Celestial is great for when you're trying out different builds. Definitely a great choice for boost characters for when you're not sure how you're going to play the class yet.
Bit late. But an interesting fact about Celestial gear (especially since you mentioned it's often used in solo content) is that it has roughly 60% more stat points in total when compared to any of the "4 stat combinations". And those "4 stat combinations" have more total stats (around 10%) than 3 "stat combinations". To clarify (for celestial gear), the 4 stat combinations mostly have 2 major and 2 minor attribute pools. For example, Vipers will feature a major increase to power and condition damage (+121 in the video), but only a minor increase to precision and expertise (+67 in the video). A major stat will be roughly 80% higher than a minor stat on those 4 stat combinations. The pieces you have shown on the video are chest pieces I'm assuming (based on the amount of stats displayed). Celestial gear will give a minor stat boost to every stat in the game, in this case resulting in 9 times +67. Comparing the total amount of stats: 121 + 121 + 67 + 67 = 376 9 x 67 = 603 There is a difference of 227 or ~60.4%. The reason this is important is because even if you don't use all of the stats given by celestial gear efficiently (which is mostly the case), you have so many more stat points than other gear types that it's mostly irrelevant. Of course you will (mostly) also not be as good as a build specifically made for damage/tanking/supporting/whatever but you can do all of it reasonably well due to the sheer amount of stat points you have over other gear stat selections. Basically if we look back at the numbers we can see that those 227 stats we have extra make up for 3.4x minor stats, so even if we don't have a use for, say, power + precision + ferocity (maybe on a condition based support build that wants to be a bit tanky) we are not using 3 minor stats worth of points (201 points total) so even then we still have a slight advantage in numbers over other stat selections. And even then, it can never be bad to have those extra stats. It's honestly crazy to think about how many stats celestial really gives. Quick edit because basically what I was getting at is that I'd often recommend to use celestial unless you are needed in a specific role or are confident in your play using other stats. Great move by Anet to give it to level 80 boosters for free as their starting option imo.
Great points about Celestial gear! It's a very nice stat type that works quite well on so many different classes. If you don't need to specialize into a particular role it's a great choice to start out on.
If you really think about it, it should never be used. If you wanna do everything, you're just doing easy normal content, some low fractals, some open world, some lower strikes. In which case, your stats don't actually matter much at all (well don't go condi build on a power build). Therefor, you might as well just pick damage to get through that content faster, or build for a proper build in case you'd want to do harder content later. But good stat analysis. TL;DR: Essentially for the bit of content in the game where stats matter a lot, you never want to go celestial build. For the other content you can do it in just dps gear, it won't really matter but you'll do it faster. Therefor it's never useful to get celestial.
@@taserrr I agree with it not being efficient in terms of speed IF you're an experienced player. However, saying it is not useful at all is is quite ignorant. The gear is in its nature "easy mode gear". And it very much supports any newer or less experienced player up until they reach a point where they either use more meta builds for harder content, or they simply never play that content. In fact it's a minority of players in gw2 that play content where stats matter which would mean most people don't care about efficiency or speed unless they run full damage builds. And most of those that bring damage builds into open world are raiders anyways, they just bring raid builds into open world because they cba to change since open world is easy content for them. But it isn't for everyone. Picking up on people's experience level. From my experience guiding new players through the game it has almost never been helpful sticking them into a fit of full berserker armor and a raid build and telling them to play. I've had plenty people come ask me for help because they can't beat the HoT story because they keep dying. Giving less experienced players a full damage build doesn't make them play better all of a sudden. Gw2's combat is arguably one of the most difficult to learn in the mmorpg landscape. In contrast, more recent players I've helped with the game had a set of celestial gear from the get-go since they level 80 boosted. Sure the damage is lower but not only do they not notice since no new player is gonna run arcpds or anything, but they actually had a good time getting through content presumably because they died less and fights were just a little longer helping that immersive "boss experience" rather than bosses falling over and dying in seconds. (which also doesn't happen with new players since they don't know how to deal damage even with the right gear) Lastly I want to mention solo play. Yes it's an mmorpg but some of us work not so cool hours at some point in their life and end up playing at 3 am when noone is around and no lfgs are up. Soloing bounties, bosses and even fractals or certain raid encounters can become a necessity if you can't play during active game hours and celestial simply fits that bill quite nicely. And not even just solo. Looking at metas like dragons end, people die a lot at soo-won. Some of course die to one shot mechanics but also there's just parts of the fight where lots of mobs are around and damage pressure can actually be too high for full damage builds when it's not an experienced player playing them. And while dps matters there, it doesn't actually matter to a point where it's berserker/viper only content. Celestial doesn't even lose that much dps compared to vipers if you play it correctly, but that's again a player issue and not a stat issue. TL;DR as an experienced player it can be hard to understand the value of non optimal gear, and I get that. I've been there. However it's currently one of the best gear choices for the majority of the playerbase when not engaging in endgame content, I did talk about that in my original post.
