Celestial Gear needs to go, these builds are unfun and boring to fight against as well as to play.

[LSD.4673]

4 hours ago, Hotride.2187 said:

The power gear versions dies in 2 seconds if focused. Not so on cele (as usual).

Though cele scrapper is not new, just the old version was purely condi.

The zerker version kills in 2 seconds too though. Same as all builds. With Barrier from explosives, it stays standing long enough to win. 

Either way, stat combos are dumb and inherently imbalanced. It's just another facet of the GW2 experience, where balance goes hand in hand with active development -- which is to say, they're both absent.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

Celestial is not the problem, it is specific elite specs which need to be balanced.

If Cele were a problem then ask yourself how often things like a Cele Reaper, Cele Soulbeast, or Cele Core Warrior, or Cele Core Ranger have given the same amount of trouble as a Cele Harbinger.

[hugeboss.5432]

Full cele isn't the best option, then there's some classes that have no real benefit of celestial. It's mostly a situational thing. Take a look at the popular meta's, hardly any use full celestial these days, but it's a great option for testing purposes & for people that don't know what to focus on.

[Zyreva.1078]

21 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Celestial is not the problem, it is specific elite specs which need to be balanced.

If Cele were a problem then ask yourself how often things like a Cele Reaper, Cele Soulbeast, or Cele Core Warrior, or Cele Core Ranger have given the same amount of trouble as a Cele Harbinger.

All of those specs would give more trouble running cele than running something else (assuming a build that make sense ofc). I'm playing cele soulbeast myself and eat most cele harbs for breakfest. Power sbl - even tho is the most commonly played build - is much worse in comparison. Ofc cele isn't the only imbalance and certain specs are overpowered compared to others. But that doesn't mean cele is balanced.

Edited April 10, 2023 by Zyreva.1078

[subversiontwo.7501]

14 hours ago, Zyreva.1078 said:

It's not just glass that strugglers vs cele. Everything not cele struggles vs cele (and cele vs cele can be pretty stale - but there is simply no better counter). The fact that all you cele defenders aren't even considering anything but full glasss "oneshot" builds or cele shows this pretty clearly. And that's the problem.

Perhaps this bit says more about Cele and its place in the game than you intend it to do. There were and are very few things played outside of full power or full conditions besides Cele. Cele opening up a third alternative perhaps says more about why we need Cele, for now, than why we don't need it.

The game suffers an overall problem with how to balance going deep into primary stats versus how to deal with secondary stats and an overall not just class-balance issue but overarching class-design issue with how to balance classes who go deep into primary stats (or draw advantages from secondary effects, without having to rely on secondary stats; like plentiful control-condition amounts without needing to build into conditions) versus those who are more tied down to their secondary stats (eg., having low base values, needing to stack stats through modifiers).

I've said this before in Cele-complaint threads, but Cele is largely unimportant, it can be deleted as a stat option. However, that would require going back to basics, to a class-design level, and look over each of the classes and what they are intended to do. Cele as it stands exists to bridge the power versus condi gap (that on its own relegates all other hybrid stats to the sideline) and it exists to keep a couple of classes relevant and actually capable of leveraging their class mechanics - classes that do not even necessarily have the strongest Cele builds. They are just more reliant upon Cele for build diversity.

Most of this is clearly visible in how certain classes enjoy up to 10k extra hitpoints on the same gear, that other classes have been given eg., heal-power to compensate for (along with some class mechanic), but through modifiers and base values, they need to stack another 500 or so stats to get something comparable- or even something concrete out of those class mechanics. If we are to do away with Cele, that is where we need to start. That along with the classes who have gratuitous 3s of blinds, weakness and poison etc. We can't just bring down the classes that have the corresponding boons like aegis or protection. They are two means to the same end, however, there is alot of focus on boons and little focus on conditions. I would hazard to guess that it is because people don't understand those effects or how strong they can be.

