Guild Wars 2

I know this must’ve been talked over a lot and I’ve read quite a bit of forums looking for an answer. As of right now, is it better to get Celestial ascended gear or Berserker. I currently have just about enough mats for one armour set and one weapon so it’s high time I decided.

I’d like to use my engi everywhere and since he’s my main character, I’d like to be able to do dungeons decently. I’ve read celestial is the better “all around” set, but berserker excels at dungeons. As of right now, I’m using exotic EDIT berserker, not ascended set. Any advices?

Exotic ascended set?

My advice is don’t craft ascended. If you are not sure what is good where yet, don’t waste gold on something. You can ask advice here, but you probably gonna have different answer so in the end you gonna take a guess and ascended can be costly while not giving much stats. Exotic is fine and when you learn the game and can make an opinion then go for ascended.

My opinion on the subject was always to have different armor for different game mode. Celestial is a good all around gear, but that mean that you will be bad in most aspect of the game. In PvE you will have ordinary dps, terrible if you are not using the right build, in Zerg you won’t be resistant enough, and in Roaming you will need to use a build that fit with your gear.

If you go for zerker, then you will be ok in PvE, die in second while Zerging and will be limited to glass canon build while roaming (and glass canon engineer are not that good).

Celestial sure.
You can keep exotic zerker for dungeons fast runs.

The raw stat value on celestial seems pretty great to me. again, only came back fairly recently in Feb… but was celestial buffed? I don’t remember its raw stats being so high in relation.

Celestial would certainly give you alot more world pve, and wvw power, achievement hunting, take a teragriph hit or two, etc… while raw dps in a 5 man stacking offense with zerker or assassins, might still be best for speed runs.

Maybe even consider mixing/matching.

There is no one set that is going to be awesome at everything. Celestial is good for WvW, but pretty bad for dungeons since a good portion of your dammage as a celestial engi is going to be from conditions, and condition dammage in dungeons is pretty sub-par. My advice would be to make zerker ascended gear so you can do fractals, but make you weapon first because it makes the biggest difference. In my opinion, Knight armor with zerker rifle and celestial rings, backpiece, and trinkets is best for WvW roaming and zergs. Or, rabid armor with dire pistol/shield and trinkets, backpiece, and rings is best for pure condition dammage in WvW.

It really comes down to how you want to play your engineer in WvW: power or condition dammage, or a blend of both. But, once again, there is no build or armor set for engis that is going to be awesome for everything in the game, you will need more than one armor set.

Celestial for one good reason: the time gate. In any case, you’ll need 30 days to get a celestial ascended set, so why not do an ascended armor at the same time?

Celestial in PvE is absolutely fine. If you prefer to play berserker, just get an exotic set: in PvE the stat difference means even less.

Another thing you’d like to consider is if you would want to use your ascended gear on another character eventually. But of course, chances are that the sigils won’t match.

Go berserker. It’s obvious.
Celestial is not fine in dungeons it’s pure kitten. For wvw you can replace the trinkets with defensive stuff since those are super easy to acquire.
Most “roamers” in wvw are so bad you can kill them with the standard dungeon meta build.
In zergs you will probably die from retaliation if you use grenades and for bombs you have to be close to the cc hammer train which is not feasible either. You can’t gank the backlines like a thief either.

robertul.3679:

Go berserker. It’s obvious.
Celestial is not fine in dungeons it’s pure kitten. For wvw you can replace the trinkets with defensive stuff since those are super easy to acquire.
Most “roamers” in wvw are so bad you can kill them with the standard dungeon meta build.
In zergs you will probably die from retaliation if you use grenades and for bombs you have to be close to the cc hammer train which is not feasible either. You can’t gank the backlines like a thief either.

1) you can go dungeons even with soldier. dungeons do not need infusions. dungueons need nothing – just turn the corner and kill the boss
2) cele is better in solo pve (silverwastes), wvw roaming, u can go cele to wvw blobs easy with nades or ft, story acheivments are easier with cele too
3) if you dont know how to play engi in blobs, just dont give advices :P
4) roamers in top tier are different from whom you met i guess
5) zerker exotic not that much different from acsended, and you need it only for 500 dungeon badges (if u dont get them from pvp)

as for weapon – dont craft ascended(it costs u 500+ gold), try to get legendary asap

Worth noting is that ascended is ACCOUNT BOUND. So if you just want to make one set, you could consider what stat combo will be most useful to ALL your medium armor classes. In that regard I went berzerker’s since it’s the most all around useful for places where people get prissy about armor.

