Guild Wars 2

The title says it all, is full or mostly full celestial armor ideal for the x/x/x/4-6/6 D/D (for small group) and staff (for large group) WvW builds? Or is the old mix of PVT and knights and zerker still the best.

I want to know, because I’m going to start crafting ascended soon, now that I’m finally back playing the game, and I’d like the make the right choice.

I could say this.
I would rather mix stats, but for armor you can get celestial for free in fractals quite easily since any box will have wupwup in it.

Personally i think its better to go DPS mixing mostly celestial, berserker and soldier but most depends on your server www tactics.

I have a mix from PVT, Knight, Zerker and Cavalier but for my new ele I’m leveling, I’ll go mostly celestial. I think celestial with some PVT is the way to go now. Just my opinion.

LordByron.8369:

I could say this.
I would rather mix stats, but for armor you can get celestial for free in fractals quite easily since any box will have wupwup in it.

Personally i think its better to go DPS mixing mostly celestial, berserker and soldier but most depends on your server www tactics.

Thanks for your response. I didn’t know that fractals dropped celestial armor, so I’ll have to look into that.

His “quite easily” is very misleading, I have done over 50 lv49 fractals in the last few months and have never gotten a single armor box, its all RNG.

Celestial is always a better option than mixing many different type of stuff. You end up a little low in power, but you have more stat point overall (WITHOUT counting condition and healing power which are pretty goods stat on ele)
You can deal with the lack of power by bloodlust, WVW’s buff and the amazing ability of Elementalist to stack might

limbeurt.9642:

His “quite easily” is very misleading, I have done over 50 lv49 fractals in the last few months and have never gotten a single armor box, its all RNG.

Yep i used to play fotm 50 daily also.
Play 30-39 for drops and 41-50 for fun.

I think I’ll craft 3 celestial armor pieces and the rest will be soldiers/knights/cavalier. I’ll messaround with a build editor if someone can provide me with good numbers to aim for each stat.

Mix celestial with any primary power stat gear and you should be good. Zerker if you want more damage or soldiers if you want more bunker. Maybe even zealots could be a consideration.

The way GW2 stats work, defense is optimized with balanced stats which makes celestial an ideal defensive set for ele but offense is not at all ideal. Precision and ferocity both rely on high power to be valuable and celestial lacks this which means your offense is not ideal. If you’re using a lot of celestial, you need everything else to be focused on power in some way if you’re intending to do any reasonable damage.

Knights is not a bad choice if the toughness is specifically something you find lacking but overall power is the most important single stat. I find ele to be more susceptible to burst damage than sustained which means vitality is not significantly worse than toughness. If that’s the case, than mixing some soldiers + zerker pieces should always be better than the knights alternative because it results in higher power with otherwise the same emphasis on survivability.

Again, this is only relevant when considering mixing celestial in your gear, which is a great set that works out fantastic for ele but can lead to a severe lack of power if mixed wrong.

Zephyrus.9680:

Mix celestial with any primary power stat gear and you should be good. Zerker if you want more damage or soldiers if you want more bunker. Maybe even zealots could be a consideration.

The way GW2 stats work, defense is optimized with balanced stats which makes celestial an ideal defensive set for ele but offense is not at all ideal. Precision and ferocity both rely on high power to be valuable and celestial lacks this which means your offense is not ideal. If you’re using a lot of celestial, you need everything else to be focused on power in some way if you’re intending to do any reasonable damage.

Knights is not a bad choice if the toughness is specifically something you find lacking but overall power is the most important single stat. I find ele to be more susceptible to burst damage than sustained which means vitality is not significantly worse than toughness. If that’s the case, than mixing some soldiers + zerker pieces should always be better than the knights alternative because it results in higher power with otherwise the same emphasis on survivability.

Again, this is only relevant when considering mixing celestial in your gear, which is a great set that works out fantastic for ele but can lead to a severe lack of power if mixed wrong.

