Celestial Stats

These stats seems that with the passage of time and appearing new combinations have become obsolete, in theory they are designed to be able to use several types of roles in a more or less competent way and that for this use the rest of the stats in a small measure, in that sense, should include concentration and expertise to be somewhat competent.

That wouldn't really do as much as you think. It's just better to have specific sets to fit each purpose than to have a generalist one that can do a bit of everything.

There also don't exist many builds that can make use of absolutely everything.

If you lack access to HoT or PoF, celestial remains valuable for that small selection of builds that benefits from 4 or more stats. Celestial is less interesting to those owning PoF+HoT, since the expansions grant access to most of the more useful combinations for 4+ stats, . It would only be a superior choice for that even tinier subset of builds that might benefit from 5+ stats. And sure, that subset might increase if ANet added concentration and expertise... however

The other issue is how many points to assign to each stat. Currently, for two-handed weapons, Celestial provides 35% more points (118 for each of 7 stats), compared to 3-stat combos (251|179|179). By comparison, 4-stat combos offer only 9% more (215x2|118x2). To avoid giving even more of "an advantage" to celestial, that 118 might be reduced to 92 points for each of 9 stats (adding up to the same amount as before). '

It's hard to imagine a situation in the current game in which 92 points (for 2-handed weapons) is competitive with 3-stat or 4-stat scenarios

tl;dr what @Blocki.4931 said: it won't do as much as you might think.

edit: clarified language; typos

Some classes still great on celestial just not your Fotm low effort build with height performance peak.

@"Aeolus.3615" said:Some classes still great on celestial just not your Fotm low effort build with height performance peak.

Yes, and those classes play in WvW where they can make use of almost the entire spectrum of the stats celestial provides, certainly not in a pve environment. At least no where near "great". Maybe adequate or not bad at best.

@onio.6403 said:

These stats seems that with the passage of time and appearing new combinations have become obsolete, in theory they are designed to be able to use several types of roles in a more or less competent way and that for this use the rest of the stats in a small measure, in that sense, should include concentration and expertise to be somewhat competent.

Even without new combinations appearing the same can be achieved through traits so the concept wasn't all that great to begin with.

On the other hand every person asking for this seems to think the additional stats can be gained with no trade offs.

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@"Aeolus.3615" said:Some classes still great on celestial just not your Fotm low effort build with height performance peak.

and if they do as OP is asking, WvW will also be the reason why all stats will get reduced to compensate for the addition of two stats

@Khisanth.2948 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@"Aeolus.3615" said:Some classes still great on celestial just not your Fotm low effort build with height performance peak.

Yup, if they simply added these stats on top, celestial builds which are already meta in WvW would get even stronger. Celestial overall is a difficult stat combination to balance.

Keep in mind traits and certain utility skills when you plan to build for 4+ stats

There are a number of different skills and triats which will add modifiers to certain stats that will allow you to forgo direct stat investment into them for something else.Traits that add toughness based on power etc can be used well enough that you can sacrifice a few gear slots planned for toughness in favour of precision or vitality etc.Likewise skills like Rangers signet of stone can provide a nice 180 stat boost to toughness allowing for the same thing.

Meaning you could build a more damaged focused character with mostly zerker/assassins stats while also having a nice toughness etc stat to go along with it.I prefer this play myself as i'm not a big fan of the pure glass canon playstyle.. too squishy for me specially in melee.

@Blocki.4931 said:That wouldn't really do as much as you think. It's just better to have specific sets to fit each purpose than to have a generalist one that can do a bit of everything.I agree but that's also why I think those stats should be added to celestial because it makes it just that bit more effective for certain all round builds without breaking the game.There also don't exist many builds that can make use of absolutely everything.This is certainly true but those builds do exist. Of course this game has a TON of stat variants so in theory each stat set doesn't need to cover a lot of builds. In fact they shouldn't and that's the biggest problem with GW2 stat sets because there are a handful that are too useful and the rest is either very limited or might as well be taken out of the game.@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Khisanth.2948 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@"Aeolus.3615" said:Some classes still great on celestial just not your Fotm low effort build with height performance peak.

