Harb Cele OW Build - Need opinions!

[Uh Pooky.4567]

Hey all!

 

I rarely post but wanted to come on here and ask for some help regarding this harb cele build for OW - http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PSwAoiZlhyAZeMWGJWMX2xfA-zxIY1ojvMqIF6oCc/jEE7h3CvfaA-e

 

I'm torn between Plaguelands and the elite elixir.

Not sure if there is a better alternative to Staff as my second weapon

I took spectral walk mainly for the swiftness otherwise the build would be really slow

I'm using aristocracy runes to maintain might longer since this is a celestial build, in turn taking the Doom Approaches talent as I believe the 6th effect of the rune works with this trait.

 

Ultimately, I'm not sure if this rune/talent set up is worth taking over say the quickness talent, and other weapons/talents that may work better, and other more offensive runes.

 

Any help would be appreciated!

[Dadnir.5038]

Why would someone bother to go cele in open world? With the traits you choose I'd just go viper if I were you.

[Uh Pooky.4567]

Hmm, I thought cele was pretty popular in OW. Viper seems too squishy, no?

[Asum.4960]

On 4/16/2022 at 10:49 PM, Uh Pooky.4567 said:

Hmm, I thought cele was pretty popular in OW. Viper seems too squishy, no?

Celestial is pretty much the best OW setup as of now (both for [Dread]Scourge and Harbinger actually). 

 

You'd get more value out of it with Deathly Haste though, in my experience it's very slightly lower DPS than Approaching Doom variants, but a lot more fun to play with much more flexibility in kiting potential/ranged dps (but I also have to admit my personal bias toward really preferring to play with Quickness, if at all possible). The whole Aristocracy Rune synergy is an interesting idea I tried with EoD launch too, but honestly it's just not quite worth it. You can certainly make it work though if you don't mind being locked into melee. 

 

I'd just go Lingering Curses with Scepter as secondary weapon, go Torment and Strength Sigil's for damage and some Might upkeep, and run Unyielding Blast for Vuln - or Vile Vials if you want to skip on SR for more sustain - be it with BM, or honestly Corrupter's Fervor in DM for perma Prot is pretty decent for solo cele Harb. 

 

I'd skip on Corruptions for solo play and switch in Ambition and Anguish for more sustain from Alchemic Vigor, Vuln if running Vial Vials, and more readily available burst through Shroud 3&4. That also opens up taking Path of Corruption instead (and Insidious Disruption, which can compensate somewhat for the damage loss of BiP), which is quite nice Utility for EoD especially where quite a few mobs have Prot or Resolution (as well as solo Fractals). 

 

It also opens the Rune slot for something like Traveler's, which can give you that always baked in movement speed - rather than having to bother with Swiftness, or Nightmare for extra damage. 

 

I've been enjoying this lately. Born out of being tired of always running the same Traits and wanting to make other Traitlines, like DM, work - as well as wanting to play something more active than just a Shroud AA spammer (Spite+SR with Reaper's Might, Unyielding Blast and Dhuumfire with Signets and Suffering, Shroud camping), which granted is really efficient for OW, albeit boring after a while. 

It's actually a surprisingly good and (through perma Prot) really durable Harb build with fairly competitive solo DPS, which makes it fine even soloing through some up to T3 Fractals at least (although cele Scourge is both faster and safer still). 

For general OW though you can easily go more offensively with the same old 113 SR though.

Edited April 22, 2022 by Asum.4960

[Uh Pooky.4567]

Thank you Asum for that lengthy explanation! I think I'm going to take your advice and stick with cele but just switch around my runes/talents. Thank you for all the help!

[Obtena.7952]

18 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

Why would someone bother to go cele in open world? With the traits you choose I'd just go viper if I were you.

I'm going to back this up. Armor choice in OW depends on what you are doing there but generally, Cele isn't going to benefit people just bombing around completing story and map completion. Soloing champs and bounties? OK ... Cele is a more likely approach in that case. 

The bottomline is that if you don't need the defensive stats, you shouldn't take them. They come at the cost of offensive stats and even in the case of Cele, it's debatable if that's an optimal mix of stats if someone wants to convert some offensive stats off to defensive. 

Edited April 17, 2022 by Obtena.7952

[Asum.4960]

1 hour ago, Obtena.7952 said:

I'm going to back this up. Armor choice in OW depends on what you are doing there but generally, Cele isn't going to benefit people just bombing around completing story and map completion. Soloing champs and bounties? OK ... Cele is a more likely approach in that case. 

