Guild Wars 2

Ryou,

I’m horribly disappointed with some of the trash you’re receiving as comments. (not all, but some) Not so much in what they’re saying, but how they’re saying it. I hope I can shed a little light on why I don’t use celestial in a little more civil fashion…

Celestial stats have a little of everything (except boon duration and condi duration) and that seems hugely powerful as you’re getting more overall stats than any other choice. And really, it’s tempting when you want to play one character in more than one role… But here’s where the problem comes in GW2 is designed to be a min-max game.

Think about it. All weapons, all skills, and all traits do exactly 1 thing well; with relatively few exceptions. They either deal damage, deal conditions, give healing, give boons, etc.. With that being said, at any given point in time, depending on your current focus (damage, condi, support, etc) your skills will be heavily weighted in one direction, and your stats will be notably weaker in that direction than if they were a secondary stat on any 3-stat combination. So someone in Shaman’s will deal far more condition damage than you while being a superior healer, someone in Sinister will deal far more direct damage while having a higher crit chance, and someone with Dire or Soldier’s stats will be far more sustainable as a tank in both toughness and vitality. And that’s entirely ignoring primary stats.

Back when crit chance, boon duration, condi duration, and magic find were all part of celestial as percentages (years ago now, and back then they were far higher a percentage than they probably should have been), celestial was a reasonably viable jack-of-all-trades. It was a decent first, second, or third choice on several classes especially when you consider it was about the only way to boost boon duration back then. Now things have changed… It takes forever to kill anything in celestial gear, and I’ve found it doesn’t really give enough suitability for the insanely long fights it forced me into.

It sounds good in theory, but in practice, it’s horrific in PVE content.

If it were a decent second option, or even third option for most categories, I’d say “whatever, go for it!”. However I know from experience that outside of a Raid/ WvW settings (and even then, only extremely specific builds), it’s not in the top 10 stats anymore for any given focus.

I’d strongly suggest you make 2 sets of more focused armor, or start with one set and get a second when you can. You’ll feel a lot more useful and you’ll be a lot more effective with a 3/4 stat armor set, whether or not they’re the “meta” selection.

Feel free to ignore me, and good luck if you do; but you’ll probably hate it regardless of your play style. I wanted to like Celestial, I really did. But from experience I can tell you it’s not worth it.

I’m looking at this and I cringe… As much as locking classes immediately upon accepting queue seems logical, it has a load of problems that it creates, and it’s going to virtually eliminate certain classes from competitive PvP. Let me explain…

Teams right now are randomly generated based on player/character rating, however not all classes are equal. Thieves, for example, can be very useful to have one of; however if your team has 2+ thieves, you’re virtually guaranteed to lose. Having no way to swap, if you have a 3-thief random team vs anything but another 3-thief team or total noobs, all you’re doing is playing for second place in a 2-team match; it’s extremely disheartening.

I say that to say sometimes team comps, as randomly generated, are so heavily weighted to one side that, unless the disadvantaged team has FAR superior players, it guarantees a win for one team. That means everyone who’s serious about doing well is going to queue in exclusively with the most versatile of classes and builds, and everyone who doesn’t has a good chance of the game being decided at 0-0.

Don’t get me wrong, some of the most enjoyable PvP classes to play are role players, and role players can often win games; however once you stack 2 or 3 players in the same non-general role, your team’s screwed.

Anyone who supports locking on queue accept, I can virtually guarantee, mains a warrior, guardian, or necromancer. Those right now are the only 3 classes which are at least decent against everything. Ranger is close, but not really there, and before you killed all decent defensive amulets the elementalist would have been a 4th but as it stands, it’s not. What that means is, with locking classes 2/3 of all classes now become a liability to take. That’s the way it’s always been, to be honest; however if you noticed that you were poorly balanced, you could switch. If you can’t switch, no ratings conscience player will use anything else. I vastly prefer variety to fighting the same 3 classes all day every day; both with and against.

In ranked, I think the best way to do it is player rating, not class rating to determine match-ups. People can switch classes at will in the 90 seconds ready room, however doing as you’ve already stated you will and locking in the 10 second pre-match until end of match, thus preventing the end-game swapping for dailies (and possible accidental throwing of match which is BS).

So my answer is an emphatic NO, do not lock classes. Locking classes won’t make PvP more fair nor more enjoyable, it will simply remove 6 of 9 classes from truly competitive PvP.

Some of the best and worst matches I’ve been in were made that way because of thieves. It’s a feast or famine class. Good thieves can win games, bad thieves can lose games, but what you’re complaining about is outright stupid. Both teams have the same odds of getting a good one and the same odds of getting a bad one in solo queue.

