Guild Wars 2

Yeah ascended armour has been out for a bit now and while I have been using my daily cooldowns, I haven’t actually decided what I might craft yet. The thought of crafting celestial armour (okay at everything, great at nothing) doesn’t really thrill me and as a WvW’r and PvE’r, ascended was the worst thing Anet could have done.

I’m thinking Berzerker which would cover PvE and which could be mixed with ascended trinkets for variations in WvW. This would cover most all except condition builds which I also like.

Has anyone thought on what they are going to craft or have crafted already and why?

I have absolutely no clue. I’ve been asking myself the same question since it was released, though I only have enough mats for one piece currently.

Indeed, it’s a mighty investment and you have to be sure about what you want. Because of that, I personally will probably never craft ascended armor. I’ll craft weapons (have one so far) which I don’t intend to get a legendary for, but armor is just too steep of an investment for the diverse amount of builds I play.

Not going to bother until more stat combos are released, or at least a way to change stats on ascended armour. With armour I change things too much, so easier to stick with exotics.

Would prefer to “ascend” current armour skins to those stats, rather than being forced into a fixed skin/name (then having to transmute) and stat.

I’ll be going for ascended weapons on the other hand given I’m not likely to swap stats on them any time soon.

My thread on ascended armor (PvE).
Ps: Better off with several exotic sets instead of one Ascended Celestial if you want versallity.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Ascended-armor-for-maximum-damage-output/first#post3432567

Well I guess I’ll answer that one myself (had a talk with Colesy, zerk is fine tho some assassin parts give higher damage). So I went over GW2buildcraft for a check on ascended gear; here are the results :

The highest Effective power possible is 15595.6 with the following stats

• Power 3402
• Precision 2512

• Critical Damage - 134%
  Critical Multiplier 2.84

• Critical Chance 100% 80% chances exactly without fury, so there is no Precision loss
• Damage % modifier 61.42%

(Optional)

• Armor 1836
• Health 17082

These stats might look wild for you, but since we are speaking of dungeons, some standarts were applied such as :
Banner of Force
Banner of Discipline
25 stacks of might
Fury

Also, the build used is the 10 30 0 20 10 build for dungeons.

Damage modifier is so high because of – Slaying potion, Night Sigil, Force sigil, Scolar runes bonus, 3 Mantras and 3 Illusions up.

Now the gear :

• the best values come from a Zerker weapon set with Mighty infusions (+5 power) with Precision Stacks (and Power food buff)
• Trinkets are all Zerker with Power infusion (+5 power)
• Armor is Berzerker helm, shoulders, boots and gloves + Assassin coat and leggins, all 6 pieces with Precise infusions (+5 precision)

Enjoy the link : http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/mesmer/?4.3|c.5g.h2.c.5g.h3.d19.0.d19|c.5g.h2.d.5g.h3.d19.0.d19|5g.7e.5g.7e.5l.7e.5g.7e.5l.7e.5g.7e.d1a.d1a.d1a.d1a.d1a.d1a|2s.d13.2s.d13.3s.d19.2s.d19.3s.d19.2s.d13|a3.u24b.0.k28.a3|6f.j|32.3i.3j.38.3q|e

How ever, the link misses on Boons and Manual stat addition (values for stacking sigil, banners, traits)
Manual tab should read these values :

power: 170,
precision: 420,
critical damage: 15,
condition damage: 170,
damage multiplier: 12,
damage multiplier: 9,

---

Now people will run with forks at me shouting not eveyone has the money for versatile infusions (we keep normal infusions, get these from WvWvW), so here is the gear break down without these [15411.88 effective power, 1.17% less direct damage than optimal setup ]:

• Assassin Helm, Coat, Leggins,
• Berserker Gloves, Shoulders and Boots
• Rest remains same (weapons, trinkets and food/sigils), however we switch 3 out of 4 aviable Offensive infusions from Mighty to Precise.

What else? We’re also soloing the dungeon and we do not have any might nor do we have fury/banners? No problem, here is the optimal gear for such a situation :

• Assassin Helmet + Berzerker everything else
• Rest remains same (weapons, trinkets and food/sigils)

(Nb: Reflects are dependant on the target’s power but your precision and crit damage, a full Assassin set is more convenient when soloing Lupicus for example)

k, done.

I settled on power based builds (primarily shatter) and after a lot of experience in zergs, small scale roaming, solo, I hammered out some stats I’m comfortable with. I picked full ascended knights armor with ascended zerker of everything else (weapons, back, trinkets). 12 out of 14 of my infusion slots go to toughness, while the remaining 2 go to power. That gives me an extra 120 armor (60 infusions, 47 defense + 14 toughness from knight).

I was thinking that maybe just crafting that one piece of ascended that is better than it’s exotic version for each build.

For example, the Berserker’s legs are the only piece that have 1% more crit than the exotic version. Maybe starting there and crafting that one piece and leave the rest as exotic.

Then if you play the Blackwater PU condition build, then create the one piece that seems to give the most stats (if there is one).

I use Ascended Berserker armor set. With Ascended Berserker trinkets for pve. And swap to Exotic PVT trinkets when I go to WvW. Mes has enough utilities to survive that they can get away with using full Berserker armor. I rarely die in WvW because of this. Positioning is better than gear in WvW anyway. Blink is your friend.

If you want to go condition build for variation, just use an exotic armor set.

I went ahead with Berserker, since I prefer the raw damage over conditions, especially in PvE. I also use it in World vs. World for that matter (full zerk, since Mesmer has decent defensive skills), so it wasn’t too hard a choice for me to make.

I’d much rather have spent my time working on a Legendary set of armor though. I would love being able to switch stats out of combat and play more with builds while having a single set or armors and trinkets.

So, celestial is pretty objectively inferior due to exponential returns from specialisation and Anet’s apparent fetish for keeping power at a higher level of parity compared to prec/cond/crit.

That said, is anyone thinking of crafting their ascended set with allstat just because we can’t predict the meta? I’m increasingly thinking that I’d rather be eternally suboptimal than build locked.

I will craft celestial helm, coat and leggins and keep my exotic berserker stuff for the rest. Those pieces got higher critdmg than the berserker ones and allow me to go with full berserker trinkets while still regaining a decent amount of toughness/vit.

That’s for WvW roaming on a shatter mesmer.

/edit: I would even craft the exotic celestial stuff but since the recipes itself cost a fortune, i’ll go directly for ascended.

Not a fan of Celestial for any class.

I got all the weapons and 2 armor pieces (gloves + boots) since they surprisingly look good on my unique armor set. Also the agony resist is required for frac 50. I probably will create one more piece since I “just” got 65 AR and 50 needs 70 AR for the 1% dot i guess. Glad that I’ve bought tons of materials at the first day (6g material investment for each damast) since they are worth now almost 14g.

The 5% higher stats at the armor is pretty much like 0% damage increase tough. However if I will have 1HP once I know it were my boots / gloves xP

Xavi.6591:

Not a fan of Celestial for any class.

It’s a very efficient setup for a staff ele in raids but not many other places.