Guild Wars 2

I’ll just throw it out there:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQFAUlIqic37y2F17IyoHdGptZgeYX+1I+pAbB-jEyAYLAqAQyvIasthioxqtxUuLqWFDYvLiWtUARsAA-w

Now that I’ve been working on getting the predator, I’ve been trying to cook up a build to get some ‘legendary’ damage out of it. Also I’ve been wanting to use the new grandmaster trait.

The idea is to get as many conditions and possible on them while CC’ing them from range, and then unload.

Well what do you guys think? I’m still working on the stupid time gated celestial gear, but I’ll report back when its complete.

I should say that I’d probly switch out PBR for for goggles if solo, its more intended to be run with a small roaming group like <5

It’s an usual SD build. But celestial is not worth it. You waste healing power and condition damage for sure. Better use zerker or mix it up with knights.

I have thought about using Modified Ammunition in the past, but the problem with it is that it only works with Pistol or Rifle – of which Rifle is the only viable choice given that it amplifies Power damage.

The problem here is that with the way the build works – stacking up conditions for the 2% damage – is that Rifle doesn’t really have the variety in conditions, nor the upkeep to really get the most of it. On average, you’ll likely have Vulnerability, Bleed with appreciable uptime – around 6%. However, it is possible to have other, lower upkeep conditions such as Cripple, Confusion and Burning for short periods, which will kick the peak bonus damage to 12.

This basically renders the build nigh on 100% about bursting, while having not very appreciable sustained damage. This build will mostly burst hard and burst very well, but when your skills are on cooldown expect your output to drop. Rifle auto-attacks are also subpar to spam, and slow to boot.

That being said, this build will most likely be able to 100-0 people. I think it will be strong enough in 1v1s, but as the number of people increases, expect your survivability and your damage output to drop.

I’m just not a big fan of running full zerk, and with knights I end up sacrificing the same or more stats that just going full celestial.
A straight stat comparison zerker v celestrial goes like this:
-175 power (probly the biggest trade off)
-84 precision (I can still get to 50% crit chance without this no biggie)
+140 Vitality and Toughness (biggest sell point to me for celestial)
+3% crit dmg ( not that huge a difference, but mixing anything else this would be a minus)
+140 cond. dmg and heal power (will make burns and bleed I need for modified ammo better, heal power meh)
Also I invested in all the recipes for celestial gear so I will be making this set anyway, I have a zerker set to fall back on if I don’t like it though.

Also I need to run a few tests, but I assumed that modified ammo worked on all damage produced while you have a main weapon equipped, including all the discharges and toolbelt skills. If it only works for rifle skills themselves then modified ammo definitely isn’t worth it. I thought about going with no kit, but toolkit is just too useful to pass up. Also I really wish I could fit in hair trigger, I may switch it for rifle mod to get more sustain instead of burst depends on the situation i guess. Sitting duck synergizes too well with modified ammo to give up though.

Thanks for the feedback guys!

I believe that someone did the calculations in the Mesmer forum and found that if you’re switching to Knights or Celestial from full Berserker, you will lose around 9% of Power based damage.

This is due to the higher % critical damage with the Celestial Armour.

However, you actually lose damage by equipping Celestial trinkets. This is because you have less or equivalent %Critical damage using the Ascended Celestial Trinkets.

It depends on whether you think the 140 Condition damage will be worth it. Condition Damage doesn’t really begin to shine until you reach 600 and even then it’ll largely be from Burning as Bleeds won’t have begun to scale high enough yet. The most useful aspect of Celestial gear is the EHP, as you have mentioned yourself.

The biggest loss is once again in the Power. You will need to find a way to make that Power back in other areas – Power is the most important, then Precision, then Critical Damage – so that 175 is a lot more significant than you think; whilst the +3 Critical Damage is less beneficial than you think.

I love Modified Ammo in SD builds. It’s especially great when you combine it with Sitting Duck (as you have). Net shot and then unloading the SD burst means you’ve got a target with burning (Incendiary Pwd), vuln (Sitting Duck/Goggles), cripple (Duck), immob (Duck), & hopefully bleeding (Sharpshooter). That’s 5 conditions for a total of +10% damage. That’s all damage when weilding a rifle, including your SDs.

Seras.5702:

I love Modified Ammo in SD builds. It’s especially great when you combine it with Sitting Duck (as you have). Net shot and then unloading the SD burst means you’ve got a target with burning (Incendiary Pwd), vuln (Sitting Duck/Goggles), cripple (Duck), immob (Duck), & hopefully bleeding (Sharpshooter). That’s 5 conditions for a total of +10% damage. That’s all damage when weilding a rifle, including your SDs.

I’m going to try this with a P/P HgH build for kicks. I’d like to see how modified ammo and sitting duck work in practical terms in WvW

MonMalthias.4763:

I believe that someone did the calculations in the Mesmer forum and found that if you’re switching to Knights or Celestial from full Berserker, you will lose around 9% of Power based damage.

It’s the wrong perspektive:
I calculated a whole celestial set compared to a full zerker set inkluding trinkets:
You deal 27% less damage with celestial gear compared to zerker gear.
But you deal 39% more damage with zerker gear then with celestial gear.

Two numbers, both right due the point of view. But one is more useful than the other number. And it is 39%. Because you can increase damage via traits/sigills/Runes in % but you can’t decrease.

What you did is the same calculations but only with armor. But u chose the bad point of view. So it is much more damage more with zerker armor then 9% (about 13%) but only 9% less with celestial armor

@Forestnator:
I did mention in my post that Celestial Armour was pretty decent over Berzerker’s Armour, although I probably should have made that more clear in my post.

The point is that Celestial Armour sacrifices 9% Power based damage over Berzerker’s Armour, whilst you lose a lot more damage if you instead use Celestial Trinkets. I still think that Celestial has a role, especially if you’re missing EHP from your Trinkets – just not in the Trinket slots themselves.