Is celestial gear good for solo play and beyond ?

[Angel.3916]

Hellp guys. I have a level 80 engineer I am playing.

I am on a crowded server and a full WvW center. I been playing engineer kind of a jack of all trades.

Right now I am farming achievements and farming dailies as well and collecting gold and mostly solo play. But there is a lot of zergs on all the PvE and WvW maps.

I was wondering if celestial armor is good.

I was going to unlock scrapper and focus on either hammer or rifle with bomb kit or grenade kit for damage. I like supporting and rezzing people but I also like doing damage and bar breaking with my cc skills.

I am mostly soloing in PvE maps and roaming in WvW. I do a lot of living world content maps and zergs with champion bosses and portal boss maps.

Honestly I am tempting to craft a celestial set because I don't feel comfortable being an assassin ( zerker full damage build ) and I love using my healing turret to heal my self and others.

If not celestial, what other armor stat would you reccomend ?

I don't do fractals or raids but I plan to do fractals soonish.

[Cyninja.2954]

In short: if you can avoid celestial, avoid it.

In Long:Acquiring celestial gear can be taxing, except trinkets. The time gate for crafting it means a very long investment when crafting it. So long, that it mostly only makes sense if going strait for ascended gear, which in turn means a significant investment resource wise into a currently mediocre set. Celestial works only well in 1 game mode, that being WvW, and even here it is only a possible side-grade on some classes or very very situational niche builds.

My personal recommendation:If you want to stay a bit more jack-of-all trades and absolutely have to use celestial gear, I'm assuming for multiple game modes initially too, get celestial ascended trinkets. The stat select-able ascended trinkets from living world seasons, or other sources like the amulet from PvP (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vial_of_Salt), bypass the time gated nature of celestial gear. Then go for either berserker or marauder gear on armor/weapons (I'd go with exotic berserker, simply because it's cheap to get off the T, or ascended marauder as first sets). You can also go with other exotic gear sets like Carrion, Rabid or Dire in case you want to go a more condition damage route.

The benefit here:All of those sets are cheap to get off the TP as exotic. The jack-of-all nature of celestial on trinkets makes it work for trying out different play styles without having to get new trinkets every time, until you decide on what you like.

That said, this is a recommendation to get into the game and try stuff out without having to go all in, or worry about making budget builds, which too would work in this case. This works well in open world too, but eventually you will have to replace those celestial items for more dedicated stats, be it minstrel for WvW support scrapper or berserker/marauder for fractals, etc.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

For hybrid support Engi use Marshal's armor/weapons (Exotics on TP) with Celestial Ascended trinkets from Laurels or from Fractals, Guild Missons, LS3/LS4 Ascended stat-select trinkets, etc. Its a build with very high Power and Healing Power and a respectable amount of all other stats, without dragging you down too much like a complete set of Celestial does.

You can run Superior Rune of the Water with Soul Pastry, Peppermint Oil and Sigil of Concentration for up to 60% Boon Duration, depending on traits. The other sigil can be Water for healing on crits or Renewal for healing when you swap kits.

Keep in mind with Inventions you get +250 Healing Power with Regeneration, so take Elixer Gun for the F# skill.

Med Kit is far superior to Healing Turret, once you learn how to use it.

If you need more boon uptime then you can take certain Turrets with the trait that makes them give boons. The most significant is Protection from Thumper Turret, but that's quite a few boons available to chose from. This is only viable in PvE and not in WvW because players move around too much there, so Engis almost always use Gyros (also known as Wells) instead.

In your other build tab you can swap out the armor and weapons for Grieving (like from Elegy armor collection), leaving the trinkets the same, and then run something like a Flamethrower build for when you're completely solo.

[Infusion.7149]

Engineer condi damage isn't great for WvW unless you go pretty much full on condi damage (typically with flamethrower) and it has quite a few drawbacks to it especially if running pistols. Because unlike guardian the conditions are also applied on critical hits with the firearms traitline you're far better off just running power builds.

Heal turret isn't really considered part of a support scrapper, it's typically used on offensive builds for holosmith to deal with conditions when photon forge is on cooldown. You mentioned hammer and rifle which are mainly power weapons. Keep in mind that barrier generation is directly linked to damage, so a celestial gearset will have less barrier output.

If you plan on having a WvW set with damage focus, full marauder is the way to go for scrapper. Supplement your toughness with either runes or trinket swapping. Bjora Marches' eternal ice easily trades into Diflourite or Mistborn motes that you can get ascended trinkets/rings/amulet from. If you farm Dragonfall then you can get mistborn motes that way as well.

If you see a warrior of any kind running offensive shouts, it is possible they may be running the Warrior's Cunning trait, which applies a large 50% damage bonus versus targets with barrier. Playing against this as a scrapper is especially dangerous which is why I would not advise running celestial : the toughness and vitality bonus aren't large enough to offset the damage you lose and thus the barrier amounts you receive. Luckily most warriors are being pushed towards damage-less minstrel support builds.

