Guild Wars 2

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJARWl0ApYoNDxVI8DNRCRl5MEgY+Bhw1XQAcAA-TlCBABbpMQLleopEshLAgCHCAAeAAWq+zGHBge2fQPdBkCgJhRA-w

Here is the current build I have been playing for ages. At the stage where I am making some ascended Armor. Any thoughts on whether to make it PVT or Celestial for WvW?

I personally went celestial even though i know i can get better stats if i optimize and mix and match.

The reason for me to grab celestials is that by swapping the accessories (which i have pretty much every combination of) i can alter my toons playstyle.

Full zerker for roaming, might builds and burst.

Full pvt for frontline pusher

clerics for healway gameplay

and so on.

My second celestial gear was full keepers. Which btw is great in a healway build, combination of lots of healing, burst and crit is superfun in a 0/0/2/6/6.

Wont craft an other ascended for my war/guard.

It’s hard for a guardian. My hunch is PVT. I do pvt with zerker trinkets because I don’t want to spend so many laurels/commendations for extra trinkets

The recipes for celestial success:

Active use of all available stats, in particular healing power and condition damage. This is why classes like engineers do well— most of their good skills are mixed damage and they have ample access to regen. Guardians have dodge heals, healing sigils, regen, mace heals and possibly healing breeze— not the easiest to incorporate. For condi damage, there’s just burning… Due to the poor scaling of AH with healing power, I’m thinking celestial is not the best choice.

Lots of might, due to it boosting both kinds of damage. Might is especially effective for celestial because it is a flat bonus, and builds with celestial have lower power due to the stat spread. Fixed bonus to smaller numbers is an larger bonus relatively speaking. Guardians can have trouble with consistent might— yes we have empower but that’s more of a burst. I suppose if you have a party that can maintain all that might it’d be nice. You do have fire fields.

Ferocity nerf makes it even harder for guardians to take advantage.

IMO, you would need to overcome both obstacles for it to not waste stats. But when it comes to terms of raw survival, nothing can beat PvT or sentinel. (well, there is nomads but I assume people want to be useful, pins excluded)

I don’t know. I just pressed a few buttons with your build for celestial. How does it look?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJARWlsApYoNDxVI8DNRCRl5MEgY+BP31XQAcAA-TlCEABLcIAeSZAXKBxU9HJeAAap0DgLAwDHBgY2fwNdBkBgZMA-w

[IMO too much effort, it doesn’t help that celestial is time gated]

— Definite loss of raw power, with a bit higher ferocity which won’t make up the difference. You will need an average of a couple of might stacks constantly running over your previous build to keep up.

— Dodge rolls are twice as effective. This is the biggest thing.

— Your burns are like 25% more effective which may help once in a while.

— I took empowering might for might (duh). You will have better sustain as long as you keep attacking, but the loss of 2hm can be an issue.

— Shelter blocks = might

— I sacrificed your 3rd stability for about 50% more passive healing. (145 HPS vs 96 HPS). However, if we took absolute resolution on your pvt build, it’d already be 120 hps so only 25 HPS can be attributed to celestial. (~19% bonus). Keeping Courage would be 116 vs 96, which is a little more than 20%. Actually this is not too bad.

— I left a few pieces as soldier because I do not want the armor/hp to sink too low.

— Restoration was replaced with water. If the wiki isn’t lying to me, water scales with HP and restoration doesn’t. With water healing for 449 on a hit every 5 seconds, it should be more consistent than restoration and also heals allies.

I’m sure people can do better. I’ve seen people put up crazily optimized celestial builds that I don’t even understand, but yes, PVT with more offensive trinkets as you need seems to be the safest choice. I also think that celestial would be better with some variant of healway that could get might put onto it, due to the issues with scaling.

