Boosted to level 80, What is Celestial Gear? Any good?

[axian.8519]

Noob here. Made the mistake of leveling a 23 to 80 necro. Celestial stats look good, but should I aim for better? What is better? Is it available from TP?
I've got a lot to learn. My restart my necro at level 1. Love the game.

[DeanBB.4268]

I'd say keep your lvl 80 necro and make a new character, different profession. Keep that celestial gear until you know of a better build. At the very least, as you replace each piece, toss the celestial piece into the 2nd equipment tab.

You can go to any zone now. Lower level zones will downscale you, but with a decent build and full traits should still be easy. Likewise, you can play the full story to level 80 now without pause, if you are so inclined. Either way, you have everything unlocked for the core necromancer so you can start getting used to different skills and play with traits.

Mapping each zone gives a reward, and mapping all of the core game gives world completion, which is needed to craft a legendary.

But do what you enjoy -- story, mapping, skipping ahead, etc. And don't be afraid to ask specific questions.

[axian.8519]

Thank you for the quick assist. Didn't know you can take an 80 to central tyria as a lower level character. Will do that rather than restart. I find the GW2 community to be very helpful. The wiki is great!

[Ellye.9123]

For a more direct answer to your thread title:

The total amount of stat points provided by Celestial gear is higher than any other type of gear - but it's the least specialized one, divided one among all possible attributes.

This makes it so Celestial is a fantastic option if your character build can truly make use of all or nearly all of those attributes, but it lags behinds other stat combinations for builds that are more focused on a single, more specialized, role or goal.

Edited January 25, 2022 by Ellye.9123

[Erich.1783]

The is a pretty good celestial scourge (necro Path of Fire elite spec) build, for PvE, not sure about for other game modes.  I believe I saw it on metabattle.

[AliamRationem.5172]

If you're brand new, I think celestial is a great choice for most classes, although some can make better use of it than others.  Scourge would do much better with it than reaper, I think. Generally speaking, it performs better for condition-based specs than power-based specs and scourge is the stronger option for condition builds. 

In any event, the advantage of celestial is that it provides excellent sustain with moderate or even fairly high damage.  This makes it a very survivable set to play with, but with a decent build you shouldn't have to spend half an hour widdling down health bars on champions.

There may be better sets to use, but for open world/story play celestial should let you survive comfortably while you learn.  When you get into more organized gameplay (i.e. raids, fractals, etc.) you will probably want to have a more focused set as you will either be playing a support role or have support provided by others.  The defense stats aren't necessary in that context and are essentially wasted.

[Ellye.9123]

Adding to what Erich.1783 and AliamRationem.5172, Celestial also tends to work decently well for support builds in WvW, by providing a bit of durability, and a decent amount of Healing Power, Concentration and Expertise, while also not completely neglecting your own damage.

 

Necromancer has a number of viable support builds for WvW, either Core or with any of the elite specs, so Celestial is a good set for them there, if you go that route.

Edited January 26, 2022 by Ellye.9123

[axian.8519]

Thank you for the quick assist. Learing a lot on the forum.

[SlipLihte.1307]

What type of content are you into?

 

Assuming you are a relatively new player and still getting used to playing necro (and you are not trying to go into raiding or high level fractals), Celestial will be fine for a while still. It's not optimal sure, but having the full Boost kit on will already put you ahead of where a lot of players are when they first hit level 80, since you get full accessories as well, and matching runes. It will also work well enough in WvW. In PvP it doesn't matter.

 

My suggestion would be to not worry about this now (again, unless you want to go do raids or high level fractals). I don't think there is any open world content that would be too hard for you to handle in that. The difference between your current armor & stats, and the optimised version, will not be as big as the difference it will make to learn how to play necro well right now.

 

Once you've got a playstyle and build you like, you will likely also have learned enough about the game to know what type of stats would work well for you.

 

You will also start collecting Ascendant items over time, and can swap them in as you go with a more optimal stat set.

[Stx.4857]

I'm sure there is a core necro build that would work well with Celestial.  Perhaps curses/spite/soul reaping?  Necro just happens to be one of the classes I haven't played with Celestial so I'm not too up to date on it.

[Ellye.9123]

10 hours ago, Stx.4857 said:

I'm sure there is a core necro build that would work well with Celestial.  Perhaps curses/spite/soul reaping?  Necro just happens to be one of the classes I haven't played with Celestial so I'm not too up to date on it.

Curses / Death / Blood work well, used to play it (though mostly as support in WvW instead of open PvE content, but it should work well enough too by just changing some skills).

Edited January 27, 2022 by Ellye.9123