Guild Wars 2

I see a lot of misinformation about the numbers and whether the condi formulas or a 10% stat nerf to celestial exist.

Misconception 1: Cele amulet got a relative 10% stat nerf
Normal amulets had a 34% increase in stats and celestial had a 28% increase. This makes it sound like cele got nerfed relative to other amulets. The missed fact here is that since amulets are a larger percentage of your total stats now, the benefit celestial provides has an increased impact. Let’s look at the math.

In PvP, you used to get stats from baseline, traits, and amulet. The total amount of stats is staying relatively similar in the new system with minor variance based on your exact build.

For example, in the old system, the meta cele rifle build (60022) had this many total stats:
3704 base + 1000 traits + 3066 amulet = 7770 total stats.

In the new system, you’ll have this many stats with the same build:
4000 base + 3920 amulet = 7920

What about other builds? if we swapped to a 3 stats amulet, like rabid,
old: 3704 base + 1000 traits + 2232 amulet = 6936 total stats.
new: 4000 + 3000 = 7000

Conclusion: from a total stat count point of view, celestial got BUFFED relative to other amulets. This is because amulets becoming a larger part of your total stat pool makes any difference in amulets’ stat totals more pronounced.

Misconception 2: Cele amulet will do less condi damage than it used to
This is based on the idea that they said 700 condi damage is the break even point when you do the same damage as before. If you have less than that, you’d do more in the old formulas. If you have more, you’d do more damage with the new formulas.

People look at this fact and say “cele only has 560 condi damage. Since that’s under 700, you’ll do less damage.” This is wrong because you only had 436 condi damage in the old system on the meta build. 560 in the new system will do MORE condi damage than 436 did in the old system.

Conclusion: while the new amulet will only have a base 560 condi damage, that’s 122 more base than in the old system, which more than makes up for the formula changes and will result in higher condi damage.

Yea thats what I tried to explain whole day today to my friend… No luck:-P

Been trying to spell this out to a few people today.
The condi effectiveness is a MAJOR nerf.
I don’t even think IP is worth it as a grandmaster anymore.

5seconds of a less effective burn on a 10 sec CD? Kitten no that is crap compared to modified ammo and even Juggernaut.

Based on five guage’s stream, I feel that celestial engineer would still be pretty strong.

The builds he seems to beleive in right now are a high damage explosions, firearms, alchemy HGH cele build with rifle, grenades, e-gun (since I think the 4 skill counts for HGH now?), and a filler and hoelbrak runes,
and then a similar build with less damage but seemingly more survivability with inventions instead of alchemy, since bunker down and mecha legs seem pretty powerful.

He seemed pretty unimpressed with tools outside of zerker based builds. He also ran a few rabid pistol builds that were a bit similar trait set up and they have really high condi burst potential, where he was getting 4-5K per second burning ticks. Still the rifle with celestial has a bit more CC and similarly good damage, so its just a bit different playstyle, with more sustain.

Yeah HGH is looking to be real good.
Here is a overexcited post I made earlier on reddit.

Well kitten.

HGH might be coming back… Dear lord that might upkeep!

And with mortar kit, nades and the rest elixir you won’t even be losing out on much.
The old HGH you had to.give up superior heal and a defensive/utility kit.

EDIT : HGH build…
Rifle, Elixir heal, elixir S, elixir gun, Elixir B/grenade/toolkit and Mortar kit… My my I am excited! AND THE BOON DURATION TRAIT!!! I’M SO EXCITED AND I JUST CAN’T HIDE IT!!!!
EDIT : Hmmm cele might not be the best choice here as you won’t be applying that many condis, knights maybe, or you swap rifle for pistol/shield, which obviously will cost you some power based damage but gives you shield to replace Toolkit with more hybrid based kit like nades…

Novuake.2691:

Yeah HGH is looking to be real good.
Here is a overexcited post I made earlier on reddit.

Well kitten.

HGH might be coming back… Dear lord that might upkeep!

And with mortar kit, nades and the rest elixir you won’t even be losing out on much.
The old HGH you had to.give up superior heal and a defensive/utility kit.

