The celestial build stacks between 3 and 9 might depending on how long a fight has been going, if no one else contributes stacks. It’s not that crucial, and you could conceivably run another rune set if you wanted. Its strength relies in its hybrid damage, bringing both good condition damage and good direct damage, with high spike damage if used correctly. Using grenade barrage inside an immobilized enemies model does great damage, as do blunderbuss and jump shot, and they can be chained as well.
The celestial build is more vulnerable to direct damage spikes, with lower toughness, and lacks the block/stun of shield, meaning your best defense against a thief spike or similar is to dps the thief instead of block while your conditions tick. On the other side of the coin, celestial is better versus conditions, as it has both higher vitality and better sustain, but it still won’t save you vs strong condition builds as our condition removal is pretty kitten terrible.
Celestial rifle also trades the slower double stun of shield and magnetic inversion’s short range knockback for a much faster CC in overcharged shot. This makes interrupting heals easier, and makes moving corpses and setting up bursts possible. The soft CC of net shot also makes decaps easier, and key grenades much easier to land. You do lose out on pistol 3’s blind, but a properly timed net shot can negate a lot more damage than it.
Basically, the celestial build trades defense for offensive, and no longer gets countered by builds with condition immunity or very high condition removal.
For Elixir S vs Elixir Gun, it really depends on your style of play and what you want to do. Elixir S is a very solid option, with the stealth from its toss allowing you to set up initial bursts with magnet, or stealth downed allies to prevent stomps, or escape an outnumbered fight. The Elixir itself also allows you to safestomp versus anything but a thief or mesmer, which can be very useful if you do not have a guardian with stand your ground or an elementalist or d/p thief for securing stomps. Depending on your comp, even teamfights may be near impossible to win due to an inability to stomp, so there are definitely times when you’d want to run elixir s over any other option.
Elixir Gun on the other hand is the defensive/support option. It brings a condition remove and decent heal with super elixir, amazing condition removal on others with fumigate, and the hard-hitting blast finisher acid bomb, which can be used for damage on corpses, or blasting a water field, or escaping a fight. Elixir S beats it for escaping fights, but acid bomb can be used for faster movement across the map, meaning you may be able to make it to a point in time to contest it and prevent a decap which you wouldn’t have had time to with Elixir S. Elixir Gun also brings a superior stunbreak, making it the better option against CC heavy opponents and terrormancers.
It should be noted that Elixir Gun and Elixir S are not your only options for a third utility. Others you may want to consider:
- Elixir U when facing multiple power rangers or other projectile heavy opponents, can also be used to safestomp against war/engi, and quickness stomp for when an enemy is being ressed.
- Slick Shoes is a strong offensive option, providing up to 6 seconds of continual knockdown if used properly, as well as a decent escape and low cooldown stunbreak in Super Speed. Both this skill and its toolbelt skill are getting significant cooldown reductions in the next patch as well.
- Thumper Turret combined with the Experimental Turrets trait to provide good protection uptime to your team during teamfights. Also brings good CC. Useful against direct damage heavy teams.
- Elixir R for when you feel like trolling enemies by self ressing. Hilarious when used with the trait Always Prepared.