The bottomline is that if you don't need the defensive stats, you shouldn't take them. They come at the cost of offensive stats and even in the case of Cele, it's debatable if that's an optimal mix of stats if someone wants to convert some offensive stats off to defensive. 

Cele, especially on hybrid builds, actually barely loses any DPS solo self buffed compared to something like Viper's though (especially through better offensive boon uptime, where if you build around that it can actually even surpass it), but in turn gains massive survivability and qol boosts - as well as increased flexibility in what content you can tackle solo. 

You are essentially just leaving a boatload of free extra Vitality, Toughness, Healing Power and Boon Duration, etc. on the table for largely wasted DPS, if anything at all.

 

In OW and Story etc., the minor damage difference between something like full Viper's or full Cele doesn't really matter as things die so quickly anyway that you are hitting major diminishing returns on all that offensive investment (basically Viper's just overkills with a bigger condi tick in about the same time and amount of button presses), but in turn Celestial gives you that flexibility to tackle those champs, group events or other solo endeavours with vastly more effective HP and sustain easily. 

 

If someone has the ability to go for two gear sets between endgame group content and solo gameplay (or is only interested in solo play), there really isn't any reason not to got for Cele at this point. 

 

/E: And just for reference, I've always argued against defensive stat sets and consider them largely a "noob trap", but in the case of post-buff Celestial it's just unquestionably the best value stat set for hybrid damage/condi builds with some boon access (which you want to work in for solo builds anyway) in terms of solo play.

Edited April 17, 2022 by Asum.4960

[Obtena.7952]

14 minutes ago, Asum.4960 said:

Cele, especially on hybrid builds, actually barely loses any DPS solo self buffed compared to something like Viper's though (especially through better offensive boon uptime), but in turn gains massive survivability and qol boosts - as well as increased flexibility in what content you can tackle solo. 

You are essentially just leaving a boatload of free extra Vitality, Toughness, Healing Power and Boon Duration, etc. on the table for largely wasted DPS.

 

In OW and Story etc., the minor damage difference between something like full Viper's or full Cele doesn't really matter as things die so quickly anyway that you are hitting major diminishing returns on all that offensive investment (basically Viper's just overkills with a bigger condi tick in about the same time and effort), but in turn Celestial gives you that flexibility to tackle those champs, group events or other solo endeavours with vastly more effective HP and sustain. 

 

If someone has the ability to go for two gear sets between endgame group content and solo gameplay (or is only interested in solo play), there really isn't any reason not to got for Cele at this point.

True, but the fact remains you are still leaving that DPS on the table for stats you don't necessarily need or even have a use for. Just being transparent here. The other fact that is true: if someone needs their stat choice validated by others for OW ... celestials is probably the best choice for them anyways. 

Edited April 17, 2022 by Obtena.7952

[HowlKamui.5120]

16 hours ago, Obtena.7952 said:

True, but the fact remains you are still leaving that DPS on the table for stats you don't necessarily need or even have a use for. Just being transparent here. The other fact that is true: if someone needs their stat choice validated by others for OW ... celestials is probably the best choice for them anyways. 

Wow that rude statement came out of nowhere.

Isn't soloing bounties part of open world?

[Obtena.7952]

4 hours ago, HowlKamui.5120 said:

Isn't soloing bounties part of open world?

Of course it is. Why do you ask?

Let me ask you a question now ... Do you think a player who comes to the forum and asks what armor they should use in OW is not concerned about their performance?

OP asked for an opinion. Mine is that Cele is not good on a Harb, EVEN if you are going to do 'hard' content. It's likely unnecessary and most stats are going to be a throw away for MOST of the content the person that asked is going to do. I got a STRONG feeling that person isn't 'soloing bounties' or such things. 

I'm also of the opinion that Cele is GREAT armor for people that don't know enough about buildcrafting and game mechanics that they have to come and get their choice validated on the forums. That's not rude at all. That's just the nature of the armor. 

Edited April 18, 2022 by Obtena.7952

[HowlKamui.5120]

1 hour ago, Obtena.7952 said:

Of course it is. Why do you ask?

Let me ask you a question now ... Do you think a player who comes to the forum and asks what armor they should use in OW is not concerned about their performance?

OP asked for an opinion. Mine is that Cele is not good on a Harb, EVEN if you are going to do 'hard' content. It's likely unnecessary and most stats are going to be a throw away for MOST of the content the person that asked is going to do. I got a STRONG feeling that person isn't 'soloing bounties' or such things. 