I only use celestial when I use a hybrid weapon that scales well in both power and condi, for example axe in ranger or shortbow in renegade.. When the power damage of the weapon is too low it's a waste to equip cele instead of trailblazer.
Thanks. Agreed, especially since the game doesn't give you a great selection of stats to choose from while levelling (also with gear usually being from many different stat types).
Thanks! When I first started I ran a mish mash of stats for quite a while. Imagine it would be even worse now with all the extra stat types introduced.
Now that I've got legendary armor when I'm just running a condi build for open world I'll often swap to Trailblazer just to make my life that much easier.
Cheers. The font is Lemon Milk Medium. I followed instructions in Ravvalicious' guide to download the font and get it set up. ua-cam.com/video/S8omEsK_GNw/v-deo.html
Dragon's got missed in the edge cases section too. It's basically the Sinister of Power builds, where a few pieces of it is an advanced optimisation to use on classes that have ridiculous amounts of bonus crit to the point that they go over 100% crit chance going full Berserker's and thus would waste the extra precision.
Good catch! I did think about including Dragons. I figured the difference between using Dragon's vs Sinister etc. is that swapping Berserker pieces for Dragons gets you slightly more health, while swapping Viper for Sinister in some cases nets you more damage. In that case optimising for more damage was much closer to "must have" while optimising for extra HP was more of a nice to have. I do like Dragon's gear though. From memory I ran a few pieces of it on my Vindicator due to its ridiculous crit chance like you mentioned.
@@connorconcarne The other one I might of mentioned was Giver's for Heal Tanking, I generally prefer it to mintrel's as it has a bit better concentration, and as you are going to be constantly healing yourself mitigating damage is probably more useful than having a larger HP pool.
Love Celestial gear on condi Harbinger! It's a good mix between power and condition damage, vitality helps with the health debuff from Blight while healing power gives you insane regen thanks to Alchemic Vigor and you can still easely reach 100% condition or boon duration depending on what you need for your team.
something you forgot to mention when talking about precision is that condtions cannot crit so crit and ferocity do nothing for it, it is like this by design cause conditions bypass armor
good info. have a question. i play mechanic. having trouble choosing the right stats. I mainly play open world content. Want to do dps, and survive a little longer. Greets.
If you're just playing around in open world and want a mix of survivability and damage then Celestial gear would be a good choice. Here's a good Mechanist build that just uses Celestial gear from the Hardstuck site: hardstuck.gg/gw2/builds/engineer/booster-mechanist/
New returning player (after 10 whole years), Power + Precision or Toughness + Concentration, What is that called? Also, is there a way to fine time it? I'd rather focus more on power than the other 2. 2:1:1 ratio or so.
Yep that would be Commander's. Pretty sure you can get the recipe for the inscription from vendors in Dragon Stand. Else other stat selectable armor should let you choose it.
The only way to fine tune your stat balance is to mix in other combinations. If you were wanting more precision or toughness, you could mix in Knights or Captains respectively, but for power, there are no options unless you do not mind mixing in a 5th stat. I would advise against going full Commanders though, maybe mix in some Berserker or Diviners in turn dropping some toughness and/or concentration for ferocity.
