Gear for Low Intensity Builds?

[Ajji.6031]

I'm a casual player who likes to play open world to farm, relax, and let the grind take over to decompress after work.  The most "pressure" I would put myself in is Living World episodes, personal story, farming in HoT, etc...so not that much, I'm sure, in most of your eyes.

 

I've been playing GW2 on and off over the years and recently found a "Low Intensity" builds section in Metabattle.  It seems perfect for me.  

 

I heard Celestial gear is great for such builds, but noticed that not all of the LI builds listed use Celestial gear.  I'd really like to craft one set of Ascended gear per armor class so that it's simple to swap based on my mood.  I'm not sure if Legendary is the way to go at this point.  The last time I played was probably around when Legendary armor started releasing and I was burned out from crafting Astralaria.  I never considered Legendary armor before.

 

My question is:  Can I just craft Celestial Ascended everything?  Or do some LI builds really do require Marauders, Trailblazers?  In that case, should I just craft 6 sets?  Marauders and Trailblazers for each armor class?

[kharmin.7683]

Have you checked these threads?

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/114435-low-intensity-leveling-and-engame/?do=findComment&comment=1651048

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/114958-lack-of-good-low-intensity-leveling-guides/?do=findComment&comment=1659606

 

[Ajji.6031]

10 minutes ago, kharmin.7683 said:

Have you checked these threads?

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/114435-low-intensity-leveling-and-engame/?do=findComment&comment=1651048

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/114958-lack-of-good-low-intensity-leveling-guides/?do=findComment&comment=1659606

 

These are helpful, thank you.

 

[mikansei.5742]

For open world and solo LW stuff I think Celestial stats would be just fine, even on the builds that don't list it. If any of those builds rely on e.g. Sigil of Smoldering for burn duration or Runes of the Pack for boon duration, if you want to swap the gear between classes you'd have to either adjust the runes and sigils to something more generalized or adjust the builds. (Personally most of my alts run Runes of Vampirism - the free 10% max HP heal on mob death covers a lot of mistakes I make playing classes I'm not super familiar with, lol.)

Coincidentally now is probably the best time to craft ascended Celestial gear as there's so much quartz from the Four Winds festival, and even if you need more than you can gather, quartz is currently significantly cheaper than usual on the TP.

I would definitely not bother going for legendary armor, lol. It's either going to take a lot of PvP, a LOT of WvW, or a lot of raiding and decently difficult raid achievements. Ascended Celestial sets will require quite a lot of crafting but the mats and/or gold can be acquired over time from whatever content you like. And running around in the LW maps will get you map currency to buy stat-selectable ascended trinkets to go with!

[kharmin.7683]

1 hour ago, Ajji.6031 said:

These are helpful, thank you.

 

You're welcome.  I think that there may be more in the Instanced Content forum.  You may want to try the forums search function for those and other relevant threads.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

I just do it in berserker or viper gear for the most part.  Marauders would be pretty decent on the low HP professions, but otherwise you can go full glass with most low intensity builds. 

As it happens, I made a post about builds that I play one-handed here.  They're fairly low intensity.  But, if you wanted to craft only one armor set for each weight class, my vote would be to use Berserker.  This is because every profession has at least one decent build with berserker's gear.

[Sindust.7059]

If you're absolutely never ever going to do group content, or if you do, it's as some kind of hybrid healer or condi support, then celestial is a viable option. It gives you a lot of survivability and flexibility in regards to your build. But there are few builds that are truly great at anything that use celestial gear. But there are some LI builds that use berserker/viper gear that do 30k+ dps, which would put you at the top of the dps charts even in some organized groups.

 

Also my experience with metabattle LI builds was that they aren't very good. The ones on hardstuck.gg tend to be much better. Also, while many builds from this video are outdated (it was made before warrior banner changes and core weapon buffs for many professions), it can give you an idea of what is possible with good LI builds.

[Sunchaser.9854]

Low intensity builds often are say, less intense, but honestly i think going glass dps gear to kill things quicker can save off the dps with the jade core saving or even providing like +200 vitality, or using celestial gear.

 

From what i can remember, Celestial gear offers a all rounder grab bag mix of stats. I remember for rev it was about 70% dps stats, but came with like 20% more hp and healing at cost of -30% dps. For some Champion soloing, It's not a bad tradeoff to hit a equilbrum where you heal as much damage as you take, even if you do a little dps.

