Celestial in strikes

[EpicName.4523]

I want to finish several weapon related achievements in EoD in order to unlock the weapons behind them - like the the Purifier, for example. 

Many of my characters have celestial exotic gear, but in order to finish many of the said achievements,  you must do strike missions. Celestial is amazing and highly versatile stat and I don't want to spend tons of gold for at least semi-meta gear, sigils and runes.

Can you do strike missions with Celestial or Trailblazer equipment without getting kicked or something?

Additionally, I have tried for a looooong time to kill Aetherblade enemies in their hidden camp in Echovald. Wanted to loot one item for the Purifier, but it NEVER dropped. Never. Will magic find boosters help or am I looking in the wrong place?

[SlipLihte.1307]

Depends on profession and role a bit. Quickness firebrand and scrapper should be fine, potentially some alac builds such as mirage and renegade as well. I haven't played it at all but I suspect support mech as well.

 

You may struggle a bit in a dps role though.

 

That said, unless you are doing challenge mode, most strikes should be manageable in a decent group comp assuming you know how to play your spec.

[AzuritaBlues.3206]

it's absolutely fine for PuGs runs if you build for a hybrid role. Tempest/Catalyst and Firebrand are good options for celestial, because they have nice boon, healing and both strike and condi damage output, which means you can take multiple roles at once and fill the gaps of your squad by taking advantage of all your gear stats

Just be aware to always bring utility to your group as a Celestial character, because your damage will still lack compared to dedicated dps.

[Friday.7864]

If you know what you're doing you can easily outdps many people who are a dedicated dps.
Don't worry too much if you're joining a pug group.

If you look up the collection item Willbender's Trinket on wiki (if that's what you mean) this is also listed on bottom: 

Bug: Drops from any Aetherblade in New Kaineng City, instead of in Echovald Wilds

Edited May 9, 2022 by Friday.7864

[ASP.8093]

43 minutes ago, EpicName.4523 said:

Can you do strike missions with Celestial or Trailblazer equipment without getting kicked or something?

So, to start off with: will your performance be worse? Yes. But you're not trying to set speed clear records here. And most players in strikes really aren't perfect, they're shooting closer to "good enough."

So, become that "good enough" by focusing on what you can control: pick the traits and skills that work best on a raid build, practice a rotation a little bit (you can look up "[your class] easy rotation" or "[your class] LI rotation" on youtube and probably find some really friendly starter version), educate yourself real quick about the mechanics of the encounter. If you can do all that, you'll probably do better than someone with the "perfect" gear/build who doesn't understand their skills very well. Which may well put you at around the middle of the pack for most pugs.

 

If you're on a class with a good condi-damage support build (Firebrand, Renegade, Specter, or Healscourge, for example), you can probably do alright running that build in Celestial gear instead of the Ritualist gear those usually call for those days — your damage will likely be a bit weaker but you'll still be able to fulfill your most vital role, which is giving everyone buffs, well enough.

With Trailblazer gear, don't try to fill that support role, of course. Just look at pure CDPS builds and accept that you'll only be outputting 50-75% of their tested damage.

(Last week, I saw an Alac Specter consistently outputting <1k DPS; that's truly dire for a build that's 80% condition application and 20% upkeeping a single party boon. But that player still managed to complete a few strikes and no one raised a fuss about their garbage-tier damage. So, who knows, really! The problem is just that the strike will absolutely collapse if most of the players are trying to do that.)

 

I recommend joining a group that says "training," "chill," "all welcome," &c. They're more likely to explain things and forgive under-optimal gear or mistakes. Avoid any groups that say "EXP" ("experienced" — they tend to be picky and don't explain anything) or "CM" (that's Challenge Mode, you don't want that right now).

[IrishPotato.6327]

12 hours ago, talesbfftt.4596 said:

it's absolutely fine for PuGs runs if you build for a hybrid role. Tempest/Catalyst and Firebrand are good options for celestial, because they have nice boon, healing and both strike and condi damage output, which means you can take multiple roles at once and fill the gaps of your squad by taking advantage of all your gear stats

Just be aware to always bring utility to your group as a Celestial character, because your damage will still lack compared to dedicated dps.

It's not a guarantee that it'll be "absolutely fine" in pugs. Pugs can and will kick players for low dps, so it depends on the group. As mentioned above, chill/all welcome groups will be their ticket.

[attractiveman.7164]

On 5/9/2022 at 10:10 AM, ASP.8093 said:

So, to start off with: will your performance be worse? Yes. But you're not trying to set speed clear records here. And most players in strikes really aren't perfect, they're shooting closer to "good enough."