That said, I just ran a scale 5 fractals last night with my engineer in exotic celestial armor and trinkets, ascended celestial amulet and rings, and ascended bezerker rifle and it was a pretty smooth run, and I didn’t notice a huge difference in damage between that and my ascended zerker set. Was also the only player to not get defeated…

I was in the same case as you about a month ago.

My conclusion (and I am still happy with it) is:
- For WvW you want some defense, I know quite a few people run soldiers, you can run a condi build, celestial is great … zerker is garbage.
- For solo PvE (including silverwastes and other zones where you can end up isolated) again you need sustain, you want to be able to solo vets with adds easily, so celestial is way better
- For hard dungeons (high fractals, maybe some arah paths, likely some of what is coming in HoT) the condi damage actually starts being relevant. With only 5 people, you won’t overwrite all that much and with longer fights against tougher mobs, conditions kick in alot more. That means your damage isn’t as far from zerker as you might expect. On top of that, in hard dungeons you often need to be able to take a hit and the difference between 1 hit to downed and 2 can be huge for the group. I’d take celestial here though some people will claim they can dodge everything always and never need defense … those same people blame their group when they repeatedly wipe because not a single group member can survive an attack.
- For speed run dungeons zerker all the way, that being said, for speed run dungeons you really don’t need ascended.
- For zerging in PvE zerker is better, but again you don’t need ascended.

What I am doing is getting my ascended celestial, I am still in the process given the time gate.

In fact I have been doing fractals and got 1 zerker ring as a random drop and I have enough for the second with pristine relics (after getting my celestial). So, given the mats for a second rifle are not in conflict with those for my armour, I am going to make an ascended zerker rifle.

Essentially I end up with 2.5 sets, 1 full ascended celestial, 1 full exotic zerkers and 3 ascended zerker items that are cheap and have big stats (4 when I feel like spending the laurels on a zerker amulet), namely rifle and 2 rings. So most of the time I run celestial, when I want to do a dungeon speed run or zerg PvE I can swap to my exotic zerker with a few ascended zerker pieces or even my ascended celestial with the ascended zerker pieces.

Ascended armour is expensive and has relatively low stats, I don’t intend to ever get zerkers ascended armour, that 5% stats is just not worth it for content that is easy anyways. Remember, zerker is only good for easy content, people run it when there is almost no challenge so speed is the only factor. As an aside, they have said HoT will be harder in PvE, so zerker may also become less useful for that.

Dimes.6024:

1) you can go dungeons even with soldier. dungeons do not need infusions. dungueons need nothing – just turn the corner and kill the boss

You can do anything in the game with anything, that’s not a point.

quote=4882680;Dimes.6024:]
2) cele is better in solo pve (silverwastes), wvw roaming, u can go cele to wvw blobs easy with nades or ft, story acheivments are easier with cele too[/quote]

Easier, not better for PvE stuff. As for roaming it depend on your build. Double Kit build with celestial, don’t think so.

Dimes.6024:

as for weapon – dont craft ascended(it costs u 500+ gold), try to get legendary asap

Legendary is far more costly than ascended. Especially if he use his engineer in different mod, he might want different weapons. The more weapon he want, the less ascended will cost per weapons. It really depend on what he prefer.

Dimes.6024:

1) you can go dungeons even with soldier. dungeons do not need infusions. dungueons need nothing – just turn the corner and kill the boss
2) cele is better in solo pve (silverwastes), wvw roaming, u can go cele to wvw blobs easy with nades or ft, story acheivments are easier with cele too
3) if you dont know how to play engi in blobs, just dont give advices :P
4) roamers in top tier are different from whom you met i guess
5) zerker exotic not that much different from acsended, and you need it only for 500 dungeon badges (if u dont get them from pvp)

as for weapon – dont craft ascended(it costs u 500+ gold), try to get legendary asap

Wow. You are like extremely wrong. It’s so funny really. It probably has to do with the casual nature of your gameplay. A few hours of mindless silverwastes mob tagging then chase a commander in wvw and auttoattack people.