For most open world content though, it's kinda like the osrs Bandos vs Barrows tradeoff. Where although you trade off 10-20% of your armor, if you kill things 10% faster, you can end up breaking even better than the tanky armor since the kill speed can mitigate damage.

Thus trading like a glass build with 20% less hp for 30% more damage can often work and gear designed for raiding, although squishier at first, only amounts to like a 23k ->19.3k change in my hp or something. 

I think celestial gear is a all rounder set, it heals, it give both dmg and condi dmg, it only does 60-70% the dps if proper runes are slotted, but it is fairly tanky and is sometimes used for condi dps alac builds as a inbetween the boon focused Ritualist gear and the condi dps focused viper. 

 

Honestly i think for most classes, i think most dps are fine with berserkers for raids, whatever the hp of marauders is for open world, or a celestial set for a grab bag. But i think you'd probably want to plan your ascended armor set around what classes wear it. 

 

Heavy: Guardian, Warrior, Revenant. I think Firebrand and Renegade can use viper (Condi dps). Or celestial (great on guardian, alac hybrid ren with + boon duration runes), etc. 

Medium: Engi, Ranger, Thief. I think engi can use berserkers for power dps to 35k-36k or vipers for 37k extended golem dps. I think the top snowcrow build is condi untamed using vipers. Haven't heard of thief being used much tbh so idk them.

 

Light:  Ele mesmer Necro. Ele and mesmer i don't think seem loved by devs, Necro is pretty solid for open world and sometimes used to solo champion and leg bounties. 

 

I think you can get away with celestial on most classes and especially for open world, it's slow but tanky, but specialized gear and even runes can tend to get specialized as well. Just remember berserker gear is usually dirt cheap to buy, viper/celestial expensive asf. And guardian or hybrid builds like boon support condi dpses kinda get some mileage out of all of it. 

[mindcircus.1506]

18 hours ago, Ajji.6031 said:

I'm a casual player who likes to play open world to farm, relax, and let the grind take over to decompress after work.  The most "pressure" I would put myself in is Living World episodes, personal story, farming in HoT, etc...so not that much, I'm sure, in most of your eyes.

 

I've been playing GW2 on and off over the years and recently found a "Low Intensity" builds section in Metabattle.  It seems perfect for me.  

 

I heard Celestial gear is great for such builds, but noticed that not all of the LI builds listed use Celestial gear.  I'd really like to craft one set of Ascended gear per armor class so that it's simple to swap based on my mood.  I'm not sure if Legendary is the way to go at this point.  The last time I played was probably around when Legendary armor started releasing and I was burned out from crafting Astralaria.  I never considered Legendary armor before.

 

My question is:  Can I just craft Celestial Ascended everything?  Or do some LI builds really do require Marauders, Trailblazers?  In that case, should I just craft 6 sets?  Marauders and Trailblazers for each armor class?

The short answer is "no" you cannot just grab an "LI" build and slap cele gear on it and perform well. Slapping Celestial gear on most builds meant for a power set like marauder's will generally lead to sub par performance.
Example: A Marauder's setup easily pushes you to the crit cap on a lot of builds. This is essential for many power builds to do a decent amount of damage. Simply replacing this stat set with Cele will lower your crit rate as well as crit damage and overall strike damage.
Rough rule of Thumb: If you see a build on a site like Metabattle or a video ect that points you towards a specific gear set and no alternatives are presented it's because the creator did indeed try other gear options and settled on the recommended set.

When you hear "cele is great for open world builds" what you should instead be reading is "many open world builds".
Celestial is great on things like Tempest, Holosmith, Renegade or Firebrand, that do a meaningful spread of both Condition damage and Strike damage while generating meaningful boons.
Celestial is not so great on things like Daredevil, Vindicator, Soulbeast or Spellbreaker. Selfish Power damage foccessed builds will see a reduction in performance that will render them simply not viable.

A good Trailblazers condi Ranger setup will shine. Toss it in celestial and it will completely neuter the build.

