Guild Wars 2

Setting aside the costs and time… the new celestial armor got me thinking.

Just with that prefix and a divinity rune on all pieces it is +200 to all stats, . Combine that with ascended gear that also adds to all stats and you are now at +416 to all stats, ~43% chance to crit, +60% crit damage, and +38% magic find.

Is this gimping, or in the long run make engis an ridiculous jack of all trades like class?

I mean… if you don’t go too deep into any tree you can swap utilities for a quick change relevant to the your/the group’s need pre- and mid-dungeon.

Admittingly, maybe my lack of experience in much of the end game content and WvWvW is showing here, but it is tempting as someone who generally is drawn to JoAT like classes to consider.

I might go for a set of this type of gear for one of my characters (I do already have a Celestial amulet thing from laurels…), simply because it would mean having a solid base for any build.

Imo engies are better suited for jack of all trades better than any other class. Anet says eles are the go to class for it but their hp and armor say otherwise. Engies are more comfortable with their medium armor and hp and can do a variety of roles well, including condition damage (Something which other classes other than necro fail to do well).
I’ll probably also be making a divinity build later on.

I was planning on making a full Celestial set for WvW. I’m just not sure how I would handle runes.

I’m not sure that this would be good at all, you can only make so many stats useful at one time. I feel like the stats you’re actually using would be lower than if you built for them.

The only kind of build I could think of off the top of my head is a healing heavy bomb type build (10/0/30/20/0 to start with, Elixir Infused Bombs). Something that actively uses Healing Power a lot, Power/Precision/Crit Damage all being used by bombs, Condition Damage a bit by bombs as well, could slot Elixir Gun too for Condition Damage/Power/Healing Power use. Toughness/Vitality obviously helps with the tankiness. Not sure it’s something I would want to do, but it is a type of build that would use every stat which is the only thing I would consider using Celestial stats. Otherwise you’re just wasting something.

It has a lot of potential if you can get a build that uses all those stats. I think an HGH build with grenadekit might scale very well. Using the power and raw direct damage combined with condition damage. Vit and Tough are always usefull for extra survivability.

The Celestial set (and infact all Celestial based gear) doesnt just split stats evenly. It has more stats then the “specialized” sets.
f.e. the stats on a regular chest were, when all tallied up, around 240. The Celestial chest had 270 raw stats without including the +%-critdamage and magicfind.

So for a build that scales with all these stats fairly well it could really work because of the sheer amount of extra stats you get.

You’d need to create a team support build that utilizes all stats. Something designed to deal both straight & condition damage (‘nades, bombs, FT) and also dish out some heals (Heal Turret, EG, Infused Bombs). The Vit/Tough is gonna make you tankier. Your damage might not be as amazing as Zerker, but you’ll be alive 100% and everyone around will be happy for your support. Celestial + Divinity as the OP suggested would mean you can do just about anything fairly well. Versatility and variability can be a life saver.

@Phineas: figure out what the goal of your Celestial build is and you’ll know which runes to slot. I was thinking team support heavy so something like Altruism or Dwayna would work nicely. Even Mercy runes + quickness rezzing. Battlefield medic with teeth.

I guess, in my mind, I was thinking less “one build to rule them all” (which many prefer), but instead dipping in just far enough that you could switch skills and traits between fights or events.

My current build (which I haven’t settled in on) is very Condi focused. P/S, EG swapping makes up the bulk of what I do. That is, until group events cause the condi stacks max out so quick. That said, I am deep enough into certain trait lines that a couple of quick flips and suddenly I can do decent FT or Rifle damage. My gear, OTOH, is still very condi heavy so it limits that switch a bit.

So, my thought was to build out with all celelstial gear and trinkets. Then, I put I uses runes and sigils to pickup what I need to help focus a bit (in my case a + crit on my pistol and corruption on my shield, might on my rifle, 2 mad king, 2 lyssa, & 2 divinity). If I am doing the math right (cause gw2skills doesn’t have celestial armor yet), that puts me at ~+350 to all attribs, ~40% crit, +50% crit damage, +30% condition dur. With that in mind, I can move around traits and weapons (I am just shooting from the hip on these builds):

10 Explosives – 20 Firearms – 0 Inventions – 20 Alchemy – 20 Tools

Always Have
Evasive Powder Keg, Sharpshooter, Target the Weak, Hidden Flask, Transmute, Adrenaline Pump, Inertial Converter

Condition Focus
P/S – Healing Turret – Elixir Gun – Tool Kit – Elixir R
Incendiary Powder, Precise Sights, Rifled Bar, Self-Regulating Defenses, BIood Infusion, Speedy Kits, ????

