Worth crafting a Celestial armor set?

[Dahkeus.8243]

Looking for some advice before I sink some gold. I only really play ele as an alt on the side, but the only armor sets I have are a berserker and viper set that I share with my other light armor classes for PvE. I'm looking to craft a more durable set for WvW roaming or for playing around with soloing stuff in open world.

My understanding is that celestial armor has been the go-to stat for armor in WvW roaming for a while, but my knowledge may be a bit dated. Is this still a solid choice? (Btw, I have plenty of amulets/accessories/rings/backpieces to swap in if a mix of stats is beneficial)

[reikken.4961]

dunno about wvw, but celestial is kinda underwhelming for open world. It still works, so if it's good in WvW go for it, but for a durable pve set you're better off going with a toughness condition damage set and focusing on stacking burning. You can get both more damage and more defense.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@Dahkeus.8243 said:Looking for some advice before I sink some gold. I only really play ele as an alt on the side, but the only armor sets I have are a berserker and viper set that I share with my other light armor classes for PvE. I'm looking to craft a more durable set for WvW roaming or for playing around with soloing stuff in open world.

My understanding is that celestial armor has been the go-to stat for armor in WvW roaming for a while, but my knowledge may be a bit dated. Is this still a solid choice? (Btw, I have plenty of amulets/accessories/rings/backpieces to swap in if a mix of stats is beneficial)

I’ve messed around with celestial on my Reaper, and to make good use of it you need to go full ham celestial stats...so everything has to be celestial. Then you need to solve the deficit in crit chance and power via traits to make it strong, which should be doable on ele.

If you full on spec for it, it’s much stronger than berserkers

[Auburner.6945]

I mean, it's not bad, it's just too low damage-wise unless someone can't heal themselves against you. 600 condition damage is just too low, and 1700 power with 35% crit chance is bad.

For me, I go for a mix of Marshal, Settler's and Trailblazer. I have seen people run full Rabid with little healing power. Some (I know one) run Trailblazer and Apothecary. You might as well add in Vitality if needed.

These other builds tend to pass 1200 condition damage, which is the better damage output for Elementalist in WvW than power damage. Celestial is safer, like you will mostly not die, but against a player that can kite you, it's an endless fight.

For PvE, you can either play with Marauder for power builds, or go for Rabid/Trailblazer (with little healing power) for condition builds.

[Clownmug.8357]

I think celestial gear mixed with some marshall is good for weaver roaming builds at least. Full celestial isn't really effective nowadays since some of the other professions' PoF builds can get better sustain without even investing in any healing power.

[alain.1659]

I have a full cele set. It is not bad but with the lack of boon/condi durations it is not what it used to be. Don't get me wrong, you can do many things with celestial but it will never be really strong by itself. Mixing it with some other stats that is appropriate for your build can create wonders. If you had asked about trinkets, I would have said "definitely go for it". But about armor... I like it. From a wvw perspective it is ok. But adjusting stats with PoF stat gears might result better.

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

I like marauder or marshal. Sometims I mix the two.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

I still use Celestial practically, sometimes I mix it with Grieving. You can also do burn builds using Shaman/Apothecary/Settler's mixes.

The main drawback is lacking Expertise and Concentration. Expertise isn't technically needed since you'll only want to invest into Burning damage, which can be 100% without the need for any Expertise, and the lack of Concentration will hurt depending on whether you're getting your boons from easily renewable sources like Auras and Cantrips, or (far less often) directly from skills.

Keep in mind you don't need to craft anything for Exotics, you can get Celestial from WvW Legeacy Armor reward track, or from farming Verdant Brink in PvE for the Bladed armor sets, and using Living World/Mists trinkets. For weapons a few are available on the Trading Post and as far as I know, it is a selectable stat on all profession-specific weapons for Elementalist from achievements.

The true power of Celestial is on trinkets only (which is half your stats), combined with various four-stat gears, acting as a base to weak stats.

