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Fun (?) Build Challenge: Help me make "Celestial" stuff great again


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TL,DR:Help me find a cool semi-viable build focussing on "All Stats" gearI know perfectly well that 99,8% of the time other builds (mostly Berserker gear) are more efficient. I don't care about efficiency. I STILL want this to be about "Celestial" only.Please do NOT suggest something along the line of "ROFL Berserker or gtfo", this is not the point of the thread here.

Hi everyone, I am sorry for the long wall of text, but for the life of me I cannot keep things concise. Apologies in advance.

Background Info:I am a long term GW2 player and would insert me into the semi-casual crowd. I do not raid, WvW, PvE. I DO Open World and Fractals up to T3 and sometimes T4.Also, you cannot count me to the most efficient and skilled players around there. I am too stubborn, lazy and laid back to care for Min-Maxxing.

I died a lot (A LOT) at the beginning of the game (mostly because A: Elementalist as the first character and B: I suck at Ele, especially at rotations). That is the main reason after reaching 80 with a couple of characters back then I tried briefly the Berserker meta (Power/Precision/Ferocity) and found it too stressful hectic and not fun for me. I loathed every second of it.

The obligatory "get gud!" I ignored stubbornly and trudged on. I tried support/heal builds for Elementalist and Guardian and had semi-decent success in dungeons and low-end fractals.I prioritized Sustaining Power / Healing and Toughness and for better or worse rolled with it. My damage was laughably poor, it took ages to take enemies down and still I had fun.Also, since I took the lazy route I was totally unprepared for the "Truck to Face" that initial HoT and some parts of PoF were at launch (still are at some places).

Finally, I had to "get (somewhat) good" and use the game mechanics as intended. Weakness, Blind, Evade and dodging are a "Necessary Evil"; Fury, Quickness and Might are not added flavor on top but the main course instead. The transition was eased a little since the Devs gave us some nice upgraded Berserkers Gear 2.0 and 3.0:

  • Berserkers 2.0 is Marauders gear (Svaard) which is like Berserkers gear but with higher Precision and Vitality on Top
  • Berserkers 3.0 is Diviners gear (Steelstar) which is like Berserkers gear but with higher Precision and Concentration on Top (increased boon duration)

Despite my loathing of Berserkers Gear, I love both Marauders and Diviners gear. I am currently in the progress of outfitting my whole cadre of characters with those stats.Back in the "roll with it" phase, I accumulated a LOT of Celestial (All Stats) ascended armors and weapons since very often I couldn't choose where to go with my characters builds so I took the safe (but stupid) route of "Jack of all trades, master of none whatsoever". The "analysis paralysis" resulted in 14 Ascended Celestial armor sets. Also, I may be the only person left alive who has crafted a full Nomad Ascended set (Toughness, Vitality, Healing Power) and hasn't stat-swapped it yet.

Request:Still, I accomplished my long term goal of a decent(?) "Shout" Support/Heal Warrior and a decent(??) Flamethrower-Only Engineer. My one unfulfilled goal is to have a decent Build which focuses on Celestial stats. Please help me find some fun builds which focus on the Celestial Stat Combos.Please do not derail the thread with "But Berserkers is more DPS, what's the point?" Also please no Meta Berserker Builds where you just slapped Celestial on, I tried that route, believe me, it won't work.

Requirements:It should be playable in Open World PVE (which means difficult areas in HoT and PoF), Dungeons and low-to-mid Fractals. Flexibility and Utility above pure DPS but if you find a decent Damage Build with it I will gladly take it.Since the purpose is to take the celestial stats all the way, the gear is pretty much set in.

Class: VariableElite Spec: VariableRace: Variable ( I main Norn, but if I simply must use Asura racial skills to make the build work I will go for it) ;-PWeapon-type: VariableSkills: Variable (I particularly enjoy shout skills and lazy Sigils (on passive) but knock yourself out)Weapons: CelestialArmor: CelestialJewelry: CelestialInfusions: VariableFood Buff: Dragon's Revelry Starcake (+45 to all stats +20%mf)Enhancement Buff: VariableSigil 1: Superior Sigil of the Stars (Gain a charge of +2 to all stats each time you kill a foe, 5 charges if you kill an enemy player. (Max 25 stacks; ends on down.))Sigil 2: VariableRunes: Superior Rune of DivinityThe one and only exception to all this is the rune set. I will allow for the hybrid runes (seen under https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rune#Miscellaneous) as in:Traveler, Leadership, Tempest, Weaver, Revenant, Zephyrite and StarsThese runes have "all stats" boni as well as some special effects, which may supplement the builds.

