Guild Wars 2

Hey guys, I was wondering if anyone has full Celestial Armor + Trinkets can comment on this?

It seems like in most games, when you spread out the stat values to more different stats, you can get overall “Larger” amounts of stats, but obviously not as much in a specific stats.

Well lets compare a Conditions build with Dire
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYEQRAqY4alYmKNHfS6E95EB3Dj60m6p4rjtTBXlPA-jkCB4iChoOYUADZk6AiABOTqIas1MFRjV3ATxiIq2joIa1SBAzaA-w

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYEQRAqY4alYmKNHfS6E95EB3Dj60m6p4rjtTBXlPA-jUCB4iChoOYUADZk6AiABO5rIas1MFRjVVjIqWdDTKAYWDA-w

What you lose Dire – > Celestial
400 condition damage,
50ish toughness,
200 vitality

Gain Dire – > Celestial you gain about
20% crit chance,
48% crit damage,
353 healing
250 more power?

I guess it makes sense that the more expensive to make set is overall better. What I was wondering is, does this set actually make your condition build better for a thief? If you think about it, this makes your direct damage MUCH more functional when compared to PURE dire build, and this doesn’t even include Runes of Divinity.

What do you guys think? I feel like a thief in Celestial (even without the Divinity Runes) will overall out damage a DIRE by quite a bit just because his auto-attack damage will be massively improved. At the same time, you can start paring it with %chance on crit sigils for extra bleeds.

Dear god, with all Divinity this is even more Lopsided…
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYEQRAqY4alYmKNHfS6E95EB3Dj60m6p4rjtTBXlPA-jUCB4iChoOYUADZk6AiABO5rIasVNFRjVVjIqWdDTKAYWDA-w

have not seen any celestial build nor anyone wearing them, but it would suck tbh, as the stats would be spread out.

Im tempted to either make a thief celestial set or a warrior one, can’t decide yet.

I play something like these build but more damage oriented, same trait lines .I think it’s very nice and very amusing and belive me toy CAN kill faster than a pure condition build .You pressure more with the conditions and the direct damage and crit .
You are not a 3 sec Killer but you can easily manage 2-4 people and if you become more experienced to the build you can kill all of them .
I think the hybrid builds is the current meta for the thief and that’s what ANET wanted for the play style of the thief, a P/D hybrid build.Go for it .It worths.

The lack of Power is what really hurts most Celestial builds as power is by far the best DPS stat.

Thieves don’t scale that well with all the different stats as we don’t have an excessive amount of healing, Boons, mitigation etc.

Even with Celestial gear your survivability won’t be great and your damage probably not high enough to seriously pressure someone.

I consider Celestial gear only to be viable for Guardians and Elementalists, aka. classes that have a good deal of everything.

@ DeeJay
Yea you have a point take a look at this build .Feel free to coment . I am not an elitist person.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYUQNAqYVlYmiOHfS5E+5EB3Dna0m6pgsitTBWtKA-jQzA4fBR6PEFBjsASEAS+FRjt4WENWVdq1LYKXAtLkKGxdgJEgoxA-e

Celestial gear is absolutely terrible for a Thief, as explained thoroughly by Wish in this thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Celestial-Armor/first#post2424729

Incurafy.6329:

Celestial gear is absolutely terrible for a Thief, as explained thoroughly by Wish in this thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Celestial-Armor/first#post2424729

His main beef with it seems to be as a purely direct damage set. For full celestial you’d want to use P/D, or maybe in a D/D deathblossom build, mixing direct damage with condition damage.

I guess here goes my two month Journey to make the gear.

roamzero.9486:

Incurafy.6329:

Celestial gear is absolutely terrible for a Thief, as explained thoroughly by Wish in this thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Celestial-Armor/first#post2424729

His main beef with it seems to be as a purely direct damage set. For full celestial you’d want to use P/D, or maybe in a D/D deathblossom build, mixing direct damage with condition damage.

That’s still going to be useless, hybrid Thieves don’t work, and if you wanted to try one you would try and mix Berserker and Carrion or something, not full Celestial. If you’re using a condition build, then what on earth is the point of the power, precision, and crit damage?