Celestial is about versatility and if that versatility can be abused in WvW then fix the abuse and not the versatility. Of course that's more work because balance is complex in a game that has many layers that need to be taken into account and affect each other in various ways. They just need to make it that versatility builds make sense but that they don't support OP builds for which the celestial set was not intended. The problem there is that right from the vanilla release they had stat sets that were geared towards specific classes and builds but actually were outperformed by berserker stats. There are a few more stats now that are viable for high level content but they never actually fixed that problem. But by all means let them address the WvW issues first before making celestial truly versatile. WvW could use the help.

@Gehenna.3625 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Khisanth.2948 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@"Aeolus.3615" said:Some classes still great on celestial just not your Fotm low effort build with height performance peak.

That has nothing to do with stats but rather skill and game design (not even balance). This games damage calculations benefit heavy stat and bonus damage stacking. Unless you decide that this needs to change, individual skill performance is not important (and insignificant since those values can be changed freely).

Celestial is about versatility and if that versatility can be abused in WvW then fix the abuse and not the versatility. Of course that's more work because balance is complex in a game that has many layers that need to be taken into account and affect each other in various ways. They just need to make it that versatility builds make sense but that they don't support OP builds for which the celestial set was not intended. The problem there is that right from the vanilla release they had stat sets that were geared towards specific classes and builds but actually were outperformed by berserker stats. There are a few more stats now that are viable for high level content but they never actually fixed that problem. But by all means let them address the WvW issues first before making celestial truly versatile. WvW could use the help.

The reason celestial is not a good stat in pve is simple: it goes against stat stacking and defensive stats have near no value in pve. As such it either gives way to many stats (en par to offensive sets WITH added bonus of defensive stats) or not enough (as is the case right now).

This is the same reason is why celestial is somewhat useful in WvW: defensive stats in WvW actually have value.

The problem you are talking around is what I mentioned earlier and two-fold:

• damage (and performance both defensive and offensive) benefiting stack stacking
• defensive stats being useless in pve

Those will never be addressed unless the core damage calculations off of how this games mechanics work get changed. I doubt 1 single stat set is worth that much trouble.

Congruently if the game was changed as to make celestial useful, most other stat combinations would become useless since it is literally a jack-of-all trades set which, if useful, would take ALL the spots in each meta. That would be great for all those players who want their "best" set, and at the same time would be insanely unhealthy to build and stat variety.

I use celestial stats on two of my mains (a guard and a rev). I like both of them for PvE-only open-world stuff. I wouldn't take them into fractals or WvW, but they provide a nice mixture of survivability and punch. They're not going to win any DPS challenges, but they don't need to.

Actually, D/D wvw Roaming ele can benefit from celestial.

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Gehenna.3625 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Khisanth.2948 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@"Aeolus.3615" said:Some classes still great on celestial just not your Fotm low effort build with height performance peak.

Celestial is about versatility and if that versatility can be abused in WvW then fix the abuse and not the versatility. Of course that's more work because balance is complex in a game that has many layers that need to be taken into account and affect each other in various ways. They just need to make it that versatility builds make sense but that they don't support OP builds for which the celestial set was not intended. The problem there is that right from the vanilla release they had stat sets that were geared towards specific classes and builds but actually were outperformed by berserker stats. There are a few more stats now that are viable for high level content but they never actually fixed that problem. But by all means let them address the WvW issues first before making celestial truly versatile. WvW could use the help.

• damage (and performance both defensive and offensive) benefiting stack stacking
• defensive stats being useless in pveI partially agree with you on this but not entirely. Survivability definitely has value in open world PvE content. I've noticed a big difference in how often I die, or rather not die, with my guardian in celestial gear.Those will never be addressed unless the core damage calculations off of how this games mechanics work get changed. I doubt 1 single stat set is worth that much trouble.Well, that's not my angle though. I do not want them to change the core of the game for one stat set. I want them to change the core of the game for a number of reasons and this is just one smaller one. I personally feel that the mechanics behind the combat system are not that great and aside from being uninteresting it does affect group content because not everybody likes to play in that stacking way and the difference between following that one path or not is HUGE. Damage output can range easily from 1k to 10k between players. There is a lot of frustration among, let's call them better players, about being with groups of people in open world and wvw that don't do that much damage.

What's important to understand there that not everybody likes the same things. GW2 has a wide variety of stat sets and possibilities for playstyle but punishes almost all of them because the vast majority gimp your build.

