Guild Wars 2

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAW8clwzKqXTTmGbdJiJFBHydqA0hqA2RqgqVSBvdhA-jkCBYLCyUgQEHwkIAJfFRjtqpIasqaER1abYmcZ14bIyyAwsAA-w

Pros:
- Almost 21k hp
- Almost 2.6k armor
- Good amount of crit damage
- Decent crit chance
- Mediocre condi damage (for bleeds)
- Good healing
- Decent condi removal
- Easy switch between builds such as condi-phantasm-shatter without changing your gear (yes it will not be as specialized as a build focusing on the required traits but it will do nevertheless)

Cons:
- Low ooc mobility -no swiftness runes-
- Low power compared to regular phantasm builds, this may result in lower damage output but I don’t know the exact result since the condi damage is good and this will reflect on bleeds.
- Lower stats in areas of focus with regards to the build in use.

ps. I have not tried this build yet it is only on paper and this is only a theoretical approach. Looking at the numbers I am appealed to at least trying this build I should say.

Open for constructive criticisms and improvements.

maybe switch offhand sword to pistol :O → more bleeds

Yeah that is a good idea, but I don’t know if it is good to give up on sword cd reduction or deceptive evasion. Bleeds are procced on illusions so clones also give bleeds, and deceptive= clones so I don’t know. Counter is also a source of clone, while magic bullet is nice as well. Tough one. I think it is matter of preference. I guess I would give up on sword cd to keep the clone source from deceptive evasion if I were to switch to pistol.

Serhend.6382:

- Low power compared to regular phantasm builds, this may result in lower damage output but I don’t know the exact result since the condi damage is good and this will reflect on bleeds.

From my experiments, there is a good deal of parity between condition and power sets provided you are stacking for bleeds; ie. rabid via condition deals similar damage to knights (2 offensive, 1 defensive). Zerkers deals damage comparable to Rampagers (3 offensive*)

Celestial splits it’s stats equally between offence/defence and utility (Magic find is no use at all offensively or defensively), based on the values pulled from rampagers then, it’s a given that celestial will deal significantly inferior DPS to rampagers (Specialised Power/Condi hybrid gear), and pack less survivability, than mixed rampagers/rabid, because you’re trading off some portion of your stats for Magic Find.

Simple fact is, PvE celestial exists for only two things:

• Giving you a “better” source of magic find than traditional magic find gear
• Confusing newbies by providing a long grind for demonstrably inferior items.

*The reason you don’t see everyone using rampagers, only zerkers is because conditions are limited by the stack cap

Rampager will not provide with crit damage, it will provide me with condi damage, which is actually not something so required to increase since I want to be able to just change my trait and have a shatter build right on spot, focused on mind wrack. And since this is all theory I really don’t like the idea of just throwing it aside without actually trying it.

Ryuujin – I would agree with you, except look at the stats on celestial – it gives MORE total points than other sets (excluding magic find). So you get more survivability (tough/vit/healing). It also gives you very close to the same total crit dmg as zerkers. On top of that you get mediocre power/crit chance/condi-damage. Take all that together, and my guess (someone do the math, pls:), is that it will do more total damage in a hybrid build than other sets.

It gives 3% more crit damage than berserker armor in total actually, really interestingly. I think it provides a very good balance.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAW8clwzKqXTTmGbdJiJFBHydqA0hqA2RqgqVSBvdhA-jkCBYLCyUgQEHwkIAJPFRjtqpIasabYKXER1mcZ14bIyyAwsAA-w
There’s the build with zerker.

winds of chaos does 256, and the bleeds do 354, burns do 368.
Crit chance is 55%, and dmg is 101%.

In the original build winds of chaos does slightly less damage, has slightly lower crit chance/dmg, but does about 100 more bleed/burn per application. It also has about 350 more armor and health, not to mention respectable levels of healing power.

Just goes to show: mesmers are in a great place to take advantage of celestial armor.

