Guild Wars 2

Just curious if anyone tried a full Celestial Hybrid build in any of the game modes?

I know we discussed Sinister a little bit last week, but what happens if we use celestial? Or half celestial with some sinister and zerker mixed in ?

Would the survivability be worth it for the DPS loss? Is the DPS loss even that significant for better defense/healing etc.. ?

In PVE it’s worthless no doubt

In sPVP it shows very little interest, you have enough escapes not to worry about mitigation. The faster you do things (moving,+1ing/killing, decaping), the higher are your odds of winnings.

In WvW I haven’t tried, maybe it could be useful for 1vX with an hybrid p/d spec as a roamer.

Prior to this patch I used to run full celestial in WvW using pack runes to push my crit up to 54% with fury, as well as having that nice condition damage added under my burst at a 50% bonus duration, the build felt quite strong actually … won many 1vX fights, even up to 1v4 (bad players … what can I say) with it.

After patch though, full celestial is extremely weak for thief now due to the way condition damage formula now works, so I have to add in some carrion to the mix to keep the condition damage from being worthless. So the build comes out to be something like this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAoYVlsMhunYzTw0JQ/EH0EFvGShZwfFfxGqDgJMCA-TliFABL8AAWUVF+UCKpaFAcIAoS53M7P4m+AEOBAIfEACAgAsz6sO3ZghO0hO0hO0m5R35OP6NLFwiCrA-w

However the formula changes really make thief condition damage feel a lot weaker, especially considering how much higher burst feels on a thief, not to mention necros just laugh at thieves trying to play condi now. So it’s likely I am going to switch my gear over to something like this instead:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAsYVlsMhunY5Tw0Jw/EH0EFvGShZwfFfRZoDgJMCA-TFCFABHq+DAPCABODAJp8gPlg1s/QVKxwTfQAAEgdWn15ODM0hO0hO0h2NP6O35RvZpAiYMA-w

Definitely a lot of damage, added toughness and health so I hopefully won’t just explode on contact with any burst class … just have to actually make the switch. Problem is, I find burst to be very boring … but what can I do, this is Anet. Thanks Anet :l

And if you wonder why I take uncatchable in WvW for PvP, even on a burst build … two reasons. 1) I fight a lot with short bow and kiting is very useful now that we can squish so easily due to power creep. 2) It helps with keeping a condition on my target to make better use of Exposed Weakness & chasing while wielding S/D. Pack runes are my source of fury so it opens up the ability to take uncatchable …

Edit: Now that I think about it, I previously used the torment for condition layering for my hybrid build but that has changed too and the necessity for it is potentially less. So I could consider just taking air & fire on SB instead to have max burst potential, debatable what to put on D/D.

I tried Celestial Hybrid in sPvP and it’s not very good. You have a little but more sustain but not enough to make up for the complete lack of damage. Your condis don’t do enough, your burst is lackluster, crit chance is not very high, power not so great. Basically it sucks because it’s not good at anything.

I don’t think it’s necessarily bad to hybridize between physical and condition damage or to mix in Toughness and Vitality, but the biggest problem with Celestial gear IMO is that Healing Power is next to useless and grants almost no benefit for the investment, so you end up actually losing efficacy from the point allocations bogarded by Healing Power. Celestial would probably be pretty decent if they dropped Healing Power and spread those points out to the other attributes.

Or, better yet, this would probably be fixed if they would buff Healing Power so that it had a reasonably decent impact on the healing skills, but, unfortunately, it’s rare that they do anythings that makes that much sense.

Oh yeah, celestial in SPvP for thief is a joke now. Before this patch it was possible to make it work, sure it wasn’t an outstanding meta build but it could work since damage from the condi side helped the lack of raw damage, not to mention you could become insanely hard to kill. But now the condi damage suffers a lot due to changes (and really just isn’t strong for thief now anyways) while your burst just isn’t high enough to really make it count on top of that.

(WvW was an entirely different story though. I loved it and miss it. -.-)

The most I could see celestial doing in SPvP on a thief now is being run as some kinda “Ninja Medic” with runes of mercy and shadow arts with shadow protector to not only revive 30% faster but also apply 25% damage reduction from stealthing allies and applying an additional 600 heal through regeneration while reviving – that mixed with shadow refuge would be a pretty fast revive and you’d sit at 3100 toughness +25% damage reduction while reviving and it would stack extra regeneration for when they also revive with 30% more health.

Other than that though, you’re just an annoying target to try to kill that doesn’t serve much of a threat otherwise. Having might stacked from a team fight would help to deal actual damage, but it’s squat compared to say an elementalist who not only hits hard while running cele, but also has burning and the ability to self max might.

In sPvP if you want to run a Hybrid damage build I have found that you need to use the Rampager Amulet + Rune of the Wurm and you absolutely have to take CS line for Practiced Tolerance and No Quarter. The traits and the rune will combine to give you 402 Ferocity w/o Fury and 652 with while amulet will give you Power, Precision and Condition Damage. Otherwise you just won’t have the burst damage to offset the nerf to Condition Damage without the Ferocity.