Guild Wars 2

Recently I started to enjoy my engineer in PvP playing with kits (30/10/0/20/10). So I have decided to invest in this character to juggle with kits in PvE. Eventually I’d like to do all content (dungeons, WvW and other open world content). At the moment it seems like berserker is still the way to go for PvE. However, with the upcoming nerf to critical damage and also my interest in WvW I am wondering what would be the smartest thing for me to do:

Should I still make ascended gear with berserker stats and get separate exotic gear for WvW? Or perhaps invest in gear with rabid or even celestial stats since the difference with berserker will be smaller?

I read through some guides made by Phineas Poe and Wolfineer. It seems like they have different builds for every type of gameplay. I rather not want to spend my time on getting two different ascended gear sets but on the other hand I don’t want to be a “jack of all trades, master of none.” Does anyone have some good advice?

I made a similar thread a week or two ago.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/What-Stats-Does-Your-Ascended-Armor-Have/first#post3555230

I pretty much had the same concerns as you. In addition to wanting to be able to have a build for PvE and WvW, I also change my builds fairly frequently so that was another thing I was worried about.

My concern with Celestial was the “jack of all trades master of none” thing you say. In the end I decided to go with Celestial anyways. It’s not practical to make more than one set of ascended armor, and once I make ascended I don’t want to continue using different sets of exotic that sort of defeats the point. With celestial you can supplement your build with trinkets, runes/sigils (if you have extra or the coin for it), and of course traits.

It’s obviously not ideal, but you’re only about 200 stat points behind whatever main stat you would have gone for instead. To put it in perspective, compared to if you had gone Berserker instead of Celestial armor the difference is less than 6 stacks of might. Will be even less if they end up raising stats on Celestial. That’s a margin that I’m okay with.

While I was initially against Celestial stats (I thought some of the stats were wasted), the more I look into it the more I think it’s the only sensible option for an Engineer that swaps builds with any regularity. This is because Engineer is one of the only professions that can make use of all the stats in any given build (I would say the other is Elementalist, possibly a case could be made for Guardians).

I would specialize trinkets and weapons, largely because they’re easy enough to get and they’re the critical juncture in making your build work. Armor by comparison is not really so important. To give you an idea, an ascended Berserker weapon is a fairly large DPS increase given the additional weapon strength. Trinkets, too, are a pretty large DPS increase just by the margin between them an exotics. The difference in power gain between ascended trinkets and exotic trinkets is 570 versus 461.

The different in power gain between ascended armor and exotic armor is 329 versus 315. So for players that already have exotic Berserker gear, ascended armor is not going to be very much of an increase! The only realm of PvE where ascended armor is really that critical is FOTM, and while I must understand the desire to gear out a character in full Beserker if dedicated to FOTM, I do take my engineer elsewhere.

Celestial armor + Soldier everything else is more than safe in WvW zergs, and Celestial armor + Berserker trinkets and weapons is more than satisfactory damage in PvE. If I’m really all that concerned with speed clearing a dungeon path, an exotic Berserker armor set gets the job done just fine.

Just a small addition to the above: Ascended armor gives you roughly 5% higher defense rating over exotic armor which for the low base HP engineer profession is desirable in WvW.

I’d be interested in what happens after they replace +crit damage and sincerely hope they will up the stats of celestial prefix armor as they implied.

If I were to craft celestial exotic (or celestial ascended) armor now, I think I’d hold off on that until the patch hits. Chances are, you’d end up feeling very nerfed (net turret, poison grenade, conversion (nerf) of +crit damage).

On the other hand, it is only pixels and you’re free to enjoy the (potentially) last month of celestial stats as you like.

Phineas’ advice is good, but after having grinded out a set celestial exotic armor I felt it was lacking compared to my berserker. That said I’m still trying to accumulate enough damask for a full ascended armor set. And in the mean time, I’ve gotten to lvl 40 fractals easy enough with just trinkets and a rifle ascended.

I will hold off until the feature patch to make the armor. But the crit damage nerf isn’t what worries me most, it’s the balance pass on all runes/sigils. I’m quickly filling my bank with 6+ sets of all the reasonably prices runes. And stacking up sigils. Also saving up some karma and dungeon tokens for the other sets.

Linc.6834:

Phineas’ advice is good, but after having grinded out a set celestial exotic armor I felt it was lacking compared to my berserker.

Well, of course. I would never suggest that Celestial should be in any way competitive to Berserker. It’s probably, at best, on level with Knight’s: a nice contribution of damage offset by a nice contribution of defense. If you live in dungeons and FOTM, I think Berserker would be best, but if you do any reasonable amount of WvW or Tequatl, I think it would be pretty frustrating to spend hundreds of gold crafting an armor set you’re not going to always use.