I wouldn’t waste your time or money on Celestial gear, OP, there are much better alternatives for every build.

Its not full celestial, but P/D hybrid builds are pretty good in wvw, they deal more damage than full conditions, with slightly less survival.

Incurafy.6329:

roamzero.9486:

Incurafy.6329:

Celestial gear is absolutely terrible for a Thief, as explained thoroughly by Wish in this thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Celestial-Armor/first#post2424729

His main beef with it seems to be as a purely direct damage set. For full celestial you’d want to use P/D, or maybe in a D/D deathblossom build, mixing direct damage with condition damage.

That’s still going to be useless, hybrid Thieves don’t work, and if you wanted to try one you would try and mix Berserker and Carrion or something, not full Celestial. If you’re using a condition build, then what on earth is the point of the power, precision, and crit damage?

I wouldn’t waste your time or money on Celestial gear, OP, there are much better alternatives for every build.

I highly disagree with this fact because unlike going FULL condition damage, doing Hybrid still benefits condition builds in the fact that you STILL ALWAYS DEAL direct damage on ALL of your skills, and having them less useless always benefits you.

I’ll be able to talk more once I do a better numbers test.

I was looking at shortbow ranger autoattack damage once, counting all shots as coming from behind the target, and I was able to build a full condition set, a full melee damage set, and a mixed set that all had superior EHP and DPS compared to full Celestial. I doubt it would be different for thief attacks, so Im going to say that you can build your EHP using Ravagers, Carrion, Soldiers and Berserkers gear to match the EHP of Celestial while increasing your DPS when compared to a full Celestial set.

Valvador.4291:

Incurafy.6329:

roamzero.9486:

Incurafy.6329:

Celestial gear is absolutely terrible for a Thief, as explained thoroughly by Wish in this thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Celestial-Armor/first#post2424729

His main beef with it seems to be as a purely direct damage set. For full celestial you’d want to use P/D, or maybe in a D/D deathblossom build, mixing direct damage with condition damage.

That’s still going to be useless, hybrid Thieves don’t work, and if you wanted to try one you would try and mix Berserker and Carrion or something, not full Celestial. If you’re using a condition build, then what on earth is the point of the power, precision, and crit damage?

I wouldn’t waste your time or money on Celestial gear, OP, there are much better alternatives for every build.

I highly disagree with this fact because unlike going FULL condition damage, doing Hybrid still benefits condition builds in the fact that you STILL ALWAYS DEAL direct damage on ALL of your skills, and having them less useless always benefits you.

I’ll be able to talk more once I do a better numbers test.

Carrion gives you power, you don’t have to go full Dire and only get CD/T/V. Again, you’re wasting your time and money, but it’s yours to waste so whatever, enjoy.

>_>

<_<

raises hand

Gully.7358:

>_>

<_<

raises hand

Can you comment on it? I would honestly love to hear how you feel about the investment? It’s a kitten ton of gold. 60 gold for runes of Divinity, 20g+ on Ectos alone to craft all the items you want. What build are you running and how do you like it? I honestly think this

Incurafy.6329:

Valvador.4291:

Incurafy.6329:

roamzero.9486:

Incurafy.6329:

Celestial gear is absolutely terrible for a Thief, as explained thoroughly by Wish in this thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Celestial-Armor/first#post2424729

His main beef with it seems to be as a purely direct damage set. For full celestial you’d want to use P/D, or maybe in a D/D deathblossom build, mixing direct damage with condition damage.

That’s still going to be useless, hybrid Thieves don’t work, and if you wanted to try one you would try and mix Berserker and Carrion or something, not full Celestial. If you’re using a condition build, then what on earth is the point of the power, precision, and crit damage?

I wouldn’t waste your time or money on Celestial gear, OP, there are much better alternatives for every build.

I highly disagree with this fact because unlike going FULL condition damage, doing Hybrid still benefits condition builds in the fact that you STILL ALWAYS DEAL direct damage on ALL of your skills, and having them less useless always benefits you.

I’ll be able to talk more once I do a better numbers test.