If you've watched this guide and tried to pvp only to go "Hey! why am I dead in 2 seconds? My build has plenty of vitality in it." Don't fret. PvP disables all of your stats in favor of a predetermined set of stats you can select. Press H to open your hero panel and go to your equipment tab. There you will find an amulet. Change out the amulet to change your stats. Btw this amulet will default to beserker stats once you enter the pvp lobby. In other words the game will make you a glass cannon by default.
Hey, thanks for the question. Revenant is usually my main across all modes however I do swap around a fair bit. Fractals, Raids and Strikes: Revenant, Necro, Mesmer, Guardian, Engineer, Thief PVP: Revenant, Necro WvW: Necro, Revenant Open World, mostly whatever I ended up using in Fractals and Strike Missions that day.
Celestial is great for when you're trying out different builds. Definitely a great choice for boost characters for when you're not sure how you're going to play the class yet.
Very much agree. It was a glorious day when they changed the boosting gear to Celestial.
Bit late. But an interesting fact about Celestial gear (especially since you mentioned it's often used in solo content) is that it has roughly 60% more stat points in total when compared to any of the "4 stat combinations". And those "4 stat combinations" have more total stats (around 10%) than 3 "stat combinations".
To clarify (for celestial gear), the 4 stat combinations mostly have 2 major and 2 minor attribute pools. For example, Vipers will feature a major increase to power and condition damage (+121 in the video), but only a minor increase to precision and expertise (+67 in the video). A major stat will be roughly 80% higher than a minor stat on those 4 stat combinations. The pieces you have shown on the video are chest pieces I'm assuming (based on the amount of stats displayed). Celestial gear will give a minor stat boost to every stat in the game, in this case resulting in 9 times +67.
Comparing the total amount of stats:
121 + 121 + 67 + 67 = 376
9 x 67 = 603
There is a difference of 227 or ~60.4%.
The reason this is important is because even if you don't use all of the stats given by celestial gear efficiently (which is mostly the case), you have so many more stat points than other gear types that it's mostly irrelevant. Of course you will (mostly) also not be as good as a build specifically made for damage/tanking/supporting/whatever but you can do all of it reasonably well due to the sheer amount of stat points you have over other gear stat selections.
Basically if we look back at the numbers we can see that those 227 stats we have extra make up for 3.4x minor stats, so even if we don't have a use for, say, power + precision + ferocity (maybe on a condition based support build that wants to be a bit tanky) we are not using 3 minor stats worth of points (201 points total) so even then we still have a slight advantage in numbers over other stat selections. And even then, it can never be bad to have those extra stats. It's honestly crazy to think about how many stats celestial really gives.
Quick edit because basically what I was getting at is that I'd often recommend to use celestial unless you are needed in a specific role or are confident in your play using other stats. Great move by Anet to give it to level 80 boosters for free as their starting option imo.
Great points about Celestial gear! It's a very nice stat type that works quite well on so many different classes. If you don't need to specialize into a particular role it's a great choice to start out on.
I love celestial for open world, dungeons and IBS strikes. You can provide everything needed well enough for you and your squad to succeed.
If you really think about it, it should never be used.
If you wanna do everything, you're just doing easy normal content, some low fractals, some open world, some lower strikes. In which case, your stats don't actually matter much at all (well don't go condi build on a power build). Therefor, you might as well just pick damage to get through that content faster, or build for a proper build in case you'd want to do harder content later. But good stat analysis.
TL;DR:
Essentially for the bit of content in the game where stats matter a lot, you never want to go celestial build.
For the other content you can do it in just dps gear, it won't really matter but you'll do it faster. Therefor it's never useful to get celestial.
@@taserrr I agree with it not being efficient in terms of speed IF you're an experienced player.
However, saying it is not useful at all is is quite ignorant. The gear is in its nature "easy mode gear". And it very much supports any newer or less experienced player up until they reach a point where they either use more meta builds for harder content, or they simply never play that content. In fact it's a minority of players in gw2 that play content where stats matter which would mean most people don't care about efficiency or speed unless they run full damage builds. And most of those that bring damage builds into open world are raiders anyways, they just bring raid builds into open world because they cba to change since open world is easy content for them. But it isn't for everyone.