I have 2 guardians, one of which I have in celestial gear and another in marauder gear. The second one definitely outperforms the first one in damage, however is also a lot more squishy. The guardian can do rather well in open world with celestial because as it stands a balanced build with a guardian can benefit from all stats. I find that it specifically works for the guardian that way and not so much other classes. I've tried on a few others but it doesn't work nearly as well as with my guardian. I do however like the feel of the survivability on my celestial guardian. Where others get one shotted by boss abilities, I survive them. This is particularly useful when doing champions or world bosses with small groups because I can sort of tank them (in the traditional sense) and ress others while standing in aoe's a lot as well.

Congruently if the game was changed as to make celestial useful, most other stat combinations would become useless since it is literally a jack-of-all trades set which, if useful, would take ALL the spots in each meta. That would be great for all those players who want their "best" set, and at the same time would be insanely unhealthy to build and stat variety.I think the build and stat variety is already in trouble. When the game released berserker was all everybody played. It's gotten a bit better once they did the overhaul but most stats sets are still not useful in the meta. It's always just a couple of builds and it always revolves around stat stacking. And the difference between the meta and what a lot of people like to play is still too big.

In the end though, I'm not holding my breath on this ever changing. So I play GW2 as a solo player who jumps into world events and wvw. I stay away from any structured group content like PvP, raids and fractals because it would require me to play classes in ways that I simply don't enjoy. So I accept that I'm not nearly as efficient as I could be but at least I enjoy it more. It does leave the frustration at times that it does take me longer to kill just about anything and that makes it a bit boring on that side. I just wish I didn't have to chose between fun gameplay and high DPS because that's what the main issue is for me. I just don't like how the system works. There's a lot of things I do like in this game but for me the combat system is deeply flawed in that respect.

@Gehenna.3625 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Gehenna.3625 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Khisanth.2948 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@"Aeolus.3615" said:Some classes still great on celestial just not your Fotm low effort build with height performance peak.

Celestial is about versatility and if that versatility can be abused in WvW then fix the abuse and not the versatility. Of course that's more work because balance is complex in a game that has many layers that need to be taken into account and affect each other in various ways. They just need to make it that versatility builds make sense but that they don't support OP builds for which the celestial set was not intended. The problem there is that right from the vanilla release they had stat sets that were geared towards specific classes and builds but actually were outperformed by berserker stats. There are a few more stats now that are viable for high level content but they never actually fixed that problem. But by all means let them address the WvW issues first before making celestial truly versatile. WvW could use the help.

• damage (and performance both defensive and offensive) benefiting stack stacking
• defensive stats being useless in pveI partially agree with you on this but not entirely. Survivability definitely has value in open world PvE content. I've noticed a big difference in how often I die, or rather not die, with my guardian in celestial gear.Those will never be addressed unless the core damage calculations off of how this games mechanics work get changed. I doubt 1 single stat set is worth that much trouble.Well, that's not my angle though. I do not want them to change the core of the game for one stat set. I want them to change the core of the game for a number of reasons and this is just one smaller one. I personally feel that the mechanics behind the combat system are not that great and aside from being uninteresting it does affect group content because not everybody likes to play in that stacking way and the difference between following that one path or not is HUGE. Damage output can range easily from 1k to 10k between players. There is a lot of frustration among, let's call them better players, about being with groups of people in open world and wvw that don't do that much damage.

Sure, that is a viable complaint. I'll not take a stance on how good or bad stat stacking is, but now we are talking a way greater balance topic than "make celestial better".

We are also entering the area of: this game has active defenses. It will be very hard to make non offensive stats viable in scripted combat unless the difficulty gets increased significantly and even then, as seen in raids and high end content, defensive stats see use only for specific purposes (as keeping boss aggro).

There is 3 pillars to how stats affect a class:

• heavy stat stacking is the first, which encourages to not run hybrid builds
• active combat is the second, it's a main reason why defensive stats are near useless in pve
• skills tied to weapons being split between power and condition is the third. Most weapons are focused towards 1 damage type (or support)

@Gehenna.3625 said:What's important to understand there that not everybody likes the same things. GW2 has a wide variety of stat sets and possibilities for playstyle but punishes almost all of them because the vast majority kitten your build.

No system will ever make all stat sets viable in pve. That is simply impossible in a min-max environment with a game with active combat. There will always be 1 set which outperforms all the others for a specific goal. WIth Celestial this becomes double problematic since the set has NO GOAL. It is a jack of all set, it either dominates all other sets, or none.