Carrion gives you power, you don’t have to go full Dire and only get CD/T/V. Again, you’re wasting your time and money, but it’s yours to waste so whatever, enjoy.

No. You don’t get it do you? Celestial/Hybrid gear has a larger OVERALL gear budget. Let’s compare the stats you get from a Celestial head + shoulder combo vs a Carrion + Dire head + shoulder gear combo:

Celestial Head + Shoulder:
____________________

35 Power
35 Precision
35 Toughness
35 Vitality
35 Condition
5% Crit Damage
35 Healing Power

Dire Head + Carrion Shoulder
______________________

32 Toughness
56 Vitality
79 Condition Damage
25 Power

If you ONLY add the non crit damage parts of Celestial, you get 210 stats additionally. While Dire + Carrion gives you a total of 169.

Sure the condition damage aspect, and vitality aspect of the dire + carrion beat Celestial, but the point is that you are making up that damage by the increase direct damage from crits. In ADDITION to this, you have a god kitten EXTRA source of BLEEDS because with Celestial you have a high enough Crit Chance where you are also applying an extra bleed EVERY TWO SECONDS thanks to Sigil of Earth.

Extra crit provides so much utility and extra pressure for for a mostly conditions build, it also lets you utilize MORE of your build and more variety of weapons.

I run a mix of dire ascended and celestial exotic gear on my p/d thief. It is really nice; it feels better balanced than either dire / carrion or dire / apothecary. The crit chance you get can be leveraged into a sigil of earth, which in combo with condi duration gives you about one extra bleed tick per hit.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/thief/?7.0|a.5q.h16.8.1m.h9.0.0.0|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|1j.7g.1j.7g.1j.7g.1j.7g.1j.7i.1j.7i|4x.0.2x.0.3x.0.211.0.311.0.1b.0|5.0.u000.k00.f0|30.d|0.0.0.0.0|e

The ascended celestial trinkets are there because there is no option for celestial gems in buildcraft, but the stats are about the same.

I play more of a support role then really focusing on bursting people down. I’ve played these kind of builds for over a year and I’ve never come across another thief with a similar mindset that’s not in my guild. So I’m not the best person to ask for advice on if it works or not, it works for me because I do require all the stats.

I’m a huge fan of the buddy system, so I attach myself to somebody else and make them play better (act like a can-opener while cc’ing like crazy) or I try to get a lot of attention on me while the rest of my squad gets free play to kill. When my guildies get into trouble, I become the peeler and rezzer. If a fight goes downhill, I get myself in between the enemy and my guildies and kite the enemy around so my guildies can regroup.

I play sword/dagger with pistol/dagger and use several different suits for different situations but the suit I run the most is my celestial suit. Might stacking concept.

Gully.7358:

I play more of a support role then really focusing on bursting people down. I’ve played these kind of builds for over a year and I’ve never come across another thief with a similar mindset that’s not in my guild. So I’m not the best person to ask for advice on if it works or not, it works for me because I do require all the stats.

I’m a huge fan of the buddy system, so I attach myself to somebody else and make them play better (act like a can-opener while cc’ing like crazy) or I try to get a lot of attention on me while the rest of my squad gets free play to kill. When my guildies get into trouble, I become the peeler and rezzer. If a fight goes downhill, I get myself in between the enemy and my guildies and kite the enemy around so my guildies can regroup.

I play sword/dagger with pistol/dagger and use several different suits for different situations but the suit I run the most is my celestial suit. Might stacking concept.

Might is even more effective with this build due to Direct Damage and Condition access.

Valvador.4291:

but the point is that you are making up that damage by the increase direct damage from crits.

I like when people make statements like this without providing any math to back it up. It leads to lulz when people start to prove them wrong.

Post your celestial build so I can beat it with a mix and match set please, Im pretty bored right now.

Gully.7358:

I’ve played these kind of builds for over a year

Post yours too.

But do it fast or I’ll find something else to do and wont bother til I get bored again!

wish.1027:

Post yours too.

But do it fast or I’ll find something else to do and wont bother til I get bored again!