Picking up on people's experience level. From my experience guiding new players through the game it has almost never been helpful sticking them into a fit of full berserker armor and a raid build and telling them to play. I've had plenty people come ask me for help because they can't beat the HoT story because they keep dying. Giving less experienced players a full damage build doesn't make them play better all of a sudden. Gw2's combat is arguably one of the most difficult to learn in the mmorpg landscape.
In contrast, more recent players I've helped with the game had a set of celestial gear from the get-go since they level 80 boosted. Sure the damage is lower but not only do they not notice since no new player is gonna run arcpds or anything, but they actually had a good time getting through content presumably because they died less and fights were just a little longer helping that immersive "boss experience" rather than bosses falling over and dying in seconds. (which also doesn't happen with new players since they don't know how to deal damage even with the right gear)
Lastly I want to mention solo play. Yes it's an mmorpg but some of us work not so cool hours at some point in their life and end up playing at 3 am when noone is around and no lfgs are up. Soloing bounties, bosses and even fractals or certain raid encounters can become a necessity if you can't play during active game hours and celestial simply fits that bill quite nicely.
And not even just solo. Looking at metas like dragons end, people die a lot at soo-won. Some of course die to one shot mechanics but also there's just parts of the fight where lots of mobs are around and damage pressure can actually be too high for full damage builds when it's not an experienced player playing them. And while dps matters there, it doesn't actually matter to a point where it's berserker/viper only content. Celestial doesn't even lose that much dps compared to vipers if you play it correctly, but that's again a player issue and not a stat issue.
TL;DR as an experienced player it can be hard to understand the value of non optimal gear, and I get that. I've been there. However it's currently one of the best gear choices for the majority of the playerbase when not engaging in endgame content, I did talk about that in my original post.
I only use celestial when I use a hybrid weapon that scales well in both power and condi, for example axe in ranger or shortbow in renegade.. When the power damage of the weapon is too low it's a waste to equip cele instead of trailblazer.
Great Video for new players! Choosing the right stats can be tricky.
Thanks. Agreed, especially since the game doesn't give you a great selection of stats to choose from while levelling (also with gear usually being from many different stat types).
Even as a veteran player of 10 years this was still interesting to watch.
I already knew everything but hearing it just felt right.
Thanks! I'm so glad you enjoyed it.
Thanks for the concise overview!
My pleasure!
Nice! That's the guide I would have needed when I started playing :D
Thanks! When I first started I ran a mish mash of stats for quite a while. Imagine it would be even worse now with all the extra stat types introduced.
I loved the call out to Trailblazer for an optional Condi stat. I personally don't see it too often save for myself and random WvW builds.
Now that I've got legendary armor when I'm just running a condi build for open world I'll often swap to Trailblazer just to make my life that much easier.
@@connorconcarne Trailblazer Reaper has been my main necro build since HoT dropped. Definitely my favorite condi build for the necro.
Very helpful, thank you!
Thanks, glad you found it useful!
ohmg thank you
Glad I could help!
Great video!
Completely unrelated question - what font are you using with Arc?
Cheers. The font is Lemon Milk Medium. I followed instructions in Ravvalicious' guide to download the font and get it set up. ua-cam.com/video/S8omEsK_GNw/v-deo.html
@@connorconcarneThank you!
Dragon's got missed in the edge cases section too. It's basically the Sinister of Power builds, where a few pieces of it is an advanced optimisation to use on classes that have ridiculous amounts of bonus crit to the point that they go over 100% crit chance going full Berserker's and thus would waste the extra precision.
Good catch! I did think about including Dragons. I figured the difference between using Dragon's vs Sinister etc. is that swapping Berserker pieces for Dragons gets you slightly more health, while swapping Viper for Sinister in some cases nets you more damage. In that case optimising for more damage was much closer to "must have" while optimising for extra HP was more of a nice to have.
I do like Dragon's gear though. From memory I ran a few pieces of it on my Vindicator due to its ridiculous crit chance like you mentioned.
