Trending Towards Celestial?

[Svarty.8019]

Entropy means trending towards chaos over time. It describes the heat death of the universe and suchlike.

 

As Guild Wars 2 grows an old man/woman beard, and in order to combat the entropy that goes along with it are we heading towards a game where Celestial stats become ubiquitous? On October 5th, the devs have gave us this patch note;

Quote

• All level-80 equipment granted by the Level-80 Boost is now of the Celestial (all attributes) stat set. This is not retroactive; only Level-80 Boosts used after this update will receive Celestial equipment. Previously, most professions were given Soldiers (power, toughness, vitality) equipment. The intent of this change is to ensure that all characters using a Level-80 Boost are given a serviceable equipment set that will allow players to experiment freely with their skill and trait choices and not result in situations in which their chosen traits and skills are entirely unsupported by their equipment.

With a bunch of uncertainty coming with the new elite specs, Celestial should cover our butts until we know what we're doing. I'm sure some won't move on from that choice of stats.

 

To me, it seems that Celestial is becoming one stat to rule them all.

 

[Let's pile on that confused face icon! GO GO GO!]

[Rasimir.6239]

7 minutes ago, Svarty.8019 said:

To me, it seems that Celestial is becoming one stat to rule them all.

If you want something "future-proof" that you can use with any build you come up with, then celestial has always been that. No matter what build you choose, celestial equipment will give you stats to go with that build.

 

What celestial equipment doesn't and won't ever do is give you the maximum possible stats to go with any build. You will always need specialized equipment if you want to min-max a specific build.

 

The only real "news" here (if you were looking for some) is that players that boost to 80 now get moderately useful equipment from the start, instead of the defense-heavy stats they used to get. Whether or not they want to specialize from there on is up to them. Believe it or not, there are plenty of players even today that never moved on from the soldier's gear they got from boosting their characters.

[Handsel.2891]

It's not unreasonable to think that. There is not a single day when I don't see at least a couple of complaints in chat about other players' low DPS and such. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the majority of players actually don't give their builds and gears a second thought once they reach 80, especially with a boost. Celestial, at least, gives them a blanket that makes them more efficient in whatever build they end up with.

[ASP.8093]

Replacing PVT gear with Celestial is replacing garbage with something passable. There's no more to it than that.

Cele in the PvE meta is a way for support builds to squeeze more DPS stats. In WvW it may partially replace even tankier Trailblazer builds. Other stat combos aren't going to disappear overnight.

[Danikat.8537]

9 minutes ago, MikeG.6389 said:

It's not unreasonable to think that. There is not a single day when I don't see at least a couple of complaints in chat about other players' low DPS and such. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the majority of players actually don't give their builds and gears a second thought once they reach 80, especially with a boost. Celestial, at least, gives them a blanket that makes them more efficient in whatever build they end up with.

One of the things I like about GW2 is that once you get to level 80 and get a full set of exotics (or exotic with ascended trinkets) you're basically done with gearing up and can forget about it, but it does mean I tend to, well, forget about it.

I only found out when swapping one of my engineers exotic pistols for an ascended one that she's got a sigil which is useless for her build. At some point traits were updated or I changed them and I didn't think to check if it affected the upgrades but it means it's been doing nothing, and I'll have to choose a new one.

I've also got a warrior who is still using the boost gear, but that's because I've never been able to find a warrior build I enjoy playing so I haven't chosen one to match the gear to, but that's going to change when EoD comes out because I really like the gunblade one. But at least I know about that one.

[Faridah.8431]

3 hours ago, Svarty.8019 said:

woman beard

Wat?

Anyway, Celestial has always been a jack of all trades master of none. For something as general as a level-80 boost and equipment that needs to cater to any possibility, Celestial makes sense. No it won't be king, but as per their language...it will be serviceable to a wide range of builds before they can get better targeted stat equipment.

Edited October 18, 2021 by Faridah.8431

[ArchonWing.9480]

Celestial is only good for some general purpose open world (you can run anything in OW because most mobs have low health), small scale WvW, and support builds. It lacks the damage to be anything in instanced PvE, and is too generalist to be used in zerg WvW.  It is nowhere close to being the best stat.

It's still incredible niche due to the multiplicative nature of power/precision/ferocity.

Edited October 18, 2021 by ArchonWing.9480

[Doomfrost.5728]

Celestial armor just offers more stat points in combined total than 3 stat and 4 stat items. It's more well rounded and all classes use the stats celestial offers in some way or another. 

[Astralporing.1957]

4 hours ago, Svarty.8019 said:

To me, it seems that Celestial is becoming one stat to rule them all.

No. For that  Celestial would need to be a good choice (or at least decent one), but it's not. It's at best passable. You may think it gives you more stats, but what you fail to notice is that not only it in most cases wastes a lot of stat points on things you don't need, but also guarantees that the stats you actually need will be subpar.

[Infusion.7149]

Celestial is meant as a baseline for people that were on Soldier's before. Unless you are on axe firebrand or renegade shortbow it won't even perform close to what a proper stat choice would have (in the case of both of those the damage is about 25-30% less).

It does more damage if you were for some reason to run condi builds on the given gear, whereas Soldier's had no stat contribution other than any power to condition interactions. In addition, it allows for the same robustness (downstate ele meme) as Soldier's.

[Asum.4960]

Celestial is a great move to add to the level booster. 

Soldiers is a terrible stat set that does very low damage, prolongs fights which drains limited defensive resources (dodges, CD's) and therefor causes more incoming damage, all of which taking more time. It's a lose lose lose. 

 

Celestial on the other hand provides great value to many OW/solo builds which generally favour a hybrid approach. Boon duration is a useful stat for every solo build to keep up Might and Fury (or depending on spec even Quickness/Alac), Condition Duration for Vulnerability and Healing Power, Vitality and Toughness for self sustain and more innate tankyness. 

On top of that it provides both power and condi support for new players to test around on, as well as being useful for high end solo hybrid builds. 

 

That's where it's usefulness ends though. In group content especially it's largely better to specialise and something like Berserkers or Viper's for DPS, Harrier's for Healing/Boon support or Diviners for DPS/Boon hybrids etc. provide more value to the only stats you need for them.

Edited October 18, 2021 by Asum.4960

[Sylvyn.4750]

I'm glad to see more level-headedness in this thread...there are those that for some reason are trying to get Cele stats nerfed, especially for WvW builds.  Guess those who run one-shot glassy power builds are upset they can't one-shot someone else that's not running a glassy power build, they actually have to work a bit for their kill...

[Ashen.2907]

Replacing awful free gear with mediocre free gear is not a trend.