Guild Wars 2

I’ve finally decided to buy an ascended amulet for my power based sword/x greatsword mesmer. Most of his gear is berserker’s so I was thinking of going with the berserker one but the stat increase on the celestial one has given me pause. While damage stats are obviously much better for him, none of the stats on the celestial one are a complete waste besides perhaps the healing. Which one would everyone recommend getting?

P.S. I use this guy almost exclusively for solo and group PvE so WvW effectiveness is not my primary concern.

I would take the Berserker one over the Celestial one. Don’t spread out your stats. Focus on the ones you use. So if you are a Berserker Mesmer then pick Berserker gear.

Mine is sitting on 99% Crit Damage with all Berserker gear.

I recommend going Celestial.

A lot of people on the forums will say you want to focus on 3 specific stats to optimize your build, but the Celestial amulet gives you so much more in terms of overall stat benefit. Compare Celstial Ammy (324 to stats, +7% crit damage, +4& mf) to Berzerker Ammy (211 to stats, +9% crit damage). The numbers speak for themselves.

And since your illusions inherit your power, precision, toughness, healing, condition damage, and crit damage you are also making them much stronger than you would with any other amulet.

Also, Celestial allows you to easily change up your build without changing up your gear.

That completely depends on if the +stats to healing power and condition dmg are more useful to you than the extra stats you would gain from one with more focused stats

Nadeen.6371:

Mine is sitting on 99% Crit Damage with all Berserker gear.

You’re missing something then. 20 Dueling & Zerker gear should give you 100%.

Quee.2389:

I recommend going Celestial.

A lot of people on the forums will say you want to focus on 3 specific stats to optimize your build, but the Celestial amulet gives you so much more in terms of overall stat benefit. Compare Celstial Ammy (324 to stats, +7% crit damage, +4& mf) to Berzerker Ammy (211 to stats, +9% crit damage). The numbers speak for themselves.

And since your illusions inherit your power, precision, toughness, healing, condition damage, and crit damage you are also making them much stronger than you would with any other amulet.

Also, Celestial allows you to easily change up your build without changing up your gear.

An effective Mesmer does not need Toughness/Vitality/Healing Power. Really, have you seen our defensive cooldowns? 2s invuln on 8s CD, yes please. Phase Retreat, yes please. “Perma” vigor, yes please. Not to mention Distortion, even if that is on a large CD, and stealth on Decoy.

Flissy.4093:

An effective Mesmer does not need Toughness/Vitality/Healing Power. Really, have you seen our defensive cooldowns? 2s invuln on 8s CD, yes please. Phase Retreat, yes please. “Perma” vigor, yes please. Not to mention Distortion, even if that is on a large CD, and stealth on Decoy.

If you play exclusively sPvP, this is a valid approach.
In WvW or PvE, I’d still like to have a moderate amount of Toughness and/or Vitality around because you simply cannot avoided all the damage you’d need to avoid. At some point you need to be able to survive some. Healing Power is ofc debatable, considering just how little healing we have compared to many other classes (really, why do we have ~0 healing utility beyond our Regen-fields-by-Phantasms, which are highly situational at best).

Carighan.6758:

Flissy.4093:

An effective Mesmer does not need Toughness/Vitality/Healing Power. Really, have you seen our defensive cooldowns? 2s invuln on 8s CD, yes please. Phase Retreat, yes please. “Perma” vigor, yes please. Not to mention Distortion, even if that is on a large CD, and stealth on Decoy.

If you play exclusively sPvP, this is a valid approach.
In WvW or PvE, I’d still like to have a moderate amount of Toughness and/or Vitality around because you simply cannot avoided all the damage you’d need to avoid. At some point you need to be able to survive some. Healing Power is ofc debatable, considering just how little healing we have compared to many other classes (really, why do we have ~0 healing utility beyond our Regen-fields-by-Phantasms, which are highly situational at best).

Just go for zerkers and use omnomberry pies when you need some sustain. Damage taken in dungeons out scales any minor mitigation you’d be able to mix in so all you’re really doing is making things harder to kill.

Berserker and Celestial are both legit depending on what you want to do.

If you have any intent of spread stats for slightly better durability / survivability / flexibility, then the Celestial amulet is a good slot to do it in (as opposed to … runes, or something). If you ever consider dropping 1 slot of Zerk gear for Knight’s or something with hybrid durability … then swapping the amulet for a Celestial is probably a better choice.

If you don’t give a kitten and want bigger numbers, then stick with Zerk. (<— this is what I do).

I agree with Easymode. Unless you are going pure offense, defense, or support, the celestial usually works out better for most builds. I ran the numbers for me (w/o food/stones):

Berserkers: +12% damage
Cavaliers: +9.6% damage
Knights: +10% damage
Celestial: =9.7% damage

And that does not include cond damage, just DD. The fact that I have several soldiers/knights/valkyrie pieces makes the celestial a no-brainer for me. Slightly less increase in offense plus 54 to v/t/h? Yes, please (OK so the +h is silly, but still +108 combined to v and t). Celestial should really give less +crit dmg to be balanced.

Now if I wanted total berserkers for events or a pure support, etc build, I might consider a skewed amulet, but not otherwise. Plus, Celestial still viable if I ever want to switch builds.