Thanks for the input. Could you provide numbers for power, armor, HP ferocity, and healing power, and crit chance that are good to aim for so I can select which pieces I want to be each type of gear?

nearlight.3064:

Zephyrus.9680:

Mix celestial with any primary power stat gear and you should be good. Zerker if you want more damage or soldiers if you want more bunker. Maybe even zealots could be a consideration.

The way GW2 stats work, defense is optimized with balanced stats which makes celestial an ideal defensive set for ele but offense is not at all ideal. Precision and ferocity both rely on high power to be valuable and celestial lacks this which means your offense is not ideal. If you’re using a lot of celestial, you need everything else to be focused on power in some way if you’re intending to do any reasonable damage.

Knights is not a bad choice if the toughness is specifically something you find lacking but overall power is the most important single stat. I find ele to be more susceptible to burst damage than sustained which means vitality is not significantly worse than toughness. If that’s the case, than mixing some soldiers + zerker pieces should always be better than the knights alternative because it results in higher power with otherwise the same emphasis on survivability.

Again, this is only relevant when considering mixing celestial in your gear, which is a great set that works out fantastic for ele but can lead to a severe lack of power if mixed wrong.

Thanks for the input. Could you provide numbers for power, armor, HP ferocity, and healing power, and crit chance that are good to aim for so I can select which pieces I want to be each type of gear?

It depends on context so you just need to keep in mind how the stats relate. Basically my armor is split about 50/50 zerker/celestial. Then I have full sets of both celestial and zerker trinkets.

For staff (zerg/small group) I’ll go mostly or full zerk trinkets but depends again on what we’re facing and how the group is working. For D/D (small group/solo) I’ll go mostly celestial trinkets. My D/D relies on high might stacks or else damage would be suffering a lot but as is, would probably be more consistent with a couple soldier pieces over celestial which I haven’t gotten yet.

It seems everyone is looking for a perfect build but there’s no perfect set of numbers that would be meaningful for even the smallest differences in a situation. That’s why you should first think about stats in a relative sense and then think about how much defense and offense you need based on how you play and what you’re playing.

Ferocity and precision are relative to each other and to power. Power is the single most important stat that’s not dependent on anything else. With the ferocity nerf, power has become even more important so there’s basically no case where precision or ferocity are better than power but at the same time with the crit proc sigil buffs, precision is also important if you rely on crit procs.

The effectiveness of armor and HP are relative to each other for ‘effective-HP’ but they each have different strengths.

Since offense stat groups and defensive stat groups are unrelated, there’s no ‘perfect’ setup. You need enough EHP to not die from a gust of wind and enough damage to be doing something of value. That comes down to weapon set, traits, skill build, and play style more than math. IMO. Come up with a general mix and then have a few pieces you can switch in and out as needed.

Its not right to say power is simply stronger than ferocity or precision

You might want to read this:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1li5q3/breakeven_points_of_power_vs_precision_mathtable/

Since is based on prepatch remember to add 1050 to power (weapon) and subtract 100 from crit damage (base damage).

LordByron.8369:

Its not right to say power is simply stronger than ferocity or precision

You might want to read this:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1li5q3/breakeven_points_of_power_vs_precision_mathtable/

Since is based on prepatch remember to add 1050 to power (weapon) and subtract 100 from crit damage (base damage).

Are you saying the weapon adds 1050 power that’s not reflected on the attributes page?

Since patch, weapon attack base attribute, have been removed from the count.
Afaik

From what I understand, weapon strength is independent from Power, following this formula:

Damage = Weapon strength * Power * Skill coefficient / Armor

Source: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage_calculation

That means it’s equally affected by power and critical hits so can be ruled out as a factor here. If it were added as flat power it would be close in most cases (precision would actually be better because procs) but since it’s not, Power is seems always superior for damage no matter how sets are combined. The fact that critical damage (ferocity) was nerfed so hard makes it an even bigger difference and also seems to rule out Cavalier’s set as ever being worth using over knights.

Oh yes sry it was changed with attack

The linked array take power, and the stat displayed IG is power, so nothing to do on this side.
But yes you have to retreive 100 at your crit damage