Sell me on Celestial (Or Don't)

[SamuelW.2685]

I plan on leveling my  again Thief soon and making a build (mostly) from stretch  it'd be primarily for open world stuff, and maybe strikes, and I plan to make it power based.

Due to not being able to always party up in the open world, I'd want a prefix that'd give me both survivability and damage, I've been thinking of full or mostly full Knights or Dragons, due to them both providing damage and survivability. Celestial also crossed my mind, but I'm not sold on it.

I like to be versatile, but Celestial almost seems like it's sacrificing TOO much for all that versatility. But at the same time, even though I just want a power build, the addition of other stats seems appealing, being able to weave in more DOT's, getting more healing power, vitality. and toughness would also let me survive longer etc.

Sooooooo, is Celestial good? Is it trash? idk, try selling me on it, or don't, and sell me on something else

Edited May 30, 2022 by SamuelW.2685

[Randulf.7614]

Healing power is a weird stat that’s rarely worth adding to. I can’t see any use for a thief when you can self heal enough through heal on hits and crits. If going power, then you are gaining condition stats for no reason. That’s enough reason not to go celestial on a power thief

I use celestial on my open world ele because he benefits from everything and I don’t have to overthink builds. It’s fine and does the job , but nothing spectacular.

Stick with a better stat combo or a hybrid. You don’t have to go one stat set, you can hybridise. Remember, thieves avoid damage. They have a lot f things for dodges, endurance, and other ways to mitigate attacks. Focus on those skills and traits, vitality and just go dps

Edited May 30, 2022 by Randulf.7614

[Gibson.4036]

Agreed with Randulf that celestial doesn’t seem to fit thief. I do find, though, that some defensive stats are helpful. Knights is way too defensive though.

For power thief I’ve had a good experience with mixing Marauders and Berserkers. I started with Marauders on everything but weapons, which were Berserker. As I got used to my build, I’ve switched all trinkets to Berserker so only my armor is still Marauders.

[JayHog.3280]

I'd say Marauders is a decent option, mostly focused on power, ferocity, precision with a side of vitality so you're not too squishy to kill.

 

I use it on my ele to at least give me time to react to bad situations.

[Westenev.5289]

Thief is probably the premier class that can get away with using berserkers anywhere. Invigorating Precision, Bandit's Defense, Healing Signet and Staff auto's are just that stronk (Dagger/Pistol 5-2 combo can also get you out of a lot of trouble while leveling, but dagger 5 into backstab also works).

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

Celestial is very good but only on certain builds. For example, celestial elemenalist is usually very good but celestial warrior is pretty terrible. It all depends on whether or not you can make use of all the stats. For celestial builds you should at the very least have access to a bunch of boons, good condi damage and good power coefficients on your weapons. Also its nice to have traits that give you universal damage boosts like additional crit chance or general damage multipliers. I havent tried celestial thief but I imagine it wouldnt be very good, though cele spectre might be decent.

[AliamRationem.5172]

Despite the fact that it has all of the relevant power stats in equal proportion, celestial is really only suitable for condition-based builds and even then it won't be your best option in terms of damage output among high-sustain condition damage stats.  Celestial is a solid choice for builds that can make use of all-stat gear (e.g. elementalist, firebrand, etc.).  I don't think I'd recommend it for thief, but if you do want to run it with thief definitely avoid straight power builds and go for condition or condition-forward hybrid setups.

[ASP.8093]

IME, Celestial typically excels when both of these are true:

1. You want a damage profile similar to Viper's (both condi and power, a bit heavier on condi).

2. Your build outputs enough personal boons to make boon duration extension worthwhile, especially if it'll turn an average 10-15 Might into a constant 20-25 Might.

(And, implicitly, 3. The Toughness / Vitality / Healing Power will make some difference for your survival. But that's often kinda trivially true.)

 

If your build can't make good use of the power damage stats, something like Ritualist could be stronger for you.

If your build can't make good use of the Concentration, you're losing a lot of damage when you go Celestial — compared to Viper's and possible even compared to Trailblazer's (the other "I am an unkillable condi god" stat combo).

 

One thing with PvE thief builds is a lot of them either have pretty weak self-boon output (Staff Daredevil when you're not stealing off a specific raid boss, for example), or naturally cap a lot of boon uptime with 0 boon duration (like Rifle Deadeye thanks to the constant boon refresh). Both of these are a bit suboptimal for Cele.

 

Also, in the case of thieves, there's something else: two of our most important "healing" traits don't use Healing Power at all: Invigorating Precision is just based on your strike damage output, and Consume Shadows restores a flat % of health to your and your group.

[Parasite.5389]

Celestial is a jack of all trades, master of none stat; for a Thief there are a lot of stats that you're just not going to use on a power build

Berserker works fine for openworld, if spec'd right you'll still have a good amount of sustain from Heals in hit and Crits. if you're still struggling Dragon or Marauder for a little extra vitality, which generally is more beneficial than toughness(as that will only reduce damage from strike and not conditions)

[mindcircus.1506]

If you are building for Thief Open World the only build I found that was really viable in Celestial was a condi-focused Spectre. Other options I tried simply did not cut it.
If you are building for Power your absolute best choices are either full glass cannon Berserker's or what I found the best balance between Damage/Survivability: Marauder's.
Marauders gets you right up to the crit cap with a little jimmy leg and gives you enough HP to take a few hits while hitting hard enough to get by.
Zerker's is great if you have enough skill, hit all your dodges and can meaningfully leverage the class' mobility and evasion options. Otherwise I will go with a Marauder's Daredevil every time.