Putting a checkbox of what professions you allow on your team would destroy the whole PvP system for certain players and increase queue times for everyone. Good thieves would have to team queue in order to be able to play without 20 minute waits; and while bad thieves would virtually be eliminated, it would hurt the diversity of the game and ultimately wreck PvP for everyone.

What would be the best option for you, is get to a high enough rank where virtually all players are good on whatever class they’re playing. There aren’t too many Legendary thieves that suck.

I’m getting the same error. Was planning on getting my last PvP match to advance my Daily League Participator before reset. Guess that’s not gonna happen…

Spartacus.3192:

Cynar Valdyr.7854:

Phaeton.9582:

big thanks to Josh for fighting the good fight

heavy handed but clear results

the only thing left is what to do about elite specs vs regular specs

As much as I’ll agree that they’re far more powerful than the average specialization line, they’re supposed to be ELITE Specializations, not just another specialization… Elite specializations should be the meta for their class across the board, much like using an elite skill in GW1 was meta, even though you could opt not to… When there’s more than one choice of elite specialization things will diversify a lot.

Thats not what ANET said when they announced the specs. They said it would be an alternative way of playing the class.

And it is. Every class can still be decent without the elite specialization. Shoutbow and hambow warrior, d/d ele, fear necro, turret bunker engie, medi guard, RtW survival ranger, and shatter mesmer are all still viable, and in some cases could be argued are better, in PvP without the elite specialization.

The reason the elite specializations feel so much more powerful is not because of the traits themselves, it’s because the elite specializations cause overlap in one or more existing specialization, and the overlap causes crazy powerful synergy…

Take a Necro for example:

• Spite – boosts power and direct damage
• Curses – boosts conditions
• Death Magic – boosts minions and toughness/ damage reduction
• Blood Magic – boosts healing and life steal
• Soul Reaping – boosts shroud and spectral abilities

• Reaper – changes shroud to melee, adds shouts and greatsword, can benefit shroud, damage, conditions, minions, life steal, or healing.

The Reaper trait line doesn’t boost shroud as much as Soul Reaping, it doesn’t boost it’s might stacking and power potential as much as Spite, it doesn’t help conditions as much as Curses, nor help damage reduction or minionmancy as much as Death Magic, or even help life steal and healing as much as Soul Reaping; however Reaper can be the second best trait line in pretty much every category. This creates overlap between specializations which never were there before allowing a Reaper to be better at any one focus than a standard Necromancer was.

That is why they seem so powerful, when by raw traits the really aren’t. If you’re going for build diversity and utility, often times the elite specialization is actually not your best choice; however most people prefer to min-max making it an easy top 3 specialization.

A few of the new skills are admittedly OP (Sneak Gyro, Well of Precognition, etc), and those are getting weakened to balance; but overall the new elite specializations are perfect for what they were intended to be; an average trait line with new mechanics and skills to create new styles of play, while also introducing a method synergy that was never before possible…

Phaeton.9582:

big thanks to Josh for fighting the good fight

heavy handed but clear results

the only thing left is what to do about elite specs vs regular specs

As much as I’ll agree that they’re far more powerful than the average specialization line, they’re supposed to be ELITE Specializations, not just another specialization… Elite specializations should be the meta for their class across the board, much like using an elite skill in GW1 was meta, even though you could opt not to… When there’s more than one choice of elite specialization things will diversify a lot.

Most Soldiers amulet builds weren’t designed for 1v1, they were designed to survive in a tank role, whether holding a point in conquest or escorting breakers in stronghold, while still being able to do some damage.

A warrior who puts himself in the front line with knockdowns soldiers is an option, he’s still doing good damage, but his team could easily take out the prone target for him to stomp and he can survive even without endure pain under heavy fire.

It is also a solid choice of bunker Mesmers, so even when their plethora of blocks are down they can handle a beating or they elect to use their block/ evades to guard their teammates from a distance without dying immediately themselves.

Of course Necromancers are king of abusing the Soldiers amulet. They can trait into nearly everything they do applying vulnerability to opponents and might to themselves. Add that with strength runes and traits giving 2% critical chance per stack of Vulnerability on opponent and 50% critical in shroud and you’ve got a Necro running around with a near permanent 25 stacks of Might they end up with well over 3k power, 90% crit (while in shroud which they can keep up 80% of the time), 2700 armor, and 28k health. Played right they hit extremely hard and survive almost indefinitely.

These are just a few of the many builds that can truly benefit from Soldiers. The one thing they all have in common is a primary goal of survivability. And while I will agree survivability over offense is very situational, with the right team properly played survivability is what wins games right now.

ANet is trying to make this about trying to get kills, not trying to live forever. As of the 26th, you are either running an offensive build or you are a healer; there is no true tank.

What this update does…

1. Limit diversity in a single build. As of the change, you can only pick up to 4 stats, not 7. That way every player is pigeonholed in some way, and every build has a weakness. The Jack-of-all-trades era is over.