I'll add this bit at the end here: There are also differences in stats that people here are conveniently trying to forget, like, 2600 AR is not the same as 3600 AR. These things are the sole reasons that other things you like to complain about, like Minstrels, still exists because Minstrel has both healing and concentration minors. It is not a superior outgoing option. It solely remains for situations where a Cele tank is insufficient relative a Minstrel tank or where a support can't leverage offensive stats anyway (where hybrid stats generally makes the game more fun and true to its original concept of support not being pure healers). That is relevant to eg., support FB and Vindi in various types of subcontent. Perhaps the game would benefit from a more experienced player mixing in other pieces than Minstrel, but going eg., the route through Clerics or Zealots just doesn't let them leverage those stats. There is only one class, role or build I'd consider Zealots on.

Again, all of that stuff has to change before Cele unless you want less diversity rather than more diversity.

Edited April 10, 2023 by subversiontwo.7501

[Zyreva.1078]

26 minutes ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

Perhaps this bit says more about Cele and its place in the game than you intend it to do. There were and are very few things played outside of full power or full conditions besides Cele.

Cele was perfectly viable before the buffs. Which made it already superior to like 80% of other stat combinations. It didn't need those massive buffs and yet here we are.

Class balance is irrelevant in this regard and does not justify cele in it's current state. There is no class that needs broken cele.

Edited April 10, 2023 by Zyreva.1078

[Hotride.2187]

1 hour ago, LSD.4673 said:

The zerker version kills in 2 seconds too though. Same as all builds. With Barrier from explosives, it stays standing long enough to win.

I'd like to see how it kills a cele build in 2 seconds. Even coming out of stealth with full bombing it wont. After that, when the boon fiesta gets going, good luck (this is assuming the boon fiesta wasn't going before the grenade nuke).

And it really isn't "same with all builds". Some professions have access to such strike dmg nukes. Definitely not all. Not a few that do must sacrifice a lot for the nuking (FA weaver, power mesmer).

That is the whole point here though. Power builds sacrifice survivability to do dmg. Cele builds sacrifice nothing. You got a condi weapon? You got access to some boons? You are good to go, make a cele build and enjoy. Everyone and their dog is running condi cleanses for days because of this garbage.

Edited April 10, 2023 by Hotride.2187

[Hotride.2187]

58 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Celestial is not the problem, it is specific elite specs which need to be balanced.

If Cele were a problem then ask yourself how often things like a Cele Reaper, Cele Soulbeast, or Cele Core Warrior, or Cele Core Ranger have given the same amount of trouble as a Cele Harbinger.

That is like saying, core mesmer can't use minstrel and so minstrel is not the go-to support stats in wvw.

[Alaya.8765]

If you were to compare stats on ascended gear and for this thought experiment assume you only use the exact same stat for everything :

3 stat gear: 1 x major stat 1381 and 2 x minor stat 961 each
total of 3303

4 stat gear: 2 x major stat 1173 and 2 x minor stat 633 each
total of 3612 
so 4 stat gear has 9.36% more stats than 3 stat gear of the same quality and people are up in arms about it already

9 stat gear. 9 x major stat 639 each
total of 5721
so 9 stat gear has 73.21% more stats than 3 stat gear and 58.39% more stats than 4 stat gear.

Before the May 11, 2021 patch that gave celestial expertise and concentration the stat total was already 4473 which was a stat advantage over 3 stats of 35.42% and for 4 stats of 23.84%.

Now if we just compare for example berserk to celestial:

Berserk has 1381 power 961 precision and 961 ferocity.
Celestial has 639 of each of them + other stats. So one might think: "Oh yes glass canon does soo much more dmg look at the numbers"
But consider that pretty much every celestial build can keep 25 stacks of might (+750 power and condi dmg) up permanently and has a lot of other boons that the typical glass canon build will not have or will have for very short amounts of time or only with a certain setup process.

So the buffed up Cele build runs with 1.389 power which is even higher than the stats berserk gives by itself.
Yes yes berserk still has more crit chance and a higher modifier but I assure you the cele build will still hit harder than the berserk build since the cele build not only has more hp and more toughness but also longer lasting boons like protection in case.

If we would take a look at Trailblazer for arguments sake.