When it comes to selecting an ascended item, think of it this way:

What gear sets will you want for the various things you do?

There will be some times where you want a mix of offense and defense stats for sure, but there will never be a time when you want 100% all defense stats. However, there will be some times when you want 100% offense stats (such as CoF speed runs and such).

Because of this, I say go berserker. If you need more defense, you can always swap a cheap exotic for something with a lot of defense, like ‘of the soldier’ or something like that to offset the lack of defense on your ascended amulet.

I went with the Syzygy celestial amulet. I’ve still got some green jewelry. I’ve found I can get by just fine solo in pve. I even solo roam in wvw without much trouble. IMHO stats are only important to a point. Eventually it’s about how you play not what you’re wearing. Besides with the celestial amulets you can get access to those yummy utility infusions (+gold/ +karma).

Flissy.4093:

Nadeen.6371:

Mine is sitting on 99% Crit Damage with all Berserker gear.

You’re missing something then. 20 Dueling & Zerker gear should give you 100%.

How so? I’m 4/6 Berserker Ascended and full berserker exotics. I’m at 99% too. Unless sigils come into play here.

Has anyone gone Celestial for all their Ascended Jewelry? I’m thinking of doing this which will allow me to change specs easily.

Arale.4207:

Flissy.4093:

Nadeen.6371:

Mine is sitting on 99% Crit Damage with all Berserker gear.

You’re missing something then. 20 Dueling & Zerker gear should give you 100%.

How so? I’m 4/6 Berserker Ascended and full berserker exotics. I’m at 99% too. Unless sigils come into play here.

Full bers with ruby orbs. Bers weapons with any sigil. 4/6 Ascended Bers and 2 Exotic Bers Earrings with Exquisite Ruby Jewels. 20 points in Dueling. No food. 100% Critical Damage with 2 weapons. 99% Critical Damage with 1 weapon.

I thought about this for a long time. In the end I went with the celestial amulet for the following reasons:

1. I play a lot of different specs, and I can use this amulet with all of them.

2. The difference between and ascended zerker amulet and an exotic zerker amulet with a jewel is 11 power, 6 prec, and 1% crit damage. Are those extra stats worth 30 laurels to you? They aren’t to me. The celestial is also very close in stats to the Triforge. However, the Triforge is virtually impossible for me to acquire . Laurels are my only realistic way to obtain a stat spread like celestial’s.

3. The celestial has something like 35% more raw stats (accounting for crit and MF) than any other exotic amulet.

You may get more stats from Celestial, but that’s because not all stats are created equal. Healing power, for example, is probably one of the weakest stats in the game in terms of how much of a difference it affects your output.

Toughness and Vitality also only make a difference on hits you take, which is significantly less for mesmers compared to something like a warrior or guardian since mesmers defend themselves through their abilities primarily rather than simply absorbing damage.

If you’re focusing on WvW, I could see going for some defensive stats, but otherwise, choosing the celestial over berserker is just replacing your important stats with fluff stats.

Just because you get more stats overall doesn’t mean you’re getting more benefit overall.

That’s my 2 cents at least.

Absolutely true. I should mention that I am primarily a WvW player. That skews my perspective on gear. If you are a PvEer who runs all zerker all the time, then I understand why you’d go for the ascended zerker amulet. You’d get it for that extra infusion slot.

I went for Rabid, personally. I’ll admit that I may go Celestial once I get to worrying about Ascended accessories. I figure I needed the extra Toughness, considering I’m like 80% WvW.
Of course, I stay in Condi builds. For a Zerker-type I’d have to say that the Celestial
might just prove rather workable. You’d gain a small amount of T/V, which would help make you a little less glassy.

Xavi.6591:

Has anyone gone Celestial for all their Ascended Jewelry? I’m thinking of doing this which will allow me to change specs easily.

Done. For a varied playstyle (PvE, Dungeons, WvW) it really helps a lot because it means you’re never outside of your comfort zone.

It also helps because I am not yet 100% certain whether I enjoy the condition-based or sword-based playstyle more. And in each case, the other one remains more viable (Scepter and Staff also scale well with Power, GS and Swords still cause lots of bleeding and some confusion).

It’s really the only “truly” viable solution IMO, unless you have no qualm with re-acquiring Ascended items should you decide to try another spec in the future.

Ether feast scales VERY GOOD with healing power. The small difference from the Celestial amulet I already felt. Same goes for vitality and thoughness. The triple defensive stat increase makes a lot of diff in wvw. And it’s on of the FEW ways to get so much free stats (with little offensive sacrafice). Lunaria rings (celestial), sacrafice more stats, compared to the 3 stat focussed items. Imo If you only EVER gonna use one ‘celestial’ equip, it should be amulet any day. Hell even condition damage is used as i’m using the minor trait ‘clones do bleed on crit’. The lower damage compared to my 8% crit rate exotic is negligable. For other professions (like warrior) the question is much harder since they dont have use for condition damage (not much at least). Almost every mesmer build has deceptive evasion, and thus condition damage. You guys should not forget about that. Secondly Ether feast with 3 clones out, heals very good. The slight +56 healing boost, already made a difference for me.