Scepter

[felincyriac.5981]

Feels like its a bit outdated now in pvp. It still has its uses in pve, but in pvp it has been almost completely replaced by pistol. Skills 2 and 3 feel very weak.

Grasping Dead

• How would a short immobilize feel with this skill? 
• A stack of poison? Auto chain applies both bleed and poison, so why not...

 

Feast of corruption

• Single target 1 boon corrupt? Even 6 years ago it would've been weak. How about 2? Though this is unlikely since the current balance team seem to hate boon strip
• Make devouring darkness baseline? Might be easier to balance in the future, and helps you output more aoe pressure whilst having weakening shroud for survival.

 

I feel like they could make scepter into a more debilitating aoe focused condi weapon, whilst keeping pistol a more single target based wep with a focus on burst damage. 

 

[XECOR.2814]

Scepter#2 is skill split for competitive modes. Does less bleeding and power damage(even though power damage is very low in pve anyway).

Imo this skill is split for no reason, its just bad in general. Nothing becomes op if it does 3 bleeding instead of 2 on a weapon skill.

Scepter#3 does 1 boon corrupt on single target and does like 4sec torment. The power level of the un-traited version is so low its actually unbelievable. The only reason this skill exists so that the curses gm trait can make it playable. Which is a twisted logic to balance something.

A much healthy approach would be offload some of the power of the scepter trait by adding condition durations baseline and make it corrupt 2 boon single target. So that you actually have a functioning skill and if you want to trait in the curses gm trait you gain 200 condi damage and the 2 single target becomes 1 aoe corrupt.

[Dadnir.5038]

On 3/9/2024 at 1:53 PM, felincyriac.5981 said:

Grasping Dead

• How would a short immobilize feel with this skill? 
• A stack of poison? Auto chain applies both bleed and poison, so why not...

Lingering curse make those ideas OP.

Also you seem to forget that Scepter do have an advantage over pistol in competitive modes as none of the scepter's skills are projectiles.

[felincyriac.5981]

31 minutes ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

Lingering curse make those ideas OP.

I doubt it, the numbers can always be tweaked, and you'll be giving up weakening shroud which is a nerf to your survival.

31 minutes ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

Also you seem to forget that Scepter do have an advantage over pistol in competitive modes as none of the scepter's skills are projectiles.

 

didn't forget, its just that the scepter skills are so weak and worthless that them being non-projectiles never come into play. The only decent condi build for spvp atm is reaper, who has the unblockable shout anyway. 

[felincyriac.5981]

1 hour ago, XECOR.2814 said:

Scepter#2 is skill split for competitive modes. Does less bleeding and power damage(even though power damage is very low in pve anyway).

Imo this skill is split for no reason, its just bad in general. Nothing becomes op if it does 3 bleeding instead of 2 on a weapon skill.

Scepter#3 does 1 boon corrupt on single target and does like 4sec torment. The power level of the un-traited version is so low its actually unbelievable. The only reason this skill exists so that the curses gm trait can make it playable. Which is a twisted logic to balance something.

A much healthy approach would be offload some of the power of the scepter trait by adding condition durations baseline and make it corrupt 2 boon single target. So that you actually have a functioning skill and if you want to trait in the curses gm trait you gain 200 condi damage and the 2 single target becomes 1 aoe corrupt.

sometimes when I use scepter 3 I'm like "did I press the skill??", its so bad lol

Edited March 10 by felincyriac.5981

[DeceiverX.8361]

Biggest problem is it is designed for a less-powercrept game.

As an attrition/DoT build, the ideas behind Core necro + scepter are pretty successful implementations when accounting for situations closer to core game.

Ramp a bunch of long, low-stack bleeds, turn into shroud to tank incoming damage when the enemy engages and punish their boons and abilities to stack offenses.  Great.

Issue is having any ramp-up time on conditions makes such builds useless in the modern context.  It has limited condition diversity and the "low and slow" method of DoT when it's so easy to negate so much of the threat by boons and raw healing.  In 2013 when some builds had like... one cleanse source every minute, it was workable.

Same for a boon corrupt every 10 seconds that frankly gives less LF per unit of time than Axe and still depends on a condition to be met.  8-12% LF on a 10s cooldown isn't super good for a playstyle that's meant to use LF to draw things out and just act as a defensive mechanic.