For convenience sake, I already prepared some templates on Build Editor:WarriorGuardianRevenantRangerEngineerThiefElementalistMesmerNecromancer

Thank you for sticking with me through this long wall of text, I appreciate it, now lets have some celestial fun!(^.^)=b

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I don't know if it's what you're looking for but this is my Tempest (ele) build which uses celestial stats and which I find very fun: [&DQYlGR81MDfHEicPvgFOAaUSpRLDEsMSJgCWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA=]

I use staff as a main weapon with dagger/dagger as a second option for when I need more mobility, or just feel like moving around more. Then Wash the Pain Away, Glyph of Storms, Flash-Freeze, Feel the Burn and Glyph of Elementals, with Arcane, Fire and Tempest traits.

My approach was pretty much the opposite of yours - I started by choosing skills and traits I think are fun, then set out to find a stat combination to suit it, and decided on celestial because I use all 4 elements, so I'll use all the attributes at one time or another. I have no idea how it compares to 'meta' builds because I've never looked, but I've done all of HoT, base game map completion, parts of PoF, Fractals up to 20 (and could probably do higher but I've never needed to) and some dungeons using this build.

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It is an interesting challenge. I also like the idea of a FT only Engineer. So here is my approach. It is a mix of various experiments I ran over the years. Survivability is granted, for Core Tyria, PoF and HoT. T1 & T2 Fractals as well. Your fights take a while, champions can take really long. Bosses with timers should not be approached solo.

FT only ScrapperNote: Before you can play it, you need to swap the hotkeys of your healing-skill (default 6) and your first toolbelt-skill (default F1).

Sustain:

  • Scrapper uses Impact Savant, so you convert 15 % of your outgoing damage into barrier. Sadly, the trait still only utilizes power-damage.
  • Shredder Gyro when surrounded by several enemies to increase barrier gain.
  • Bulwark Gyro grants additional barrier for a short time.
  • Defense Field (Bulwark Gyro toolbelt) to block projectiles and stack up might.
  • Supply Crate & Spare Capacitor (Shredder Gyro toolbelt) to stun enemies.
  • Smoke Vent area-blind (FT 5) to blind surrounding enemies.
  • High availability of Superspeed, passive + 25 % speed baseline thanks to the Rune and limited access to Swiftness.
  • Good availability of vigor, allowing you to dodge a lot attacks.
  • Permanent access to Stability.
  • Condition Cleanse every 6 seconds due to the 2nd sigil, if you need more, swap Shredder Gyro for Purge Gyro.

Heal:This is the heal-mechanic of my old turtle-builds. Due to the healing-power gained from the celestial stats, Med Kit's toolbelt Bandage is actually quite powerful. As it is still a toolbelt, it can be improved with Mechanized Deployment, resulting in really low cooldown of 14.5 seconds (for almost 5.7k HP). You do not need to equip the kit, you can camp the FT right after login.

Damage:As we only use FT, there are not many difficult rotations we can run. But there exist a few skill-combinations which can increase performance.

  • When you enter a fight, start with Air Blast. This will inflict burning, knock your opponent away, trigger Lock On and cause 10 stacks of Vulnerability on the target and Fury on yourself. Assuming that you do not want to un-equip FT ever, this is a better trait-option than Streamlined Kits, as it enhances one of your FT skill. Cooldown is pretty long, so it is perfect to start a fight.
  • Next you can put a Lightning Field by using either Function Gyro, Bulwark Gyro or Spare Capacitor and shooting your Flame Blast into it. This will inflict more burning, cause both Swiftness & Superspeed which trigger Object in Motion and unlock its full potential (+ 15 % damage increase) as you have permanent Stability anyway.
  • Use another toolbelt skill, maybe Incendiary Ammo or your heal-skill to gain access to vigor. Then use the Shredder Gyro which will have access to almost all possible damage-multipliers at once.
  • If you want to milk out even more damage, put Napalm below yourself before you trigger the Shredder Gyro. The Gyro is a Whirl Finisher, which causes Burning Bolts in the fire-field which stack up burning. The effect is horribly low, but will still increase your damage output slightly. I ran a lot of tests with this, best strategy is to run into the enemy, put the field, activate the Gyro. If you made no mistakes, every bolt will hit the target.
  • As mentioned above, you have access to three Lightning Fields. So you can always trigger the full capacity of Object in Motion before you use the Shredder Gyro.

Other:

  • Feel free to use the Supply Crate frequently whenever you want. Thanks to Power Wrench and your enhanced access to vigor, you will dodge a lot to prevent damage. So the cooldown will be over in no time.