If you like heal turret I assure you will enjoy the mobility of the medic gyro even more : the water field is mobile and it pulses protection on the toolbelt skill. Even if you run an offensive scrapper you still retain access to kits, which means if you really want to you can run elixir gun or purge gyro for cleanses. Sneak gyro gains nothing from boon duration or healing power either. If your group has strong sustain already and isn't up against many conditions then they might just want mobility, so the superspeed from running shredder gyro (traited with Gyroscopic Acceleration) for example is just as valuable as any other gyro ; Toss Elixir U is just as good as a gyro that does no damage.Before bunker down was silently nerfed in WvW from 2s to 4s as in PvP I would even sometimes run that for added group sustain and cleave without having to camp med kit.

Unless you don't care about WvW participation gain or WvW rank, I would not advise playing minstrel scrapper especially given the monetary commitment if you don't have the gear already. WvW rewards are still linked to damage indirectly, you have to hit things (which is basically not happening on med kit when your utilities are purge gyro, stealth gyro, bulwark gyro, and elixir gun), even if negligible damage is inflicted, to get credit. The other common supports (aura tempest, firebrand, spellbreaker, chrono) don't camp a non-offensive kit so they're more suitable for people trying to gain ranks.

[Dawdler.8521]

I have only experienced celestial being good at the height of the scrapper (ie very early HoT), when it was durable and sustainy enough to go hybrid (a basicly broken sneak gyro didnt hurt either). But that's not really the WvW of today. Too many extreme builds requiring you to go to equally extreme builds to compete.

Then again in pug zerging you can hide the crappiest build imaginable if you just bring the visible skills (ie bulwark for reflect, sneak gyro and medkit, though maybe barely not even medkit).

[Seras.5702]

I have a full berserker and celestial armor set and while you’d think that the wide range of stats would increase survivability, I actually found it to be detrimental while open world roaming. The damage reduction is pretty substantial, which extends fights, forcing healing when a zerk set would have the fight over quicker.

[ArchonWing.9480]

Celestial has zero use because its base power is way too low. In the past before 4 stat gear, it was a way to fill out your stats, but these days an extra degree of tankiness won't really help you, and stuff like trailblazer+ grieving would be even more tankier and do the same thing. The healing power is also wasted on everything except for medic scrapper, which has little use for the other stats anyways.

For PvE, it's completely useless.

For WvW, there is generally no point in hybrids at all beyond solo or duo play. If you're a healer, then you need to bring a healer and not half of one. Fully ascended celestial is 639 healing power and ZERO boon duration.

The only exception is with condi builds because grieving gives you some extra direct damage to deal with excessive enemy cleanses.

But beyond that, Celestial just doesn't really have burst that zerker or marauder can have, and you usually can't kill anyone without it. Even if you do outsustain them, they can just leave.

[Angel.3916]

Thanks guys for the advice. I was just testing things and experimenting. It seems healing turret is already good healing with out any healing power, and yea ..celestial seems pretty weak for WvW. I am likely going to use marauder for the damage and health. Right now i am using a flame thrower build with bunker down and assassin exotics. I find the crit, healing packs, mines, and dps pretty decent.

I am not sure what weapon or kit to use with marauder. I feel like i should just give in and go marauder holosmith. It seems like it would be very effective in PvE and PvP.

This is my first character and my first engineer. He has 70% map completion so i am just using him to fill up my account. I should probably roll a different profession for WvW and maybe raid and fractals.

Well i have a good number of laurels. I have 80 laurels so far. I also have 80 gold, 1200 badges of honor and a few spirit shards. The dailies is not for getting stuff.

If i do go marauder, i hope i can get a decent damage build. I don't like being an assassin dps unless i know fight mechanics or other class play styles. I know we don't have much defensive other than barrier and stability, so engineer feels kind of squishy to me.

I am going to use marauder for PvE and WvW i hope it works out.

Thanks all for your help, the engineer community is awesome <3

[Infusion.7149]

I did some testing over the weekend because I haven't used flamethrower in a very long time (it hasn't been changed in years). I concluded it is pretty worthless on a build not focusing on condi. Even if you are focusing on condi, because grenades and bomb kit still rely on critical hits to some extent to proc the Firearms traitline (Shrapnel in Explosives is not reliable either) you can't run as tanky as a Dire /trailblazer Firebrand with Balthazar's runes for burn duration for example. (Both bomb kit and grenade kit don't have condi application on their own within the auto attack.) The 4s burn is only applied on the last hit of the flamethrower auto attack, which is a 2.25 second channel , each full channel requires 2.57 seconds with aftercast included. In that amount of time, even without quickness a firebrand would get at least one burn proc off virtue of justice even without Permeating Wrath in the virtues traitline (with far more if it's cleaving 3+ targets) and 2 stacks of 2s burn off axe if it's melee range. As far as tagging things in PVE, I think the shortbow on thief (3 targets with bounce) or dagger (5 targets with similar range) / staff (3 targets at range , bounce on air attunement or splash on fire) on elementalist do a better job.

edit: a note about the pop up damage numbers (not combat log) , flamethrower doesn't register properly because the damage pulse is constant so a bunch of flamethrower hits count as a single attack. The same thing happens with mesmer greatsword autoattacks. In armistice bastion (the only place you should be testing WVW builds/gear) even with full zerk + scholar rune and the meta PVE power build, the bomb kit does ~ 3k autos (to 5 targets) , grenades do ~1k-1.2k each untraited with Grenadier, while flamethrower is ~600-700 per tick. You'd down a tower guard in roughly 10 hits of bomb kit (~8 seconds including aftercasts) or ~ 8 hits of grenade kit untraited (if you have the AoE centered on the target), sword auto downs it in about 14 hits and Photon Forge is similar (both of them are around 2K a hit), while a flamethrower takes 4-5 casts and loses most of the synergy with explosives since none of the skills count besides Flame Blast.