One thing to point out, once you start using celestial armor and a hybrid condi/power build. You need to act like you’re a condition class. You are now competing for bleed stacks with necros, rangers, etc. So, in PvE, you need to make sure that you don’t party with too many condi-classes, or you risk hurting the group dps.

I meant the armor crit damage only btw, not the gear. Combine it with berserker trinkets and you go beyond the traditional berserker set in terms of crit damage.

bobross.5034:

Ryuujin – I would agree with you, except look at the stats on celestial – it gives MORE total points than other sets (excluding magic find). So you get more survivability (tough/vit/healing).

A “typical” coat gives:
1 × 101 primary attribute
2 × 72 secondary attributes

For a net total of 245 stat points. In the case of knights, then you’ll have 173 in offence, 72 in defence. In case of rampagers, all 245 are put towards offence.

Zerker gear gives:
1 × 101 power
1 × 72 precision
_1 x 5% crit damage _

Giving 173 stats points, and 5% crit damage bonus (All of which are offence, and we know from my condition damage tests gives approximate parity – so we could call this ‘equivalent’ to 72 offensive points when the crit rate is around 50-60%)

Celestial gives:
6 × 45 attributes
1 × 6% crit damage
1 × 3% MF

If 5% crit at 50-60% crit chances hold parity with 72 stats in condition, then 6% crit at 33% is equivalent to ~40-45 stats in offence. Adding in power/condi/precision we could then say celestial has “equivalent” to ~175 points in offence.

This is of course a fairly big fudge, but it suggests that the offensive capabilities of celestial is similar to knights or rabid gear (172 offence); and is certainly without a doubt, inferior to rampagers or berzerkers. (245 in offence).

And that is probably why they did not call it rampager.v2 or berserker.v2 and hence why I called this a low powered yet a balanced build. Obviously if I wanted higher offensive stats I would have gone for a different build. That was not exactly constructive criticism as I have asked for but rather a suggestion of total change of gear-build, which is kind of out of topic in this case. I got your point when you said you thought it did not give enough offensive stats for you but that was already stated.

Ryuujin.8236:

If 5% crit at 50-60% crit chances hold parity with 72 stats in condition, then 6% crit at 33% is equivalent to ~40-45 stats in offence. Adding in power/condi/precision we could then say celestial has “equivalent” to ~175 points in offence.

I get what you’re going for here, but by that logic – Valkyrie’s is less than all the other sets?

Anyway, I’m sure a full zerker set would do more dps than this, but it doesn’t lose a lot of offense to gain a lot of defense.

So I’ll just agree with your 172 number, but then consider that it also gets
45 toughness
45 vit
45 healing.

thats 135 in defense, which is far superior to the lack of defense in zerkers, superior to the defense offered by knights and just shy of the defense offered by soldiers (144 – between tough/vit) and worse than clerics (173 between healing/toughness).

Considering that a mesmer can take advantage of all of these and make them work, Celestial makes a lot of sense for a mesmer with a balanced play-style and a moderate level of skill (i.e. not avoiding all damage, like Osicat or somesuch).

Yeah on paper it seems like a better defensive option. But the usefulness of healing can’t be compared 1 to 1 with toughness or vitality (Different builds and strategies yield different results. ie regen and mantra of restoration is more strongly affected than ether feast)

So that’s a different analysis for a different time.

Edit That said – even if we discount healing entirely, that still leaves 90 defensive, vs knight’s 101 (i also just realised, knights is toughness primary isn’t it, not power,* so my earlier numbers are off, and in fact celestial is quite a lot better than knights. offensively _and_defensively* (As well as infinitely better than Explorer’s)

I can only see celestial finding its place in an attempted hybrid type build like this. I’ve been spending most of my time in the ele forums lately looking at peoples thoughts on celestial stats and guardian forums(though I don’t have a guardian) It’s viable because everything is viable in WvW it isn’t optimal. For celestial to have a place optimally then people would have to do the opposite of the norm and build around the armor to get to a stat combination that isn’t possible through mixing and matching currently.