[AliamRationem.5172]

When I test celestial out, it comes up a bit tankier but lower damage than my trailblazer/plaguedoctor setup. And despite all the stat points in ferocity, power, and precision, the damage breakdown is still upwards of 80% condition damage. Power just requires more of a focus on dealing damage to make it work than condi, as far as I can tell.

In my experience so far with WvW roaming on fire/arcane or water/arcane, water is basically only good for rolling noobs in outnumbered fights. It doesn't pack the punch it needs to finish experienced players who know how to kite effectively. However, fire is a threat to most builds and is still quite tanky. You don't have to stay on them for long to apply serious pressure.

Given that, I expect celestial fire weaver would be more like the water/arcane setup. It'd be very resilient, capable of staying alive in outnumbered fights (within reason!), but would probably struggle to deal enough damage to win against experienced players.

Having said that, I see nothing really wrong with celestial except that I feel sets like trailblazer/plaguedoctor would provide nearly the tankiness with better damage and you don't have to deal with the time-gating issue on crafting them like you do with celestial. In my open world testing it still produced decent damage and was ridiculously tanky. You might struggle a bit with smarter opponents in PvP/WvW, but they probably won't be killing you either! It's not a terrible choice for these types of gameplay, it's just that there might be better options that are easier to craft. That's all.

[AliamRationem.5172]

@"Hannelore.8153" said:I still use Celestial practically, sometimes I mix it with Grieving. You can also do burn builds using Shaman/Apothecary/Settler's mixes.

The main drawback is lacking Expertise and Concentration. Expertise isn't technically needed since you'll only want to invest into Burning damage, which can be 100% without the need for any Expertise, and the lack of Concentration will hurt depending on whether you're getting your boons from easily renewable sources like Auras and Cantrips, or (far less often) directly from skills.

Keep in mind you don't need to craft anything for Exotics, you can get Celestial from WvW Legeacy Armor reward track, or from farming Verdant Brink in PvE for the Bladed armor sets, and using Living World/Mists trinkets. For weapons a few are available on the Trading Post and as far as I know, it is a selectable stat on all profession-specific weapons for Elementalist from achievements.

The true power of Celestial is on trinkets only (which is half your stats), combined with various four-stat gears, acting as a base to weak stats.

Try this as an alternative:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGgAw2lZwkYRsJmJOSXbvfA-zRRYkRD7N4yIzCo3EwhZpKpN-e

Over 25k health with 600 toughness, and 300 healing. +33% boon duration for massive might stacking (rapidly build to 25 stacks and easily maintained) and full uptime protection and vigor. With endurance regen food as well as energy sigil, you can maximize evasion and really put evasive arcana to work for you. It also has pretty amazing cleansing potential rolled into its damage rotation and excellent (and evasive!) burst healing. 1400 condi damage with 92% burn duration increase plus the aforementioned might stacking make for a potent offense.

[Jenny.4831]

Hi everyone,

I have a similar question.

The other day, I decided I wanted to give Ele another try. My main issues with the class have been low hit points and the lack of a weapon switch. Now, being the noob that I am, I don't tend to use my weapon switches during a fight. It's more so I can have two sets of weapons so I don't have to open my inventory and de-equip/reequip things should I feel like using something else. With Ele not being able to switch in combat, that actually doesn't bother me. What I can do is have staff on switch if I'm doing a group event (or solo) and another weapon set for variety or practicality.

That all said, what does this have to do with Celestial stats. Simple, my other issue with Ele was staying alive even doing 'easy' content and being downed/killed easily really detracted from the enjoyment of using the elements to punish my enemies.

Well, I saw Cele and thought the boost to defense, offense and Ele being a somewhat hybrid power/condition class and thought that it would work. This thread suggests going full Cele isn't a really good idea as I had intended on doing. At this point, I have a full set of ascended Cele trinkets (amulet, accessories x2, rings x2) along with the chest and legs armor pieces.

I wonder though, how would Marauder armor, Celestial trinkets and either Zerker or Marauder weapons work? Would it be strong enough to alleviate at least some of my survivability issues and have enough firepower to not take an egregious amount of time to get things done?

