Scepter Nerf on 10/1/2019: "The best melee damage option should not be a ranged weapon."

[Falseprophet.1502]

 

From the November 29th Balance Patch notes:

 

• Quote

  True Shot (PvE only): Increased power coefficient from 2.44 to 3.2. Increased cooldown from 4 seconds to 6 seconds.
  Hunter's Ward.png Hunter's Ward (PvE only): Reduced cooldown from 40 seconds to 20 seconds. Increased power coefficient of initial hit from 0.25 to 0.75. Increased power coefficient of final hit from 2.2 to 2.5.
  Spear of Justice.png Spear of Justice: Increased power coefficient from 0.6 to 0.8 in PvE only.

   

 

Clearly, this nerf three years ago didn't age well as Longbow will probably become meta for DH - meaning a range weapon will be the best melee damage option. Can we get our old scepter back?

Edited November 17, 2022 by Falseprophet.1502

[Infusion.7149]

Pretty sure it was because scepter was not just high autoattacks at the time? The autoattack was nerfed by 10% from 0.666. Yet scepter didn't fall out of favor until the cooldown change on Symbol of Punishment from 6 to 10 seconds. Your assessment hones in on the 2019 autoattack change which is fairly insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

Right now scepter Orb of Wrath is 0.6 coefficient every 0.64 seconds or so. You can consider this to be around 0.94 coefficient a second down from ~1.04 coefficient a second. It is reflected by Varinia in Cold War so it behaves like a projectile. 

Sword on guardian is slated to get another bump from 0.666 to 0.75 in PVE on the first hit, 0.725 to 0.8 on the second hit, and 1.5 on the last hit of the chain with ~2.15 seconds for the entire sequence so ~1.4 coefficient per second. Longbow is 1.0 coefficient every 1 second but has 1.1x the weapon strength so you can consider than 1.1 coefficient per second in comparison to a 1 hand sword or scepter. 

The best melee damage option for guardian is likely going to remain Greatsword anyway. 

Edited November 17, 2022 by Infusion.7149

[Falseprophet.1502]

6 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Pretty sure it was because scepter was not just high autoattacks at the time? The autoattack was nerfed by 10% from 0.666. Yet scepter didn't fall out of favor until the cooldown change on Symbol of Punishment from 6 to 10 seconds. Your assessment hones in on the 2019 autoattack change which is fairly insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

Right now scepter Orb of Wrath is 0.6 coefficient every 0.64 seconds or so. You can consider this to be around 0.94 coefficient a second down from ~1.04 coefficient a second. It is reflected by Varinia in Cold War so it behaves like a projectile. 

Sword on guardian is slated to get another bump from 0.666 to 0.75 in PVE on the first hit, 0.725 to 0.8 on the second hit, and 1.5 on the last hit of the chain with ~2.15 seconds for the entire sequence so ~1.4 coefficient per second. Longbow is 1.0 coefficient every 1 second but has 1.1x the weapon strength so you can consider than 1.1 coefficient per second in comparison to a 1 hand sword or scepter. 

The best melee damage option for guardian is likely going to remain Greatsword anyway. 

 

Oh, come on. Don't be silly. This is such an odd response as it has nothing to do with auto-attacks. It has everything to do with philosophy of balance.. Your perception of honing into "just auto attacks," just simply is wrong. LB will definitely outpace sword now, meaning that there will be a ranged component to DH for the first time since 2019. Three years removed since they nerfed scepter out of the kit because a "ranged weapon shouldn't be best in melee (meaning out performing sword, this is the same patch that buffed Zealot's Defense (A RANGED ATTACK!!))." Scepter was officially dead in October of 2019. They nerfed the symbol three months before the autoattack nerf. The six to ten second cool down increase was just insult to injury. You weren't using scepter in power builds in 2021. 

 

You still ran GS when Scepter/Focus was relevant. You're going to run GS/LB on 11/29. You won't use scepter on any power builds. It will still only be used to proc passive virtues on condition based builds and even then -- cDPS FB is looking like it won't even use it anymore on 11/29. 

 

Edited November 18, 2022 by Falseprophet.1502

[Infusion.7149]

It has everything to do with what you wrote. You mentioned the 2019 balance notes but that was the only thing changed in that patch, unless your point is what they did and what they stated as the point of the change did not align with their goal.

For reference this is the patch you are talking about: 

In addition, I don't know why you think longbow wasn't relevant before, it was. It just wasn't the top DPS pick for DH.

See longbow variant from 2021
 

Compared to the 36K sword variant dated 2021

and Virtues

 

[Falseprophet.1502]

My point is longbow becoming good is against their philosophy and reason for making scepter. You just refuse to understand and clearly want to argue to argue (5K+ posts on this forum, LOL).  The October 2019 reduction to the auto attack was the nail in the proverbial coffin and removed it as a choice for Power. Your video links perpetuate my point. 

 

The virtue benchmark link is rich as it is unrealistic in any encounter, even more so now.

 

Also, edit - done entertaining you and your uncanny desire to argue. You're not contributing to the whole point of discussion. You're misinterpreting. Look at your comments on this forum, it's obvious. You question other people's objectivity and education, but then you continue to post stuff like this.

Edited November 18, 2022 by Falseprophet.1502

[cat.8975]

Scepter was nerfed because it was stronger than sword (which was silly), so they kept buffing sword and nerfing scepter until that wasn't the case.

