EU The Right Trolls [JiVE]
Gear Stats
I would just stick with zerker if you have that already, assuming its for PvE. Celestial is a PITA to make and you end up with stats that are neither here, nor there.
I have zerker, condi/bunker and soldiers sets for my ranger and want for nothing. Soon we will be able to swap armor and traits on the fly for true versatility. Armor is so cheap on the TP now too with everyone selling off the exotics they made to get leatherworker up to 500. Apothecary and soldiers armor pieces are like 1g or less! Use the Settlers trinkets until you can get pink apothecary, they are super cheap too.
Imo, its better to specialise in one area (find your niche) than spread yourself out and be a ‘Jack of all trades’ but a MASTER OF NONE.
As far as we know, zerker is still going to be #1 in terms of dps after the patch. Celestial may have a place in WvW, but not in PvE as long as the name of the game is dps, dps, and more dps. I went from celestial to zerker about a month ago, and unless I’m in WvW/EotM, I can’t go back.
Disclaimer: I own a ton of celestial recipes I’ve slowly been selling off for profit (they’ve gone up in price 100-1000x since I bought them). So I may be biased. I don’t think I am, but I felt I should disclose that.
This whole thing boils down to how many attributes are important to you. Here are the attributes generally available on equipment and what they do:
- Power – increases DD
- Precision – increases DD, weapon proc rate (for now)
- Toughness – increases survivability/effectiveness of heals against DD
- Vitality – increases all survivability, does not improve heals
- Condition damage – increases condition damage
- Healing power – increases effectiveness of heals
- Critical Damage – increases DD
Looking at those, it’s quite obvious that there are only three attributes which improve DD (direct damage). Berserker armor is the only one which has all three, so it will continue to be #1 in terms of DPS.
The price being that you get nothing else. For berserker to be “worth it” the benefit you get from each DD attribute has to be greater than what you’re giving up with a different attribute. The Ferocity change reduces the benefit of crit damage, thus increasing the chances a different stat will be a better choice. e.g. When crit damage increased your damage by 100%, it may have been a better choice than toughness. Now that it increases damage by 90%, you may decide that toughness is a better choice.
How does celestial armor relate to this? If you assign equal value to all 7 attributes, celestial is only “worth it” if you have 6 or 7 attributes. If you value 5 or fewer (i.e. you consider 2 or more attributes to be worthless), you can actually come up with higher attribute total (in the ones that matter to you) by mixing pieces of non-celestial armor.
The reality is a bit more complicated because the value assigned to an attribute isn’t a binary 100% or 0%. That is, an attribute is never “worthless” (except maybe condition damage if you have no skills loaded which deal condition damage). So you have to weight each attribute by how important it is to you, then sum up. But the bottom line is that at least 5.2 attributes have to be important to you before celestial becomes worth it.
At least that was the story up until the next patch. Being able to change your traits at will adds another wrinkle. Making and wearing just one set of celestial armor is a lot less hassle than making and carrying 2, 3, or more sets of armor. That may be enough to tip things into celestial’s favor even if you’re getting slightly less-optimal stats with celestial. I’m a big fan of wearing mostly celestial armor, and changing your amulet, rings, and earrings around based on your traits. If all you do are high-speed dungeon clears, then obvious berserkers is a better choice. But if you experiment and switch around your build a lot, celestial can be a lot cheaper and simpler.