Good, then there is no need for me to go through that effort

wish.1027:

Valvador.4291:

but the point is that you are making up that damage by the increase direct damage from crits.

I like when people make statements like this without providing any math to back it up. It leads to lulz when people start to prove them wrong.

Post your celestial build so I can beat it with a mix and match set please, Im pretty bored right now.

Gully.7358:

I’ve played these kind of builds for over a year

Post yours too.

But do it fast or I’ll find something else to do and wont bother til I get bored again!

I apologize that I haven’t done the math or testing myself. I don’t have the time at the moment.

I’m looking for a hard numbers comparison for this build: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fYEQRAqY4alYmKNHfS6E95EB3Dj60m6p4rjtTBXlPA-jUCB4iChoOYUADZk6AiABO5rIas1MFRjVVjIqWdDTKAYWDA-w

VS a pure dire Condition damage build and maybe a pure Carrion condition damage build.

Everything I am saying is purely on “feeling” like it would work, but just looking at the general stats and the benefit of using Sigil of Earth for stacking extra bleeds seems very enticing.

I also don’t have access to gear to be doing the tests myself.

So Mr. Wish, if you make me a Carrion + Dire mix build that is more effective for this sort of set-up, you will save me a lot of time and money!

EDIT: Also saying “Carrion and Dire combo gives power too, you’re wasting your time and money” isn’t exactly a mathematical disapproval of my build. Your topic discusses mostly Crit damage builds, if I remember correctly. I apologize if this is incorrect.

I have been running a PD hybrid for 5 weeks now and the only thing I cannot beat are full burst DD thieves that play better than me.

PD is a hybrid set and some celestial pieces in the armor fit it well to round up some defensive stats while getting critical damage.
You play that set with full direct or full condi and you lose potential.
PvP is not pure math. Mitigation will benefit the complemental conditions and conditionremove buffered by higher direct damage.
You dont want to go with divinity though, but with Traveler. Movmentspeed and 10% condidurration > some stats.

Unlike direct DD builds, PD can use every single stat on celestial. It just makes you too defensive so I would set a limit of HP and toughness you want to achieve and swap the rest vs Zerker or Rampager.

The problem is that Numbers do really tell you everything, it’s just it’s hard to analyze numbers from highly variable situations. How do you include damage from an extra proccing Bleed from the Sigil of Earth? How do you keep track of the fact that in a condition build, Might increases Condition Damage AND Power?

I just crafted my first piece of Celestial. Such stats!

IMO Celestial is really bad for the thief.
Stats you want are spread out and weaker, bonus you get other stats you don’t want.

Please for all that is good and right in GW2 stay away from celestial if you want to have damage that a pure DD/Condi specialization has (pst stay away from conditions)

OIIIIIO.7825:

IMO Celestial is really bad for the thief.
Stats you want are spread out and weaker, bonus you get other stats you don’t want.

Please for all that is good and right in GW2 stay away from celestial if you want to have damage that a pure DD/Condi specialization has (pst stay away from conditions)

Did you even bother reading the greater discussion in this thread?

Valvador.4291:

The problem is that Numbers do really tell you everything, it’s just it’s hard to analyze numbers from highly variable situations. How do you include damage from an extra proccing Bleed from the Sigil of Earth? How do you keep track of the fact that in a condition build, Might increases Condition Damage AND Power?

Let me give you an example. In my current celestial / dire gear, I get 95 bleed ticks, 100% duration, 21% crit, 1547 effective power and 27367 effective health. Every time my pistol 1 hits, I get base damage + 8 seconds of bleed (8*95 damage) + 0.6*0.21 chance to get 10 seconds of bleed from the sigil. The expected number of bleed ticks is 8 + 0.21*0.6*10 = 9.26, for a total of 880 extra damage. Note that this doesn’t factor in the 2 second cooldown – the cooldown has a substantial effect on sigil procs, but it’s too complicated to go into here.

If I drop celestial gear for carrion, I get 108 bleed ticks, 100% duration, 11% crit, 1527 effective power and 26917 effective health. Effective power and health (omitting healing power) is a wash. The expected number of bleed ticks is 8 + 0.11*0.6*10 = 8.66, total damage is 108*8.66 = 935.

