier.

Makes me wonder why is the condition duration halved for clones when using the Scepter but not the staff. With the latest Scepter nerf, they need to remake confusing images, scepter autos and the ambush skill. They're not "fine".

@Sodeni.6041 said:Scepter and focus are probably the worst weapons of the mesmer right now.

Try playing chrono before posting your opinions bud.

You're glorifying staff. While it's better than what it used to be with the phantasm changes, it still needs improvements to be on the right spot, specially Chaos storm and Armor, outdated skills that for sure need improvements.About Scepter, it suffers from being a weapon designed in the old Gw2. Nowadays with the prevalence and bump of AoE skills, single target weapons are kinda pointless. And about halved condi duration on Ambush, it is nothing but the result of being able to output 10 stacks of confusion and torment with every ambush.

@Ansau.7326 said:You're glorifying staff. While it's better than what it used to be with the phantasm changes, it still needs improvements to be on the right spot, specially Chaos storm and Armor, outdated skills that for sure need improvements.About Scepter, it suffers from being a weapon designed in the old Gw2. Nowadays with the prevalence and bump of AoE skills, single target weapons are kinda pointless. And about halved condi duration on Ambush, it is nothing but the result of being able to output 10 stacks of confusion and torment with every ambush.

I'm just curious. What would you do with chaos storm?

@AliamRationem.5172 said:

@Ansau.7326 said:You're glorifying staff. While it's better than what it used to be with the phantasm changes, it still needs improvements to be on the right spot, specially Chaos storm and Armor, outdated skills that for sure need improvements.About Scepter, it suffers from being a weapon designed in the old Gw2. Nowadays with the prevalence and bump of AoE skills, single target weapons are kinda pointless. And about halved condi duration on Ambush, it is nothing but the result of being able to output 10 stacks of confusion and torment with every ambush.

Just thought I'd chime in and say I'd like to see a guaranteed daze and aegis proc on the first tick of chaos storm for consistency, given those two things are the main benefits of it.

@Curunen.8729 said:

@AliamRationem.5172 said:

@Ansau.7326 said:You're glorifying staff. While it's better than what it used to be with the phantasm changes, it still needs improvements to be on the right spot, specially Chaos storm and Armor, outdated skills that for sure need improvements.About Scepter, it suffers from being a weapon designed in the old Gw2. Nowadays with the prevalence and bump of AoE skills, single target weapons are kinda pointless. And about halved condi duration on Ambush, it is nothing but the result of being able to output 10 stacks of confusion and torment with every ambush.

Yes, better consistency would be nice. I often find myself wanting to save a dodge while standing in the field, but when making split-second decisions on critical mechanics (e.g. Can I block this Sniper shot or am I going to get downed if I don't dodge immediately?) it's not reliable enough. I have to check and make sure aegis is there, which I don't always have time for. If I could count on it always being there for at least the first hit, it would be more useful.

I thought the daze was supposed to pulse every second? Is that not the case?

A shorter cooldown would be nice, too. 35 seconds is too long for this effect.

@AliamRationem.5172 said:

@Curunen.8729 said:

@AliamRationem.5172 said:

@Ansau.7326 said:You're glorifying staff. While it's better than what it used to be with the phantasm changes, it still needs improvements to be on the right spot, specially Chaos storm and Armor, outdated skills that for sure need improvements.About Scepter, it suffers from being a weapon designed in the old Gw2. Nowadays with the prevalence and bump of AoE skills, single target weapons are kinda pointless. And about halved condi duration on Ambush, it is nothing but the result of being able to output 10 stacks of confusion and torment with every ambush.

Daze is also rng sadly which either ends up being really strong (ie multiple interrupts on opponents) or so inconsistent as to be useless.

Sure 30s base cooldown for 5 would be nice, and staff 4 is still really bad for such a long cooldown too.

Anyway given how strong overall mesmer is right now I'm happy to wait, but with the aim that when other powerful things are reigned in that the relatively mediocre skills like staff 4 can be brought on par with other good weapon skills. :)

But regardless of the current power of mesmer, scepter really ought to be improved at least a little bit in the coming balance where I expect to see a majority of scattered nerfs across the profession, because outside of a 1v1 it does lag behind all the other mesmer weapons.

Staff is better then Scepter because it's twice as big.. the logic is sound.

Scepter will get reworked to be godly once they debute the new legendary and it's cool enough for me to want it. Mark my words.

@STIHL.2489 said:Staff is better then Scepter because it's twice as big.. the logic is sound.

.... Yeah I can't argue with this.