I wouldn’t trash celestial. Even discounting healing power and condition damage, the sum of the remaining stats of Celestial are on pair with the sum of stats offer by zerker or pvt. Therefore, Celestials are great as tools to increase overall stats. The downside is of course the lack of specialization. I have chests, shoes, legging as celestials and the rests of the pieces are combination of Zerker + Assasin + PVT as I see fit. Sure I am probly weaker in damage than a pure zerk, but not too far behind while usually last man standing in a near wipe.

Brutaly.6257:

I personally went celestial even though i know i can get better stats if i optimize and mix and match.

The reason for me to grab celestials is that by swapping the accessories (which i have pretty much every combination of) i can alter my toons playstyle.

Full zerker for roaming, might builds and burst.

Full pvt for frontline pusher

clerics for healway gameplay

and so on.

My second celestial gear was full keepers. Which btw is great in a healway build, combination of lots of healing, burst and crit is superfun in a 0/0/2/6/6.

Wont craft an other ascended for my war/guard.

I am generally on the commander and playing a front line pusher. The nice thing about PVT is the nice power/toughness/vitality balance, which provides plenty of survivability when combined with AH. AH basically makes up for not having very big healing power.

The big bonus to Celestial to me would be the increase to healing power and ferocity and the ability to play entirely different roles by just swapping accessories.

Meh I’m still confused. I recieved a wup-wup chest box the other day so maybe not having to craft a cele chest piece is a sign.

Don´t play full PVT, massive waste of dmg or support via healing power.

PVT amor and berserker trinkets (or zealot´s works well). Celestial is ok, still better then full pvt.

For whatever it might be worth, I have been using ascended celestial armor+weapons with full ascended zerker trinks when running around in WvW solo/small group roaming setup. I find it to work out just fine with travelers as far as speed, and survivability goes. Energy and stamina sigils on one swap out works well if you have heals on dodge as I do, and like to tag and spam blinds also. The DPS is honestly good, not optimal, and allows for some fair fights that usually end with you being the victor against multiple attackers. Not saying what I run, or how I play is the winning ticket, but I don’t suck at guardian play, and I’m still enjoying myself in game.

Norjena.5172:

Don´t play full PVT, massive waste of dmg or support via healing power.

PVT amor and berserker trinkets (or zealot´s works well). Celestial is ok, still better then full pvt.

I actually have a ton of different trinkets that I use to achieve different numbers, beserker, knights, cleric, soldier, celestial. So I am already doing what you say to some extent. TBH I find Crit Damage about the worst stat in the game for zerg play and lately have been running with near full pvt. I find you notice the difference in a group of 10 or less but otherwise its like meh the longer I live the more damage I do.

Its going to take a while to do the crystals so am not in a hurry.

The dmg diffrence between a 15p pvt meleetrain and a 15p half pvt half zerk meleetrain is huge.
U don´t need more defensive stats as other players. Eles can surive full celestial in meleetrains (D/D), necros in cavalier/knights.
Guards with shelter/renewed focus/heal on dogderolls and AH don´t even need full Pvt amor.
Warriors for example should use full pvt amor and zerk trinkets, because they need more toghness/vita then guards. The “worker” warrior does not have any additional active migtation (like endure pain which is not used).

It´s important to finish downed players fast, and u need dmg for it. Even clerics is better then full pvt. A full clerics train will dominate a full pvt train.

Even if u are alive longer then others, u aren´t more usefull. Probably they can´t rally because your dmg was to low? probably they did already more dmg in a shorter period of time?

~18-19k hp and ~2,4k amor, more is not needed as a guard. Less is possibel.

Relentliss.2170:

Brutaly.6257:

I personally went celestial even though i know i can get better stats if i optimize and mix and match.

The reason for me to grab celestials is that by swapping the accessories (which i have pretty much every combination of) i can alter my toons playstyle.

Full zerker for roaming, might builds and burst.

Full pvt for frontline pusher

clerics for healway gameplay

and so on.

My second celestial gear was full keepers. Which btw is great in a healway build, combination of lots of healing, burst and crit is superfun in a 0/0/2/6/6.

Wont craft an other ascended for my war/guard.