Trailblazer has 1173 toughness and 1173 condition damage and 633 vitality and 633 expertise.
Celestial has 639 of each of them + other stats. Once again if we were to crunch numbers a bit with 25 stacks of might (+750 power and condi dmg) up permanently we are at 1.389 condition damage which is higher yet once again. So the argument for trailblazer would be 534 extra toughness in comparison to 639 healing power, concentration, power, precision and ferocity.

Celestial has an insane number of stat points it provides like I said above. 73.21% more stats than 3 stat gear and 58.39% more stats than 4 stat gear.

So the situation is simple.
If you have certain specs that profit from having different stats they will profit immensely from this very situation.

You could probably reduce the total stats of celestial by 20-25% and not break it but just bring it more in line with other gear options in wvw at least. 

If the gear would have been stat adjusted to consider the 2 added stats in the May 11, 2021 patch it would be 497 per stat and 4473 total which would still give it a stat advantage over 3 stat gear of 35.42% and for 4 stats of 23.84% just like before the patch.

If you now slot those numbers in my comparisons above the total power in the berserker comparison would still come close to it and the total condition damage would still be higher in the fully buffed situation.

Expertise and concentration each give 1% duration for 15 points so the current stats give 42,6% of both without any traits or runes / sigils in the equation. The reduced numbers would be 33,134%.

If you disagree with anything I said be my guest the only thing I want to point out in this situation is simply that the celestial gear has an insane stat advantage and that even a number adjustment (in case for wvw only) would not even kill the builds. If we would look at the pre February 26, 2020 patch days there might be an argument you could make that you would just fall over like a piece of paper if you were to meet a full glass canon 1 shot build but nowadays I do not think that even the adjusted stats would make you drop like nothing.

 

Edited October 17, 2023 by Alaya.8765

[LSD.4673]

11 minutes ago, Hotride.2187 said:

I'd like to see how it kills a cele build in 2 seconds. Even coming out of stealth with full bombing it wont. After that, when the boon fiesta gets going, good luck (this is assuming the boon fiesta wasn't going before the grenade nuke).

And it really isn't "same with all builds". Some professions have access to such strike dmg nukes. Definitely not all. Not a few that do must sacrifice a lot for the nuking (FA weaver, power mesmer).

That is the whole point here though. Power builds sacrifice survivability to do dmg. Cele builds sacrifice nothing. You got a condi weapon? You got access to some boons? You are good to go, make a cele build and enjoy. Everyone and their dog is running condi cleanses for days because of this garbage.

But Cele builds do sacrifice damage. Unless they can stack 25 might, they hit like wet noodles.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

9 minutes ago, LSD.4673 said:

But Cele builds do sacrifice damage. Unless they can stack 25 might, they hit like wet noodles.

And even if they run Fury, they still lack in their ability to even crit. Not every spec is capable of 25 might stack uptime.

The builds that use it best derive extra stats from their traitlines to shore up where Cele lacks.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

just buff boon strip (stronger then it was pre nerf) and this won't be such a problem. if your class doesn't have strip, well it can probably use cele :D

[Zyreva.1078]

22 minutes ago, LSD.4673 said:

But Cele builds do sacrifice damage. Unless they can stack 25 might, they hit like wet noodles.

Not true. I don't have much might on my cele slb, can still kill most other builds, certainly anything not cele, minstrel or runaway build (which don't die to any other ranger build either). Aside from that even zerk hits like a wet noodle against anything remotely tanky unless going full glass - and that only works vs outnumbered or bad players, so it's trash.

Edited April 10, 2023 by Zyreva.1078

[andrewlcl.8176]

7 hours ago, Hotride.2187 said:

Can't say I'm a big fan of minstrel but at least you are forced into a role. You are not a tank that does dmg that does support...

 

Alright, may I play devil's advocate for a few minutes? If we are talking about trailblazer, dragon/marauder, or minstrel putting players in a role, then the corollary of that is celestial has no role, not necessarily because it is good at everything, but because it is uniformly mediocre at everything. On its own, it will heal less and deal less damage than these stat combinations.

 

Cele hits like a wet noodle, but we can justify it with builds that are capable of accumulating 25 stacks of might, with the boon duration sustaining it for the majority of the fight. And cele can still be very lethal if we already have very loaded skills/traits, and/or high damage coefficients.