I ran similar builds in the past. The damage is low, but the sustain is nice. When doing group-content, you may often end up as the last man standing. That means you have to resurrect your downed allies whenever there is a chance, as you can face-tank a lot of attacks other classes would just instantly die to. Your increased dodge availability allows you to evade almost all lethal attacks. The speed-sources make evading area-attacks a run in the park. Key to this build is mobility. I would not use the LFG to avoid conflicts with other players*(, except for training/teaching groups and story-dungeons. Fractals should be done with friends.

*( ~ 3k DPS when all multipliers are used correctly. If you run into a person with a meter ... you know happens ^^.

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just as general advise: Ele and Guardian have among the highest potential for Cele gear, since they're design makes use of, and scales well, with all stats across most of their skills and traits. Engie is decent second. Thief used to be high on that list, but upcoming changes may knock it down hard. Necro changes may also shift back in favor of Cele; but that call is harder to make until they actually implement something.

Ranger is weird because it should be good as a hybrid, but its terrible scaling always works against it.

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@Danikat.8537 said:My approach was pretty much the opposite of yours - I started by choosing skills and traits I think are fun, then set out to find a stat combination to suit it[...]

That is usually my approach as well. This results in most of the time focussing on making Shoutskill-builds since my favorite class in GW1 was the Paragon (shouting supporter). Since my warrior hit LVL 80 about 3 months after launch I fiddle with my Shoutwarrior build. I wasn't too happy when Berserker came out, but with Spellbreaker I am more than happy. Still....not viable in Celestial gear.....yet(?)My current Tempest utilizes Shout skills as well (yay) but not with Celestial (boo) so i definetly have to try that out. Appreciate the input

@HnRkLnXqZ.1870 said:This is the heal-mechanic of my old turtle-builds. Due to the healing-power gained from the celestial stats, Med Kit's toolbelt Bandage is actually quite powerful. As it is still a toolbelt, it can be improved with Mechanized Deployment, resulting in really low cooldown of 14.5 seconds (for almost 5.7k HP). You do not need to equip the kit, you can camp the FT right after login.

  • Next you can put a Lightning Field by using either Function Gyro, Bulwark Gyro or Spare Capacitor and shooting your Flame Blast into it. This will inflict more burning, cause both Swiftness & Superspeed which trigger Object in Motion and unlock its full potential (+ 15 % damage increase) as you have permanent Stability anyway.
  • Use another toolbelt skill, maybe Incendiary Ammo or your heal-skill to gain access to vigor. Then use the Shredder Gyro which will have access to almost all possible damage-multipliers at once.
  • If you want to milk out even more damage, put Napalm below yourself before you trigger the Shredder Gyro. The Gyro is a Whirl Finisher, which causes Burning Bolts in the fire-field which stack up burning. The effect is horribly low, but will still increase your damage output slightly. I ran a lot of tests with this, best strategy is to run into the enemy, but the field, activate the Gyro. If you made no mistakes, every bolt will hit the target.
  • As mentioned above, you have access to three Lightning Fields. So you can always trigger the full capacity of Object in Motion before you use the Shredder Gyro.[...]

My Flamethrower-only Build focuses on Power, not Condition Damage, but man, there is some gold in your post here, I seriously need to up my build game since there are interactions I never thought of. I really appreciate it.And even with celestial gear, thats like having your cake and eat it too. I like the way you think! (^.^)=b

Unfortunately, while I drown in Ascended Heavy (and Light) Armor I currently have no Celestial Medium armor (my ascended armor producing craze was at a time where leather was even more stupidly expensive as of recent times, so a bit weak on supply there).I have to get down to business and get another one ready to try that out.

In the meantime keep the ideas coming!

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Well, I read somewhere that celestial thief is the worst so I made my thief all celestial (exotic gear and weapons, ascended trinkets, stars and divinity). She doesn't dare to enter PvP or WvW like this, but in PvE she's pretty good. Not perfect, but good. She hasn't finished core game yet and I'm not sure she will ever get to the end of HoT or PoF. But she dreams to become Daredevil. We'll see...We use sword/dagger and pistol/pistol. Mainly pistols in hard zones because melee fights usually result in painful death.As for the build, its main purpose - survival.[&DQU2HxQmLCsKAQwBGQFWAVsBWAFWATMBDgEOAQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA=]It's fun and real challenge for me.

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@"Wrong Device.3014" said:Well, I read somewhere that celestial thief is the worst so I made my thief all celestial [...]

I like that philosophy of yours! Same goes for me, Shouts are crap you say? Hmpf! Ok, lets play Shout skills all the way!

