Guild Wars 2

I did some calculations today to figure out exactly how much more bang for your buck you get with full celestial armor compared to a set like soldier’s which offers pure power and defensive stats. Soldier’s was the most apt comparison I could find because its only offensive stat is power (which as you will see shortly is by far the most effective in increasing DPS, and thus is the stat I normalize by). This comparison uses a level 80 d/d ele with no offensive trait stats as the base. Without further ado:

celestial vs soldiers
amulet 54 54 7%… 126 85 85
ring1 43 43 6% … 103 68 68
ring2 43 43 6%… 103 68 68
acces1 38 38 5% … 91 60 60
acces2 38 38 5% … 91 60 60
back 22 22 3%… 56 35 35
boots 15 15 2% … 34 24 24
gloves 15 15 2% … 34 24 24
pants 30 30 4%… 67 48 48
mantle 15 15 2%… 34 24 24
masque 20 20 3%… 45 32 32
coat 45 45 6%… 101 72 72
dagger1 40 40 5%… 94 67 67
dagger2 40 40 5%… 94 67 67

celestial offensive stat total (pow, prec, crit): 458 458 61%
soldier’s offensive stat total(pow): 1073

I used a spreadsheet (which unfortunately I can’t attach, and am too lazy to upload somewhere else right now) to normalize the celestial damage trinity stats (pow, prec, crit) into power alone. Although you get a lot more raw points (about 1400), because precision and crit damage are a lot worse than power, the equivalent amount of damage you are getting is equivalent to what you would get with:

820 power (no fury), and 937 power (fury). Note celestial performs better with fury.

Defensive stats and condition damage are a lot harder to normalize, and are extremely scenario dependant. Therefore I just added the lump sum of remaining stats to the adjusted offensive stats of both celestial and soldier’s sets.

celestial remaining stat total: 458*4 = 1832
soldier’s remaining stat total: 1468

celestial adjusted total (no fury): 820 + 1832 = 2652
celestial adjusted total (fury): 937 + 1832 = 2769
soldier’s total: 1073 + 1468 = 2541

Conclusion: Based on these calculations, I have determined that even normalizing power stats down for the celestial set, it gives you more bang for your buck than a set like soldier’s, assuming you value defensive stats and condition damage (combined) as much or more than power. For bunker builds, defensive stats are extremely important, and condition damage is always moderately useful for d/d because of burning and churning earth (especially for soloing camps in wvw). In the end, the degree to which you value condition damage is probably the deciding factor for going celestial or not.

You also have no problem proccing crit sigils and renewing stamina with celestial, which is a decent bonus (although you don’t really require the whole set for this benefit).

Soldier’s provides better effective health and damage reduction by far than Celestial and pre-fury Soldier’s is better.

When you start might stacking and adding fury celestial is better than Soldiers for damage.

I wouldn’t say soldier’s is far better for effective health. You get 458*3 = 1374 points worth of defensive stats from celestial, and 1468 points worth from soldier’s. Furthermore, soldier’s doesn’t provide healing power, which is imo the most important defensive stat in moderate quantities for eles going 20 in water and 30 in arcana. Vitality is in my eyes the least important to stack highly, since eles rely on healing for sustain.

I also feel that the condition damage of celestial puts it on par or better than soldier’s offensively even without fury, and allows you to counter high armor builds more easily.

Cleric’s is another apt comparison, but it definitely is far more defensive (and less offensive) than either soldier’s or celestial, since it’s main stat is healing power and not power. However I think healing power gets less effective in practice at extremely high levels because you will be more easily one shotted and have heals wasted all the time by going past max health, making cleric’s not so great. It might have more of a place mixing and matching pieces.

I always looked at Celestial as a way to hit marks for stats you want without going full zerk or full soldiers or clerics. The problem is then you give up more just do do that unless you really care about all the stats I feel like there is always something better in each slot that you can take. I do think the helm is a excellent place to put celestial just because it isn’t a major loss from another gear choice but you gain more stats.