 

I don't think cele is busted in and of itself. It merely points towards the stench of some of today's pay-to-win elites. When you combine those with certain rune and sigil combinations, they are already incredibly toxic. Cele just gives the worst players a clutch to avoid the repercussion of any mistakes, and buy them time to hit back and win. Cele also gives the best players an edge with these builds, because the increased sustain just makes them incredibly hard to pin down, so they can 1v3-5 like gods.

 

Delete cele, and we may raise the skill floor of those builds, a temporary issue most players will get over after a bit of practice, and they will continue to be deadly as ever.

 

TL;DR- I think we need to scale back today's most overperforming specs, rather than nerfing or simply deleting cele.

[blp.3489]

27 minutes ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

(where hybrid stats generally makes the game more fun and true to its original concept of support not being pure healers)

This.

Quote

Can't say I'm a big fan of minstrel but at least you are forced into a role.

Not this.

 

And I don't think I'm the only player that doesn't get bored if a fight lasts more than 2 seconds.  I'll even hypothesize that more new players would stick around and continue to play wvw if they weren't constantly deleted before they even realized they were being attacked.  Players should at least be able to struggle a bit before dying so that they can feel like if they had only managed to use this or that skill they might have at least lasted longer, rather than just feeling completely helpless.  No one starts playing knowing all the classes and all their skills and all the skill animations and timings.  L2p requires time and experience, if you are constantly dead before you know what happened it won't be an effective learning experience.

I don't think you can fairly compare cele vs zerker by assuming that cele runs around and enters combat with perma 25 might while zerker has none.  I would consider reducing the max stacks of might before looking at nerfing cele.  A lot of the boons made sense when they were generated by the individual and therefore somewhat limited and therefore possible to balance.  Now that every second class passes along half of the boons to everyone around them the boons are overwhelming the stats, as illustrated by the cele with 25 stacks of might versus zerker with none comparison.  You should also consider the zerker that's receiving aegis, perma protection, quickness, alacrity, etc.  A player stacking in a zerg is almost completely incomparable to their stand-alone self these days and isn't going to learn diddly about playing their class properly.

 

[andrewlcl.8176]

14 minutes ago, blp.3489 said:

... constantly deleted before they even realized they were being attacked.  

Many moons ago, a massive patch dropped and there were huge reductions in damage for some skills and traits. Anet obviously tried. Their emphasis was on giving players the opportunity to react. 

 

They were only partially successful. Sic 'em OWP Soulbeasts, backstab d/p thieves and power Willbenders are still deleting players in seconds. 

[eXruina.4956]

16 hours ago, andrewlcl.8176 said:

The game has its great and fun bits, but I don't think "balance" is one of them. 

yep..👍

[Burnfall.9573]

 

Anet biggest mistake and its long lasting consequences was to attack Guild Wars 1 Holy Trinity. The Holy Trinity is what gave each Professions their meaning, identity, attributes and specialize roles.

 

Celestial gives all Professions equal roles, equal diversity, equal identity...defeating the the purpose of giving Professions their meanings and purpose. 

 

 

Removing Celestial from the game is the first step in bringing back Professions to their purpose and their meanings.

 

side note-

 

Guardian Profession specialize in healing and support. 

- No other Professions including Gears, Accessories, Attributes etc... should come to its level or surpass them

 

Necromancer Profession specialize in condition damage and life steal

- No other Professions including Gears, Accessories, Attributes etc... should come to its level or surpass them

 

Ranger Profession specialize in range, traps, survival and control of their pets

-  No other Professions including Gears, Accessories, Attributes etc... should come to its level or surpass them

[eXruina.4956]

1 minute ago, Burnfall.9573 said:

 

Anet biggest mistake and its long lasting consequences was to attack Guild Wars 1 Holy Trinity. The Holy Trinity is what gave each Professions their meaning, identity, attributes and specialize roles.

 

Celestial gives all Professions equal roles, equal diversity, equal identity...defeating the the purpose of giving Professions their meanings and purpose. 

 

 

Removing Celestial from the game is the first step in bringing back Professions to their purpose and their meanings.

