appreciate the effort you put into explaining this. this will certainly help me understand build crafting more, its a concept ive been trying to put my head around but now with all of the other specialization weapons becoming unlocked and the 6th tier rune stat bonuns being split off, it just gets more confusing, or maybe not. it remais to be seen.
These type of Celestial builds are now hidden gem in WvW for roaming. I've always loved the celestial play, it becomes very popular even if it is not meta. Couple months ago I've tried celestial firebrand and it was working so damn good. 25 stacks of might, quickness, protection, resolution, vigor, fury and they are all 100% uptime. Also damage done is around 15k with just rotating axe 1-2.
Won't lie, I've been quite scared to put this out. Also I relegated Celestial Supports in the Boon DPS role to the list of “Off-Meta Tools”, because there’s a difference between “Celestial Boon Supports that just tank and use an AoE Healskill” and “Pseudo Third-Healer Comp” and that would require an examination of the value of defense aaaaaand that would need to be it’s own video.
@@MarenAlu Ahh haha very true. I think it's hard to provide advice to people using the words "good" or "bad". For example, most people suggested meta builds to me when I started. They advised full dps gear (Berserker's), traits, and skills, and when I tried it and struggled, they just suggested either switching 1-2 traits/skills or "git gud". This was extremely unhelpful to me and almost caused me to quit. Thankfully, I stopped listening to these people's advice and just built more defensively. I boosted a couple characters and used their full Celestial sets, I switched out full dps specs for full defensive/recovery specs, and I switched out 2-3 dps utility skills for defensive/recovery skills. My success immediately skyrocketed, as did my enjoyment of the game. Then, as I was able to actually play and enjoy the game without continuously dying, it allowed me to actually learn to play, and then I was able to start swapping defensive/recovery build stuff for more dps stuff. That being said, I still often run full Celestial with very hybrid builds, even in T3 Fractals, Strikes and Raids (no CMs though). So, I think this kind of analysis and presentation is very helpful to the community, and I really appreciate it and hope that more people look into it more. I would like to note that some people are just going to experience the game differently: For some, full dps isn't "good" because it causes them to die a lot and thus their experience of the game is worse with it, even if the theoretical ceiling is much higher; for others, defenses and hybridisation aren't "good" because they prefer to be really focused on one thing and do it optimally, and have their allies or personal play style make up for everything else. That's why I try not to say "X is good/bad" any more. That still upsets some people of course, so you can never win 😂 The main thing I recommend to people is: If you're playing in someone else's group, please respect their preferences. Otherwise, just do whatever works for you. There is a LOT in GW2 that contributes to having fun, and it's very dependent on the player.
@@MarenAlu Mate, people will get offended over literally *anything*. Just do you. Share your opinions, block nasty people; it's not worth dealing with them :)
Cool discussion! Celestial can still shine in group content on very narrow builds. One of which is Celestial Firebrand. Firebrand is uniquely powerful with Celestial because you can tailor the build to provide "most" of its healing for little to no extra actions. Such as healing from Symbols, Healing from Virtue Passives, Healing from Regen, Healing from instant cast mantras, with extra panic buttons like Bow of truth or tome 2 if you need it. Essentially letting you do a full DPS rotation on the boss while still pumping the heals which would be different skills and a dps loss for other builds.
Celestial gear is great for Boon DPS role when the healer is struggling to keep the group alive, and there are quite a few professions that can benefit from the extra healing power too. - Firebrand has Tome of Resolve and can bring staff for healing; - Mechanist has passive and active barrier and can bring healing turret for bursty heals; - Scourges can have their barrier improved and bring well of blood; - Tempest has water attunement, ice elemental and wash the pain away; - Specters can target an ally and give them barrier if needed and bring well of gloom; - Herald and Renegade can both bring staff, Renegade's Breakrazor's Bastion and Soulcleave's Summit both have a fairly significant increase in healing with the extra healing power; - Chronomancer has Well of Eternity and the All's Well That Ends Well trait that can heal allies when bringing extra well skills. I wouldn't personally bring celestial gear into the healer role, but for Boon DPS they can be a great introduction to the role while also being quite effective in open world without having to grind or switch gear.
Well thought out video, and very good explanations (especially for a new player like me) I love the theorycrafting in any arpg/mmo I play, and Celestial is a different kind of beast. This helped a ton to help me understanding why and what Celestial does well, and what to avoid to make mistakes building around it.
