Guild Wars 2

Hi engineer community!

Thanks to daily fractals I’m zeroing in on a set of ascended medium celestial gear, but I’m a bit confused about engineers and celestial stats.

Now I had a blast playing celestial rifle pre hot, and I also played the standard scrapper pvp meta before celestail was removed. Given that the amulet was deemed too good for pvp I assumed it would be the go to gear for wvw roaming, but I see most scrappers running marauders. Why is that? Something like Sheriff Sauer’s roaming build seems like a perfect candidate since it has bleeding and burning procs, but he’s still running with marauder/zerker. Is the plan for most scrapper builds to just apply as much pressure as they can right away?

And given all this, if you HAD to run with a celestial roaming build, how would you do it? Just the standard pvp scrapper meta with maybe some marauder/zerk trinkets? Or something with more condi pressure? As much as I’m tempted to throw this celestail gear in the forge, the time gated mats make me want to keep a set around.

Thanks in advance.

Celestial gear is far from optimal for roaming, it however okay for zerging. You can surely kill even fully upgraded camps alone or solo the tower lords with ease, BUT when if you take rifle + full celestial you will be sooner or later owned in 1 vs 1 against skilled players. For roaming power build + hammer scrapper with sneak gyro is far better and going full condition is probably the 2nd best option.

My own core engi build uses rifle + 4 kits + rocket boots. It is not 100% full celestial, but close to it. I use very weird mixed rune combination. I have no evades, blocks, projectile reflection or invulnerability. This is an obvious weakness is roaming and small scale fights, but once again last night I didn’t die a single time in huge zerg fights, while most of our blob got wiped multiple times. I rely on positioning, dodging, plenty of self-healing, condition cleanses to survive. I really do not recommend this build to anybody else unless you have tons of experience running it. I have played over 3000 hours with it, so I feel comfortable even to command with it.

I think most hammer roamers use power gear because its allows you to burst more which is important for a build that does most of his damage in close range (to utilize the few oportunities you get to burst your enemies hard (which cele isn’t all that great for) or into downstate which is important against certain builds that can kite well and basically heal up again)(also the hammer is a power weapon)

builds have drifted. elite specs are op nearly across the board, and ours is very very power oriented. the more you use hammer, the more you win fights, and hammer has no condis… so the larger stat budget of cele goes to waste to some extent, putting it more on par with the 4 stat combos… and then those 4 stat combos are more focused and marauder/demolisher/paladin are pretty natural power stats when you want to mix offense and defense.

additionally, scrapper can barely afford to take an offensive spec line because there will be gaping holes in your build without alchemy (irreplacable) or inventions/tools (pretty kitten core). explosives and firearms bring a lot of condi stuff that a cele build needs to be able to put out enough pressure to kill someone.

I run p/p rabid+celestial, firearms/inventions with balthazar or firearms/alchemy with traveler runes. All gyros except elixir gun.

I still havent quite decided what the “best” variant is but I can say that its a very, very strong roamer and a key component in smallscale havoc.

I have tried the hammer but I leave that to people good at melee. In my experience, its strong but easily kited. The more outnumbered you are vs good players the worse it gets. P/p isnt technically better but its nasty burns can relieve the pressure on you for an extended period, allowing you to focus targets.

I’ve been running full celestial armor since its inception a couple years ago. It’s a solid set that fits all play styles, but more so with the engineer given that many of his skills are balanced around condi and power. Looking at armor alone, the loss in stats compared to a standard triple major/minor/minor set is also negligible. You’re losing out on 211/108/108 points, which does not really help boost your numbers that much. So the way I see it, might as well craft one set of armor and never look back.

Now as far as weapons/trinkets go, I use a combination of full celestial, zerk, or rabid/viper depending on what I want to do and what will benefit the party comp. Celestial for a balanced defence/offence, zerk for bombing zergs with mortar and orbital bombardment, and rabid/viper for smaller scale fights. In the end though, stats/pressure is only going to make or break pug fights. In 2+ scenarios, party comp and strategy will have the upper edge. I’ve been in some skirmishes to see something like an elementist focus on survivability and use that to lure the attacks, while his friends do all the damage. People who try to focus down the elementist are fighting the wrong battle and it won’t take long to realize your squad is about to get owned. Party comps and roles are always the most fun, so having a set of weapons/trinkets to fulfill a role with celestial armor to balance the equation offers me the most options.

Thanks for the replies everyone!

As far as my gear goes, I’ve been roaming around in a set of exotic knights armor with durability runes (I had put this together for the 100% quickness engie build) and a mix of accessories. Having tried the build out, I can definitely see why celestial is not favored. With just knights armor, I really only ever die to 3+ people, and being able to burst someone down that little bit faster would be a huge bonus.

I’ll wait for the summer update to see if there are any major changes, but it looks like my celestial set will be headed for the forge after all haha.

Thanks again for the help everyone!

A bit outdated but should still work just the same.

Pride.1734:

A bit outdated but should still work just the same.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxoUl7cbPpo

Yeah I actually started with that build back in march when I came back from a long break. It was pretty fun but didn’t perform nearly as well as what I’m running now. I’m also not Yishis haha. It’s a shame because bombs are one of my favorite play styles.

Hey,
Did the build shared by Pride.1734 still work after the last patch ?

I think that build works in WvW but its heavily reliant on your personal skill. It relies a lot less on hammer dps and sustain and so the nerfs would have hurt it less than the meta power hammer. It also uses a hybrid combination of stats which are no longer available in pvp so a great player could make it work but it is very complex to play.

I am not that player, it failed horribly for me but i feel like with lots of practice you could make it work still.

I run celestial scrapper right now, but I’m thinking about going back to my (technically wolfineer’s) static discharge build. The nerfs to scrapper were just too much. I just don’t have the same level of burst as I did before this latest nerf.