I'm also of the opinion that Cele is GREAT armor for people that don't know enough about buildcrafting and game mechanics that they have to come and get their choice validated on the forums. That's not rude at all. That's just the nature of the armor. 

 

 

Yes I get you, and I actually agree with you that going all out damage is best in OW. In my point of view though, buildcrafting in GW2 is actually basic compared to other rpgs so yeah no cool points in claiming that a certain armor set is what people with no "knowledge of buildcrafting" default to. I also dont see anything wrong with someone going to the forums to ask a question. It doesnt automatically have to be "someone looking for validation" when they post something like this in the forums. Everyone, even you, was new at some point, and there's more than one way of getting up to speed on the game's mechanics, and the forums SHOULD be one of it.

 

I just dont like how arrogant you are I guess, but you're not wrong.

[Asum.4960]

If you take the meta cDPS Harbinger build and slap full Celestial onto it rather than full Vipers, solo self buffed with just something like a Strength Sigil added to the Cele version, you lose ~1k DPS for 675 Toughness, Vitality, Concentration and Healing Power as tradeoff in ancillary stats, aka. an increase of 6750 HP, ~25% direct damage reduction, 45% Boon Duration and a ~60% increase of sustain from Alchemic Vigor - for around a 6% damage loss. 

 

Even in content such as OW where primarily only damage matters, that's an insane trade to not make - all while providing a vast increase in build flexibility from being able to be a competent Quickness boon support for group events and more casual group content, to opening up far more potential for harder solo content/challenges (where especially Harbinger really falls apart otherwise, due to no innate damage mitigation and pitiful active defense). 

 

It doesn't matter if you are a newer player who struggles with mainline solo content to a more hardcore player who does challenging solo challenges, outside of organised group content with a dedicated support, a ~6% DPS loss for >65% increased effective HP (plus vastly increased flexibility) imo pretty much always is a worthwhile trade.

 

Edited April 22, 2022 by Asum.4960

[Xerxez.7361]

Even though Celestial is nice in Open World I still prefer Viper's in Open World so I don't have to swap gear for Raids or Fractals. Haven't had any survivability problems in Open World just running Vipers.

 

There's no need to go out of your way to build for Open World since it caters to almost every build.

[Dadnir.5038]

Point is more that you want to avoid anything with toughness if you plan to go beyond solo playing. Else you'll need a 2nd armorset which is expensive (and that's especially true when solo playing).

[Agrippa.1693]

Imo there's actually a really easy way to decide if you want to do good damage AND have high survivability in OW:

If you go for Parasitic Contagion go for full Viper.

If you go for Lingering Curse go for Cele.

 

The survivability from Parasitic Contagion is (still) great. But it shines the most the more cDPS you do. Viper is a great choice with that!

Cele is indeed always a good choice in OW, but synergizes less with Parasitic Contagion than full Viper does. To (somewhat) make up for the lost damage, go for the damage trait: Lingering Curse instead.

[Saltmaker.9532]

I made a similar build to this thanks to the wvw variants, this is the build I used to solo MAMA CM http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PSwAoitlhySZsMQGJWMXZxfA-zxIY1o7vQyJC6KBytAcfakxnG-e

Swap some traits around depending on difficulty of the solo content or if you are in a group

Some tips I can give:

- Use demons sigil + meaty asparagus to get your torment duration as high as you can, preferably capped with jade bot core and infusions.

- Eternal Life is a dps increase in situation where you don't have perma alacrity and quickness as you won't have enough LF juice to continue the next shroud rotation, and don't bother using staff with the traits for LF.

- You're going to want Unyielding Blast, without vile vial you'd average around 20-23 vuln with the trait.

- Doom Approaches also pulses weakness which in turn gives you more might, as does plagueland if that answers your question.

- Bonus tip: You can use the elite elixir to Aegis certain mechanic like first boss of 99 CM where you go kill the 4 anomalies and won't have enough dps to kill them in time before the boss does his insta kill attack

 

Credibility: I'm on the wingman records for all 3 Necro specs (#2 Harbinger specifically)

Edited April 27, 2022 by Saltmaker.9532

[jpsssss.7530]

It works. I’m using a mix of cele with a splash of viper’s as its also my WvW set up. Works well in both cases.

Just don’t take it to raids/fractals. It’ll lower your dps and/or boon uptime potential (dunno of that second one is still relevant or not) and it’ll mess up anyone tanking.