It's also important to realize many Low Intensity builds are golem builds made for easy group content. They look great in Arc on a golem and are fantastic for running strikes/raids/fractals but aren't actually what I would personally a good "Open World" build. Many LI builds lack the sustain needed to mitigate the damage of harder targets in Open World like Desert Bounty champions.

My big reccomend is to gear up in Stat-selectable exotics and easily acquired ascended trinkets, tweak until you are comfortable then look at crafting your ascended. 
From your described gameplay loop, I'm not sure if Legendary armour is a good solution for you.

[Cuks.8241]

A build is always linked to the gear. If you change gear, dont expect to have similar performance. Details like runes and sigils are often more important than it seems at first glance.

There is no universal gear set. If you had to pick one, celestial is probably the closest. But you are making a hybrid build with celestial so there are prerequisites or you might end up using only half of the stats which will be a big setback. Celestial is also not cheap. 

When making or picking a build be very specific what content you want to play. Build more often than not dont translate well between modes. By modes I mean pvp, wvw, ow, raids/strikes, fractals. 

LI builds are often made for raiding enviroment, dps or boon support/dps roles. These are specialised roles. LI just means less input required to play at a specific lvl. Don't be surprised if you take a raiding dps build and get 1 shot in open world. So we are back at pick a build for the content you want to play. 

[Axelteas.7192]

Low intensity build have nothing to do with gear.

 Low intensity is a particular playstyle based on easy/simple rotations, but they use the same gear as meta.

For condis the go is viper and for power berserker or marauders.

The tanky gear like traiblazer or cele is used to do solo content. As far as you do fractals or raids you sholud use the meta gear with your low intensity build because mates will heal you and support.

Edited August 15, 2022 by Axelteas.7192

[Astralporing.1957]

Like already mentioned, builds are tied to gear. There's some variation and simplification possible, but only within a narrow range.

You can probably go from a build that is a mix of assassins and berserkers into a pure berserker build. Just as you can go from a mix of vipers, sinisters and rabids into pure vipers. There will be some dps loss as a result, but the general principle behind the build will stay the same. You can't go from one of those builds to a celestial set and expect anything good to happen however - while it is true that there are some decent builds utilizing celestial gear, those are different builds, that are adjusted to take full use of that gearset.

So, no, there's no "universal" gear set you can use for everything and expect to do just fine.

[Ashen.2907]

If the extent of the pressure that you will place on your build is story instances and open world farming then exotic or ascended celestial will serve just fine for the vast majority of situations. You will have enough damage to kill your foes and will have enough sustain to survive. Will your damage output be below dedicated dps builds? Of course, celestial is a jack of all trades master of none stat set. 

Personally I would rather get multiple sets of exotic gear that serve me better in specific situations than one set of ascended to serve in all situations, but if you are set on one armor set per weight class celestial will work.

Now, if you ever decide to get into instanced group content you will need to take gear dedicated to your role on the team.

Edited August 16, 2022 by Ashen.2907

[Dante.1508]

On 8/15/2022 at 1:45 AM, Ajji.6031 said:

I'm a casual player who likes to play open world to farm, relax, and let the grind take over to decompress after work.  The most "pressure" I would put myself in is Living World episodes, personal story, farming in HoT, etc...so not that much, I'm sure, in most of your eyes.

 

I've been playing GW2 on and off over the years and recently found a "Low Intensity" builds section in Metabattle.  It seems perfect for me.  

 

I heard Celestial gear is great for such builds, but noticed that not all of the LI builds listed use Celestial gear.  I'd really like to craft one set of Ascended gear per armor class so that it's simple to swap based on my mood.  I'm not sure if Legendary is the way to go at this point.  The last time I played was probably around when Legendary armor started releasing and I was burned out from crafting Astralaria.  I never considered Legendary armor before.

 

My question is:  Can I just craft Celestial Ascended everything?  Or do some LI builds really do require Marauders, Trailblazers?  In that case, should I just craft 6 sets?  Marauders and Trailblazers for each armor class?

I did works perfectly on all condi builds.

[William.3871]

As others said, celestial is great. At least for light and medium.

 

As a side not, in my opinion, Berserker is great for all heavy armor professions. In your scenario, unless i want to play badly condition revenant or healer/condition guardian, I would build the Berserker (maybe mix some marauder) ascended gear for that armor class.