1)You can do wvw with uplevels in rare carrion gear with no trinkets too! Being able to do something and doing it properly are different things. Why slice the bread with a knife when you can use a spoon and eventually get it done anyway! Silly.

2)If you really need defensive support in doing the silverwastes and LIVING STORY then you clearly need to l2p and fast. You can’t use grenades(unless that hipster carrion grenadeer build) and even less the flamethrower because retaliation kills you as I said before. And as others said before me when asking for flamethrower changes to make it viable in zergs.

3)This is too stupid to counterargument. “:P”

4)I’m actually in top tier. Seafarer’s Rest. Numero uno!

5)If zerker ascended isn’t that much different than exotic then the same is true for celestial. Also, again, you are totally wrong about the number of tokens(not badges but how could you know?). It’s 1380 for a full armor set.

I agree with most of what was said, but I feel like I need to comment on the 5% thing.
It gets thrown around alot… but it feel its wrong. Its possible people understand the implications, but are just ignoring real math. but if they did.. I feel they wouldn’t be using the 5% figure at all…

the stat trinity of zerker meta exists for a reason. power, crit, and ferocity multiply into each other.

A 5% increase in power, would be an actual 5% dps increase by itself.
5% precision is harder to measure, as it would increase crit rate, an unknown%, and the same applies to crit damage.
but, they would multiply into each other, so a 5% overall stat increase would be more like and 7-9% dps increase.

Now, ascended armor is not actually a 5% stat increase overall, which is important to this.
that 5% power on the armor, is much less then 5% of your power with might, traits, food, runes, weapon, and accessories of course. Granted how much exactly it is of your total power, is again, releative to how much might stacks you can get, food eaten, etc.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Equipment#Attribute_bonuses
ascended armor is 329 power, (+5x6 infusions), 235prec/ferocity
vs 315power, 224 prec on exotic.
A 14 power, 9prec, ferocity variance. (44 power, 9prec/ferocity with infusions.)
a 4.4% increase in power. (14% with the infusions)

So, it should be noted if you spend a TON of cash on 6 versatile might infusions, you do get, what is at this point a notable increase.

But the problem as noted is, armor is not in a vacuum.
Using that same table we can see, “1087/745/745” as the ascended totals,
“1003/698/698” as the exotic.

Lets amend those. Ascended weapon is unquestioned due to the raw weapon damage increase. And Ascended trinkets are fairly easy to attain.
So the reality is you should have those. only the armor itself is up for question. Then again, runes. lets use runes of str. +175 power. food, +100power, 70 prec. what is your build? for the sake of arguement, going to give 6 explosive, for +300 power.
And how many might stacks? lets use an average of 10. +300 more power. And lets not forget base character stats. 926 power.

so, lets look at what a more realistic comparison would be.

Full ascended,
1087+30+300+300+100+175+926=2918 power.
Exotic armor, with ascended everything else.
1073+300+300+100+175+926=2874power.
a 14power without infusions vs 44 with infusions, into 2874…
14 power is a .5%increase in power. 44 power is a 1.5% power increase.

And this scenario is even worse, when you consider 25 stacks of might, bloodlust rune, or that I didnt add in +5 power infusions on weapon/trinkets/back.

Dimes.6024:

as for weapon – dont craft ascended(it costs u 500+ gold), try to get legendary asap

In what universe does it cost 500 gold to craft an ascended weapon!? It cost me about 15-25 gold, and that’s only because I was too lazy to farm all my mats, and just bought most of them off the TP. It’s crafting a LEGENDARY that costs an arm and a leg, NOT an ascended weapon.

If you are making ascended gear, you should always make your weapon first. It’s cheaper to make than armor, takes a fraction of the time, and gives a much larger increase to your stats than individual armor pieces.

@robertul there is no perma ret neigher in sfr blobs, not in fsp, not in kodash etc. you can die from anynithing – from train, ret from ft#1 or even fallin damage if you want.

badges (or tokens i dont care much) are just for gift for your legendary. runin dungeons for other reasons becomes boring very fast.

zerker armor is 173 (of about 3k) power, 79 (of 1.8k) precesion and 79(of 0.8) ferosity more than cele. and has 156 less in other 4 stats, has no other places then pve dungeon fast runs… why not assasins than?

