Guild Wars 2

I’m about halfway to my ascended armor set, still thinking about what stats I want to make.

I mostly PvE, but I switch builds a lot. I’m not in WvW a lot but I like to have good builds for it. I almost exclusively use pistol/shield. Because of this my builds tend to go hybrid, but I like the ability to swap trinkets to have a good condition build if I need to.

So with that all said what do you guys use, or what would you suggest for me to think about? Right now I’m leaning towards Carrion, or 4/2 Carrion/Rabid. Full Rabid seems like it would lack power for a hybrid build, or do you think going Berserker trinkets would compliment it nicely?

Thanks!

Celestial insignia + Traveler runes is best, in my opinion.

It’s honestly the only armor set available as an engineer that is actually useful in both PvE and WvW, which I think should be your main objective anyway. It’s just way too expensive making an armor set you’d only use for one phase of the game.

And while Berserker is great for dungeons, it’s not the best for Wurm or Tequatl. Celestial is a much more ideal middle ground, and the additional healing power is useful if you regularly run Temple of Balthazar (or anything that involves keeping NPCs alive). And while Berserker is great in FOTM, running Celestial is more than satisfactory. I still complete FOTM 30 in as many minutes in Celestial armor when I run with my guild. So it’s not like you need to go full glass cannon to be efficient there. If anything, when rolling through 40+ you want at least a little survivability to cushion the blows.

Now it’s true that 140 Toughness or whatever Celestial gives is barely a 5% damage reduction, but that’s also compounded with additional healing power and vitality. On paper it doesn’t seem like a lot, but in actual application I find myself often in a situation where I was able to heal myself back up to a reasonable state where I otherwise would have been downed.

The areas where Berserker truly shines is in quick path dungeons like TA, CoF, CoE, HotW, and SE. Stuff that is ran in quick succession where speed is the sole concern. And in such places exotic armor gets the job done just fine. For the rest of PvE (and all of WvW as far as I’m concerned) Celestial is fantastic.

Thanks for the reply. When you run Celestial, is that everything? Gear, trinkets, weapons? I posted this in another thread but this is the kind of comparison I’m looking at right now:

My own mix:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqelIqiYH5yuF17IyoCdGoH6VehXfe8WsFEC-jwBBYhBk8AkCBIDtIas1gFRjVJjIqWdDTKAYmDA-e

Celestial:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqOGRGVozA9AAAgR8zDAAAgQA-jQBBYjBMRtIas1gFRjVVjIqWlETKAYmDA-e

The trait/rune/food setup doesn’t really matter I just threw in something that I like that is the same for each one.

I guess pros for Celestial is what you already said. It’s one set of gear, has great critical damage, and more stats than you could get with any home grown combination.

With my own mix it’s more flexible. I could even stay one set of gear (whether it be Carrion, Rabid, etc) and just with the trinkets and weapons really modify it to what I want for any specific situation.

I lean more toward condition damage, especially in WvW. I like to just throw on the conditions then outlast my opponent. I don’t feel like you can do this with Celestial very well. That’s really my only concern with it, though admittedly I haven’t looked at what Rampager weapons (what I have in Ascended since I figured it would fit pretty much any build) and the Rabid/Dire ascended trinkets. That could be okay, but it’s late and I’m going to bed and I haven’t put it through the calculator. If you have experience with Celestial gear (armor) + condition damage trinkets/weapons I’d like to hear about it.

Just armor. In WvW when roaming I run Giver’s weapons with condi trinkets (Rabid or Rampager, depending on my mood). When in zergs, I run with Soldier stats.

I very rarely record my play time in WvW so unfortunately you’re going to have to go by my word on this, but I find it effective enough. Would it be better to run full Rabid? Perhaps. But I think it is way too expensive to make multiple sets of ascended armor for one character.

In PvE I run Berserker trinkets and weapons in dungeons/fractals. At Tequatl and Wurm I wear my Soldier trinkets.

What seems to be your biggest advantage to Celestial isn’t that prevalent when you only have the gear: Critical Damage. Though I agree using just one set of gear is well worth it. That’s the point of the thread after all.

I hadn’t seriously considered Celestial, as I have always got more of the stats I want from my own mixes. That hasn’t been a problem before, as I have many different exotic sets of armor. Now that is no longer feasible with ascended I am quite undecided lol.

I think your advice is best. Celestial may not be ideal for any individual build, but looking at the numbers it’s not bad I may just go that way. Thanks for the input.

The fundamental flaw with the difficulty in getting ascended armor (or weapons for that matter) is that too often it is much better to have several sets of exotic and swap for the specific situation than to have ONE set of ascended.

So, while Celestial certainly has more stats and Ascended certainly has more stats than exotic, does Celestial Ascended have more stats for a particular style of play than just swapping out exotic sets?