The point is more that ascended armor is so ridiculously expensive, and that you’re probably only going to make one armor set. Therefore, it’s probably best to make something you’ll get use of as much as possible.

Celestial armor is great for roaming. It’s great for zergs. And it’s great for high level FOTM and Tequatl. I specialize my weapons (I have Predator to swap stats on command) and jewelry when I need more focus. And if I’m really in one of those dungeon groups that really is all about finishing stuff as fast as possible, I do carry my Berserker armor set with me at all times.

The amount of flexibility I have with Celestial is just too good. The Ferocity nerf is going to hurt, but I think they have plans to adjust the stat allocation of Celestial so that it remains competitive to other insignias—which just means even more defensive gains with improved power and condition damage.

I’ve been living in EOTM this week, and I’ve been rolling a 10/0/30/30/0 bomb build at the front of whatever zerg or guild group I’m rolling with. I’m always one of the last to die/longest to survive despite Celestial’s inferiority to Soldier, and I still complete FOTM 30s in as many minutes with my 30/30/0/0/10 build with the same runes and armor, farming relics for my alts.

You’re going to see a personal DPS loss going from Berserker armor to Celestial armor, but your quality of life is so significantly better you won’t really care. It feels so good to have one armor set that literally just works everywhere—and gives me 25% movement speed with Traveler runes. It frees up bag space and keeps constructing builds simple—something that we don’t really get to say much of regarding our profession on the whole.

Well said Phineas. That’s exactly what I wanted from an armor set and why you ultimately convinced me to go Celestial. Even with the crit damage nerf, it’s still the most convenient and generally useful armor set you can get.

What is the cost right now after getting to 500 in crafting of making armor and weapons for an engineer?

Bombsaway.7198:

What is the cost right now after getting to 500 in crafting of making armor and weapons for an engineer?

Far and away the most expensive part of armor are Bolts of Damask. You’ll need 24 of them and they run 13-14g for a buy order. You’ll also need 18 Elonian Leather Squares, but they’re less than a gold each.

For weapons you need a pretty even mix of Spiritwood Planks and Deldrimor Steel Ingots. You can find the exact amounts on the wiki, you’ll need 11-12 of both materials combined. They run 2-4g.

Keep in mind while the gold is significant and it will save you a lot of time, nothing can replace the ascended materials themselves. Empyreal Fragments, Dragonite Ore, and Piles of Bloodstone Dust. For armor you need 1500 of each of those. For weapons you need 500 of each. You must craft these yourself, there’s no way around gathering all of it up.

The problem I have with only getting one celestial set is that I’m still stuck with a single rune set unless I want to go re-buying entire rune sets every time I want to re-spec. I haven’t crafted my armor either. I’m waiting for the patch and accumulating mats until then so there’s less I have to buy.

Assuming I’m going to limit myself to one set on my Engy, I’m leaning toward having one ascended armor set specifically suited to one of my preferred builds, and just go exotics for other builds as needed so I can keep my runes. The Celestial nerf was only further encouragement for me. If I were to go for a single celestial, I’d probably go for some sort of boon duration or condi reduction runes for their general utility, but I hate limiting my own build options.

scimi.3487:

The problem I have with only getting one celestial set is that I’m still stuck with a single rune set unless I want to go re-buying entire rune sets every time I want to re-spec. I haven’t crafted my armor either. I’m waiting for the patch and accumulating mats until then so there’s less I have to buy.

Assuming I’m going to limit myself to one set on my Engy, I’m leaning toward having one ascended armor set specifically suited to one of my preferred builds, and just go exotics for other builds as needed so I can keep my runes. The Celestial nerf was only further encouragement for me. If I were to go for a single celestial, I’d probably go for some sort of boon duration or condi reduction runes for their general utility, but I hate limiting my own build options.

I hear you, this is my main concern. I will probably invest in Runes of the Traveler, those are just so good for any build you could make. Plus you get the run speed so you don’t even have to worry about Speedy Kits.

My current best guess is that items with smaller amounts of critical damage (like runes) are going to be hit less by the critical damage nerf (unless it is removed completely from that item). This is because that +2% critical damage when changed will likely just be lumped in with the stats as +10 Ferocity (or more if they raise those a bit). I would imagine that comes out to ~.5-1% critical damage, so in total all the Runes of the Traveler lose is maybe 3-4.5% total critical damage. Not really a big deal.