I am generally on the commander and playing a front line pusher. The nice thing about PVT is the nice power/toughness/vitality balance, which provides plenty of survivability when combined with AH. AH basically makes up for not having very big healing power.

The big bonus to Celestial to me would be the increase to healing power and ferocity and the ability to play entirely different roles by just swapping accessories.

Meh I’m still confused. I recieved a wup-wup chest box the other day so maybe not having to craft a cele chest piece is a sign.

Added a pic of my guardian in celestial armor with hoelbrak runes with celestial trinkets and back and clerics ring and amulet and celestial weapons.. This is what i zerg with and also command from time to time. Its dual or triple shouts and one consecration. I swap out the celestial back and trinkets for pvt and/or berserkers from time to time.

You seriously dont need any more vitality. I have 22k health with minor bloodlust and after killing 5 npc. The issue imo isnt healthpool, its the ability to restore healthpool to come back in to the fight as fast as possible. The ability to fast come backs lack in pvt imo.

Brutaly.6257:

Relentliss.2170:

Brutaly.6257:

I personally went celestial even though i know i can get better stats if i optimize and mix and match.

The reason for me to grab celestials is that by swapping the accessories (which i have pretty much every combination of) i can alter my toons playstyle.

Full zerker for roaming, might builds and burst.

Full pvt for frontline pusher

clerics for healway gameplay

and so on.

My second celestial gear was full keepers. Which btw is great in a healway build, combination of lots of healing, burst and crit is superfun in a 0/0/2/6/6.

Wont craft an other ascended for my war/guard.

I am generally on the commander and playing a front line pusher. The nice thing about PVT is the nice power/toughness/vitality balance, which provides plenty of survivability when combined with AH. AH basically makes up for not having very big healing power.

The big bonus to Celestial to me would be the increase to healing power and ferocity and the ability to play entirely different roles by just swapping accessories.

Meh I’m still confused. I recieved a wup-wup chest box the other day so maybe not having to craft a cele chest piece is a sign.

Added a pic of my guardian in celestial armor with hoelbrak runes with celestial trinkets and back and clerics ring and amulet and celestial weapons.. This is what i zerg with and also command from time to time. Its dual or triple shouts and one consecration. I swap out the celestial back and trinkets for pvt and/or berserkers from time to time.

You seriously dont need any more vitality. I have 22k health with minor bloodlust and after killing 5 npc. The issue imo isnt healthpool, its the ability to restore healthpool to come back in to the fight as fast as possible. The ability to fast come backs lack in pvt imo.

Thanks for uour help Brut. I can’t seem to make anything like that in the gw2 skills builder. You have a lot of stacks of stuff and seem to be using stats based food rather than the -40% conditions we usually use. Its hard to work out what they all are or what accessories to run.

Atm I am looking at making celestial. I admit I’ve gotten a bit bored with WvW and only play when the good commander is on so I don’t feel rushed. I think my whole server has.

Been thinking about for a while and I just cannot find a way to get around the low base power. Maybe the new retreat could be a factor but that’s a longshot.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJARWlsApfnNDxVI8DNRCRl9MEg/H2fwzVmXFAA-TlCBABdp0rPdBopEkU1fwSZAAXAAPeAAMcIA24IA0z+DkBgZMA-w

Also is force better than accuracy?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJARWlsApfnNDxaI8DRR8Ql9YEjvodfQlBQDcDA-TFCDAB1pLAgDBAnq/8lSQoU+ZxDAom9Hm4KAQGgqxA-w

Try this out, and see if it fits your style at all, go from there if so.

Power without precision is useless, power and precision without ferocity means low burst. Burst rules when it comes to all pvp formats. The trick is to get all three of them in there and with as much control as possible so you can burst on demand.

As a general rule 5 points in power equals to 6-7 points in precision. Its not as straight forward in reality but close enough.

With that said there is no straight answer if force is better. For raw damage yeah, but IMO you shouldt be looking just for top dps, you should look for a resonably controlable burst. More crit chance increases control.