It is really hard to gauge celestial items because everyone weights certain stats higher than others.

When I think of celestial I think of it as the prefect gear for 100% boon duration. A little bit of everything prefect for a medium sized zerg in wvw but not the best for a server zerg or havoc group. Still celestial fits well into the high versatility aspect of eles.

oZii is correct. You should use Celestial to hit certain stat levels that you are comfortable with. Everyone will have different levels for power, toughness, vitality, critical chance, and critical damage that they would like to have.

Celestial does have cheap critical damage cost for armor pieces. However, if you use a full Celestial set some values are higher or lower than what you would want so mixing in different armor stats will give you the desired result. Although it is hard to tell how much healing power or condition damage will help you since it is very situational. Will condis get cleanse or will your condis get a lot of ticks in. Will you get multiple healing rotations in per fight or will the enemy burst you down before you get a full healing rotation in.

So Celestial can fit in most builds if you want say power, precision, toughness, vitality, and critical damage. You can use it to meet certain levels of those stats and since critical damage (if you calculate healing power and condition damage as “wasted” stats) per stat point lost is low compared to other critical damage alternatives like berserker.

Chest Piece stats
Zerk: 101, 72, 5% (14.4 stat points per 1% critical damage) | 173 stat points total
Soldier: 101, 72, 72 | 245 stat points total
Celestial: 45×6, 6% (7.5 stat points per 1% critical damage) | 270 stat points total *

Celestial gives 270 stat points versus 245 from soldiers. Extra 25 points. If healing power and condition damage are considered “wasted” stats then you “lose” 90 stat points. Factor in 25 extra you lose 65 stats over non critical damage chest piece like soldiers or knights. If you calculate the critical damage cost off 65 points it cost 7.5 points granted you wanted critical damage. If not then soldiers or knights are better choices.

Forget “total stat points,” which factors in useless/almost useless stuff like condi-dmg. What you want is a mix of knights/cavaliers. Why? So you can hit the toughness threshold, above which a burst thief won’t kill you the moment you see him.

As an ele, you’ve got enough condi-removal that the toughness-threshold is what matters in the first 10 secs of a fight, not how much health you have, so spec into toughness rather than vitality.

The other thing that matters in those first 10 secs is how much damage YOU can do, so spec into power/prec/crit dmg. THAT is why you use knights/cavaliers, since both have toughness & power, plus either prec or crit dmg, so you can create a mix of them which optimizes your damage output. Your own damage matters so much because, if you don’t burst your enemy to death ASAP, you’re doomed. A war will out-survive you (healing sig and stuns are OP); a necro will out-survive you (fear’s OP); a thief will out-survive you (stealth’s OP). And of course, even the professions without obviously-broken mechanics will probably still out-survive you, so your only hope is to kill them at the very start of an engagement.

Ok, so would Soldier armor + Celestial trinkets be a good setup if I wanted 1 set to use for PvE dungeons and WvW utilizing multiple builds?

Seras.5702:

Ok, so would Soldier armor + Celestial trinkets be a good setup if I wanted 1 set to use for PvE dungeons and WvW utilizing multiple builds?

No. PvE is always zerk/assasins. Particularly in dungeons. No exceptions. Doesn’t matter what you think about survivability, what build you “like” to play, any of that; in PvE, DIRECT dmg is king (no condi-builds, things die too fast for condis to matter), and that means zerk.

WvW, use different sets of gear based on how you want to play. The only real req is this: stack enough toughness so a burst thief won’t insta-kill you, and a hammer war won’t kill you after the first stun.

After you reach that toughness threshold, you can go: 1) survivability; 2) condi dmg; 3) direct dmg. I recommend the last one via knights/cavaliers. You will never match a guard/war in survivability, or a necro in condis, so don’t even try. Ele’s got good burst, so take advantage of that.

i have a full celestial armor set with divinity and boon duration runes that i usually run 0-10-10-20-30 and i really think its a strong setup with a nice mix of offense and defense, its amazing for duels. but when running solo trying to fight outnumbered it really doesnt matchup to soldiers with traveler runes and running 0-0-10-30-30, the damage loss is really not that huge and the extra survivability from toughness and vitality is enormous.
everything is situational

Anierna.6918:

Seras.5702:

Ok, so would Soldier armor + Celestial trinkets be a good setup if I wanted 1 set to use for PvE dungeons and WvW utilizing multiple builds?

