Guild Wars 2

I just hit 80 on my Mesmer today and I am trying to decide what ascended amulet to get her. After looking around the forums and reading some popular builds it seems like Berserker is the most popular choice right now, but I am also curious about the Celestial amulet as well. I’m looking for opinions on which is the best choice before I run out and spend 30 laurels. Please note that my Mesmer will mainly be for PvE/Dungeons/low level Fractals. At the moment my plan is to run a pretty standard S/F + GS build with Berseker armor.

Thank you for your input!

Zerker for sure.

Well, you are talking about Ascended. Unlike in sPvP where Celestial has the same +crit damage as Berserker, in PvE/WvW the “celestial” ascended amulets have only +6 crit damage to berserker/cavalier’s +9.

So when it comes to Ascended it’s always best value to pick either Cavalier or berserker gear.

LiuliRenai.3928:

Well, you are talking about Ascended. Unlike in sPvP where Celestial has the same +crit damage as Berserker, in PvE/WvW the “celestial” ascended amulets have only +6 crit damage to berserker/cavalier’s +9.

So when it comes to Ascended it’s always best value to pick either Cavalier or berserker gear.

Thanks for the explanation! I never even considered Cavalier before. The added toughness in Cavalier might be a worthwhile trade off. Do you use Cavalier in a PvE setting regularly?

Zkarlet.2478:

Zerker for sure.

Thanks for the input. It does seem that Berseker is the popular choice right now!

Arzeth.4701:

Thanks for the explanation! I never even considered Cavalier before. The added toughness in Cavalier might be a worthwhile trade off. Do you use Cavalier in a PvE setting regularly?

I use a mix of Cavalier and Berserker for my ascended gear. It’s good to have a certain amount of toughness in GW2 since the more toughness you have, the less effective it is, but if you have none at all you will take a lot of extra damage.

I went celestial. Ascended amulets are expensive and ascended trinkets in general take a while to get. Also, the “celestial” amulets and accessories have a large point difference compared to non-celestial trinkets. The extra vit and toughness you get adds a nice balance to one’s build. If you feel you need to increase a specific attribute you can always do that with a new set of gear, upgrades, and traits.

The celestial amulet is definitely better. While you lose 3% crit damage, let’s put that into perspective. If you have an 20k health opponent, and you crit on every single attack, then having a berserker amulet essentially lowers the opponent’s life by 3%. For a 20k health opponent, 3% is only 600 damage you don’t have to do to kill them. How much is 600 damage? It’s 1/3 of a full glass-cannon greatsword auto-attack.

Basically, the difference is almost negligible. And in return, you get a bit of toughness and vit, a little extra condition damage to help sharper images compensate for the lost crit damage, and, most importantly, you never have to switch amulets between builds. It’s totally worthwhile to do until you have an ascended amulet + accessories + rings for every single build you want to run- which most people don’t have.

Celestial amulet is by far more cost efficient- if you don’t care about extreme min/maxing, go with celestial.

Celestial amulets have 7%, not 6%, crit dmg bonus.
The loss in burst damage isn’t just from -2% crit dmg though. It also loses -72power and -31prec compared to zerker.

Baa.4582:

Celestial amulets have 7%, not 6%, crit dmg bonus.
The loss in burst damage isn’t just from -2% crit dmg though. It also loses -72power and -31prec compared to zerker.

Precision only gives you crit chance, and the ratio is something like 21 prec = 1% chance. So you only lose 1-2% crit chance, which is almost nothing. The -72 power is probably the biggest issue, as I have no idea how that will affect your dps. But on the bright side, you get an extra 1% crit damage from my earlier post to make up for it ;D

Still think Celestial amulet is completely worthwhile for the flexibility it gives. As long as you don’t add in more celestial items (so that your stat losses don’t start adding up), you will hardly notice any difference, if any at all.

I don’t like celestial for dungeons. The “surviveability” or balance they grant are not needed at all. Mesmers already have a lot of tools to survive and a bit of extra toughness/vitality wont make a difference. If you want to “start out slowly” and have some more surviveability in the begining you can do that. But I would not recommend for this to spend 30 laurels (at least 20 days of work/waiting) for something you might want to switch out later on for something stronger (about 5% better in damage). In my opinion its better to start out with switching out some of your exotic pieces with knights/valkyrie gear at first and then look where you can get.

If you’re really committed to just doing Berserker Phant or Shat, go with Berserker’s over anything else.

If you want to occasionally – or frequently – toy around with other builds, just go with the Celestial. It’s more useful in many builds than it appears.

I run the Celestial amulet (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Syzygy). I make up the loss of power via runes/other equipment, plus I get access to Utility Infusions. I run a lot of dungeons so I use the Gilded Infusion. +20% gold from the dungeon monsters? yes please. Suddenly that 10 silver the sub-boss drops is 12 silver, that 5 silver that champion dropped is 6 silver. The extra silver adds up quickly when you’re running dungeons or downing champions.

I used to have Berserker amulet but since switching and making appropriate tweaks elsewhere the only significant difference I’m seeing now is the extra gold. And oh no that mob took 5.5 seconds to down instead of 5… * tear *

But really, you should use whatever you find most comfortable/fits your style best.