EDIT : HGH build…
Rifle, Elixir heal, elixir S, elixir gun, Elixir B/grenade/toolkit and Mortar kit… My my I am excited! AND THE BOON DURATION TRAIT!!! I’M SO EXCITED AND I JUST CAN’T HIDE IT!!!!
EDIT : Hmmm cele might not be the best choice here as you won’t be applying that many condis, knights maybe, or you swap rifle for pistol/shield, which obviously will cost you some power based damage but gives you shield to replace Toolkit with more hybrid based kit like nades…

Cele will still be ideal here because you get a ton of condition pressure from shrapnel, incendiary power, and the other e-kit/nades skills. I feel like knight’s is just a horrible idea for pvp in every conceivable way. And the rifle is still better for celestial because its CC and power based damage, even in a hybrid set up are really strong.

I think the HGH build he tested out looked something like this:

http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgEBWAR0Aqw~

IP is getting a substantial indirect nerf, keep that in mind.
I don’t even think it deserves grand masterstatus.

As for the rest, I was actually considering dropping Explosives for more support potential, but it will be at a major power dmg loss.
Alchemy and firearms(for the extra crits/bleeds/burns and reduced CD on rifle) are a must though, and lets say explosives too(for the meta build, since it won’t go into inventions as I will be doing straight out the gate after patch.
I would drop the backpack regenerated for inversion enzyme, which will help you benefit more from 20% increased boon duration. Super elixir will more than make up for the loss in sustain.

so apparently, only the defensive stats are getting nerfed? i thought the problem with the kitten thing was that it gave too much offense. they should have left the defense and reduced the offensive capability of the ammy. all the esports people are pretty much gonna keep using cele. will the buff to other “pure” amulets make up for this?

mistsim.2748:

so apparently, only the defensive stats are getting nerfed? i thought the problem with the kitten thing was that it gave too much offense. they should have left the defense and reduced the offensive capability of the ammy. all the esports people are pretty much gonna keep using cele. will the buff to other “pure” amulets make up for this?

The gap is smaller, but still substantial.

The major thing that will keep it in line is the effectiveness of condis, condi duration nerfs and boon duration nerfs.
You will need to invest a lot more for condis to hit near as hard as they do now when using cele.

Well you can drop either explosives or firearms to take both alchemy and inventions, which will make you much tankier but your damage will be a bit less. It may be the way to go though, since you’ll be able to have HGH might stacking, mecha legs, bunker down, and either incendiary powder or shrapnel in the same build while still having backpack regenerator and whatnot. The potential might uptime with HGH and elixer gun and then one elixer is really insane with hoelbrak and a battle sigil, although in a group with mroe AoE might, you may not even not the sigil.

Inventions is sort of like the water line for elementalist, but a bit more flavorful in my opinion.

nearlight.3064:

Well you can drop either explosives or firearms to take both alchemy and inventions, which will make you much tankier but your damage will be a bit less. It may be the way to go though, since you’ll be able to have HGH might stacking, mecha legs, bunker down, and either incendiary powder or shrapnel in the same build while still having backpack regenerator and whatnot. The potential might uptime with HGH and elixer gun and then one elixer is really insane with hoelbrak and a battle sigil, although in a group with mroe AoE might, you may not even not the sigil.

Inventions is sort of like the water line for elementalist, but a bit more flavorful in my opinion.

Yeah I would drop Battle for Sigil of energy, now that vigor uptime and effectiveness is down and Sigil of Intelligence for that dmg push.

Are you guys playing HGH with Rifle and cele amu? Or Rifle and zerk? Or even with pistol/pistol+Rabid?

Interesting observation.

Also, in regards to condition damage, since cele builds usually stack a lot of might they’ll get more than 700 condi dmg anyway.

flow.6043:

Interesting observation.

Also, in regards to condition damage, since cele builds usually stack a lot of might they’ll get more than 700 condi dmg anyway.

Current cele engi foregoes might stacking almost completely but it can run around 6-9stacks IF using hoelbrak and sigil of battle.

That is less than 300 extra condition damage.

Lupanic.6502:

Are you guys playing HGH with Rifle and cele amu? Or Rifle and zerk? Or even with pistol/pistol+Rabid?

You would definitely benefit the most damage wise from a rifle and cele stats.

How is boon duration going to work now?

Ardid.7203:

How is boon duration going to work now?

Well basically you get 20% from a minor trait in alchemy, and you can get more if you take certain runesets, but it probably wouldn’t be worth it.

Also in general, I’m excited to run mecha legs with hoelbrak, to show those panic strike theives whos not immobolized as long as they tought I would be.