No. PvE is always zerk/assasins. Particularly in dungeons. No exceptions. Doesn’t matter what you think about survivability, what build you “like” to play, any of that; in PvE, DIRECT dmg is king (no condi-builds, things die too fast for condis to matter), and that means zerk.

WvW, use different sets of gear based on how you want to play. The only real req is this: stack enough toughness so a burst thief won’t insta-kill you, and a hammer war won’t kill you after the first stun.

After you reach that toughness threshold, you can go: 1) survivability; 2) condi dmg; 3) direct dmg. I recommend the last one via knights/cavaliers. You will never match a guard/war in survivability, or a necro in condis, so don’t even try. Ele’s got good burst, so take advantage of that.

Im testing this out not exactly the same setup though I am in all knights and 2 cav rings. Zer/valk ammy Ill probably throw on 2 zerk or valk daggers to roll around with just to see. So far initially I kind of like it though 2v1 some necros a couple of secs ago probably werent the best necros but lightning whip for close to 2k sure is fun

Seras.5702:

Ok, so would Soldier armor + Celestial trinkets be a good setup if I wanted 1 set to use for PvE dungeons and WvW utilizing multiple builds?

Yes, that would work rather well.

Anierna.6918:

Forget “total stat points,” which factors in useless/almost useless stuff like condi-dmg. What you want is a mix of knights/cavaliers. Why? So you can hit the toughness threshold, above which a burst thief won’t kill you the moment you see him.

As an ele, you’ve got enough condi-removal that the toughness-threshold is what matters in the first 10 secs of a fight, not how much health you have, so spec into toughness rather than vitality.

The other thing that matters in those first 10 secs is how much damage YOU can do, so spec into power/prec/crit dmg. THAT is why you use knights/cavaliers, since both have toughness & power, plus either prec or crit dmg, so you can create a mix of them which optimizes your damage output. Your own damage matters so much because, if you don’t burst your enemy to death ASAP, you’re doomed. A war will out-survive you (healing sig and stuns are OP); a necro will out-survive you (fear’s OP); a thief will out-survive you (stealth’s OP). And of course, even the professions without obviously-broken mechanics will probably still out-survive you, so your only hope is to kill them at the very start of an engagement.

Condition damage is FAR from useless on ele. We get constant burning and whenever we are in earth we are using bleeds as our main damage source (no matter how much you theory craft about attacking only in air, in practice you will always be auto-attacking some of the time in earth). Sigil of geomancy and runes of perplexity, which are easily usable by d/d ele, also benefit from it.

But like I said, the degree to which you value it determines the overall effectiveness of celestial. Also, I’ve yet to test precision sets, but based on calculations already made on celestial I have a feeling precision is the most wasted stat on ele, once you have enough to proc renewing stamina reliably.

And I think the reason you claim you can’t survive anything is because you don’t have healing power. Healing power turns (x/x/x/30/30) ele into the most sustainable class over time. The main weakness ele has always had is weakness to burst (condition and otherwise), due to low hp.

Every build I run I use the same gear. Only things that change are my runes and traits.

- full celestial armor
- valk, celestial or zerk weps
- zerk/valk, cavalier, pvt trinkets.

It’s not all about min max stats it’s about out playing your opponent. Predict their movements, win the fight.

I still shoot for the base stats of around 2700/3k attack**,1600+ toughness, 16k hp, 35% CC, 75+% CD.

• typed power instead of attack, fixed.

Treborlavok.3504:

Every build I run I use the same gear. Only things that change are my runes and traits.

- full celestial armor
- valk, celestial or zerk weps
- zerk/valk, cavalier, pvt trinkets.