 

side note-

 

Guardian Profession specialize in healing and support. 

- No other Professions including Gears, Accessories, Attributes etc... should come to its level or surpass them

 

Necromancer Profession specialize in condition damage and life steal

- No other Professions including Gears, Accessories, Attributes etc... should come to its level or surpass them

 

Ranger Profession specialize in range, traps, survival and control of their pets

-  No other Professions including Gears, Accessories, Attributes etc... should come to its level or surpass them

i honestly believe they could've pulled it off eventually, if they stuck with certain design restrictions, but bias won out in the end, and some classes ended up designed better or gifted with more overloaded kits, without any real sense, while some got broken, neglected, and i'd go as far as to say, made a joke of.

 

the whole "you have something playable so you're fine" thing too, in their work philosophy that they've been sticking with all these years, this did not help at all, and only made things worse. just more excuses not to put out a great product. and totally missing out on the great potential this game could've reached.

 

everyone sees it, how great the game is, and how much better it could be if the whole balance thing was properly addressed, just not them.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

36 minutes ago, Burnfall.9573 said:

 

Anet biggest mistake and its long lasting consequences was to attack Guild Wars 1 Holy Trinity. The Holy Trinity is what gave each Professions their meaning, identity, attributes and specialize roles.

 

Celestial gives all Professions equal roles, equal diversity, equal identity...defeating the the purpose of giving Professions their meanings and purpose. 

 

 

Removing Celestial from the game is the first step in bringing back Professions to their purpose and their meanings.

 

side note-

 

Guardian Profession specialize in healing and support. 

- No other Professions including Gears, Accessories, Attributes etc... should come to its level or surpass them

 

Necromancer Profession specialize in condition damage and life steal

- No other Professions including Gears, Accessories, Attributes etc... should come to its level or surpass them

 

Ranger Profession specialize in range, traps, survival and control of their pets

-  No other Professions including Gears, Accessories, Attributes etc... should come to its level or surpass them

Can we extend that to the Warrior Profession specializing in melee, CC, and durability

- No other Professions including Gears, Accessories, Attributes etc... should come to its level or surpass them

?

[flyingplanet.6912]

1 hour ago, andrewlcl.8176 said:

They were only partially successful. Sic 'em OWP Soulbeasts, backstab d/p thieves and power Willbenders are still deleting players in seconds. 

minor correction.

It's only possible if d/p thief use up all utility skills&ini+full zerker+traits set up ONLY for damage+ perfect backstab before stealth runs out + enemy also full zerker. If that one backstab misses then the thief will lose the fight XD

If anything above is not met, it's usually 5~7k damage which is about 30% ~50% of enemy health.

[Burnfall.9573]

25 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Can we extend that to the Warrior Profession specializing in melee, CC, and durability

- No other Professions including Gears, Accessories, Attributes etc... should come to its level or surpass them

?

 

Yes, most definity 

[Hotride.2187]

2 hours ago, LSD.4673 said:

But Cele builds do sacrifice damage. Unless they can stack 25 might, they hit like wet noodles.

Run out of cleanses on a power build and we can talk about those wet noodles.

[Hotride.2187]

2 hours ago, andrewlcl.8176 said:

I don't think cele is busted in and of itself. It merely points towards the stench of some of today's pay-to-win elites.

Let us go over the cele builds you can play in wvw:

catalyst, weaver, tempest

harbringer

willbender, firebrand

spectre

spellbreaker

mirage

scrapper, mechanist

soulbeast, druid

renegade

Sure, not all of those are amazing but even the weakest one (druid, really) is decent. Every profession has at least one cele build that is strong for roaming.

Tell me again how its not the stat, but its the traits and skills that are overtuned. What, you want the studio to rebalance the whole thing? Ha ha.

Every good duelist I've talked to will tell you the same thing, cele is broken. Anyhow, duel spot is dead and I play conquest. I couldn't care less about wvw; its just pve with a few extra steps at this point.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

43 minutes ago, Burnfall.9573 said:

 

Yes, most definity 

🙏

Now what about Ele, Engi, Mesmer, and Necro?