Guild Wars 2

I cannot decide what I want to make here. I was pretty set on celestial since I change my build often but I am leaning towards beserker now. I am only willing to make one of these sets. What is everyone that is making ascended making that you think will give you the most use out of the cost of this set?

Depends on your build, for sure.
I feel like we have a very wide range of active defenses that let many builds skip the pure-defensive PVT gear a lot of folks clamor for in WvW.

If you run PvE, you probably want full berserker.

If you mostly do small-group wvw and you’re running a condition build- you’ll want rabid or whatever those folks want.

For a PvE lightweight, WvW roamer, and WvW zerg-member, I’m planning on looking into a mix of Berskerker and Solder (PVT) stuff. It should give me a nice balance of damage and survival. Generally, I have an easier time getting laurels/guild commendations than resources/gold, so I’ll most likely get two sets of ascended jewelry and go a bit more heavy on the berserker side with my armor.

I made a berserker ascended set for my mes since it’s easier to switch trinkets plus she’s equipped with all legendaries so I can change weapon stats easily. I personally like DPS over condition anyway.

I’ll be going for a mix of Beserker and Knight. I hate how much crit costs on some armour, so I might use Celestial instead of Knight if I need more of it.

I typically build shatter or phantasm, so I can’t say for mantra builds or some hybrids but:

In my opinion condition damage really only helps staff and phantasm bleeds which compared the power gain to my auto-attacks and raw damage of phantasms, mind wracks and other dps abilities I didn’t find it worth it.

Healing power is beneficial for a select array of spells/traits. Signet of the Ether & Phantasmal Healing get bonus healing over time, but since so many mechanics in PvE are “dodge or die” I wasn’t completely sold on this. Restorative Illusions seems really weak to me and is so far down the Inspiration tree most shatter builds don’t include it. Restorative Mantras probably sees the best benefit from this, but I’ve only poked around with mantra builds here and there. I really wanted to farm Celestial. The weapons are one of the best looking for mesmers imho. Thought it would be interesting to be versatile, but I think the benefits of the condition damage and healing power to be too circumstancial and not worth the sacrifice of straight power.

For this reason I typically gear about have berserker’s & half soldier’s for high power with some survivability stats thrown it. (Cardboard Cannon) If they some day made it easier to farm a second set, I may experiment, but until then it’s what suits me.

I’ve gone full Berserker. I don’t really tend to use Conditions all that much, as they are pretty much “pointless” in PvE, and I would rather have something I can use both in PvE and WvW. For that matter I run full Berserker trinkets and weapons. I’ve used the armor Infusion slots to gain a little more Toughness with Resilient Infusions. It’s like getting slightly less than a second set of boots worth of Toughness (30), not a huge deal, but every little bit helps.

Works fine for me in PvE, and works just as well in WvW, both when roaming alone, with a few friends or in the guild group during prime time. Only used it once in a GvG, but at least I didn’t die while dishing out the damage, heh.

As others point out, it’s far easier to exchange your trinkets, so if I wish to get some more defense, more conditions and/or a hybrid, I can exchange the stats on the trinkets. With my weapons being Legendary, I can switch the stats at will for those too, though I probably wouldn’t.