It’s not all about min max stats it’s about out playing your opponent. Predict their movements, win the fight.

I still shoot for the base stats of around 2700/3k power, 1600+ toughness, 16k hp, 35% CC, 75+% CD.

Can you link that build? Those stats seem pretty high, trying to figure out if you’re traiting fire and/or using signet of earth.

actually the build calculator was off a lot with hp but close with toughness.

http://imgur.com/a/ufQWF

all images show no buffs/food/oil

top image, in earth no buffs

second image, in earth 2 cast

third image, in earth 2 cast while casting

last image, in air while casting, buff from earth 2 still up.

With my build im casting constantly to make good on earth 1 trait, with food and oil power/attack jumps up significantly.

Jabberwock.9014:

Also, I’ve yet to test precision sets, but based on calculations already made on celestial I have a feeling precision is the most wasted stat on ele, once you have enough to proc renewing stamina reliably.

Not sure how you’ve tested this, but i’d like to disagree on this. One of the great feats of celestial is the insane high crit dmg you get. At a certain amount of critical damage, you actually gain more from precision compared to power when it comes to increasing your damage. More precision is more critical hits. At 50% crit dmg, you do 200% damage compared to a normal hit, so you can imagine, the more crit dmg you get, the more you gain from precision (crit chance).

Retsuko.2035:

Jabberwock.9014:

Also, I’ve yet to test precision sets, but based on calculations already made on celestial I have a feeling precision is the most wasted stat on ele, once you have enough to proc renewing stamina reliably.

Not sure how you’ve tested this, but i’d like to disagree on this. One of the great feats of celestial is the insane high crit dmg you get. At a certain amount of critical damage, you actually gain more from precision compared to power when it comes to increasing your damage. More precision is more critical hits. At 50% crit dmg, you do 200% damage compared to a normal hit, so you can imagine, the more crit dmg you get, the more you gain from precision (crit chance).

If you have extremely high critical damage like 100+ or 2700 power(hard to sustain). Almost every theorycrafting topic I have read on the subject usually come to about these same conclusions. The 100+ critical damage part is a bit moot since you can’t get critical damage without getting power on gear. Generally the importance of Power vs Critical chance comes down to your procs that rely on crit like renewing stamina. Which is what I believe jabberwock is trying to say this holds true for most classes.

I also wouldn’t call celestial gears crit dmg advantage insane it gives 3 total over zerk or valk on armor but drops in power compared to those. Weapons are the same.

Treborlavok.3504:

actually the build calculator was off a lot with hp but close with toughness.

http://imgur.com/a/ufQWF

all images show no buffs/food/oil

top image, in earth no buffs

second image, in earth 2 cast

third image, in earth 2 cast while casting

last image, in air while casting, buff from earth 2 still up.

With my build im casting constantly to make good on earth 1 trait, with food and oil power/attack jumps up significantly.

Thanks for sharing, however it appears your are getting 2700 ATTACK, but only 1790 power.

I was wondering if I was doing something wrong.

CallousEye.5018:

Treborlavok.3504:

actually the build calculator was off a lot with hp but close with toughness.

http://imgur.com/a/ufQWF

all images show no buffs/food/oil

top image, in earth no buffs

second image, in earth 2 cast

third image, in earth 2 cast while casting

last image, in air while casting, buff from earth 2 still up.

With my build im casting constantly to make good on earth 1 trait, with food and oil power/attack jumps up significantly.

Thanks for sharing, however it appears your are getting 2700 ATTACK, but only 1790 power.

I was wondering if I was doing something wrong.

Lol yea sorry I edited my post up top, I meant attack. With food and oil it jumps up over 3k attack and to in think 115% CD. If my enemy is a glass cannon, they’re downed instantly. On average vs most ppl, who aren’t running solid bunker builds, I hit them for 3-4k+ just with the air 15 proc, then another 3-4k+ air 2 etc etc. Using celestial gear with my burst builds has given me the best success with having both offense AND defense coupled into one build.

