Guild Wars 2

I’ve been enjoying my Tempest in PvP so much that I am now motivated to craft ascended armor for it and use it for fractals, WvW, And PvE. My question is this: Is it still worth it to craft celestial armor for elementalists?

Sometimes I might want to go backline staff in wvw, sometimes aura mancer with some heals, also in fracs is the little extra heal worth it? Someone recommended to me that I should make zerker armor and then shift my trinket stats around for situations. Such as valk/zerk for backline wvw, soldier/cleric for aura mancer, zerk for fracs and PvE.

Celestial is a pain to make and might not be worth it if you don’t roam or play frontline tempest exclusively.

Fractals and wvw backline both use zerker. PvE uses zerker.

Unfortunately, it requires quite dramatically different stats and runes/sigils to play all the aforementioned roles.

For raid/fractals, you want full zerker with scholar runes.
For WvW backline, you can do whatever you want since it is pretty much a jack of all trades. But scholar runes are probably not optimal.
For WvW frontline, you will need to go very tanky with trooper or durability runes.

My experience…the first set of ascended armor I crafted was cele…it was ok, but not great for the way I tend to play. Cele is jack of all traits, master of none. To me, it’s mostly meh. My next set was zerk, and that’s what I should have made the first time. As long as you know how to move, dodge, and position yourself, zerk/scholar runes is the way to go. I can now play either ranged (tempest staff DPS), or melee (fresh air D/W)…works great for fractals, raiding, or just solo PvE roaming.

Aizza.4950:

I’ve been enjoying my Tempest in PvP so much that I am now motivated to craft ascended armor for it and use it for fractals, WvW, And PvE. My question is this: Is it still worth it to craft celestial armor for elementalists?

Sometimes I might want to go backline staff in wvw, sometimes aura mancer with some heals, also in fracs is the little extra heal worth it? Someone recommended to me that I should make zerker armor and then shift my trinket stats around for situations. Such as valk/zerk for backline wvw, soldier/cleric for aura mancer, zerk for fracs and PvE.

Celestial is worth making for sure, Aizza. I can’t speak for PvE but I can tell you that for WvW, it is king for Ele.

My ele builds are here: http://asphyxia.tv/builds/

I run ascended Marauder armor, zerk staff and cele trinkets for larger group play usually, which works great if I am not being focused, but full celestial is great for running over all in WvW because even if you do get focused, you can survive it and still do pretty decent damage. If you plan to roam on Ele, you definitely want to use my roaming build which runs full cele. Since we’re in the same match, you could duel my ele to see what I do to people with full cele and be the judge lol. Or we could also go in to BEEP guild hall and I can show you later tonight.

Edit: I also have 3 full Cele ascended sets, one for each armor weight. Its great to have and once you have it, its done and you don’t have to worry about needing it. I love it for my Guardian and Ele. The medium one was made for my Engineer, but I never really got in to playing it.

I run a mix of celestial trinkets + viper armor and weapons. A splash rabid.
It does good all round hybrid damage, has enough armor and HP for me and a bit healing.
I am still crafting some of the ascended pieces but it play quite good in WvW. I run scepter + focus or if needed i have a staff with me.

I have ascended berserker, celestial, viper, marauder and cleric armor (for temp support fights)
I have some cleric accessories, zerker, celestial, knight, dire and Apothecary for wvw mixture fights. You can have so much fun as a core ele or as a tempest. Tempest requires less math and combos in stats but if you play core ele it’s ok to have lots of goodies. Some days you want 1.2k in condi build as a fire ele, sometimes you want 195 crit in a burst.

What we need is more storage.

Berserker for PVE

Soldiers/clerics mix for WvW.

Do not craft celestial ascended armour for 2 reasons.

1. It’s not that good in PvE, namely fractals where you actually need it to be ascended.

2. Celestial stats is an option from most dropped ascended armour boxes so if you get one with stats you think is rubbish you can pick celestial.

Try a mix of berserker armour and marauder trinkets for back line, helps a lot.

For staff marauder is propably the best. I don´t have it but when making a staff ele i would propably go fire/arcane/tempest in mainly marauder. Propably like this:
It´s might stacking backline but can hit very hard with overloads.
Food and rune is WvW. Por PvE strength rune and food is better but i will prefer hoelbrak and only swap food. Comander pices are nice but if you can´t get it just use another zerk/valk. You can also pick arcane shield on your toolbar if you like a bit more defence. In PvE i often use glyph of storms.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQFAWnMIClMgVYC+XCcYiFCALoAEAWAFrh0wYwt0uartA-TFSBQB8Y/hEq+zVUiZGlgA4CAQhHAwFVekPdABAQA25ODAH9oH9oH9otzjuzde0dWKgikaB-w

Lots of good food available depending on playstyle.
Bowl of orian truffle and meat stew (more might and dodges. Noticable endu regen with vigor on crits)
Plate of roasted cactus (Ferocity + might)
Or classic plate of truffle steak. (Power + precision)

I still like my Celestial armour for a base line I can tune with trinkets and weapons.
(e.g. go more defensively with Soldier stats in WvW or more offensively with Zerker/Marauder stats in PvE)

Wolfric.9380:

For staff marauder is propably the best. I don´t have it but when making a staff ele i would propably go fire/arcane/tempest in mainly marauder. Propably like this:
It´s might stacking backline but can hit very hard with overloads.
Food and rune is WvW. Por PvE strength rune and food is better but i will prefer hoelbrak and only swap food. Comander pices are nice but if you can´t get it just use another zerk/valk. You can also pick arcane shield on your toolbar if you like a bit more defence. In PvE i often use glyph of storms.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQFAWnMIClMgVYC+XCcYiFCALoAEAWAFrh0wYwt0uartA-TFSBQB8Y/hEq+zVUiZGlgA4CAQhHAwFVekPdABAQA25ODAH9oH9oH9otzjuzde0dWKgikaB-w

Lots of good food available depending on playstyle.
Bowl of orian truffle and meat stew (more might and dodges. Noticable endu regen with vigor on crits)
Plate of roasted cactus (Ferocity + might)
Or classic plate of truffle steak. (Power + precision)

Please, no, not commanders in PvE, never use toughness gear in PvE as if you start raiding you won’t be used to the drop in toughness and taking toughness messes up aggro on 2 bosses. Also scholar I feel are much stronger in PvE even if you only keep the 10% damage buff up 50% of the time it’s better than strength runes.

OP should slot arcane shield and either or both lightening flash/mistform for PvE and learn to play zerk by avoiding damage. That’s where the majority of ele’s defense comes from, the choice of utility between fights.

Tips for the OP for surviving in zerk. Arcane shield can take 3 hits for you if you’re casting meteor shower or have to stand in something. Mistform is instant cast so if you’re rezzing someone you can start the rez, press mistform and be invulnerable while rezzing. Lightening flash is great for again, casting something and if the enemy is attacking and you need to move, use that.

Offhand focus provides projectile mitigation through swirling winds, magnetic wave and you have a 50s CD immunity in earth 5. Has decent hard CC too.

Warhorn has a moving water field you can blast, decent fire field and might share and a good blind on earth 5 as well as magnetic aura on earth 4.

Other useful things are glyph of storms in earth produces an AoE that blinds targets which helps a lot on non break bar enemies. If you absolutely find you need some vitality then mix in some marauder trinkets.

OP should really listen to their friend as s/he seems to really know what they are talking about.

I agree if its pure PvE then you don´t need much defence. Only maurauder if you realy want a bit. I usuallydon´t max out damage for PvE i do all around PvE + WvW builds not number crunced raid builds.