516 healing power doesn’t make decent healing thats still bad healing for pretty much any class outside of a ele since ele has some of the best scaling heals in the game. If 516 was decent healing then grabbing 300 points in your healing line and 2 clerics weapons and call it a day for all the bunker type builds out there you don’t have 15 points in inspiration so you aren’t getting a constant source of outside healing that isn’t your 6 skill. Unless you count the possible chaos armor regen procs is random. I find the trinkets to be good but the armor isn’t worth it (I only run celestial trinets on my ele). 516 isn’t decent condition damage either it goes again to what I was saying about healing. Burn scales the best bleeds scale like meh. You don’t have duration either and bleed duration > bleed damage.

That said I’m sure you can kill stuff in WvW but you aren’t really benefiting anyone with the healing including yourself so if you take all the points you have there for healing and put them somewhere else you could probably get the idea why celestial is just not to good. So its viable just because you can try anything in WvW there is no ping gear requirements to do anything there.

I think when you guys take your “points in defense” in to account, you should remember that healing is a terrible stat. Personally I wouldn’t even count those points from healing.

Xenon.4537:

I think when you guys take your “points in defense” in to account, you should remember that healing is a terrible stat. Personally I wouldn’t even count those points from healing.

That really depends on where you get your healing. Yeah, for Ether Feast its meh, but in an Inspiration build Healing is an incredible stat. Regeneration scales rather well with Healing, and its fairly common to pull near perma regen with Inspiration traits. Couple that with the RM trait and some points in Chaos and you boost its effectiveness even more.

Didn’t know healing was so important for everyone. Healing comes as it is. What should be taken into account is the balance of the build. Sure I could grab some toughness, even like 1850 toughness, 55% crit chance, 88% crit damage, 3-3.1k attack all together but that would be a whole different setup. Take into account that this build was supposed to be based on the new armor combined with the all-around stat provider trinkets and not that alternative other ones out there that I assume we all know of already.

How on earth you feel like contributing something constructive when you say “Nuh, this stat is not enough, this gear does better so screw it” kind of stuff? I am not asking for people to make me a build here, I am asking for possible improvements that can work better in the intended direction. You can tell me to get 1 or 2 stuff out and replace it with something, or change the sigils or change the armor rune, or change traits and trait points alright, but unfortunately everyone is so narrow-mindedly thinking over the new armor’s offerings and short-comings. Tell me what makes the use of this armor BETTER in any build at all (say shatter, phantasm, condi, hybrids, etc). I was already fully aware of the fact that it distributed stats among all and this in fact reduced points in areas of focus -as said in first post- but also increased points in other areas, hence allowing for a more balanced build (so saying these things over and over again is really not useful). We get it, you hated the celestial trinkets and now you hate the armor with celestial stats because ……………… Now if you can get over it and provide some potential improvement to the build I would appreciate it.

bobross.5034:

I get what you’re going for here, but by that logic – Valkyrie’s is less than all the other sets?

Valkyrie’s is less.

Valkyrie’s and Cavalier’s have crit damage bonuses, but no perception to actually land any crits. You would never use a full valkyrie or full cavalier set on a mesmer because the crit damage bonus is almost worthless with the base crit chance; you can however use them to introduce additional vit/tough on a zerker build without hurting your crit damage bonus.

The reason you might see other classes use a full set are the likes of thieves and warriors, who have combos and signets that allow them to guarantee critical hits, or drastically buff their crit chance without needing to dump points into perception.

Serhend.6382:

Didn’t know healing was so important for everyone. Healing comes as it is. What should be taken into account is the balance of the build. Sure I could grab some toughness, even like 1850 toughness, 55% crit chance, 88% crit damage, 3-3.1k attack all together but that would be a whole different setup. Take into account that this build was supposed to be based on the new armor combined with the all-around stat provider trinkets and not that alternative other ones out there that I assume we all know of already.