@@connorconcarne The other one I might of mentioned was Giver's for Heal Tanking, I generally prefer it to mintrel's as it has a bit better concentration, and as you are going to be constantly healing yourself mitigating damage is probably more useful than having a larger HP pool.
knew it all but its great for those who doesn't thanks for the work put in the video.
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it.
Great Video for new players
thanks
No problem!
very well made crack, I liked everything
Why thank you haha
Love Celestial gear on condi Harbinger! It's a good mix between power and condition damage, vitality helps with the health debuff from Blight while healing power gives you insane regen thanks to Alchemic Vigor and you can still easely reach 100% condition or boon duration depending on what you need for your team.
I love slapping some celestial gear on condi classes as well. Some nice synergy on Condi Harbinger as well like you mentioned.
something you forgot to mention when talking about precision is that condtions cannot crit so crit and ferocity do nothing for it, it is like this by design cause conditions bypass armor
Good point about conditions not being able to crit!
Thanks for the video.
No worries!
Thanks mate
Happy to help
good info. have a question. i play mechanic. having trouble choosing the right stats. I mainly play open world content. Want to do dps, and survive a little longer. Greets.
If you're just playing around in open world and want a mix of survivability and damage then Celestial gear would be a good choice. Here's a good Mechanist build that just uses Celestial gear from the Hardstuck site: hardstuck.gg/gw2/builds/engineer/booster-mechanist/
New returning player (after 10 whole years),
Power + Precision or Toughness + Concentration, What is that called?
Also, is there a way to fine time it? I'd rather focus more on power than the other 2. 2:1:1 ratio or so.
Commanders
Yep that would be Commander's. Pretty sure you can get the recipe for the inscription from vendors in Dragon Stand. Else other stat selectable armor should let you choose it.
The only way to fine tune your stat balance is to mix in other combinations. If you were wanting more precision or toughness, you could mix in Knights or Captains respectively, but for power, there are no options unless you do not mind mixing in a 5th stat. I would advise against going full Commanders though, maybe mix in some Berserker or Diviners in turn dropping some toughness and/or concentration for ferocity.
Thank you
You're very welcome :)
Thanks!
No problem!
Does healing power increase necro barriers?
Yes
Yep, healing power increases the size of your barrier.
Never mix your runes. All Runes should be the same type.
Good point, I'm planning to do a separate video on runes and sigils touching on just how important they are.
If you've watched this guide and tried to pvp only to go "Hey! why am I dead in 2 seconds? My build has plenty of vitality in it."
Don't fret. PvP disables all of your stats in favor of a predetermined set of stats you can select. Press H to open your hero panel and go to your equipment tab.
There you will find an amulet. Change out the amulet to change your stats.
Btw this amulet will default to beserker stats once you enter the pvp lobby. In other words the game will make you a glass cannon by default.
Good point about PVP overriding your stats.
Very noice
Why thank you!
I hope that one of your alts is Conner Con Queso 😄
Haha it should be.
Neat :)
Thanks!
Celestial is de wae
Enjoy that 250 plus ping
The joys of Australian ping haha. Still totally playable though. You get used to it.
Completely missed stat types for WvW
Crazy how most of the gear stats in this game are useless. ☠️
They could really do with a bit of a trim and tidy up. So many of the gear stats are just a trap for people to fall into.
Cel is great for lazy people. You dont need to get legendary crap and can play around with builds.
I do like Cele gear just for that as well. Very good for condi builds as well if you're just trying them out.
The reason giving Cele to the 80 boost was so good. Allows new players to experiment with build types more without being heavily punished.
Hey, just a question! What class do you primarily use? For fractals/pvp/open-world?
Hey, thanks for the question. Revenant is usually my main across all modes however I do swap around a fair bit.
Fractals, Raids and Strikes: Revenant, Necro, Mesmer, Guardian, Engineer, Thief
PVP: Revenant, Necro
WvW: Necro, Revenant
Open World, mostly whatever I ended up using in Fractals and Strike Missions that day.
@@connorconcarne Ahh, okay! Thank you so much for your time! :D