2. Lower maximum sustain and force a defensive weakness. As of this update there will be no way to get both 900+ Toughness and 900+ Vitality, only one can be that high at the cost of the other, or both can be 560. Toughness is better against direct damage, Vitality is better against conditions, so now you must be completely vulnerable to one, the other, or somewhat vulnerable to both.

3. Make having a decent, balanced defense viable in EVERY build. All new amulets have 2 offensive and 2 defensive stats. And while you can no longer go crazy with defensive stats like Soldier’s or Sentinel’s , you now can add balanced defense while still having 2 strong offensive stats.

All of the balance changes seem aimed at weakening every form of bunker build while giving more non-bunker options. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I was getting bored and annoyed with this season’s bunker meta. The PvP season’s theme has been that of the Highlander soundtrack – “Who wants to live forever?”. The only viable builds have been those that can survive seemingly indefinitely or extreme glass cannons who’s main purpose is to kill players that are otherwise unkillable. By removing the key strengths and stat options of bunkers while giving decent defensive stat options to offensive builds, we should be seeing far more viable options from all classes.

Between the 9 classes in PvP, I use in some way nearly ever amulet, rune, and sigil they’re removing or destroying , and honestly I’m extremely pleased overall to see these changes. As much as it’ll hurt most of my builds, it’ll make the game far more enjoyable while making more than 1 style of all 9 classes usable again.

Kudos ANet.

P.S. I do have one gripe about the new balance changes that I’d love a response to from ANet, and it’s about keeping, but destroying, the Sigil of Energy. Yes I did say destroying… Sigil of Energy is not being debuffed or having it’s functionality “changed slightly” it’s being rendered entirely unusable to ALL builds, so it would actually be better to delete it. It will now give 12.5 endurance over 5 seconds instead of 50 endurance instantly. A 75% drop in endurance gain, with a 5 seconds delay on even getting that. Long story short it goes from giving an extra dodge every 10 seconds to an extra dodge every 45 seconds assuming SoE on BOTH weapon sets. With everlasting bunker builds soon to be a thing of the past, most fights will be over long before a player will get their extra dodge. Then finally taking into account that most, if not all, classes have a better way of getting Vigor AND the fact that vigor can be removed or corrupted, virtually every other sigil in the game gives better benefit in ANY build than SoE will post update. So while I still agree that it was too powerful, if you’re going to be that extreme in it’s debuff, just delete it from PvP. Remember, some people don’t keep up on the boards/ news, and those people will keep using it for months not realizing it’s entirely worthless.

This has probably been reported numerous times, however I just wanted to throw this out there. I recently completed Verdant Brink with my Engineer and Necromancer; my Engineer was given his map completion reward (Engie Cache and all), however my Necromancer was not.

In non-official forums I have found others with the same problem, and it appears that any character that has 100% map completion in Tyria is unable to receive map rewards in any other maps. Since 6 of my 8 pre-HoT characters have 100% completion, that’s definitely a big problem for me. It’s currently impossible for me to get any of their Elite Specialization collection weapons. Thankfully I heard about the bug and stopped running Tyria with my Engineer @ 95%, however I am still rather annoyed.

Attached is a screen shot taken with my Necromancer showing 100% Verdant Brink completion and no Necromancer’s Cache.

I really hope this can get fixed soon. Some skins in the specialization collections are among the coolest in the game in my opinion, and I can’t get 2/3 of them as things currently stand.

I would be very interested to know why 6% was chosen. For me, it seems like a death-sentience to armor that, by-all-rights SHOULD work reasonably well in any given situation. And honestly, it does ok most of the time, but it’s damage is low… And that’s pre-change.

The stat system is designed where a few points does NOT make a noticeable difference, and offensive stats scale faster than defensive stats (though granted, it will be less extreme after the patch). So giving 28 points (6% bonus to gear) to every stat will be negligible (20 damage on non-critical hits, +1% chance to critical, +1 bleeding damage per second, +280 hit points). What is being lost, however, is 100% out of direct damage… This change will effectively be removing 7-20% of overall direct damage AFTER the 6% stat boost. That change will not only be noticeable, but completely devastating.

I’m not looking for an argument, I’m merely wanting to know why 6% was chosen.

Lunatic.6134:

Cynar Valdyr.7854:

And no Lunatic, we’re not ignoring you because your points are vaild, we’re ignoring you because of a line in your original comment – “Unless, of course, you were abusing it for the crit damage?…” Critical damage is pretty much celestial’s primary stat, so obviously everyone using Berserker’s is “abusing” power, everyone using Clerics is “abusing” healing power, Sentinel’s “abuses” vitality, and so on…

It’s not because we can’t address your comments that we’re ignoring them, merely that you’ve invalidated them yourself so there’s no point for us to do it as well.