So, become that "good enough" by focusing on what you can control: pick the traits and skills that work best on a raid build, practice a rotation a little bit (you can look up "[your class] easy rotation" or "[your class] LI rotation" on youtube and probably find some really friendly starter version), educate yourself real quick about the mechanics of the encounter. If you can do all that, you'll probably do better than someone with the "perfect" gear/build who doesn't understand their skills very well. Which may well put you at around the middle of the pack for most pugs.

 

If you're on a class with a good condi-damage support build (Firebrand, Renegade, Specter, or Healscourge, for example), you can probably do alright running that build in Celestial gear instead of the Ritualist gear those usually call for those days — your damage will likely be a bit weaker but you'll still be able to fulfill your most vital role, which is giving everyone buffs, well enough.

With Trailblazer gear, don't try to fill that support role, of course. Just look at pure CDPS builds and accept that you'll only be outputting 50-75% of their tested damage.

(Last week, I saw an Alac Specter consistently outputting <1k DPS; that's truly dire for a build that's 80% condition application and 20% upkeeping a single party boon. But that player still managed to complete a few strikes and no one raised a fuss about their garbage-tier damage. So, who knows, really! The problem is just that the strike will absolutely collapse if most of the players are trying to do that.)

 

I recommend joining a group that says "training," "chill," "all welcome," &c. They're more likely to explain things and forgive under-optimal gear or mistakes. Avoid any groups that say "EXP" ("experienced" — they tend to be picky and don't explain anything) or "CM" (that's Challenge Mode, you don't want that right now).

I run chill strike squads every day around 5pm est. Bring celestial all you want, I'm more concerned with genuine attempts at the mechanics than giga-dps. 

[Nash.2681]

If we're talking normal mode EoD strikes, just focus on learning the mechanics (read/watch some guides) and invest some time in learning the proper rotation for your build. Rotations influence on dps is so much bigger than perfect gear (unfortunatly most players underestimate rotations and overestimate gear). If you do it right, probably no one will ever suspect you having suboptimal gear in PUG strikes, since you'll outperform most ppl.

[TheQuickFox.3826]

Yes, you're fine, but your contribution will be probably lower. Strikes are not the best content to have all-purpose versatility. But if you just need the Kaineng strike for the turtle, absolutely go for it with Celestial. It also helps you survive a bit when you screw up a few mechanics which you will during the first run.

 

And normal mode strikes (Not harvest temple) can be easily done with one or two players dead on the ground if the rest of the players know what they are doing.

However, some groups want to rush to rewards and require optimized builds. Skip these groups.

 

If you like the strikes and want to play them more often, try to find an optimal build for the role you like to play.
I usually play a new strike with Celestial because it is more forgiving. When I get familiar with the dangers I switch to a glass cannon build for more DPS. Remember: Celestial greatly outperforms a glass cannon meta build when the glass cannon player lies dead on the ground.

[Khisanth.2948]

1 hour ago, TheQuickFox.3826 said:

And normal mode strikes (Not harvest temple) can be easily done with one or two players dead on the ground if the rest of the players know what they are doing.

That was pretty much how it was when I was doing the strike for turtle unlock. Only one person was actually dead initially but there was someone one the wrong platform so practically the same as dead. There are also people who have solo'ed that strike so I guess technically doable with 9 dead people ...

[SlayerXX.7138]

On 5/9/2022 at 8:31 AM, EpicName.4523 said:

Many of my characters have celestial exotic gear, but in order to finish many of the said achievements,  you must do strike missions. Celestial is amazing and highly versatile stat and I don't want to spend tons of gold for at least semi-meta gear, sigils and runes.

Really depends on the build. Something like virtuoso can get away with celestial. Most specs don't. If you have any profession with a viable power build. Just pay for exotic Berserker weapons and armor. Armor you can get for 3 gold weapons depend. Could be as low as 2 gold. If you have some WvW badges its is 133 badges and 1 gold per weapon from the WvW vendor. Buy Eagle runes. Buy order 29 silver x 6 makes another 2g . Leave your celestial trinkets be if you don't want to pay to much money. So at minimum 7g for runes Armor and weapon. Not free but really not much of an investment. Its not like a Berserker set couldn't come in handy another time.

 

Sure you can get carried by other people. But being to stingy to invest around 10 g and be a bother seems like a kitten move to me.

Edited May 14, 2022 by Albi.7250