So, in comparison to celestial / dire, carrion / dire gains about half a bleed tick per hit of extra damage. In exchange, you get a slightly different mix of vitality / toughness (although overall the same effective health), and you lose half your healing power. In my play, I much prefer having the higher toughness and healing power, but going dire / apothecary proved to be giving up too much direct damage and maybe more importantly vitality. So, celestial.

Edit: if I made a mistake in the above or omitted something, I’m happy to be better informed.

Traveler’s runes

I thought about those… at 9 G apiece and because if I go traveler’s it’s a pain to meet 100% bleed duration, I gave up on them. But yeah, the 25% run speed is really tempting.

Valvador.4291:

OIIIIIO.7825:

IMO Celestial is really bad for the thief.
Stats you want are spread out and weaker, bonus you get other stats you don’t want.

Please for all that is good and right in GW2 stay away from celestial if you want to have damage that a pure DD/Condi specialization has (pst stay away from conditions)

Did you even bother reading the greater discussion in this thread?

Yes I have, what part of that would you care to expound upon?

I wanted to share my experience with you and let you know that if you use Celestial you will be statistically less effective vs going with a more streamlined build. I crafted celestial gear for the MF before it was removed. I have the trinkets and even the rare celestial back, however it is weak. I would like to save you some time crafting all of that. Divinity/Traveler runes are the only “celestial” items I could suggest honestly without losing too much damage.

OIIIIIO.7825:

Valvador.4291:

OIIIIIO.7825:

IMO Celestial is really bad for the thief.
Stats you want are spread out and weaker, bonus you get other stats you don’t want.

Please for all that is good and right in GW2 stay away from celestial if you want to have damage that a pure DD/Condi specialization has (pst stay away from conditions)

Did you even bother reading the greater discussion in this thread?

Yes I have, what part of that would you care to expound upon?

I wanted to share my experience with you and let you know that if you use Celestial you will be statistically less effective vs going with a more streamlined build. I crafted celestial gear for the MF before it was removed. I have the trinkets and even the rare celestial back, however it is weak. I would like to save you some time crafting all of that. Divinity/Traveler runes are the only “celestial” items I could suggest honestly without losing too much damage.

You pretty much told me to not go Conditions as a thief in your previous post. So forgive me if I have a hard time taking your input.

Valvador.4291:

wish.1027:

Valvador.4291:

but the point is that you are making up that damage by the increase direct damage from crits.

I like when people make statements like this without providing any math to back it up. It leads to lulz when people start to prove them wrong.

Post your celestial build so I can beat it with a mix and match set please, Im pretty bored right now.

Gully.7358:

I’ve played these kind of builds for over a year

Post yours too.

But do it fast or I’ll find something else to do and wont bother til I get bored again!

I apologize that I haven’t done the math or testing myself. I don’t have the time at the moment.

I’m looking for a hard numbers comparison for this build: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fYEQRAqY4alYmKNHfS6E95EB3Dj60m6p4rjtTBXlPA-jUCB4iChoOYUADZk6AiABO5rIas1MFRjVVjIqWdDTKAYWDA-w

VS a pure dire Condition damage build and maybe a pure Carrion condition damage build.

Everything I am saying is purely on “feeling” like it would work, but just looking at the general stats and the benefit of using Sigil of Earth for stacking extra bleeds seems very enticing.

I also don’t have access to gear to be doing the tests myself.

So Mr. Wish, if you make me a Carrion + Dire mix build that is more effective for this sort of set-up, you will save me a lot of time and money!

EDIT: Also saying “Carrion and Dire combo gives power too, you’re wasting your time and money” isn’t exactly a mathematical disapproval of my build. Your topic discusses mostly Crit damage builds, if I remember correctly. I apologize if this is incorrect.

Well looks like Wish got bored and moved on so I’ll do the math for you.