Rather than revert those nerfs, I'd prefer if they would pivot it into a hybrid power/condi weapon and give it some burn (or other condi) application. With the upcoming rework to Firebrand, you'll only swap to scepter on an 8 page build, as it wont be worth swapping away from axe otherwise. I've always found it weird that the core Guardian traits have so much for condis, but there aren't any core mainhand weapons for it.

Would also be nice if we could get a rework to the auto attack (giving it a chain, similar to what they did to staff), but that has a substantially higher development cost.

Edited November 18, 2022 by cat.8975

[MagicBot.1570]

Yes, even at the time it felt like a lousy excuse to nerf scepter in favor of Sword, but I always prefered the spammy gameplay of scepter. But the recent cooldown increase unironically probably has more to do with server costs and maybe an over use of the spell in WvW, hence the cooldown increase. It's the type of minor spell-related optimizations they started doing these last few years; it's probably not much but it helps.

 

I agree Scepter is a meme though, and since their philosophy now seems to include ranged weapons as competitive options then itcould definitely use a nice buff.

Edited November 18, 2022 by MagicBot.1570

[Falseprophet.1502]

I'm all for a scepter rework, definitely. I'm also in agreement that it's ridiculous that Guardian doesn't have a core weapon that does condition damage.  But let's be honest, @cat.8975; they're not going to do that (you've clearly told me this in my suggestion to have sword offhand create three dual attacks).

 

I want to give you credit as this corroborates what I'm saying:

21 minutes ago, cat.8975 said:

Scepter was nerfed because it was stronger than sword (which was silly), so they kept buffing sword and nerfing scepter until that wasn't the case.

 

Three years later, they're buffing longbow (ranged) to be stronger than sword (melee). The complete inverse philosophy of why they nerfed scepter three years ago. 

 

 

23 minutes ago, MagicBot.1570 said:

Yes, even at the time it felt like a lousy excuse to nerf scepter in favor of Sword, but I always prefered the spammy gameplay of scepter. But the recent cooldown increase unironically probably has more to do with server costs and maybe an over use of the spell in WvW, hence the cooldown increase. It's the type of minor spell-related optimizations they started doing these last few years; it's probably not much but it helps.

 

I agree Scepter is a meme though, and since their philosophy now seems to include ranged weapons as competitive options then itcould definitely use a nice buff.

 

The WvW point is interesting, but they purposely increased the CD in PvE when skill splitting exists. So, I don't know how I feel about this. 

 

Scepter definitely deserves a nice knob-turning. We do live in a game-world where core ranger weapons saw monumental buffs in PvE? Why the hesitancy with other specializations?

[Ashantara.8731]

On 11/17/2022 at 8:05 PM, Falseprophet.1502 said:

Can we get our old scepter back?

Preferably without its annoying sound effect that makes using this weapon on Guardian truly painful for me.

[Saiyan.1704]

On 11/17/2022 at 8:26 PM, cat.8975 said:

Rather than revert those nerfs, I'd prefer if they would pivot it into a hybrid power/condi weapon and give it some burn (or other condi) application. With the upcoming rework to Firebrand, you'll only swap to scepter on an 8 page build, as it wont be worth swapping away from axe otherwise. I've always found it weird that the core Guardian traits have so much for condis, but there aren't any core mainhand weapons for it.

Would also be nice if we could get a rework to the auto attack (giving it a chain, similar to what they did to staff), but that has a substantially higher development cost.

I think Anet intented on Scepter's increased hit rate to be a "condi" weapon of it's own. They changed it to hit 8 random targets above symbol, then 5 hits of the symbol itself when...prior to the change... scepter #2 was just a simple symbol cast.

Scepter/X + Sword/X has always been the superior F1 Burn Proc weapons of choice in WvW and PvP. To add.. DH has always been the most superior burn spec build available... Firebrand was/is a TERRIBLE burn build option. I can't recall FB ever being a burn build option actually... when it came to wvw or competitive sPvP.

Edit: Sage amulet was a thing but a very niche thing.... come to think of it.

Edited November 20, 2022 by Saiyan.1704

[otto.5684]

On 11/17/2022 at 9:26 PM, cat.8975 said:

Scepter was nerfed because it was stronger than sword (which was silly), so they kept buffing sword and nerfing scepter until that wasn't the case.

Rather than revert those nerfs, I'd prefer if they would pivot it into a hybrid power/condi weapon and give it some burn (or other condi) application. With the upcoming rework to Firebrand, you'll only swap to scepter on an 8 page build, as it wont be worth swapping away from axe otherwise. I've always found it weird that the core Guardian traits have so much for condis, but there aren't any core mainhand weapons for it.

Would also be nice if we could get a rework to the auto attack (giving it a chain, similar to what they did to staff), but that has a substantially higher development cost.

The reason why we do not have any core main hand condi weapon is cuz of VoJ and torch. For better or worse, all condi damage is built on these 2 with MH being a trigger for VoJ. You could say this is bad design and I would agree. Guardian condi is locked into VoJ + torch and power into GS. I was hoping WB will pivot a bit from this, but it did not.

 

As for scepter, it is possible for it to get some condi damage, but unlikely. And that is assuming it get any rework. I would settle for reducing symbol to 8 secs and/or buffing AA or skill 2 a bit.