That is why outside of main weapons, you will probably not see me crafting ascended armor yet. There ARE classes where switching specs isn’t so compelling. The more static (and boring) your class is, the more ascended gear makes sense.

Engineers are generally better off ignoring ascended armor IMHO because too often that leads to fewer tweaks per situation.

I would certainly agree if you don’t care about Ascended or do not do Fractals. I fall under neither category

Do all fractals use the same stats (really do not know)? I do know that in WvW you will often want to change your stats out and I do the same with the LS content depending on what it is.

Do you just acquire materials and gold so quickly as to make creating 2-4 sets of ascended gear not a problem? If so, that would confirm the perception that getting ascended is very unbalanced to those who enjoy WvW or simple PvE more than hardcore PvE mode.

Bombsaway.7198:

The fundamental flaw with the difficulty in getting ascended armor (or weapons for that matter) is that too often it is much better to have several sets of exotic and swap for the specific situation than to have ONE set of ascended.

Sure, but how much is that specificity really getting you? Let’s compare values to one another.

Celestial (ascended) armor gives 147 to all stats. Three attribute armor (ascended) gives 329/235/235 split. Going Celestial over Berserker, for example, nets you a loss of 182 power and 88 precision (3.5% critical hit chance).

Has anyone failed to complete a fractal because they were running with 20 stacks of might versus 25?

Not really.

Celestial armor is more than satisfactory for anything in PvE. If you’re concerned with maximizing your clear times it’s not ideal, but I think it’s important to be realistic of just how much time is lost when you’re swapping from Berserker to Celestial.

I would argue from the very beginning that your ascended armor should be what you expect to wear in FOTM. That’s what it’s primarily designed for.

Bombsaway.7198:

Do all fractals use the same stats (really do not know)? I do know that in WvW you will often want to change your stats out and I do the same with the LS content depending on what it is.

Do you just acquire materials and gold so quickly as to make creating 2-4 sets of ascended gear not a problem? If so, that would confirm the perception that getting ascended is very unbalanced to those who enjoy WvW or simple PvE more than hardcore PvE mode.

The question raised in this thread is what 1 set of gear is the best to use for any given Engineer build. Often I do change my stats out (as stated in the OP) but this is not feasible with Ascended gear.

It takes 24 days to craft 1 set of Ascended armor if you want to stick with the easy to acquire materials, or an obscene amount of money. It does not require hardcore play if you don’t want to drop hundreds of gold on it, just lots of time.

Don’t forget that Celestial is about to hit with the nerf stick on critical damage though…

Then it may be useless. Having said that whatever you build ANET will most likely kitten it at some near future point and you’ll need to respec… they can’t sell gems if everyone has what they need can they. My 2c on it

All crit damage is going down. Celestial is not being singled out for a nerf. All crit damage in the game is being nerfed. It will still be just as good as it is now relative to other options. I take that back, it may be moved to be second to Berserker (which to be honest it probably should be). Though they did say the best crit damage will still be the best crit damage, it will just all belower. It is only few percentage points between the two anyways.

I don’t know what the gems comment has to do with anything. They don’t sell armor in the gem store so why does it matter if we get the armor we want?

i run knight armor, cavalier earrings, zerk the rest. all ascended.

with my traits its 39 crit rate, 54 crit dmg, ~1850 toughness, 2100-2400 power (stax, might, food, whatever)

works excellent in wvw. and people dont expect a power engi with staying power. damage isnt optimal for pve, but it works fine and i can often rely on perma aggro which means the boss isnt kittening my mates.

when only pink trinkets existed, i had all celestial… but i felt squishy in wvw in rampager/zerk armor and i hit like a wet noodle in soldier armor. my argument against celestial is centered on wvw and large scale pve:
1. in wvw, you dont fight pcs/npcs all the time… you also need to consider structure damage. i wanted to optimize survivability and structure damage, so i run a power build with a minimum toughness requirement and throw the rest into damage.
2. in open world pve your conditions are pretty much worthless. condis arent worthless in dungeons, but the less you invest in them, the less you step on some other poor saps toes.

i do a lot of both (and mostly wvw) with only occasional dungeons and fairly frequent lowish fractals.

crit damage nerf will hurt, gonna be on the worst end of it since all my trinkets have crit damage… even though my build isnt what needs shaving. i expect to lose ~10 crit damage overall. and my crits essentially allow me to outsustain warriors, guards, well played rangers, non-fresh air eles, condibunker thieves, etc in duels. and stomp unsuspecting scrubs before they can react.

Crumps.4012:

Don’t forget that Celestial is about to hit with the nerf stick on critical damage though…

Then it may be useless. Having said that whatever you build ANET will most likely kitten it at some near future point and you’ll need to respec… they can’t sell gems if everyone has what they need can they. My 2c on it

Armor is not really a huge contributor of critical damage in the first place. Your rings alone near-match what your entire armor set provides (+17% versus +16%).