Your build has 1437 power, 23% crit chance, 48% crit dmg, 2805 armor, 17705 hp so that works out to:

EHP: (17705 * 2505) / 1836 = 24156.33
DR: (2805 – 1836) / 2805 = 34.54%
DMG: 1437 * ((1 * 0.77) + ((1.5 + 0.48) * 0.23) = 1760.89

and then you get 1039 condition dmg and 656 healing power.

And while you could get slightly better stats by throwing together a mix of soldiers/berserkers/dire/rabid/whatever but honestly, why?

You’ll hit like a wet noodle, have bleeds that people will ignore because they’ll tic for so little, have a heal that heals more but by such a tiny amount you won’t notice anyways, be slightly tankier than a standard thief using soldiers/berserkers (which will do 2x the dmg you can do) but be a lot less tanky than an actual condition/perplexity dire cheese of the month build.

The game penalizes you a lot when you try going for more than 4 stats, that’s just the way it is. Certain healing/support ele and guardian builds can sort of benefit from using a few celestial trinkets, but only because using clerics ends up being worse.

Sartori.6758:

And while you could get slightly better stats by throwing together a mix of soldiers/berserkers/dire/rabid/whatever but honestly, why?

You’ll hit like a wet noodle, have bleeds that people will ignore because they’ll tic for so little, have a heal that heals more but by such a tiny amount you won’t notice anyways, be slightly tankier than a standard thief using soldiers/berserkers (which will do 2x the dmg you can do) but be a lot less tanky than an actual condition/perplexity dire cheese of the month build.

I went into gw2buildcraft and compared two exotic gear sets. One was based on pretty much straight carrion. The other replaced carrion with celestial everywhere possible.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/thief/?7.0|a.1h.h16.8.1m.h9.0.0.0|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|1h.7g.1h.7g.1h.7g.1h.7g.1h.7i.1h.7i|1h.62.1h.62.1h.62.1h.62.1h.62.1b.62|5.0.u000.k00.f0|30.d|0.0.0.0.0|e

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/thief/?7.0|a.1j.h16.8.1m.h9.0.0.0|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|1j.7g.1j.7g.1j.7g.1j.7g.1j.7i.1j.7i|1j.62.1h.62.1h.62.1j.62.1h.62.1b.62|5.0.u000.k00.f0|30.d|0.0.0.0.0|e

In comparison to carrion, moving to celestial gives: More effective power, more effective health, better damage reduction and more healing power (this is actually noticable in game play, I’ve played both carrion and celestial). All carrion gets is slightly larger bleed ticks, and this is partially offset by more SoE procs in celestial gear… if you do the calculation, the amount of condi damage you miss out on per hit by going celestial is about half or two thirds a bleed tick per pistol 1.

I’m sure one might want to do something with ascended, quibble about particular metrics, come up with some min maxed gear mix that yields a 1% increase in overall damage while keeping everything else the same, etc. But I’m not convinced it’s going to make much of a difference in the overall result. In comparison to Carrion, Celestial trades a bit of bleed damage for better survivability. That’s about it.

I don’t think anybody would complain if the discussion was Apothecary instead of Carrion for p/d… Celestial makes the same tradeoffs, just less so, and gives some crit to play with.

Valvador.4291:

You pretty much told me to not go Conditions as a thief in your previous post. So forgive me if I have a hard time taking your input.

For a condition build you would be better off play a class that has access to
-better conditions
-condition application.

I really dislike conditions on a thief since it feels like you are trying to force a square peg through a triangle hole. You can do it, but you will be missing something in the end. That thing missing would be the damage.

While you can try to be a good condition thief, you will never be able to output the damage a class that has access to all the conditions can. I would encourage you to try a Necro if you really like condition damage.

Compare the DPS of a condition Necro/Engineer vs a Condition thief. It is my experience that the thief will always fall short because they don’t have all the tools that some of the other classes have. (Burn procs on crit)

So with all of that said I want to offer you advice that would possibly not help your build out, but help you identify why the condition thief is a sub-optimal choice when trying to deal damage.

sas.6483:

Sartori.6758:

And while you could get slightly better stats by throwing together a mix of soldiers/berserkers/dire/rabid/whatever but honestly, why?