Looking at it in that light, it would be the equivalent to saying this… “As Berserker’s deals too much damage, and it’s power is obviously being abused, what we’ll do is this; remove Berserker’s power primary, and replace it with a power secondary stat. In consolation, as this reduction will be huge, we’ll give a 6% increase to all stats…” If that was done, every power hungry min-maxer would be having a coronary trying to stop ANet from going forward, but since they’re doing EXACTLY the same thing to a considerably weaker stat – celestial, none of those people care.

I’m sorry you have such a powerful reading disability.

As I have said, and Nike has said, the intended use for celestial is in a general build that makes use of all the stats. I highly doubt that anet intended for it to have thisuch crit, but it couldn’t be helped because the general stat spread.

Crit is remaining one of seven main stats on celestial. I use and love celestial gear and I love this change. It will be an amazing move for anyone making full use of the set. The only ones who are concerned are those who are exploiting how much crit is available in the set.

Celestial never was and never will be a set that has crit as aain stat. Anet has already mentioned making a set with crit as the main stat in addition to the sets we have. That would seem to imply the high amount on celestial gear was not intended.

Simply put: you’re using the set wrongly if this change hurts you.

You have said that celestial was designed to have exactly the same stats across the board… If that’s true, there would have been considerably lower critical damage from the beginning; from the release of celestial the amount of critical damage has been disproportionately high. If they actually wanted to make it proportional, a full set of exotic celestial would have given 31% critical damage, not 49% (which is actually 1% MORE than a critical damage as a full minor stat). The calculations are so simple, why would they do that?

The answer is simple too, it was INTENDED… That being said, begs the question of why it was intended to be higher than everything else, and why critical damage of all things? Well, that too is simple. Celestial was designed not to be equal, but to be BALANCED. Average defense, average offense, average healing, average health. The designers had realized that they created a game that was HEAVILY dependent on offensive dps, and realized that in order to make celestial average offensively that they needed to add something to offense… But what? Critical damage was the obvious choice. It is the the single most dependent offensive stat as it’s potency depends heavily on both power and precision; plus it had a different bonus system, so it was easier to raise, but still appear uniform.

This change does not balance, it actually painfully dis-balances celestial in the name of making things equal.

This change therefore hurts EVERYONE using celestial. If you do not put ANYTHING into precision outside of celestial stats, you will be hurt the least, and at that point you will be losing 7% of your direct damage, while gaining less than 2% defense and health, and 1/2 a percent gain in condition damage.

That’s merely raw fact.

If you had attempted before the change to add anything to offense, (thereby exploiting the evil and overly high critical damage stat) you’re going to be losing closer to 15% or 20% of your direct damage while still gaining only tiny bits to everything else.

If the only point to your build was to heal and survive, to an extent where you actually don’t deal direct damage, at that point this change won’t hurt you at all, it will in fact help you… Of course, at that point Shaman’s, Apothecary’s, Settler’s, and Magi’s would all be far better suited to your build.

Morningstar.2934:

Cynar Valdyr.7854:

If you compare a full sets of armor, celestial’s current Critical Damage stat totals almost match it’s berserker’s equivalent; so for this greatsword it’ll be more, but for other pieces (like the Solaria, Circle of the Sun vs. the Ring of Red Death) a standard minor stat would be more. Although I’m making a point, I still am trying to be fair… Over the set, Celestial’s Critical Damage averages out to be pretty close to that of a minor stat, so I gave the current minor stat number for 2 handed weapons (134) for my calculations.

You should state what your assumptions are upfront to maintain credibility.

Cynar Valdyr.7854:

So you pick the trinket that is statistically the worst celestial piece in existance, prove how even that is losing stats, then try to say that this proves how celestial will be better?.. Very interesting logic. (And as they’ve released 15/1 will be the ratio, 7% crit would be 75).

Your basic arithmetic is flawed. The conversion of 7% based on 15 stat points to 1% is 105.

Cynar Valdyr.7854:

In order to actually fix the damage that was caused to celestial, while still keeping it proportionate the bonus would have to be at least tripple; so 20% actually IS reasonable. Full celestial currently gets 468 added to everything, it will soon be getting 28 (basically no noticeable difference) added to everything and an extremely noticeable critical damage nerf. What I would suggest would make celestial 561 across the board. And before you go jumping on how “outlandishly high” that is, it’s only about half a primary stat (meaning it will be exactly as intended, jack of all trades, master of none.).

You don’t really support why 20% is reasonable. Celestial gear is all-purpose utility gear which may not be right for every profession/build and play choice. Focusing on purely dps-based arguments isn’t sufficient. If that’s the basis, then perhaps Celestial isn’t the right set (there’s certainly support among players for allowing players to opt for a stat change – they did it for MF gear).