How on earth you feel like contributing something constructive when you say “Nuh, this stat is not enough, this gear does better so screw it” kind of stuff? I am not asking for people to make me a build here, I am asking for possible improvements that can work better in the intended direction. You can tell me to get 1 or 2 stuff out and replace it with something, or change the sigils or change the armor rune, or change traits and trait points alright, but unfortunately everyone is so narrow-mindedly thinking over the new armor’s offerings and short-comings. Tell me what makes the use of this armor BETTER in any build at all (say shatter, phantasm, condi, hybrids, etc). I was already fully aware of the fact that it distributed stats among all and this in fact reduced points in areas of focus -as said in first post- but also increased points in other areas, hence allowing for a more balanced build (so saying these things over and over again is really not useful). We get it, you hated the celestial trinkets and now you hate the armor with celestial stats because ……………… Now if you can get over it and provide some potential improvement to the build I would appreciate it.

Thats what I see people pointing out to you. The only way you can do something different is to build around the celestial armor instead of your traits and stats. I said that I felt it is viable because its WvW and run what you like. It’s not optimal at anything we know that and you know that.

The point people are trying to make without saying it’s not optimal at this or that because not all stats are weighted the same. Thats what Ryuujin is trying to point out.

The value of all the stats aren’t equal is where the problem comes in condition damage doesn’t scale as well as power, healing doesn’t scale really like any stat etc since its skill dependent and has a base heal value.

Usually when you post a build and ask for feedback the conversation usually says take trait X over trait Y. You should take critical damage here instead of here because of the ratio. In your build you have points in everything and don’t really go far in any direction which is building for the armor. Really if you are dead set on running all celestial all stat everything the only thing that is up for discussion is traits. From this post you wont swap a piece out for zerker or cleric’s because “We already know zerker is best for dps” “We already know clerics is the best for healing” so you are attempting something different and gear is not up for discussion so I am not sure what you expected in your feedback.

So we are left with trait discussion then you become what? If you put more points into illusions you become condi focused. If you put points into power then your more direct damage focused. So this is a phantasm build cool, you have proper phantasm traits. Its not like you said hey this is a phantasm build and took all the mantra traits.

@ozii
and when I was theorycrafting this build I was, as I said already, fully aware that they wheigh differently.

I did not ask for feedback, I asked for constructive criticism to “improve and construct upon” the build. This armor, as you also know, is something new and I wanted to try to get some juice out of it. I know I did not pick the wrong traits. There was already threads with discussions on whether the celestial armor is good or not, this was like “With celestial armor do you think this phantasm build is good by also considering the advantage of having one gear only that can go towards the direction of other builds and can perform well as hybrid instead of having different gear for different builds?” If not then I would like to see how it can be better with this set because I really don’t want to have 3-4 sets for 3-4 different builds in my inventory/bank. That is why I was not asking for such a thing, since I already have those sets. I wanted to start and go from this gear’s point of reference to be exact.

Hey, lets relax a bit, no one was really being rude here. I think because celestial was the main new thing about the build, it wound up being a thread about celestial vs other armors. I know that wasn’t your intent.

Honestly, I think any phantasm build with sharper images will take as much advantage of celestial as possible, especially if it uses staff.

That’s really all there is to say at the theory crafting stage. The next thing is posting videos. Also, I have a feeling that celestial armor builds won’t perform in any way that is obviously exceptional. Zerker armor will still probably wind up making flashier videos…of course doing that sort of stuff with any sort of sustainability requires lots of skill/luck. I think the people who will really appreciate celestial will be those who play with it themselves, and notice a difference in feel…which will probably be subtle.

I did not get tensed actually, I just got bored of having to repeat the same warning over and again, can’t blame me for that. Well I am looking forward to obtaining the required things, will nevertheless take quite some time. I think with a skilled gameplay combined with survivability of this set one can achieve quite success in 1vX battles.