The core tenet of the "Full Berserker Gear Philosophy" is that the AI of Trashmobs and their stats practically beg you to murder them, as they are simple HP sponges 90% of the time, at least in Core Area GW2 Open world areas (not so much in current content, Expansion and LW areas, Fractals and some dungeons (and ofc raids). So I understand the mindset of "why bother with anything else than pure power DPS output?". So stacking as much Power and Ferocity as possible is the way to go. This backfired spectacularly and resulted in many long faces when HoT released and everyone had nightmares of being humped by a Pocket Raptor Swarm or three and/or Smokescale ambushes.

However, GW2 has more to offer than that, especially in the trait system. I like to disregard Power and Ferocity altogether (pretty much) and go for 100% Critical Hit chance and try to get as much as possible from the benefits of traits which play into "critical hits do X, Y or Z"

Here lies the challenge in the Celestial Set. The set has an abysmal measly 41,29% Crit chance as a baseline. Even with going for a fully charged Sigil of Stars (+50 to all stats) and adding a Sigil of Accuracy (unfortunately Sigil of Perception is out of the game because you can only have one "on kill" stacking bonus on you at a time) and fully decking out with Precision Infusions will net you with 54,95% Critical Hit Chance.Example

For me, the main challenge is to get as close as possible to 80% CHC (+ 20% CHC per Fury buff) via Traits and Skills as well as having these skills have as much interaction with our buffed celestial stats as possible to get to a build that is fun to play. Fun meaning not necessarily being Top Dog DPS but maybe Top Dog at evading, ramping buffs and debuffs, doing tons of CC, Heal, crippling/immob, never ever going down, etc.

One thing to ponder:The Runes, The Sigil and the Food give Bonus Expertise and Concentration as well, however, Armor/Weapons and Jewellery do not. Which is truly very sad. If the gear would follow the runes/food/sigil ruleset we would have about 885 Expertise and Concentration as well, which would result in ~ 59% improved boon and condi duration which would boost the set quite significantly in my opinion :-)

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I would pick a profession which can easily stack might. Here’s a Revenant build which can stack might by blasting the mace’s fire field. It also has Runes of Leadership and Sigils of Strength to help you stack more might. The traits provide might, fury, and alter fury to provide an extra 20% critical chance.http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PmzAkeVldQIMHKi1QSsHCi9RgsASgD10/TD-zxIY1o7/MCUqWzqyjzyWLAA-e

I would test this out in cheap gear to make sure it can easily hit 25 might. I have a celestial Herald that can do it but I get an extra 25% boon duration from sigils and also have +100 concentration from food.

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http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PWBBk6x3lVwyYfMMGJW8PupMA-zxIY1onfMqXBRSBNryWB-e

Maybe something to play around with. Core guardian build with some decent support and potentially not terrible damage. It's got a hell of a lot of condi removal for the party and should have just under 100% crit chance with retal and fury which it should be able to provide a fair amount of. I used to play something like this before I became a sucker for berserker. I'm not even elitist or anything I just like the challenge of squish and the buzz from stuff melting. I may play around with something like this myself. I thought about using torch instead of focus and I only put sigil of fire there for idk. Maybe scepter would be better than mace I guess I just like the idea of mace being used ever since it's quite a cool weapon even if quite niche functionally. I can't imagine this being particularly great damage wise to be honest but the utility is strong and the condi damage is fairly well used as per virtue of justice and it refreshing on kill. GL with your mission.

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I recently had an idea for a thief build, which appears to work quite well with your restrictions. Fortunately I had an almost complete full celestial leather set around, so I was able to even test it. The results are OK. DPS is obviously not so great, but the sustain and the mechanics it utilizes are even fun to play. It works definitely better than my old thief build, although I might change for more suitable stats sooner or later.

Celestial Core Thief

It is basically a build for people who want to play Thief, but do not really like to play as a traditional Thief. It allows fast combat, acceptable sustain in both range & melee scenarios, with a decent mix of both power- and condition-attacks.

Healing:It is a self-recovery build that does not utilize Signet of Malice, Skelk Venom or Invigorating Precision. The main source of the passive healing are blinds, using Cloaked in Shadow. You siphon health every time you apply the blind-condition to an opponent, which happens a lot:

  • whenever you enter stealth you blind nearby foes, this happens by using the heal-skill or stealing
  • pistol 5 on both weapon-sets applies a smoke-field that blinds enemies
  • Smoke Screen applies blinds
  • Weaponswap (Superior Sigil of Mischief) applies blinds
  • Using Dagger Storm inside a smoke-field applies tons of blinds quickly

So when your heal-skill is on cooldown, your best chance to recover HP quickly is to drop any of the smoke fields and use Dagger Storm. If you are ranged, just switch to dual-pistol and keep shooting until you are out of Initiative. Projectiles that pass through a smoke-field also blind enemies. It is not a 100 % finisher, but the effect is acceptable. In addition venoms, steal and stealth-attacks (auto-attack while in stealth) siphon health.