Power Build
Rifle – Healing Kit – Flamethrower – Rifle Turret – Elixir B
Incendiary Powder, Sitting Duck, Juggernaut, Protection Injection, Potent Elixirs, Static Discharge, Speedy Kits

Support/Healing
Rifle – Healing Turret – Elixir B – Elixir U/Elixir Gun – Elixir R
Acidic Elixirs, Infused Precision, Go for The Eyes, Fast-Acting Elixirs, Potent Elixirs, Always Prepared, Scope

Granted, I am not going to claim to be an Engi pro, so this could be total garbage. XD

It is just swirling around in my head and is interesting to see when you start to write it out.

bump! Theorycrafting started long ago. Anyone have finished their celestial + divinity? What hp u stand? armor? tough? attack? condi dmg?

Im about to start to do celestials too but before spendin trillion on divinity I want to see some samples of this working. Im planning to use pp/+s , elixir gun/ft , tool kit , heal turret and boots for bye bye move. + another blast finisher for aoe heal.

Phineas helped galvanize the flamethrower/elixir gun build for PvE, I’m sure he will be fine figuring out his runes.

Personally, I think full celestial gear is going to ruin classes like the engineer, unless the difference between celestial and zerker is a much larger difference in dps.

Engi’s need a true min/max spec and gear selection to truly stand out in the crowd.

Sorry, let me edit and reiterate. An engi decked out in full ascended berserker should deal considerably more damage with the proper spec than an engi decked out in ascended celestial. If the difference is only like, 10 percent, then you will see a game where every engineer wears full celestial, which to me, is boring.

From a design standpoint, a full zerker engineer should technically do 30 percent or more damage than a celestial engineer. If the traits, weapons, skills, do not allow for such a discrepancy, then I suggest rolling another class until they do.

As much as I hate to mention the game, the world of warcraft druid was plagued by this issue for years until the designers realized their flaw. And by years I mean three-four years. The wow druid really came into its own around wrath of the lich king.

No Divinity runes, but I’ve come up with what I think is a pretty legit 4-kit build.

That’s right.

Four kits.

It’s a modified version of my old FT/Bomb build that used Knights/Cavalier/Berserker stats and could maintain 24 stacks of might.

Wrap your head around this.

Med Kit: Get in the habit of swapping to Med Kit for a split second before you swap to a different weapon. It’s free might.

Flamethrower: First rule of Flamethrower is: you do not use Flame Jet. Second rule of Flamethrower is: you do not use Flame Jet. Flame Blast is a nuke; use it every 5 seconds.

Bomb Kit: Spam bombs while waiting for your other cooldowns.

Elixir Gun: Situational/support skills, including a stun breaker.

Rifle: For when you want to single-handedly stunlock someone for the remainder of their short life.

Macros.6120:

Rifle: For when you want to single-handedly stunlock someone for the remainder of their short life.

No one worth a grain of salt has been stun locked by a lone rifle engineer. Net is easily dodged by any human being with the average reaction time of someone 50 years old or younger, and overcharged shot is subject to numerous obstacles (short range, block, etc).

Four kit builds are the epitome of gimmick, and I’m not trying to be insulting. There are numerous flaws towards your concept, including using an entire kit (flamethrower) for a single nuke, while ignoring its benefit as a fire field generator to stack area might with blast finishers.

Maybe not stun-locked, but it is very possible to disable someone for a while with the rifle alone. In effect rifle is our high risk high reward and our “set-up” weapon with a few tricks that can be used to help us land damage more often namely counting opponent cool-downs and knowing their build and how they play. The net shot in particular as you mentioned has low projectile speed and as a result is usually dodged if fired alone but this also comes with the effect of burning one of the opponents 2 dodges per 10 seconds or acting as a setup/wasting a blocking skill or “obstructed”.

A baseline guess for most professions is 2 dodges per 10 seconds with a stun-break. The rest of the counting comes from knowledge of the opposing profession.

I would have to agree that a four kit power build is still short of par especially in tournament play, but discounting the engineer rifle as not being able to disable someone for a solid amount of time is nothing short of denying the weapon itself. With that said, the rifle requires much much more effort to play effectively than pressing buttons.

@Macros:
I ran a 4kit build like this, with Altruism runes and everything, and was contemplating getting the Celestial ascended trinkets along with the amulet. My build was balanced more around Grenadier over Bomb kit, and took Tool Kit over the flame thrower. I think that whilst Celestial Armour has its merit and sacrifices little over, say, Knight’s armour, Celestial trinkets grant too much Vitality, too little Precision and too little Power for the investment of time-gated Quartz crystals.

This is what I eventually settled on after cobbling together everything as I did not have much gold and I wanted a build with acceptable DPS for dungeoning whilst having acceptable survivability in WvW

I used the Karma Armour, 4 runes of Altruism and 2 Runes of Water, Rampagers and Knights Pistol and Shield, and Rampagers trinkets with the Celestial Trinket that I bought with Laurels.