I’ll follow-up with a further post of why I think a 10% increase for armor and weapons would make more sense. I think 20% is extreme, taking into account that all gear with crit damage will be affected by this (particularly trinkets).

To your point #1, I did state that in the first post that I had mentioned referring to a 2-handed weapon for the purpose of stat comparrison… It’s about the 8th post in this thread. – “You actually get 38.6% more stats overall with Celestial, but the points are distributed evenly (save critical damage, which is almost exactly equal to it’s berserker’s counter-part and thus you can count it like a minor stat). For 2 handed ascended weapons, Major stat is 188, minor is 134, and celestial is 83 (plus the equivalent of 134 in critical damage).”

To point #2, you are correct, I was typing to fast and had a typo, 105 is correct (and I have corrected that post).

To point #3, I suppose I have said little as to why I support something as extreme as 20%…

Celestial was initially designed to be the most versatile set of armor, a little of everything, so that it had a low average in every category; dps, condition damage, healing, defense, and health, while even having good magic find… It would never be the best at anything, but could do everything passably well. Because of that, relatively few people actually used celestial because it could never be as specialized as any other build. When magic find was removed, celestial was actually hit harder than traveler’s because celestial had nearly a full minor stat equivalent in magic find as well as critical damage… So while Traveler’s got changed to berserker’s stats, celestial lost 667 points (exotic was high level at the time, so that’s an exotic minor stat equivalent) out of a total 3878 in the original set, effectively removing 6% stat points with no compensation. That one sucked, but I see why they did it.

Now the other benefit, the other “minor stat” that celestial has, is being removed in an effort to “balance” the game, causing an effective loss in dps from 7%-20% depending on how many precision boosters someone uses (ie sigil of perception, ranger runes, etc); and that is AFTER an overall stat boost of 6%.

A low percent of an already low number yields obscenely low results. The only way celestial will be usable in any builds is to up that number considerably. Perhaps 20% is extreme, but 6% is extremely low… But as it’s a bit of a pain to get, shouldn’t it actually be worth getting?

And no Lunatic, we’re not ignoring you because your points are vaild, we’re ignoring you because of a line in your original comment – “Unless, of course, you were abusing it for the crit damage?…” Critical damage is pretty much celestial’s primary stat, so obviously everyone using Berserker’s is “abusing” power, everyone using Clerics is “abusing” healing power, Sentinel’s “abuses” vitality, and so on…

It’s not because we can’t address your comments that we’re ignoring them, merely that you’ve invalidated them yourself so there’s no point for us to do it as well.

Looking at it in that light, it would be the equivalent to saying this… “As Berserker’s deals too much damage, and it’s power is obviously being abused, what we’ll do is this; remove Berserker’s power primary, and replace it with a power secondary stat. In consolation, as this reduction will be huge, we’ll give a 6% increase to all stats…” If that was done, every power hungry min-maxer would be having a coronary trying to stop ANet from going forward, but since they’re doing EXACTLY the same thing to a considerably weaker stat – celestial, none of those people care.

Min-maxing is always going to be the most powerful way to maximize any specific build, but will inherently create weaknesses. Celestial was designed to give an overall stat bonus to players that were willing to sacrifice the min-maxing benefits in exchange for balance. As LordByron stated earlier, before this change, wearing celestial allowed you to be average in everything; and therefore it seems logical to assume that was the intent of celestial. So yes, celestial had more stats to begin with, but not enough in anything to be considered “good” at anything, instead just enough to be considered average. And though they are higher stats overall, to say that celestial stats were “too high” is absolutely hilarious, and completely wrong. (If you ever play a celestial build, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about).

Previously celestial was given a disproportionate amount of magic find and critical damage, then they removed magic find from armor, and now they’re removing their current system of critical damage, thereby making it fully proportional and considerably weaker. Getting anything out of critical damage is highly dependent on both power and precision, 2 categories which celestial has rather low stats in. Only with the higher critical damage was celestial able to put out direct damage on the low end of average, and now it will be very low.

In order to actually fix the damage that was caused to celestial, while still keeping it proportionate the bonus would have to be at least tripple; so 20% actually IS reasonable. Full celestial currently gets 468 added to everything, it will soon be getting 28 (basically no noticeable difference) added to everything and an extremely noticeable critical damage nerf. What I would suggest would make celestial 561 across the board. And before you go jumping on how “outlandishly high” that is, it’s only about half a primary stat (meaning it will be exactly as intended, jack of all trades, master of none.).

Antares.2586:

callidus.7085:

In the end I wind up with a net loss of 266 stat points. Some might say this isn’t a big deal, it’s just crit dmg, a celestial build doesn’t have enough precision to make use of it anyway… Well, that’d be wrong. Through traits, skills, buffs, food, runes and sigils I maintain a 100% crit chance. This hurts my build significantly. I effectively lose 26.13% of my damage for a gain of next to nothing.