But bunker builds aren’t a problem really either, it’s just a longer rotation.

Treborlavok.3504:

actually the build calculator was off a lot with hp but close with toughness.

http://imgur.com/a/ufQWF

all images show no buffs/food/oil

top image, in earth no buffs

second image, in earth 2 cast

third image, in earth 2 cast while casting

last image, in air while casting, buff from earth 2 still up.

With my build im casting constantly to make good on earth 1 trait, with food and oil power/attack jumps up significantly.

I have just started working on gathering the Celestial Armor and these are the exact kind of stats I am looking for. Would you mind using a build calculator and linking all the gear that you wearing in your pictures? Thanks in advance

I had to dig this one back up. Again as my mind started to turn as usual. This is only in regards to Armor not trinkets.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1kigzm/a_comparison_of_defensive_gear_in_build_making/

Celestial vs Knights

Knights gives more toughness but as many know when you hit a certain mark vitality is better to put some points in but you want a combination of both. Celestial gives both stats in equal amount while knights gives much more toughness. Soldiers is great defensive gear because it gives good amounts of toughness and vitality.

So does the healing power and vitality from celestial allow you to survive better than knights?

I’m thinking that it does IF your heals run their course, regen isn’t over written by someone elses weak regen, you aren’t poisoned. The healing will help counteract damage conditions you may not be able to cleanse.

As far as damage Knights is better than celestial out of the gate no buffs. Factor in Might stacks and fury knights is still better but not by much. So does the condition damage on celestial make up the difference? If you have access to high damaging condition like burns then yes IF the burn can run its course and be maintained until you can reapply burn again best if you can keep 100% uptime on it. Bleeds help as a stop gap until you can reapply burning again.

Condition damage, like healing power, and like precision needs stat investment to move the damage or healing up or down. 1 stat point of power = 1 point of power where as healing is coefficient dependent on skill used. Precision requires 21 stat points.

Bleed damage increase investment is expensive like precision. Burning scales much better than bleeding. Both dependent on the condition not being wiped.

Anierna.6918:

No. PvE is always zerk/assasins. Particularly in dungeons. No exceptions. Doesn’t matter what you think about survivability, what build you “like” to play, any of that; in PvE, DIRECT dmg is king (no condi-builds, things die too fast for condis to matter), and that means zerk.

It only works if you’re skilled enough to stay alive and your team is skilled enough to stay alive. My setup is pretty offense orientated as well, but I have enough defense to pick up the slack if things go wrong.

Anierna.6918:

Forget “total stat points,” which factors in useless/almost useless stuff like condi-dmg. What you want is a mix of knights/cavaliers. Why? So you can hit the toughness threshold, above which a burst thief won’t kill you the moment you see him.

As an ele, you’ve got enough condi-removal that the toughness-threshold is what matters in the first 10 secs of a fight, not how much health you have, so spec into toughness rather than vitality.

vit is far and away the best stat for not dying to burst, so why would you get toughness?
how about instead a mix of valkyrie’s and zerker’s, with like one piece of knight’s. or assassin’s

Also, @ topic title
I made a spreadsheet thing and calculated the effectiveness of soldier’s vs celestial for the PvP amulets, and soldier’s was better both at raw defense and at doing damage. like actual damage values. none of this “total stats” nonsense

That’s because celestial amulet in sPvP is trash, and doesn’t give more stat points compared to other amulets. My analysis is strictly PvE and WvW, where celestial armor gets an approximate 30% more total stat points. My analysis also used a spreadsheet to determine how much “actual damage” the power+prec+crit damage of celestial did compared to pure power.

oh ok
I guess celestial is good, then, if you aren’t in a setting where your condition damage won’t matter

Stat total means nothing. Using the same circumstances as the OP I get the following:

Effective power Celestial (fury)
1767.63 (2072.66)
Effective power Soldier (fury)
2028.78 (2227.68)

Effective HP Celestial
19222.87
Effective HP Soldier
25399.05

Of course soldier’s is better if you completely ignore two of the seven stats celestial offers: healing power and condition damage. Sheesh. Are you gonna tell me next that 1+1+1=2 if you ignore one of the ones?