If you're running scrapper, you can run hammer + mortar for WVW purposes or hammer+grenades/bomb kit (melee range) for PVE. For holo you can pretty much use sword mainhand + pistol offhand or shield with grenade kit. Holo gets quite a bit of sustain from Crystal Configuration: Eclipse and Heat Therapy but those aren't as intuitive as scrappers' "hit things for barriers".

Explosives' Big Boomer gives added sustain and a damage bonus so there's literally no reason to not run it in PVE on a power build. For WVW you can opt for Blast Shield to offset any health loss from scrapper.

You could probably use the same character for WVW. Scrapper is part of the WVW meta and even if you run a damage scrapper it isn't useless because commanders are always looking for stealth / "sneak" gyro as well as party superspeed. Medic gyro and shredder gyro apply superspeed when you run gyroscopic acceleration.

[Deniara Devious.3948]

Different opinion here.

I have been playing rifle 4-kit core engi almost since launch, over 6000 hours. Full celestial legendary/ascended gear. Diamond+ WvWvW rank. Fairly good amount of commander experience with this as well.

My build has ZERO blocks, evades, stability, invulnerability etc. Since there is no easy "oops" escapes, you need to position yourself super well and anticipate your enemy. If you are mediocre at positioning, then forget full celestial.

Just like some commented above, you will be lacking damage, BUT with the right build, you can still solo all the camps (even those which are upgraded or have annoying NPCs, like hyleks or dredge to protect them). You can also solo towers and keeps, if they are undefended. Capturing t3 camp will take about 2 minutes, which is quite risky and enemy might be in time to defend it. Solo capturing an open tower will take about 3-4 minutes, depending how much it is upgraded. Theoretically if nobody will defend Stonemist Castle, you could solo open SMC in about 6 minutes.

So the build is actually good when there is not much enemy players around.

It is also reasonably good in large blob/zerg fights as you can provide so much AoE pressure and do so many unblockable AoEs with 4-kits. Once again, you need to know what you are doing an engage in close distance, only when there is opportunity do so. Don't just jump into massive amount of enemy AoE, as you will melt and your condition removal alone will not save you and you have zero stability.

BUT:Don't expect to win much any outnumbered small scale fights or be great at 1 vs 1 against elite specs. Don't expect to be tanky, but have quite good sustain, but nothing to handle focus fire. You will be jack of all trades and master of none.

Your main damage comes from rotating the kits, explosives line and avoid using rifle auto attack, which is weak.

Also don't expect to be a great healer, because < 1000 healing power is not enough. But you can heal and cleanse condition kit with medkit and elixir gun. Once again, you will be mediocre, but not completely useless.

Btw. you can solo pretty much all the open world pve content, including almost all champion-level group events, using the full celestial rifle core engineer. I have no experience in raids, but Tyria, HoT, PoF, Living Story etc. will not be a challenge will full cele gear, but rather a breeze, when you can even leave your character AFK for a while to fetch some water to drink, since it will not die instantly.

[Angel.3916]

Hello all. I wanted to chime in on my build.

So dallies are so awesome, and so is the box you get every day. I have 110 laurels and 90 gold as well as a bunch of good items in my bank.

Ok the real stuff, i have berserker armor, berserker rifle, berserker sword, berserker shield, berserker harpoon gun, and i have 1 back piece solder armor, 1 amulet soldier, 2 accessory soldier, and the 2 rings are Valkyrie. I also eat food to boost my power and precision and use pack runes and force sigil accuracy sigil.

I am SUPER strong in wvw. I can pretty much solo anything 1v1 in WvW.

I use alchemy, firearms, and holosmith. I use iron blood in alchemy and light density amplifier to get massively tanking while bursting down enemy players.I use elixir c for cleansing, elixir B for armor stats and stability, and elixir U for offense and stability. Sometimes i will switch elixir B for hard light arena in group settings, or spectrum shield if i am facing a zerg or getting focused.

The toughness on my armor helps kind of, with PvE and WvW guards, but also the guard damage and guard defense wvw points help a lot too.

I am destroying in WvW it is amazing.

So yea, hope that helps people with WvW. I been using mixed armor stats for WvW and solo contant. My power goes up to 2900 and my crit is 50% with food and 70% with fury. My vitality health hp is 19k which is not to shabby. I am tough but not tanky or too armored. The dps is great though.

I am not playing fractals or raids yet, i'll get a beserker armor just for that. Hope this helps.