@Gehenna.3625 said:I have 2 guardians, one of which I have in celestial gear and another in marauder gear. The second one definitely outperforms the first one in damage, however is also a lot more squishy. The guardian can do rather well in open world with celestial because as it stands a balanced build with a guardian can benefit from all stats. I find that it specifically works for the guardian that way and not so much other classes. I've tried on a few others but it doesn't work nearly as well as with my guardian. I do however like the feel of the survivability on my celestial guardian. Where others get one shotted by boss abilities, I survive them. This is particularly useful when doing champions or world bosses with small groups because I can sort of tank them (in the traditional sense) and ress others while standing in aoe's a lot as well.

This has more to do with the class than with the stats. The same applies to necromancer for example. Even here though, there would be more efficient stat combos which would have the same durability yet more damage. Stat stacking works for both, offense and defense.

@Gehenna.3625 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:Congruently if the game was changed as to make celestial useful, most other stat combinations would become useless since it is literally a jack-of-all trades set which, if useful, would take ALL the spots in each meta. That would be great for all those players who want their "best" set, and at the same time would be insanely unhealthy to build and stat variety.I think the build and stat variety is already in trouble. When the game released berserker was all everybody played. It's gotten a bit better once they did the overhaul but most stats sets are still not useful in the meta. It's always just a couple of builds and it always revolves around stat stacking. And the difference between the meta and what a lot of people like to play is still too big.

Well technically it was soldier for the first few months until people figured out how to play the game, but yes. Condition builds did not work in pve and berserker is, and remains to this day, the best offensive power stat combo.

The only change which happened is:

• condition builds were made viable, thus viper (and Sinister before it) became best-in-slot for condition builds
• support builds were introduced

That's more akin to asking for more trinity than stat balance. Sure, Arenanet could make the game ever more like classic MMOs by introducing healers and tanks in open world.

@Gehenna.3625 said:In the end though, I'm not holding my breath on this ever changing. So I play GW2 as a solo player who jumps into world events and wvw. I stay away from any structured group content like PvP, raids and fractals because it would require me to play classes in ways that I simply don't enjoy. So I accept that I'm not nearly as efficient as I could be but at least I enjoy it more. It does leave the frustration at times that it does take me longer to kill just about anything and that makes it a bit boring on that side. I just wish I didn't have to chose between fun gameplay and high DPS because that's what the main issue is for me. I just don't like how the system works. There's a lot of things I do like in this game but for me the combat system is deeply flawed in that respect.

To be honest, there is a lot more stats which can be used in open world for funsies though. Condition classes on Trailblazer for example become near indestructible. Celestial works well enough as you had mentioned. Diviner for example is a great alternative for classes which can selfbuff and play power (ranger on Boonbeast for example). Marauder is a small damage loss for increased vitality for any power class.

There is a very nice section on metabattle which deals with open world builds which are specifically designed with more sustain and dealing with multiple enemies in mind, while easy to play.

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:If you lack access to HoT or PoF, celestial remains valuable for that small selection of builds that benefits from 4 or more stats.Been tried before - it's practically always better to use a mix of different 3-stat pieces than go celestial. The best celestial can hope for in such builds is for someone to use one-two pieces of celestial to finetune a non-celestial build, but even that is never a superior choice.

Celestial is less interesting to those owning PoF+HoT, since the expansions grant access to most of the more useful combinations for 4+ stats, . It would only be a superior choice for that even tinier subset of builds that might benefit from 5+ stats. And sure, that subset might increase if ANet added concentration and expertise... howeverIt wouldn't be even for those. Similar to the situation above, you'd simply mix and match 3 and 4-stat pieces to get an overall better result.

Yes, some people do use celestials in WvW, but that's mainly because it's simpler to use a single stat set than think which combinations would be better. Also, "has more stats, so must be better" way of thinking.

The other issue is how many points to assign to each stat. Currently, for two-handed weapons, Celestial provides 35% more points (118 for each of 7 stats), compared to 3-stat combos (251|179|179). By comparison, 4-stat combos offer only 9% more (215x2|118x2). To avoid giving even more of "an advantage" to celestial, that 118 might be reduced to 92 points for each of 9 stats (adding up to the same amount as before). 'No need, for the reasons already mentioned above (by you as well) - celestial is simply not good enough as it is, so there's absolutely no need to "balance" around that submediocry.