Hi there,

Could you show us the numbers if you go Zerk for everything BUT Ascended Celestial armor ?

I mean, now that’s Ascended stuff become account based, it’s not very painfull to buy Zerk trinkets with laurels or Guild merits, once and for all.

Here is the original build stats he referenced (look at the armor) http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vEAQFAGAA-zEBBYfAJqFRjVVjIqWXDDA-w

Here’s the stats you wanted calculated http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vEAQFAGAA-zEBBYfAJqFRjVXDT5iIqGA-w

Plugging that into the old and new systems, the bonuses looks like this:
Old – New
Power 905 – 914
Precision 657 – 665
Toughness 147 – 156
Vitality 147 – 156
Healing 147 – 156
Cond Dmg 147 – 156
Crit Dmg 73%(1095) – 44% (665)

As Berserker’s is the primary target of the balance, this build will be hit harder, while being “given” less… It has a 39.27% drop in critical damage with a total stat loss of 394 points (430 out of critical damage, +9 in everything else).

So you pick the trinket that is statistically the worst celestial piece in existance, prove how even that is losing stats, then try to say that this proves how celestial will be better?.. Very interesting logic. (And as they’ve released 15/1 will be the ratio, 7% crit would be 105).

(Corrected, thanks for catching my typo morningstar)

LordByron’s right Nike… In fact, after the change if you calculate in power, precision, and critical damage, even Clerics armor will allow the wearer to deal over 2% more damage than celestial.

LordByron.8369:

People still fails to realize critical damage scale on POWER

If i give a guy 90 % of 1 euro and to another 1% of 100 euro, the first one gets LESS despite the 90%.

Simple math….that is why celestial had high crit damage and yet LOW overall damage

Post patch will be amongst lowest damage across the board.

Well said LordByron, my point exactly.

Morningstar.2934:

Cynar Valdyr.7854:

Going back to the 2-handed ascended weapons and my original point, overall stat-wise celestial will be weaker after the “fix”. As I showed in my last post a wupwup claymore currently gets what calculates to a total of 632 stat points… Adding 6% to 83 makes the new stats likely to be 88 for each of the 7 stats for a total of 616, 2.5% less stats than it has currently.

So even with their attempts to compensate for the huge hit to celestial’s only decent stat, it is weaker overall, even after a 6% increase. And realistically, as it has nothing it’s “good at” anymore, it should be getting considerably more overall to even be equal to what it was.

How do you get 632 as your current stat total for the 2H ascended Celestial weapon? If you convert crit damage to a stat based on the conversion for Ferocity (15 stat points per 1%), current crit damage of 11% converts to a current stat of 165 for a total of 663 not 632. The net stat loss for the 2H ascended Celestial is expected to be 47 stat points for a net loss of 7% (after the 6% increase).

If you compare a full sets of armor, celestial’s current Critical Damage stat totals almost match it’s berserker’s equivalent; so for this greatsword it’ll be more, but for other pieces (like the Solaria, Circle of the Sun vs. the Ring of Red Death) a standard minor stat would be more. Although I’m making a point, I still am trying to be fair… Over the set, Celestial’s Critical Damage averages out to be pretty close to that of a minor stat, so I gave the current minor stat number for 2 handed weapons (134) for my calculations.

The point of Ferocity is to slightly lower critical damage totals vs the current system, so to use current numbers mixed with Ferocity will make things look even worse, but that’ll be hit either way. Assuming they gave celestial exactly what they had in relation to other armor, a little less than a minor stat, it’d change from 71% critical damage from armor, to 49.7% critical damage from armor. (and as I’m making the calculations, holy crap that’s a huge drop!). Full suit of ascended (armor, weapons, trinkets) minor stat total is 745 (divide that by 15, that’s where I get 49.6), current minor in critical damage is 71% [or 62% for celestial, all of the 9 points difference coming from trinkets, but strangely enough, celestial exotic trinkets have a higher critical damage total than berserker’s exotic trinkets, even without a back item (ascended trinket/back totals: Berserker’s 44%, Celestial 32%; exotic trinket/back totals: Berserker’s 18%, Celestial without a back item 19%)].

Would you wear celestial after the “fix” as is currently suggested Nike?

Honestly, I don’t think they realize how big a hit these changes will really be to celestial gear. When they make stats 100% even and integrate ferocity into that system, a 6% increase does almost nothing. Even the proposed 20% increase (from 5/8 – 6/8 minor stat) would not be overpowered, and in fact would still be a decrease in damage.