At the moment, I have only enough crystal shards to make one more piece of Cele gear. After that, I'd have to hold off until I farmed enough quartz to complete it or rely on WvW for the other pieces. Conversely, I could probably craft the Marauder set in an afternoon even if it would cost me a fair amount of gold.

This is all ascended btw and my first foray into crafting ascended armor.

I only started WvW three days ago and am generally not good at pvp in games like this. (I was awful in WoW too) I tend to find it more frustrating than anything because everything happens so fast. By the time I've realized I'm being attacked, I'm at half health or less and I have trouble responding in any sort of meaningful way. Given my current skill level at the game in general, it's not really surprising pvp/wvw totally wrecks me when I still have issues with open world. This is vanilla open world, I haven't even really tried HoT/PoF content short of HP trains. I wanted to do things in order and I'm still working on living world 2.

As such, I do not have access to a lot of the gear stats I've seen mentioned in this thread.

Anyways, if anyone could offer any suggestions I would greatly appreciate it, including whether the above idea would work. I want to be able to play Core, Weaver, Tempest and (eventually) be able to do open world, fractals, raids and wvw. I've never tried the small scale pvp and doubt I would be anything but a liability, but maybe I could be alright.

Thank you,Jenny

[AliamRationem.5172]

@Jenny.4831 said:Hi everyone,

I have a similar question.

The other day, I decided I wanted to give Ele another try. My main issues with the class have been low hit points and the lack of a weapon switch. Now, being the noob that I am, I don't tend to use my weapon switches during a fight. It's more so I can have two sets of weapons so I don't have to open my inventory and de-equip/reequip things should I feel like using something else. With Ele not being able to switch in combat, that actually doesn't bother me. What I can do is have staff on switch if I'm doing a group event (or solo) and another weapon set for variety or practicality.

That all said, what does this have to do with Celestial stats. Simple, my other issue with Ele was staying alive even doing 'easy' content and being downed/killed easily really detracted from the enjoyment of using the elements to punish my enemies.

Well, I saw Cele and thought the boost to defense, offense and Ele being a somewhat hybrid power/condition class and thought that it would work. This thread suggests going full Cele isn't a really good idea as I had intended on doing. At this point, I have a full set of ascended Cele trinkets (amulet, accessories x2, rings x2) along with the chest and legs armor pieces.

I wonder though, how would Marauder armor, Celestial trinkets and either Zerker or Marauder weapons work? Would it be strong enough to alleviate at least some of my survivability issues and have enough firepower to not take an egregious amount of time to get things done?

At the moment, I have only enough crystal shards to make one more piece of Cele gear. After that, I'd have to hold off until I farmed enough quartz to complete it or rely on WvW for the other pieces. Conversely, I could probably craft the Marauder set in an afternoon even if it would cost me a fair amount of gold.

This is all ascended btw and my first foray into crafting ascended armor.

I only started WvW three days ago and am generally not good at pvp in games like this. (I was awful in WoW too) I tend to find it more frustrating than anything because everything happens so fast. By the time I've realized I'm being attacked, I'm at half health or less and I have trouble responding in any sort of meaningful way. Given my current skill level at the game in general, it's not really surprising pvp/wvw totally wrecks me when I still have issues with open world. This is vanilla open world, I haven't even really tried HoT/PoF content short of HP trains. I wanted to do things in order and I'm still working on living world 2.

As such, I do not have access to a lot of the gear stats I've seen mentioned in this thread.

Anyways, if anyone could offer any suggestions I would greatly appreciate it, including whether the above idea would work. I want to be able to play Core, Weaver, Tempest and (eventually) be able to do open world, fractals, raids and wvw. I've never tried the small scale pvp and doubt I would be anything but a liability, but maybe I could be alright.

Thank you,Jenny

Hi, Jenny. There's nothing wrong with full celestial for open world. It's extremely tanky and the damage is more than adequate for taking down champions and group events. I personally prefer a mix of plaguedoctor/trailblazer, but it didn't seem like there was anything I couldn't manage in celestial. If you already have the gear, I'd give it a go. Try it with the burn stacking build.