I already said celestial is better if you value condition damage as much or more than power, and you just proved my point, since 1767+458 > 2028 by a good margin (nearly 200).

Effective HP is useless to me since it ignores healing power, which for many ele builds is as or more important that vitality (there is a reason why cleric eles used to be the most successful pvp build in game, and not soldier eles). Defensive stats are incredibly build reliant so you can’t decide what to go with based on a flawed measure like effective hp alone unless you have no skills or traits that scale off of healing power. In which case why are you even considering celestial? The only stats that are easy to normalize are power/prec/crit damage, which is why they are the only stats I do so with.

Essentially you have to use stat totals when comparing incomparable stats which vary in effectiveness from build to build. Your build determines the best armor in the end.

For reference I used a similar but slightly different method than effective power. I used “power-matching” to figure out what amount of power alone yielded the same amount of average damage against a fixed armor target as celestial.

what do you think about ascended celestial?

Since one of the piece of zerk gies 1% more crit while celestial does not i wonder if it would be better to mix…for ex a valkirie or cavalier pants.

If we include the same modifier from total armour used to work out effective HP to do effective heals on ether renewal we get:

Effective heal in Celestial
6933.97
Effective heal in Soldier
6998.91

I believe many of our other heals get better healing power scaling over time so celestial might just edge out soldiers here when you stack heals but it’ll take a long fight before the total HP you’ve used becomes greater in celestial than soldiers. Clerics can work because of the fact that healing power has a subtractive effect on enemy attacks. This means it has exponential scaling, meaning each point of healing power is worth more when you have 1500 healing power than when you have 300 healing power.

458 condition damage doesn’t make a significant difference when you only have 2 damaging conditions, anyone can cure 2 conditions per ele attunement cycle.

You can’t just look at stat total, you have to look at what the stat is actually doing for you, and it celestial’s case it’s either not useful at all or not present in large enough quantities to be useful.

Is it possible the data totally ignore food?

Also just adding a couple of precision pieces, celestial will outperform soldier

I think it’s a failry complex puzzle which ultimately comes down on how many conditions you cause. For myself, I’ve determined in the past that because I use staff, and thus relatively little conditions, full celestial wasn’t optimal for me. Instead, I went for Soldier’s gear, with a mix of celestial, berserker and cleric trinkets.

However, given that dagger and scepter have a much larger condition component, celestial may end up being better for them.

Ultimately though, I suspect the actual difference will be very small. ArenaNet isn’t stupid, and the actual dps of celestial in my back-of-paper-napkin calculations seemed awfully close to that of PVT.

Celestial is only useful depending on certain class and weapon choices. Some weapons are specifically dps oriented meaning having additional cond stat is useless and some weapons are specifically cond oriented meaning having additional dps stats is useless. In those situations having better all around stats but lower stats of the weapon focus would actually hurt you.

Some setups benefit from having celestial like D/D setups for elementalists because their weapon skills have a hybrid of both cond and dps orientation.

So the bottom line is celestial only work well for certain class/builds.

for D/D celestial gear set + precise food and nourishment. anyone try out this combo???

Coldtart.4785:

Stat total means nothing. Using the same circumstances as the OP I get the following:

Effective power Celestial (fury)
1767.63 (2072.66)
Effective power Soldier (fury)
2028.78 (2227.68)

Effective HP Celestial
19222.87
Effective HP Soldier
25399.05

Lack of other numbers such as defensive values. Total stats does matter if it doesn’t then Ascended stats wouldn’t matter. Celestial is a good stat distribution if you need a bunch of stat outside of healing power and condition damage.