I run a celestial build on my d/d elementalist, this will translate to a loss of 11% damage for me in an already low damage build. I don’t think they realize how low a 6% increase really is for celestial after taking away it’s only real strength (which was a heavily dependent minor stat). If changes go through as suggested it won’t add any noticeable defense, healing, or life, but it will decimate what little damage the build had.

ANet, you need to seriously consider a 20% increase instead of your 6%. Otherwise you will be making celestial, the most time-consuming armor to get, completely worthless.

Going back to the 2-handed ascended weapons and my original point, overall stat-wise celestial will be weaker after the “fix”. As I showed in my last post a wupwup claymore currently gets what calculates to a total of 632 stat points… Adding 6% to 83 makes the new stats likely to be 88 for each of the 7 stats for a total of 616, 2.5% less stats than it has currently.

So even with their attempts to compensate for the huge hit to celestial’s only decent stat, it is weaker overall, even after a 6% increase. And realistically, as it has nothing it’s “good at” anymore, it should be getting considerably more overall to even be equal to what it was.

Ezekiel.1985:

Celestial isn’t what I’d call balanced, even if I’d like it to be. You would get overall more of pretty much every stat (excepting some side stats) by mixing and matching between types.

You actually get 38.6% more stats overall with Celestial, but the points are distributed evenly (save critical damage, which is almost exactly equal to it’s berserker’s counter-part and thus you can count it like a minor stat). For 2 handed ascended weapons, Major stat is 188, minor is 134, and celestial is 83 (plus the equivalent of 134 in critical damage). Add that up and you’ve got 456 total for everything else, and 632 total for celestial (38% more overall stat points, and actually 8% more stat points without counting critical damage at all).

If, however, you mean you can’t min-max, then you’re 100% correct, it adds to all stats at once, (also known as balanced).

I think you’re completely missing the point, Gumball… Celestial never was, is, or ever will be, a dps build; but the changes that are soon to come will hit celestial even harder than berserker’s (the intended target of the nerf). 10% less on berserker’s means they’re still dealing more damage than anything else, a 10% nerf to celestial means it’s 100% useless for anything… Good news though, you can still get ectos out of celestial…

I like the concept in part, but what you’re suggesting is beyond reasonable and would actually force a complete rebuild of the game. Some characters actually cannot help but deal certain conditions, the easiest example of this being the Guardian’s Virtue of Justice. Your suggestion of certain conditions healing certain foes (such as Burning healing Flame Legion), would mean that the Guardian wouldn’t be usable in CoF at all. Upping immunities in certain races I could see. Or perhaps even having some creatures be immune to critical hits, but I honestly don’t think that’d be good…

What I think they’re trying to avoid and what your proposed system would cause, is forcing people to change their entire build, armor included, every time they switch locations. Some of the high end players will do it no problem, but the “little guy” who is new, or simply plays occasionally to relax will be totally messed over… Your proposal would change there from being 3 metas per profession (WvW, PvP, PvE) to dozens of metas based on location. Occasional hobby players couldn’t afford the 5 sets of armor/ runes/ sigils required, and would be annoyed at constantly switching traits every time they want to do something else.

After reading your comment Xillllix, I realized that I made a small mistake in my calculations. I used the raw armor stats to make all calculations save the crit chance which I grabbed from my build editor… Oops. 31%/32% critical chance is what it would be from a build I currently run (which I just realized has 10 in the precision trait line (+100prec/21 =~ 5% crit chance), therefore a pure celestial without anything else in precision that would be 5% less 26%/27%).

So the % difference between the two (before and after) is slightly less than my above calculations assuming nothing in precision outside of the celestial stats, but can be considerably greater if you have higher precision boosts (runes, sigils, 30 in prec trait line, etc).

I recently came across an article about the upcoming changes to critical damage and the introduction to Ferocity. -> https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/learn-about-critical-damage-changes/ Up until I had read this, I had not heard of any specific figure to be added to the celestial armor when ferocity came out, instead just general banter that celestial needed to be beefed up as it would be hurt badly… But reading this concerned me as it seems like the “fix” (6% stat increase) is a drop-in-the-bucket to what they’re taking away.

Celestial gear is losing its biggest stat (by a long shot) in critical damage switching to ferocity but a 6% increase means virtually nothing. When broken down, if using 100% celestial armor, weapons, and trinkets 6% is 28 total stat points per stat. A full celestial build currently gets 31% chance to critical, and +73% critical damage, with the new and “improved” celestial armor it’ll get 32% chance to critical, and +31% critical damage. Non-critical damage will be improved by 2% (celestial gear accounts for 1/3 of the power of it’s wearer, 2/3 coming from their base power, thus a 6% gear boost means +2% power) while critical damage will drop 42%.