The reasons Cele is not great on Thief are largely covered in the responses here. It generally (though not always) favours condi focussed builds that generate a lot of boons. Things like Tempest, Catalyst, Renegade, a few different Mesmer options, and a few flavors of Engi are great in Cele gear. A few Ranger builds are really fun in Cele.
But power focussed builds on Thief and Warrior don't gain much from the boon duration as they perma the few relevant boons they generate (Might, Fury) without needing the Concentration, leading to a lot of wasted Stats and overall milquetoast performance.

Edited May 31, 2022 by mindcircus.1506

[Hotride.2187]

Cele thief should work (well) with spectre only.

Edited May 31, 2022 by Hotride.2187

[mercury ranique.2170]

Although raids and high end fractals changed this a bit, the way I used to explain it for PvE is as follows:
To be succesfull you'll need to do two things:
1: Stay alive during a fight
2: Kill the opponent
When the opponent is killed, the fight is over, so for survivability, killing quickly is a good thing. 

Staying alive is a yes/no situation. You either win the fight and stay alive or you are killed . With standard damage mitigation like dodging and moving, you can actually win all fights. So there is no actual need to sacrifice dps for survivability. The quicker you kill, the better.

Celestial is a jack of all trades and in general therefor a bad idea. 
Obviously, this is very generic and there are exceptations like glasscanon builds. 
With thief I do not see why you would need it though

 

[Cyninja.2954]

9 hours ago, ASP.8093 said:

IME, Celestial typically excels when both of these are true:

1. You want a damage profile similar to Viper's (both condi and power, a bit heavier on condi).

2. Your build outputs enough personal boons to make boon duration extension worthwhile, especially if it'll turn an average 10-15 Might into a constant 20-25 Might.

 

 

This is a good summary and advice (and the remainder of  ASP.8093's explanation too).

In short: if you can leverage the extension of offesnive boons for the lower stats, you can go for celestial. 

This is also somewhat dictated by if your class of choice has good hybrid weapons available, otherwise why not take ritualist and go full condi?

This also explains why celestial in general is subpar for group content (unless on a class which is providing the boons on a hybrid slot like say celestial fb for fractals) because those offensive boons should be present.

Edited May 31, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

A couple of years ago, there was a challenge on the board to craft 100 % full celestial builds. It was about using everything with celestial stats, including the kill-stack sigil. I currently have one character which uses such a build, a mechanist. Performance is acceptable for open world and story-content, but it may not be enough to compete with everything group-content related. I also experimented with Thief builds back then, but the result was underwhelming. 

Celestial stats support a few features which have barely any effect on thief. Healing Power is definitely a bit of a problem if you do not run Specter specialization. If you run the support/heal traits (core) it can become a little handy, but not comparable with any other class. 

Toughness is a real problem. A few years ago, I did a test run with outmaxed toughness on a thief. Horrible idea XD. You still get 1-shot by a lot of stuff and if you survive, you are left with only a few hundred HP. Another problem is that toughness scales not linear (incoming damage reduction) and above a certain threshold, you sacrifice a lot of stat-points for little to no reward at all. Celestial crosses that threshold easily. So you definitely end up wasting stat-points.

You have access to two gear-templates by default. So I recommend having one Open World set and one for group-content. Use your shortcuts to quickly swap between them. Also assign different build-templates (traits, skills) for this.  Even if you run the same stats, you maybe do not run the same runes & sigils.. The power meta for the past ~9 years is Scholar Runes, which stop working once you go below 90 % health. In group-content, that is not a problem. You have healers there, which maintain your HP. But in Open World and story content, maintaining the HP can be difficult, especially after the EoD sustain nerfs. 

As you intend to focus on power but want survivability, I recommend using Marauder's or Dragon's stats. Marauders provide a massive chunk of additional precision and can be selected via stat-selection gear. So this might be an option for ascended trinkets+backpack.

Edited May 31, 2022 by HnRkLnXqZ.1870
​🙄​

[attractiveman.7164]

Celestial is ok as a "training wheels" set. It has some niche uses for condi support builds but otherwise it's probably best used by Elementalist. Just my opinion on it.

[SlayerXX.7138]

Don't buy dragon gear! Without hidden killer it is useless. And you don't want to maintain stealth all the time in OW.
 

On 5/30/2022 at 11:32 PM, SamuelW.2685 said:

 it'd be primarily for open world stuff, and maybe strikes, and I plan to make it power based.

Any reason you want to make it power based? As Power damage has 3 stats that increase your damage by multiplying each other you have to go all in the get the most of it. On thief sacrificing Precision, power or Ferocity for survivability isn't worth it or fun for that matter. Marauder daredevil Staff is as "tanky" as you can get with power on thief.