Ascended Celestial Helm: 10.333 stat points per 1% critical damage
Ascended Berserker Helm: 17 stat points per 1% critical damage

Ascended Celestial Shoulder: 10.5 stat points per 1% critical damage
Ascended Berserker Shoulder: 12.5 stat points per 1% critical damage

Ascended Celestial Shoulder Stats: 16×6 +2% critical damage = 96 total stats
Ascended Soldier Shoulder Stats: +35 Major +25 Minor x2 = 85 total stats

Ascended Celestial Shoulder gives 11 total stat points and 2% critical damage over Soldiers stat. If healing power and condition damage sucks for you then you lose 32 (16×2) stat points from Celestial. But since you gain 11 total free then you are really losing 21 stat points over soldiers in turn for gaining 2% critical damage. Whereas Berserker you lose 25 stat points over soldiers for the same amount of critical damage.

Now if your baseline is say 2.6k armor and 15k hp and you achieve that with only 3 pieces of Celestial Armor then why put another 3 since the critical damage is worse for you since you don’t need the other stats anymore beyond your comfortable baseline and all you want after that is damage stats. Meaning instead of 21 stats it is now 37 stat points lost. Instead you would be better off with Berserker for the last 3 pieces.

Sounds like really low power.

Celestial gear is a complex issue. It is probably the most talked about armor on Reddit. Alot of math and analysis has been brought up on it. People are curious about it but it is really hard to put your finger on it. This is how I personally view the following gear excluding condition damage gear.

Soldier = Defensive
Sentinel = Defensive
Cleric = Defensive
Cavalier = Defensive

Berserker = Offensive
Knights = Offensive
Valkyrie = Offensive
Assassin = Offensive

Magi = Odd combo I never used
Celestial = Want something but don’t want full offense or full defense.

oZii.2864:

Sounds like really low power.

Celestial gear is a complex issue. It is probably the most talked about armor on Reddit. Alot of math and analysis has been brought up on it. People are curious about it but it is really hard to put your finger on it. This is how I personally view the following gear excluding condition damage gear.

Soldier = Defensive
Sentinel = Defensive
Cleric = Defensive
Cavalier = Defensive

Berserker = Offensive
Knights = Offensive
Valkyrie = Offensive
Assassin = Offensive

Magi = Odd combo I never used
Celestial = Want something but don’t want full offense or full defense.

Celestial does give lower power than soldier or knights but it gives you higher critical damage. If you consider only 6x in armor.

So there is a relationship between power, critical chance, and critical damage that you have to keep in mind. This will affect how you distribute your stats around for your play style. Too much critical damage but little power isn’t good but so is the reverse and then there is critical chance one has to consider to see how often you will get a critical hit.

For Celestial versus Knights you trade toughness for vitality. The value of these is based on your play style. I have seen people with high armor but low hp and vice versa.

I think most people will agree that Celestial should be considered when you are building but how much of a specific stat set you need depends on what you are trying to achieve stat wise and your play style.

oZii.2864:

Soldier = Defensive

…

Celestial = Want something but don’t want full offense or full defense.

Why do you consider Soldier defensive rather than balanced? Because to me, it having Power as major and 2 defensive stats as minor made it feel like balanced gear. I used that assumption to compare celestial to it (being the other balanced stats) and found that their dps was roughly similar for my ele. It seemed to make sense but I take it you still find it more defensive because it has 2 defensive stats and 1 offensive?

ThiBash.5634:

oZii.2864:

Soldier = Defensive

…

Celestial = Want something but don’t want full offense or full defense.

Why do you consider Soldier defensive rather than balanced? Because to me, it having Power as major and 2 defensive stats as minor made it feel like balanced gear. I used that assumption to compare celestial to it (being the other balanced stats) and found that their dps was roughly similar for my ele. It seemed to make sense but I take it you still find it more defensive because it has 2 defensive stats and 1 offensive?

I consider it defensive gear because sentinel is #1 for tanky gear and soldier is #2. You could make the case that clerics is #2 but that fits more for ele or guardian. Every other class builds for max tankiness with either sentinel or soldiers.

On the two extremes for max offense you would go berserker’s for max defense you would go sentinel. Then if I wanted hit the middle ground the gear that comes to my mind is Knights gear.