Simple calculations using base of 1000 damage:
Non critical: before – 1000, after – 1020
Critical : before – 2230, after – 1846
chance to crit: before – 31%, after 32% (51% and 52% if using perma-fury, as many do)
Average damage: before – 1381, after – 1284 (1627 and 1450 with perma-fury)

What does that calculate out to? a 7% lower damage output, without fury, and an 11% lower damage output with fury. Keep in mind that the vast majority of celestial builds focus on 100% fury up-time simply because their damage is extremely low compared to nearly all other builds already. So what will the wearer get in return? About 28 toughness (roughly 2% boost to damage reduction), 280 hit points, 1.5 damage per second per bleeding stack, and +3.5hp per second regeneration.

While I do realize that the critical damage stat is currently dis-proportionately high in the current set-up, that is the ONLY thing that made celestial even remotely viable. Celestial was never considered the best, or even in the top 5, but was considered to be rather versatile. Now, if a 6% boost is all that’s given in return for it’s immensely reduced damage output, 100% celestial gear can NEVER be viable in ANY situation… It’s damage output, which is bad to begin with, will soon be outright terrible.

Celestial seems as though it was designed to be special. It’s harder to get than nearly all other stat combos; forcing the potential wearer to make charged quartz crystals every day for a month just to get an armor set… So why does it seem like you’re trying to kill it? Perhaps it’s not out of intent, but it always seems to be an unintended causality of every “major improvement” to the game. Magic Find used to be 1 of 2 reasons to use celestial, at least for a couple pieces, the other reason was critical damage. Now both reasons to use celestial are soon to be gone, and celestial is going to get next-to-nothing in return.

I’ve heard it proposed before to move celestial from 5/8 minor stat to 6/8 minor stat numbers, and would that really be a bad thing? It still could never be the best in anything, or even the second best, but it would be viable for pretty much everything. After taking 95% of the reason to wear celestial, a 6% increase of remarkably low numbers will not undo the damage; and if 6% does end up being all that is given, I have little doubt that celestial usage will disappear almost entirely from the game as it will be entirely useless. I’ve been one of the few that actually likes and uses celestial, but as of reading the above article, I’m budgeting to change over a dozen pieces of exotic armor on a few of my characters as soon as the change hits… Of course, I hope I don’t have to.

I honestly believe that conditions are not the problem at all; and they are no more powerful in WvW than direct damage. Instead I contend that most players are leaving themselves obscenely vulnerable to it, and getting annoyed when their weakness is exploited. I know I’ve ticked a few people off, but please hear… read me out.

Trying to find a proper armor set for a build everyone tries to min/max to simply get the most out of their build, and though defense is definitely needed in WvW, far more than in PvE, offense is still the primary focus of nearly all hard-core gamers, simply because the ability to kill quickly is often far more important than living forever… So most people pick armor that has 2 offensive stats (power/ precision/ critical damage/ condition damage) that have good synergy together (and to their build), then take a third stat that is defensive (healing/ toughness/ vitality). If you do that, 99% of the time, you will end up extremely susceptible to conditions. Why? After reviewing the armor sets, there’s actually a very good reason… You have no added vitality at all.

All min-max-able armor sets that have Vitality as a stat (thus ignoring Celestial completely), are either defensive (2 defensive stats, 1 offensive) or the 2 offensive stats do not have good Synergy in the vast majority of builds. Don’t believe me? Here is a complete list…

Soldier’s – Power/ Vitality/ Toughness – 2 defensive stats.
Valkyrie’s – Power/ Vitality/ Critical Damage – Unless you split armor set Critical Hit Chance is 4% making the Critical Damage virtually useless.
Sentinel’s – Vitality/ Power/ Toughness – 2 defensive stats (and crazy expensive).
Shaman’s – Vitality/ Condition Damage/ Healing – 2 defensive stats.
of the Shaman – Vitality/ Power/ Healing – 2 defensive stats.
Carrion – Condition Damage/ Power/ Vitality – no Synergy. Both Condition Damage primary and Power primary builds would rather have Precision for sigils or damage.
Dire – Condition Damage/ Vitality/ Toughness – 2 defensive stats.
Magi’s – Healing/ Precision/ Vitality – 2 defensive stats (and virtually worthless).

Toughness doesn’t have that issue, thanks to Rabid and two versions of Knights stats, but toughness does nothing against conditions. So what it comes down to is you are FORCED to choose, the ideal offense with a huge weakness to conditions, OR the ideal all around defense but mediocre offense at best.

I would not be surprised if that was an intentional move by ANet to force mixed armor, but it’s a choice that you must make. The only truly balanced armor set is celestial, but few builds can make that work as it’s so scattered. Most people, when given the choice, take a weakness to conditions even without realizing it. What it comes down to is all true min-maxers are forced into the same weakness – conditions.

So in the end, people are going on and on about ‘broken conditions’ in WvW, but in all reality, to a conditions opponent, they’re nothing more than a glass cannon begging to be shattered.