You’ll hit like a wet noodle, have bleeds that people will ignore because they’ll tic for so little, have a heal that heals more but by such a tiny amount you won’t notice anyways, be slightly tankier than a standard thief using soldiers/berserkers (which will do 2x the dmg you can do) but be a lot less tanky than an actual condition/perplexity dire cheese of the month build.

I went into gw2buildcraft and compared two exotic gear sets. One was based on pretty much straight carrion. The other replaced carrion with celestial everywhere possible.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/thief/?7.0|a.1h.h16.8.1m.h9.0.0.0|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|1h.7g.1h.7g.1h.7g.1h.7g.1h.7i.1h.7i|1h.62.1h.62.1h.62.1h.62.1h.62.1b.62|5.0.u000.k00.f0|30.d|0.0.0.0.0|e

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/thief/?7.0|a.1j.h16.8.1m.h9.0.0.0|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|1j.7g.1j.7g.1j.7g.1j.7g.1j.7i.1j.7i|1j.62.1h.62.1h.62.1j.62.1h.62.1b.62|5.0.u000.k00.f0|30.d|0.0.0.0.0|e

In comparison to carrion, moving to celestial gives: More effective power, more effective health, better damage reduction and more healing power (this is actually noticable in game play, I’ve played both carrion and celestial). All carrion gets is slightly larger bleed ticks, and this is partially offset by more SoE procs in celestial gear… if you do the calculation, the amount of condi damage you miss out on per hit by going celestial is about half or two thirds a bleed tick per pistol 1.

I’m sure one might want to do something with ascended, quibble about particular metrics, come up with some min maxed gear mix that yields a 1% increase in overall damage while keeping everything else the same, etc. But I’m not convinced it’s going to make much of a difference in the overall result. In comparison to Carrion, Celestial trades a bit of bleed damage for better survivability. That’s about it.

I don’t think anybody would complain if the discussion was Apothecary instead of Carrion for p/d… Celestial makes the same tradeoffs, just less so, and gives some crit to play with.

Sorry if I wasn’t being clear. What I meant to say was why bother with this build at all? That’s why I didn’t bother putting together an alternate set.

Sartori.6758:

Sorry if I wasn’t being clear. What I meant to say was why bother with this build at all? That’s why I didn’t bother putting together an alternate set.

Ah, sure. In my case, I started out as p/d in WvW with full carrion, and had real difficulties. I felt really fragile (sure, you’ve got a good amount of vit, but every hit feels like it takes a massive chunk off, and let’s face it – you’re going to take damage), and I didn’t feel like I had good healing. To top it off, I was at the start point of the thief learning curve. I gave up on p/d for a while, played p/p, got more used to thief. Then, I thought I’d start working on p/d again.

This time, I went to PvP. I tested out various mixes of carrion, rabid, celestial and apoth on dummies and in matches. I ended up with 5/0/30/20/15 in a celestial / apoth mix, which felt like it gave me a good amount of offense, but more importantly upped my survivability.

I went back into WvW with the same build. Dire had come out, so I got key dire pieces and then used buildcraft to figure the rest… mixing celestial with dire seemed most attractive, as it gave me a lot more offense relative to mixing in apoth, while keeping the high healing potential of celestial / apoth in PvP.

TLDR, it’s because of the improved durability and sustain relative to carrion, and not wanting to give up what you do with apoth to get it.

The cynical TLDR is I sucked too much for carrion.

I went ahead and got a celestial set since I main thief and already have a condi bunker and direct damage sets anyway.

And it works! Building celestial is viable, IMO, but it’s not what I would call and ideal super thief that can handle everything.

1) You need to like p/d and/or d/d and incorporate condition damage into your attack rotation.
2) You need to min-max somewhat to get around the deficiencies of full celestial, people might think you can build however you want with celestial since it has an even stat spread but that just isn’t true.

The biggest problem I found is going against full bunkers, because high armor and high condi cleanse work doubly against you, when you can wear them down faster with a pure condition set because armor isn’t a factor. However, kill time is noticeably faster against anyone that isn’t a bunker. So there you go.