The build could be much, much better balanced and have a higher hybrid DPS ceiling if I replaced all my Karma Armour with all Celestial armour owing to the much greater Critical hit % and Critical Damage % possible; although Toughness and Vitality suffer a little as a result.

As to whether it is worth the time investment of an entire month’s worth of transmuting Quartz and 30 ectos, it’s debatable. I can simply invest in Boon Duration food to stack my Might up to the 25 stacks possible and get similar Effective Power and Effective Condition Damage, so why bother? There comes a point where Min-Maxing simply is not cost effective, especially in my case where I could be spending the time and gold to be levelling and gearing other alts.

Adamantium.3682:

Not sure it’s something I would want to do, but it is a type of build that would use every stat which is the only thing I would consider using Celestial stats.

100% agreed, but I think I’ve found a way to make it work with my FT/EG in WvW.

The key detail isn’t that Celestial levels out all your stats. It’s that it’s the only insignia in the game that offers both Condition Damage and Critical Damage. If you can utilize a build that uses both—Condi through Bleeding/Burning, and Critical through direct damage—you may find your DPS loss to be negligible with Celestial, never mind the slight increase in survivability with Healing Power, Toughness, and Vitality directly added into your build.

A full Celestial set shaves a few Critical Damage percentage points off—5%, in total. The bigger question is, can your build utilize other stats in a way to fully offset the loss in 573 Power?

When looking at my own Flamethrower, I noticed that the additional Condition Damage in my build—686 in total—would contribute about 170 damage to my burns, rounding them out to deal around 500 damage per second with no Might stacks.

At least for the Flamethrower, you’re about 30% less effective in DPS wearing Celestial gear versus Berserker in direct damage, but your burns (and by extension bleeds through Sharpshooter) are much more effective at the same time. I’d say on paper it pretty much balances out, and my experiences with Celestial gear thus far have supported that assumption.

In zergs I would still recommend full Soldier, but when roaming, try out Celestial and see if it fits your build.

@MonMalthias:
Between Drop Stimulant and Hidden Flask, I’ll have enough fury to keep my crit chance at 60% the majority of the time. Target the Weak can add another 10% to that, too. They make up for the lack of precision, in my opinion. Power and condition damage are less important, with all that might flying around. I agree about the vitality, though; I’m used to having less health and at least 1500 toughness.

I honestly can’t remember why I picked two Runes of the Monk instead four of Altruism. I wonder what I was thinking.

@Decklan:
You are mistaken in assuming I only use Flamethrower for skill #2. I wasn’t writing an in-depth guide; I was mentioning how good of a skill it is.

I can’t see why pistol/shield wouldn’t work just as well as a rifle. The rifle has its flaws, but I firmly believe it’s not nearly as bad of a weapon as most people seem to think. I’ll probably end up trying both setups.

^
What Phineas Poe said.
It’s also worth noting that if your gear currently has a surfeit of Power and/or Precision, putting Celestial gear into your Shoulders, Gloves and Boots gives you more effective health and hybrid DPS with a minimal sacrifice to your Power based damage.

I would also advocate reading this:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/84216-new-celestial-armor-does-it-work-with-the-engineer/

On the other hand, I don’t think that Celestial Jewelery offers quite enough in the way of Toughness and Power to be justifiable outside of using the Ascended Celestial Amulet. I have Szygy because it is the most stat-efficient item for the slots in my build (Running 30/5/0/20/15 4kit Grenadier). Certainly with my current Gear setup of mixed Soldier’s/Rabid from Karma Vendor and full Rampagers Rings/Trinkets I could swap out my armour for much better hybrid DPS (+20% crit damage with also +2% critical hit chance, another 100 condition damage and losing 100 vit but gaining 50 toughness is ridiculously good).

On the other hand if I instead took out all my Rampagers Rings and Trinkets and instead put in Celestial Rings and Trinkets I would lose 10% critical chance which would be an overall loss in DPS.

I think that whilst Celestial Armour is pretty good for the investment, Trinkets, especially the exotic ones, aren’t worth it right now considering that they are time gated. If you did your dailies you could even buy the Ascended stuff which doesn’t actually cripple you, but you’d need ectos for that which could be better spent on Armour instead.

In the end it depends on what you currently run; and especially what you have in your Armour slots. If it’s suboptimal like mine, go for it. But if you have a good Trinket setup already, don’t change it. Any gains in hybrid DPS and Effective health really aren’t worth it for the Exotic trinkets right now aside from the Amulet.

I am 1 armor piece away from having this full set (everything all-stat except for weapons and boots, so technically 3 pieces away) and I must say it works well. I still prefer my rabid set for wvw zerging but with roaming I find that I tend to beat everyone at their own game. Against bunker/survivability builds I can outbunker them because they don’t deal enough damage. Against burst builds, again I can take them down reasonably fast without getting nuked too hard myself. Overall I’d say I enjoy this build but it works exactly the way you would think. You’re a little good at everything, but not great at anything.