@AliamRationem.5172 said:

@Ansau.7326 said:You're glorifying staff. While it's better than what it used to be with the phantasm changes, it still needs improvements to be on the right spot, specially Chaos storm and Armor, outdated skills that for sure need improvements.About Scepter, it suffers from being a weapon designed in the old Gw2. Nowadays with the prevalence and bump of AoE skills, single target weapons are kinda pointless. And about halved condi duration on Ambush, it is nothing but the result of being able to output 10 stacks of confusion and torment with every ambush.

• Chaos Storm could apply daze on impact (softer version of Thunderclap of Scrapper) and chill and weakness on enemies while retaliation and aegis every tick instead of only one random boon/condi.
• Same way, Chaos Armor could grant short resistance, short stability and protection and apply 2 vulnerabilities, cripple and blind on hit.
• With Wind of Chaos I would personally remove the second bounce and make it apply bleeding and burning or fury and might on hits.

@Ansau.7326 said:

@AliamRationem.5172 said:

@Ansau.7326 said:You're glorifying staff. While it's better than what it used to be with the phantasm changes, it still needs improvements to be on the right spot, specially Chaos storm and Armor, outdated skills that for sure need improvements.About Scepter, it suffers from being a weapon designed in the old Gw2. Nowadays with the prevalence and bump of AoE skills, single target weapons are kinda pointless. And about halved condi duration on Ambush, it is nothing but the result of being able to output 10 stacks of confusion and torment with every ambush.

• Chaos Storm could apply daze on impact (softer version of Thunderclap of Scrapper) and chill and weakness on enemies while retaliation and aegis every tick instead of only one random boon/condi.
• Same way, Chaos Armor could grant short resistance, short stability and protection and apply 2 vulnerabilities, cripple and blind on hit.
• With Wind of Chaos I would personally remove the second bounce and make it apply bleeding and burning or fury and might on hits.

that Chaos Storm would be op af. It'd be on a 70sec CD if it was like that, and Chaos Armor at least on 60sec CD.

The only reason there's burning on an auto attack is because its rng. If they were to remove the rng part of the auto and make it apply burning AND bleeding, it'd be more powerful than many other non auto attack skills lol. Especially with three clones spamming it as well.

Staff is much better . The real problem of scepter is clunky clone generation. With staff you can precreate 2 clones ( staff 2, 3 ) instead with scepter you have to hit 3 times for having a clone. it is a great loss becouse clone are mesmer defense and mesmer offense. U can play with scepter, surely, for roaming but in my opinion now it is overstimated. I used scepter for roaming but now in my opinion is suboptimal. For example , a condi setup full melee sword torch / axe pistol/sword/focus is better than the same with scepter becouse even if you have no range the clone generation of axe is much better than scepter so you can shatter more often ..

@"EUmad.7645" said:Staff is much better . The real problem of scepter is clunky clone generation. With staff you can precreate 2 clones ( staff 2, 3 ) instead with scepter you have to hit 3 times for having a clone. it is a great loss becouse clone are mesmer defense and mesmer offense. U can play with scepter, surely, for roaming but in my opinion now it is overstimated. I used scepter for roaming but now in my opinion is suboptimal. For example , a condi setup full melee sword torch / axe pistol/sword/focus is better than the same with scepter becouse even if you have no range the clone generation of axe is much better than scepter so you can shatter more often ..

Full melee condi? Oh right I think I met one of those when celebrating rank 3000.

It really doesnt matter what you carry as long as you know how the skills work. The weapon isnt what will fail you in combat - its your build vs the enemy builds or your skill vs the enemy skill. IMO the condi mesmer is suboptimal in WvW to begin with - the choice of weapon is just a matter of whether you like melee or ranged. They all have their respective advantages in any given scenario. And of course their respective quirks. Yeah the channel on scepter is... awkward... at times. But then again the clone leap on the sword is still borked and the ambush is likely to send you face first into a zerg when you try to dodge it. The delay on the axe just feels uuuugh...

Comparing a 2h staff to a 1h scepter is also completely unfair. One has 5 skills, the other has 3 and need to be complement by a secondary weapon. What's the argument here? That 5 > 3? That's not a reason for it being bad, that's math. I find that using staff on a condi build is about as good as using x/torch in WvW roaming (since they nerfed x/sword, bah!). They arent competing with each other.

Honestly I don't see the harm in letting the scepter wielding clones use the full scepter auto chain. Just replace the third strike with the torment stacks. But if you wanna get really whacky you can always have clones summoning their own clones.