It's hard to imagine a situation in the current game in which 92 points (for 2-handed weapons) is competitive with 3-stat or 4-stat scenariosIt's hard to imagine a situation where celestial with added concentration and expertise without rebalanced stats for it would be competitive. Which clearly shows that there would be no need for such a balance. That advantage exists only on paper, but in game it turns out to have absolutely no meaning. Because of stat-stacking value, and because stat points are not equal, their worth is always dependant on which attribute they are added to.

tl;dr what @Blocki.4931 said: it won't do as much as you might think.On that, i'm in full agreement. Even with those two more stats, celestial would still not be a good choice. In PvE anyway. SPvP is different, but that's mainly because we cannot mix different stat set pieces there. Not because celestial is suddenly so better.

I remember a dagger/dagger build for elementalists from a guy who would solo kill 5 and more people in wvw and pvp. but that was when the celestial stats were new.the build later got nerfed and said player rage quitted the game. I think he went by the name of phoenix or something like that.

@Clyan.1593 said:I remember a dagger/dagger build for elementalists from a guy who would solo kill 5 and more people in wvw and pvp. but that was when the celestial stats were new.the build later got nerfed and said player rage quitted the game. I think he went by the name of phoenix or something like that.

Engineer had similar synergies when one could use both Modified Ammunition and Incendiary Powder at the same time. Not as tough but the damage was staggering.

@MrForz.1953 said:

@Clyan.1593 said:I remember a dagger/dagger build for elementalists from a guy who would solo kill 5 and more people in wvw and pvp. but that was when the celestial stats were new.the build later got nerfed and said player rage quitted the game. I think he went by the name of phoenix or something like that.

Nah I'm not talking about a dmg number occuring at once, just that the celestial stats were best for this build, since it was designed for high mobility and survivability while putting out average dmg. By switching between the elements he would use whatever the situation required. It was quite beautiful to watch him play, since - as he said - after a while switching between the elements became a routine and felt very natural.

Adding Concentration and expertise into celestial would be pretty huge tho ... imagine the amount of stats that it would gives ... and lowering the other stats (again) would pretty much make it worthless in pvp. In Wvw it would pretty much balance it I think (maybe not)

Fair point : ele would be OP (again) if they add that directly without changing anything LUL

@Clyan.1593 said:

@MrForz.1953 said:

@Clyan.1593 said:I remember a dagger/dagger build for elementalists from a guy who would solo kill 5 and more people in wvw and pvp. but that was when the celestial stats were new.the build later got nerfed and said player rage quitted the game. I think he went by the name of phoenix or something like that.

Engineers can pull off the similar things via kits.

The value of defensive stats in PvE is never high, but it depends a bit on class. Some classes like Thieves actually get most of their defense from their offense through draining mechanics and whatnot, so, you're likely to notice a decrease in both your time to kill AND time to live trying to use defensive stats on a Thief. A guardian, though, has mostly passive attrition, so, with their low HP pool, mixing in some vitality can be a good choice depending on your build.

Regarding Celestial, it needs one of two things:

1. Replace Healing Power with Expertise
2. Add concentration and expertise and very slightly lower the bonuses

Reason being is that, because of the mechanics on healing skills (they tend to be high baseline with low scaling) HP is a near-useless stat unless you're fully dedicated to it, so it ends up being nearly a total waste on Celestial gear. That is far less true of the other attributes. However, if you got bonuses to both HP and concentration, it would be better.

@Nath Forge Tempete.1645 said:Adding Concentration and expertise into celestial would be pretty huge tho ... imagine the amount of stats that it would givesYep. Still too low for it to be really wanted in PvE.

@Clyan.1593 said:Nah I'm not talking about a dmg number occuring at once, just that the celestial stats were best for this build, since it was designed for high mobility and survivability while putting out average dmg. By switching between the elements he would use whatever the situation required. It was quite beautiful to watch him play, since - as he said - after a while switching between the elements became a routine and felt very natural.

That's what I pointed out. With grenades, tool kit, elixir gun and a rifle one was a fairly mobile juggernaut dealing hybrid damage with a fair bit of healing and defensive abilities, no stats went to waste. Could cash on sustain while keeping some very respectable damage.