Sustain:

  • your enemies are often blinded, so you receive a lot less damage than usual
  • your heal-skill is an evade
  • Pistol Whip is a spam-able evade
  • Dagger Storm is an evade
  • you shadowstep via stealing & Infiltrator's Strike
  • you gain stealth using your heal-skill and stealing
  • Smoke Screen blocks projectiles
  • you cleanse conditions with using heal skill (several) or Haste (1)

Offense:

  • Revealed Training enhances your damage output (power), so try to break out of stealth almost instantly.
  • You gain Spider Venom for spending time in stealth, BUT it is best to break out of stealth within the first 1-2 seconds. In most cases it is not worth to wait the 3rd second for the 2nd stack of the Venom.
  • Poison enhances your power damage, so do not try to enforce Venoms. If you have access to them, use them.
  • stealing buffs you up and deals damage, use whenever it is ready. In addition it will reset one of your equipped skills.
  • blinding deals damage (life siphon)

Combat:

  • Sword + Pistol is the weapon-set you camp the most. Pistol Whip is still the most useful skill, dealing damage to several enemies and granting you evasion. Spamming it results in stacking Lead Attacks which enhances your damage even more.
  • Stacking up conditions enhances your damage-output by 2 % per different condition. So aside of blind & poison, feel free to use the auto-attack when you are in ranged mode. Keep in mind that poison also applies weakness, which increases your survivability and adds another 2 % damage increase.
  • Do not be afraid of swapping weapons.
  • As long as you do not run out of enemies, your health should never be a problem. If you face too much crowd-control, use your shadow-step skills and Haste. If that is not enough, use your heal-skill and switch to dual-pistol.

Note: I create most of my builds to serve a certain (non DPS) purpose. They either support a certain playstyle, use certain weapons/skills which have a questionable reputation or fit to a certain character theme. Priorities are always FUN > Playability (ease of access/control, smooth playstyle) > Survival > DPS. Regarding to CHC my focus lies on 60 % or more during the attack phases. That can be achieved either by boosting passives or granting reliable access to Fury. In condition builds which use no "on critical hit triggers" I sometimes ignore precision completely. Your stat-restrictions are too stiff for my personal taste, but offer an interesting challenge.

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The first thing I thought of when I saw this post was a reaper build called shout reaper that was meta in WvW before Path of Fire was released. I used the same build in open world and soloed some dungeons with it as well. There have been quite a lot of balance changes and the build used reaper runes however here is something similar that follow your rules:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PSjAEZlJwaYcsFWJOuLatUA-zxIY1oi/QyUK0pComRg8mltOjA-e

It is a hybrid build with a lot of utility. Power damage, bleed poison and chill. A trait in reaper makes chill deal damage as well. The build uses mainly shouts for heal, utilities and elite. Some traits that are more WvW focused (boon corrupt and such) can be changed to get more damage from the build (grandmaster trait in spite, minor and major trait in curses).

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Incidentally, Shout build with Necro made the class bearable for me at least. I know many players like their Necro but until I seriously tried shoutcasting (heh) it was at the bottom of my class list. it still is......but it isn't at negative value anymore at least ;-PI dabbled in a bit of minion-mancing since then but didn't try to celestify the build yet. I will try your suggestions out.

In the meantime do not think I have forgotten this thread, I am trying several things mentioned above but I am a sloooooow player and need time to let things settle in. So keep em suggestions coming guys! :-)

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@"Ashantara.8731" said:I don't think you can make "Celestial gear great"[...}

"Great" is as always a "relative", not an "absolute" thing. I never said I want to solo Raids with Full-Celestial Gear because "its better than Berzerker and stuff", but having fun despite the fact that Celestial <=/=> Berzerkers, Vipers, Grieving, etc. Also fun is relative as well because for me fun <=/=> efficient or fast ;-P

Finished collecting mats for a Celestial Middle Armor set and currently using the Celestial Thief mentioned by "HnRkLnXqZ.1870".I struggle quite a bit, but thats part of the celestial fun.

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@Captain Prinny.6492 said:I struggle quite a bit, but thats part of the celestial fun.

No no no, I didn't mean to say that you aren't free to do as you please. ;) I was just wondering why one would want to have gear that has stats which one cannot make use of in open world solo PvE (and which oppress higher values for the stats that are indeed useful for said content), because there isn't a single build you could construct to make use of all those stats in a practical way. So, just curious.

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