Dimes.6024:

4) roamers in top tier are different from whom you met i guess

at roaming scales, the skill distribution is about the same everywhere
t1 just has more people

The highest DPS build will always be the best at dungeons due to the absence of “Unavoidable” damage.

Buuuut hey. Celestial is decent in PvE if you go for the 6/6/x/x/x route as well. You better hope to not be teamed with someone who uses the conditions you use. Would be a waste.

Dimes.6024:

zerker armor is 173 (of about 3k) power, 79 (of 1.8k) precesion and 79(of 0.8) ferosity more than cele. and has 156 less in other 4 stats, has no other places then pve dungeon fast runs… why not assasins than?

It’s simple.

Does Zerker do more dmg than Celestial? Yes
Do you die in Zerker but not in Celestial?

If you answer yes in the second question, then use celestial and try to improve. For a lot of ppl, that’s not an issue. Anyway, even If I would die in Zerker, I would take a sigil of energy, or bring a range weapon, or change trait or utilities to improve my surviability WAY more drastically than using celestial, while keeping my damage higher too. But hey, celestial is good for casual too. It’s not like damage is critical in open world.

how big is the damage difference between a zerk/assas engi and a celestial armor, rest zerks/assass engi? so the only difference is the armor

+ i HATE how engi walks with rifle. would a normal meta grenade dungeon build with pistol/shield instead of rifle be a huge damage loss?

Staffordshire.1752:

how big is the damage difference between a zerk/assas engi and a celestial armor, rest zerks/assass engi? so the only difference is the armor

+ i HATE how engi walks with rifle. would a normal meta grenade dungeon build with pistol/shield instead of rifle be a huge damage loss?

With only armor in celestial, around 10% dps lost. With full celestial, it’s around 30% dps lost.

If you want to use Pistol/Shield the dps lost is small, no problem.

if you want to go pistol shield take a condi setup not a celestial or beserker one

Both are good choices. However, I’d go Celestial for a simple reason: Build flexibility. Celestial gear will do well with almost any engineer build; it will rarely be the ideal, but it will work. That is, after all, the point of celestial: balanced and diverse stats. If you’re wearing celestial gear and you feel like trying a new build, you have a set of gear that will more-or-less work for that build. Again, not ideal, but enough to try the new build and see if you like it.

In contrast, Berserker (or at least part-zerker) gear will be better for a power-based build (MOAR DAMAGE), but then you have to go get a whole new set of gear if you ever want to go for something condition-based, supportive, or tanky.

Dacromir.6207:

Both are good choices. However, I’d go Celestial for a simple reason: Build flexibility. Celestial gear will do well with almost any engineer build; it will rarely be the ideal, but it will work. That is, after all, the point of celestial: balanced and diverse stats. If you’re wearing celestial gear and you feel like trying a new build, you have a set of gear that will more-or-less work for that build. Again, not ideal, but enough to try the new build and see if you like it.

In contrast, Berserker (or at least part-zerker) gear will be better for a power-based build (MOAR DAMAGE), but then you have to go get a whole new set of gear if you ever want to go for something condition-based, supportive, or tanky.

Yes and no. Yes, you are correct, there is more build diversity with celestial. No in that getting zerker gear is 10,000 times easier than celestial. You can get a full set of zerker gear in a just a couple days of doing CoE, CoF, and a some WvW without ever spending any gold. Whereas you HAVE to craft celestial gear, and even the exotic celestial gear will take you around 3 weeks or more to craft. I suggest getting zerker right away, and working on making celestial, then you will always have a good set of gear for dungeons, and eventually have a celestial set for doing anything else.

Gern.2978:

Yes and no. Yes, you are correct, there is more build diversity with celestial. No in that getting zerker gear is 10,000 times easier than celestial. You can get a full set of zerker gear in a just a couple days of doing CoE, CoF, and a some WvW without ever spending any gold. Whereas you HAVE to craft celestial gear, and even the exotic celestial gear will take you around 3 weeks or more to craft. I suggest getting zerker right away, and working on making celestial, then you will always have a good set of gear for dungeons, and eventually have a celestial set for doing anything else.

Yep, you can get exotic zerker easily, and it is sufficient for most PvE.

Then start building ascended celestial to WvW (and to some extent fractal).

As an aside, I did build the rifle and get rings/amulet in ascended zerker, the armor is not worth it.