Guild Wars 2

People usually say that Celestial gear is useless because you “waste” points. I wasn’t sure if that was true, so I came up with a way of measuring the effectiveness of celestial gear in a built that is interested in multiple stats. I’m hoping you all can help me refine my thinking.

Valuing Critical Damage Points

Before I did anything else, I needed to figure out how to value the critical damage % points. I added up (using ascended gear) the number of major / minor / and crit damage points you get from each piece of gear. I assumed 1 helm, 1 shoulders, 1 chest, 1 gloves, 1 legs, 1 boot, 1 backpiece, 2 rings, 2 trinkets, 1 amulet, and 2 1 handed weapons.

Adding them up I got 1059 major points, 728 minor points, and 70 points in crit. Dividing 728 by 70, I determined to value each crit point as 10.4 points.

Useful Points
Then I computed a total number of “useful points” granted by different gear. I assumed that “useful points” are points that fall into one of these areas: Power, Precision, Crit Damage, Toughness, and Vitality. I pretending that Condition Damage, Healing, and Magic Find have no value.

Then I computed a total number of points granted for each piece of gear. The results below show the point total for using the “standard” gear without crit, “standard” gear with crit, and celestial.

Gear            Std    Std w/ crit   Celestial
Helm              109       97.8          111.2
Shoulders       80       76.8           80.8
Chest              245       225           242.4
Gloves             80       76.8           80.8
Legs                163      146.2          161.6
Boots               80       76.8            80.8
BackPiece      126      143            ----- 
Ring                 239      254.2          234.4
Trinket            211      223.8          204
Amulet           296      304.6          288.8
1 H Weapon    218      206            212
2 H Weapon    435     400.6          420

So Why is this useful
I don’t know for sure, I’m still thinking about it.

I think it shows that as long as your build desires those 5 stats (power, precision, crit, vitality, and toughness) then you should start with celestial helm, shoulders, gloves, and boots as also provide more total “points”. Chest, Legs, and Weapons provide better value that the crit damage varieties (beserkers, valkyrie, and cavalier) but are worse than equipping other stat varieties. For ascended accessories, celestial is always inferior.

Note: in some cases the differences are minor. You only lose 2.6 “useful points” in the chestpiece in exchange for 45 points of condition damage and 45 points of healing. For legs you lose 1.4 “useful” points in exchange for 30 points of condition damage and healing.

Second Note: As soon as you don’t want the 5 stats (for example, you think you have enough vitality) celestial gear is always inferior to straight stats.

I do agree for Celes Helm. 3% Crit damage is just…. Nice… Berserker only give 2%.

Prev Gear i use Knight Helm. Then changed into Celes Helm. Well what can i say…. I gained more Crit damage and still have moderate defensive stat compared to my Old Knight Helm. Losing Power? Yes.. But I more happy for the crit damage :S

I’ve been using 8 for crit damage iirc, derived from comparing the celestial trinkets. However, the results are comparable.
Celestial I too found to be particular interesting in the reverse order for gear one used to rate the crit damage roi before:
Shoulder, Hands, Foot
Chest
Leg, Head
→ Reverse
as in where Std/with crit looks particular bad versus Std in your table.

However, I guess once I made my mind up, my Ele might be priority for them

Wothor.4781:

I’ve been using 8 for crit damage iirc, derived from comparing the celestial trinkets. However, the results are comparable.
Celestial I too found to be particular interesting in the reverse order for gear one used to rate the crit damage roi before:
Shoulder, Hands, Foot
Chest
Leg, Head
-> Reverse
as in where Std/with crit looks particular bad versus Std in your table.

However, I guess once I made my mind up, my Ele might be priority for them

8 pts / crit may be a better value to use. The interesting this about the crit is that the more you remove the lower the point value. 10.4 only really applies if you are going full zerker. If you, for example, remove the legs the value drops.

TooBz.3065:

Adding them up I got 1059 major points, 728 minor points, and 70 points in crit. Dividing 728 by 70, I determined to value each crit point as 10.4 points.

I think I have a few problems with your analysis. Each piece has it’s own stat to crit dmg ratio. I don’t think you can use a 10.4 ratio for everything.

Just looking at total stats (or “useful stats”) gained seems futile as it gets way too complicated. Also, with how power/precision/crit dmg are just basically “power”, I think it’s better to look at effective power loss and then look at what you gain. As per my previous post on this:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/New-Celestial-Armor-vs/first#post2450718
Basically, swapping from zerker to knights or celestial give the exact same power damage loss (about 9%) What it comes down to is do you prefer the toughness or the 4 other stats you get from celestial. With diminishing returns on stats and bonus condition damage in some builds, it can be viable.

