Guild Wars 2

Question 1:
So, I’m only going to make one ascended set. Should it be celestial or berserker for running raids?

Question 2:
Would celestial have enough toughness if I wanted to tank or should I just go knights for that?

In Summary:
Overall, which armor set is the best bang for my buck and would benefit my group the most?

Thank you to all who help!

Actually you only need two accessories to have Assassin’s stats for maximum DPS benefit. Maxing crit chance is easier than you think. Everything else is Berserker.

Also, D/x doesn’t use Lightning Hammer in PvE because you never spend more than a second or two outside of Air attunement, and LH is a DPS loss over the Air/Fire skills.

And if you want to tank, then swap out your accessories for Cleric’s stats. Ele makes a great tank because it has such high self heals. Ele can even fulfill both the healing and tanking role simultaneously with full Cleric/Zealot gear. It can be a bit tough, but is totally possible and there are videos of it being done.

Edit for link:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQFAWn0XCVPgNNAmNA0RgFBALIAUAOACXySQKwt1ObztA-TxRBABkpEDPdAPcBAMTJIAPAgrUeQp6PkBQfBA-e

Without Spotter/Banners you are looking at 89.81% crit chance. Spotter’s is another 7.14% and Banner of Discipline is another 8.09%, for a total of 105.04%. Even if you dropped Signet of Fire you would still be sitting at 96.46% crit chance. Even if you don’t have a Druid healer, you are still sitting at 97.9% crit chance.

Equipping anymore than 2 Assassin’s accessories is absolute overkill. Equipping an entire armor set and possibly more, as you suggested, is quite simply a waste of stats and will lower your DPS in all situations.

And of course, if you’re running the D/x build then you have the 9% crit chance from Aeromancer’s training, so you are guaranteed to have max crit chance at all times.

You should probably change all of that ascended gear back to zerker rofl. =p

cool people run dire

Raiding or PvE you do not need any defensive stats. Just have to learn the encounters and went to dodge. You only need defensive stat in WvW and PvE.

Celestial is not useful for the first wing of Spirit Vale. The meta build for tempest is all out DPS. Note that while Berserker is the highest DPS you can have with no buffs, with the power buffs that are typical in raids (25 might stacks, Banner of Strength, Power food, Empowering Flame while in fire, in addition to various ferocity buffs) Berserker is not the optimal stat choice as it does not allow you to max you critical hit chance. Even if your crit chance is 99%, gaining 21 precision to increase it to 100% is a higher DPS gain than 21 strength assuming you have the buffs listed above (though you don’t need all of those buffs for precision to be better), and so you will likely want a substantial portion of your gear – certainly at least the armor and likely more – to be Assassin’s.

Capping your crit chance is a bit tricky because elementalist has several skills/traits that grant precision only under certain conditions. These are Signet of Fire, Aeromancer’s Training, and Conjure Lightning Hammer. If you are planning on playing staff – and you should be at least for Gorseval – you will be spending almost all your time in fire and therefore should not plan for the Aeromancer’s Training or Lightning Hammer buffs. If you’re playing D/X you will probably be spending a lot of time in lightning and may be running Lightning Hammer for when you swap to other attunements. In both cases you can decide if you want to be running Signet of Fire or if you would rather take more precision on your gear. Ultimately this is a calculation you have to do for yourself since I don’t know how you plan on raiding. When calculating don’t forget that you will likely have Spotter and Banner of Discipline for a free 320 precision, as well as fury for +20% crit chance. You can also run curry butternut squash soup, or even sigil of accuracy if you’re desperate.

Note that outside of raids you may not have all of these buffs, and Berserker would then be better. Additionally, you may have other classes you wish to share the armor with for which Berserker would be better.

Also note that although capping crit is the “best” option for dps and for the first raid wing overall, it isn’t like the raid is unclearable with Berserker’s (or even Celestial) gear. Since the raid opened I have been playing tempest there with exotic berserker’s armor and berserker ascended staff + trinkets to beat Gorseval and Sabetha every week (I played engineer on VG). I only finished my light ascended armor and swapped it to assassin’s a couple weeks ago. So don’t be overly worried about having the 100% best build, I only wrote all this about assassin’s gear because you asked specifically about raids.

tl;dr don’t make celestial, assassin’s is probably best but do you

EDIT: Since you specifically mentioned tanking, typically the tank will just swap out a couple rings or other trinkets until they have the most toughness in the group. A full set of toughness gear is extreme overkill. If your only armor set has toughness you are actually a huge liability in raids because it means no one else can ever tank without having a toughness armor set (which very few people have in ascended) or sacrificing a lot of dps.

Prism.5649:

Actually you only need two accessories to have Assassin’s stats for maximum DPS benefit. Maxing crit chance is easier than you think. Everything else is Berserker.

Also, D/x doesn’t use Lightning Hammer in PvE because you never spend more than a second or two outside of Air attunement, and LH is a DPS loss over the Air/Fire skills.

And if you want to tank, then swap out your accessories for Cleric’s stats. Ele makes a great tank because it has such high self heals. Ele can even fulfill both the healing and tanking role simultaneously with full Cleric/Zealot gear. It can be a bit tough, but is totally possible and there are videos of it being done.

Edit for link:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQFAWn0XCVPgNNAmNA0RgFBALIAUAOACXySQKwt1ObztA-TxRBABkpEDPdAPcBAMTJIAPAgrUeQp6PkBQfBA-e

Without Spotter/Banners you are looking at 89.81% crit chance. Spotter’s is another 7.14% and Banner of Discipline is another 8.09%, for a total of 105.04%. Even if you dropped Signet of Fire you would still be sitting at 96.46% crit chance. Even if you don’t have a Druid healer, you are still sitting at 97.9% crit chance.

Equipping anymore than 2 Assassin’s accessories is absolute overkill. Equipping an entire armor set and possibly more, as you suggested, is quite simply a waste of stats and will lower your DPS in all situations.

And of course, if you’re running the D/x build then you have the 9% crit chance from Aeromancer’s training, so you are guaranteed to have max crit chance at all times.

Lightning Hammer is useful for D/X if you aren’t running fresh air. D/W Fresh Air is the best and most common D/X build right now for raids, but I was talking about ele skills that give precision so I figured I might as well mention it.

Really though you’re right assuming that you’re running precision food instead of power food. It is also potentially useful to be able to take an extra slot skill instead of fire signet, which would require more precision on gear. Assassin’s gear was the right choice for me personally since I already had a full set of berserker trinkets and did not want to buy assassin’s trinkets when I had to get new ascended armor anyway. Ascended stat changes are cheap and many players don’t have lots of laurels. I just use power food and it works out the same.

I should have mentioned that mostly berserker’s stats with precision food is equivalent, though. This is important because precision food is generally much cheaper.

Here is something like what all assassins armor with power food looks like

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQFAWn0XClNgNNA+XC0RgFBALIAUAOAut2ZbuV4SWCSBA-ThRBABmpEEgHAgoq/8wFAAPdAXp8jUARsMC-e

64.19% crit chance with fire signet, +20% for fury, +15.23% for spotter and banner makes 99.42% crit chance. Not exactly 100% but pretty close. So If I needed to drop fire signet (which you probably dont for the current only wing) I could get some assassin trinkets and swap those out. You are right that berserker’s armor works in general for max crit, but it’s equivalent to assassin’s depending on the food you use. Sorry, I was wrong about the necessity of assassins armor in my earlier post, though it isn’t any worse than berserker’s. Just be sure you have everything sorted out with your trinkets and food.

No need for me to swap my armor back though don’t worry lol

Thank you all! Your answers cleared it up.