Guild Wars 2

The meta is changing at an alarming rate.™

So everyone said Cele was bad and we should go Power or Condition. What do you guys think about the builds we saw in the NA Pro Leagues?

Those cele reapers are made so they fit well with the team. If you only solo-q you can still go marauder/carrion or something like that and you might fare better than with cele.

Cele is the team-supporty, still doing damage through attrition and not being squishy ammulet for coordinated 5-mann-teams. Pure damage or pure condi is still viable for most stages of the pvp-ladder.

That doesn’t really make sense because they were Spite/Soul Reaping/Reaper. What sort of support could they be doing with which Cele would actually help?

I think it was nearlight who pointed out that Reaper doesn’t take advantage of of the healing stat, so it’s not the most efficient. My take on it is that you use cele if you want carrion-type hybrid damage (e.g., using Deathly Chill) but with more sustain from the added toughness. Plus the extra precision gives you a bit more leeway when considering whether or not to use the precision modifying traits like Decimate Defenses and Death Perception.

Cele was always a thing, before reaper it was cele signet necro that saw success on The Abjured. Cele offers more armor which helps with sustain. Also has higher crit + crit damage over Carrion. Compared to power builds like soldiers, cele allows the usage of condi where as soldiers are pure power, and zerker/valk is not viable at that level of play at all.

For those cele signet reapers in the tournament, they aren’t necessarily trying to kill people with condi damage. They’re overloading condi to force opponents to burn cooldowns, and sustain until they get help from teammates. That’s why Carrion’s higher condi damage isn’t necessarily preferred over a more sustained build with Cele. The higher crit + crit damage do help them do some damage though especially in shroud.

When I queue solo, I still prefer carrion because it eliminates opponents faster and I’ll never know if teammates have my back or out there 4man zerging.

However I can understand why celestial is preferred in organized teams. The sustain (plus extra crits) will help you hold a point long enough till you get backup.

Salamander.2504:

I think it was nearlight who pointed out that Reaper doesn’t take advantage of of the healing stat, so it’s not the most efficient. My take on it is that you use cele if you want carrion-type hybrid damage (e.g., using Deathly Chill) but with more sustain from the added toughness. Plus the extra precision gives you a bit more leeway when considering whether or not to use the precision modifying traits like Decimate Defenses and Death Perception.

Yay I’m famous now.

Basically here’s the breakdown:

Cele reaper: no healing power use and doesn’t have enough immediate damage to kill good Druids and scrapers in a reasonable time frame, but it can absorb more damage.

Carrion reaper: much better damage and can kill cele bunkers way faster, but will be bursted down by marauders much more easily. (Though 1v1 it counters thugs like rev quite handily). Also can’t strip diamond skin on its own.

Logic: switch amulet based on what you’re going up against. Though carrion is better in most scenarios imo for the role yore trying to fulfill which is 1v1s and condi spam in teamfights since AoE cleanse is rare right now.

After 1v1ing eurantiens cele Druid as a cele reaper a month ago and failing to do enough damage to dent his sustain at all, I knew that carrion would give me more success in the things that I wanted to be successful at.

nearlight.3064:

Cele reaper: no healing power use and doesn’t have enough immediate damage to kill good Druids and scrapers in a reasonable time frame, but it can absorb more damage.

If that’s true, then Soldier makes more sense. Soldier has the same drawbacks but with freakish durability. It doesn’t seem like the (relatively) small amount of Condition damage on Cele is enough to make a difference.

I mean if you want to have this problem, you can. Wearing Soldier I had a fight vs a druid at the Treb on Khlyo that was so long I had time to type “I’m bored.” and just leave.

Dristig.9678:

nearlight.3064:

Cele reaper: no healing power use and doesn’t have enough immediate damage to kill good Druids and scrapers in a reasonable time frame, but it can absorb more damage.

If that’s true, then Soldier makes more sense. Soldier has the same drawbacks but with freakish durability. It doesn’t seem like the (relatively) small amount of Condition damage on Cele is enough to make a difference.

I mean if you want to have this problem, you can. Wearing Soldier I had a fight vs a druid at the Treb on Khlyo that was so long I had time to type “I’m bored.” and just leave.

Actually I wouldn’t agree with this. Most of the people running celestial in tournaments run the traits/weapons the exactly some way they would if they were going full condi, so even though soldiers is a much better mix of sustain and power damage, people dont run it so they can keep deathly chill and scepter and all that.

I find it so ironic that EU, which was once totally devoid of necromancers on top teams is now swarming with them. And the weird viper condi rev build that they come up with.. I think that is potentially stronger than necro once people master it.

WTB Dire amulet in PvP

Signet of Vamp and Dagger 2 (scales 2.7 per healing power) do a lot with the healing power. Personally I’ve been trying to make a vipers build that gains sustain through Blighters Boon but had trouble doing well with it, but I didn’t practice much.

I use marauder. I also think soldiers is good and valkyrie is really underrated. Valk you can actually make use off with all of our free crit. Wish there was a P/T/F amulet with power as main stat