I agree with you that ascended celestial trinkets are not worth it. With the announcement of an ascended weapons/armor tier of gear coming out though, I decided to not bother crafting celestial exotics and wait to see what the new stats look like.

What that analysis shows is that celestial is better in most cases for a build that wants to maximize crit damage, but falls behind for a build that wants to maximize about anything else. Even though the number of useful points is still higher in some cases, celestial gear is so spread out that if you just want to focus on a couple stats, you shouldn’t take it…unless that stat is crit damage.

Crit damage isn’t especially useful if your crit rate and base damage is low to begin with.

What Celestial does offer, is superior damage output compared to knights (Assuming you take sharper images and decent precision bonuses from food and runes) without losing too much of your EHP. In otherwords it’s a bridging set between rampagers/zerkers, and knights – slightly less survivability, for marginally more DPS.

The fact it also boosts healing might justify it’s use in WvW/dedicated support role, since you’re boosting the mantra heals and regen not insignificantly without sacrificing your DPS and survival significantly compared to knights… but my personal opinion is those uses are too fringe and too gimmicky.

Gimme a set of zerkers any day.

@Pyro
Absolutely, the only thing that makes the celestial gear worthwhile at all is if you are interested in maximizing crit damage while having some defense. This is only because they didn’t reduce (and in some cases increased) the amount of critical damage for celestial gear. Everything else is decreased substantially.

For example, even if you are interested in 5 of the other stats, you are still better off not getting celestial.

@Ryuujin
Yeah, I was analyzing this outside of all zerker all the time approach. What actually triggered it was I was trying to figure out if I could improve on the stats that Osicat uses in the Shattercat heavy 3.0 build.

Plus the analysis did assume that healing power and condition damage are worthless.

Pyroatheist.9031:

What that analysis shows is that celestial is better in most cases for a build that wants to maximize crit damage, but falls behind for a build that wants to maximize about anything else. Even though the number of useful points is still higher in some cases, celestial gear is so spread out that if you just want to focus on a couple stats, you shouldn’t take it…unless that stat is crit damage.

I have to disagree. You can not look at just maxing crit damage in a vacuum.

What about a build that wants to maximize defense while minimizing the loss in damage.
Comparing knights to celestial: same effective power (considering 3 power stats)
Comparing zerker to celestial: 9% effective power damage loss.

Other stats:
Knights: 315 toughness OR ~ 16% damage reduction.
Celestial: 140 toughness OR ~ 7% damage reudction and 140 vit/healing power.
140 condition damage OR ~ 16% increase in base bleed damage.

Since sharper images +illusions and/or the staff is rather common in mesmer builds, a 9% loss of power but 16% increase in bleeds is potentially comparable if not more damage than full zerker gear. Mathematically more damage than going knights armor. Mathematically more defense than going zerker armor. It’s not about maxing “useful points or crit dmg.” It’s about maxing total damage and still having more defense than zerker.

Math is based on 20 domination/dueling with zerker weapons/accessories. This seems like a fairly common mesmer set up. With 30 into chaos/inspiration/illusions the condition and defense # will change do to diminishing returns. Example: 30 chaos would change the knights/celestial damage reductions to 14% or 6.4% respective damage reduction.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

Since sharper images +illusions and/or the staff is rather common in mesmer builds, a 9% loss of power but 16% increase in bleeds is potentially comparable if not more damage than full zerker gear.

Context is important here.

In WvW and solo play this may be true. But in Dungeon/Team PvE condition stacking is a serious headache; rangers, mesmers and engineers for example can stack a lot of bleeds by accident – all those “dud bleeds” will block a large portion of your own bleeds thus lowering your effective DPS. On the flipside, your own bleeds will be weaker than a condition specialist like a necro – you filling the condition cap with weaksauce bleeds may actually result in a net decrease in party DPS as you’re blocking the condition user from landing proper, high DPS bleeds.

It’s also interesting to note that celestial stats have been available since launch in PvP, and mesmer’s using celestial is nearly unheard of

I agree with conditions being bad in groups/dungeons but those dud bleeds are happening regardless of what condition damage you have. It really does come down to the potential. I don’t PvP that much so I cant comment on that.