This is such a good video to introduce people to guild wars 2 attributes. I think celestial is a perfect beginner gear for open world, story, solo open world content and even a starter gear type for group content as Boon DPS. I think there are many professions in the game that can pull off a Boon DPS with cele stats (like Firebrand, Mechanist, Tempest, Specter, Scourge, Herald, Renegade, Chronomancer) that works even in t4 fractals and harder strike missions so you can learn the fights and still be very useful to the group although switching to berserker+diviner or full ritualist will fulfill the Boon DPS role better once you can start diversifying your gear.
As a vet player and guild leader i always tell my team to compare the benfits of using something. Following the line of thought of this video about raid composition, i wanna point the follwoing scenarios: if you are gonna play the healer, whats your job? keeping people alive... when do people die in raids? when they screw mechanics, so as the video says you could feel tempted to phase faster. Now go to the golem dps check, what percentage of your team's dps are you doing vs their pure damage? (normally less than 5% based on years of reviewing logs in arcdps), if you bring added damage whats the percentage increase? (normally less than 5% more) now if you were attacking and lose a dps ally, how much percentage are you losing? (can be anything between 15-40% depending on how good your dps player was compared to the rest of them) so what has more weight on your decision making? now if you are going to play a dps and you think "maybe i should bring sustain", well thats actually important until you reach a certain treshold, yes you dont wanna be playing with 11k health 0 toughness and 0 heals, because anything that touches you will kill you and you will mess with the teams dps. Here, what you want to do is go in a practice team to the fight first and see how much damage you are taking and tune it to the point in which your healers can save you when you get hit without them having to fully focus on keeping you alive or reviving you. (look at your health bar and how fast it goes up ro down, try to tune to softer variations). Always start tankier until you are comfortable with the fight, and then start removing sustain until you reach a point where your damage is comparable with your fellow dps players and your healers dont struggle keeping you alive
I'm trying to decipher what you're intending to tell me here. I'm guessing what you want to say is that you think that A) Healers using damage increasing options isn't all that useful because it's not their job - which yeah, one of the main points of the video was that you shouldn't use a celestial healer unless both you and your group are experienced enough to balance work with it. And B) That it's more valuable for DPS players to take these defensive options because it increases their reliability. - Which I kinda skimmed over. I did want to talk about it, but ended up derailing the video, so I still have a half-finished script all about this idea lying around, because I find it's a really complex topic. Long story short, while this is absolutely reasonable, in my experience I've found that approaching learning from the angle of numbers, regardless of if you're worried about your damage or survivability is never as effective as getting people on the ground quickly and getting them to focus on actually learning mechanics over anything else. In some cases it may lead to fewer early successes, but far more long-term learning.
@@MarenAlu intention wasnt telling you anything :D i quite liked your analysis and the way you explained. The intention was adding to it, for any viewers that come down to the comments section. So as you correctly understood, adding to your statement of "you can bring celestial as the healer as long as you and your team are in sync and aware of the additional stresses that will come up in the fight", which i agree with, i also want to tell your viewers to think about -why would you do it? what is the benefit? is the benefit worth enough for the loses that you can potentionally see? (this is where i bring up numbers, to tell them real data with which they can analyze by themselves) But yes, i also agree with you, learning from the angle of the numbers isnt the most beneficial way, and it is as you say a big topic, in which you have to consider whats your effect on everyone elses dps with whatever you are doing. For now i just wanted to give your viewers (specially those starting instanced content) a little perspective on how much they increase team's damage with their choice. As you said there is not ONE only way of doing things, but also as you said, players should know the extent of their actions. That way you dont have someone going celestial support to raids thinking "well im adding damage as a support so im great", rather you can have someone going in celestial support thinking "ok since this boss isnt heavy on its damage output, and we kinda need to skip this phase to prevent instant death mechanics, i think i can offer a +5% to team dps to help clear the fight". Similarly for the case of the dps using celestial.
5:29 discretion on alacity as this was revamped to have alacrity on ambush only with Mirage mantle. 16:48 My thoughts on the meta is that the more you understand your class (strengths and weaknesses), you're build will likely shape into the meta build. Meaning if you start with a ineffective build, eventually you will poke and optimize it on your playstyle and it will eventually shape into the meta build.
Very good summary! Truth be told celestial is very good but nit on all classes and builds You need a build that can provide power and condi dps plus create boons and has good sustain options that allow its healing power to shine Ele are one prime examples (weaver only with arcane traitline) For pve its - as you said - a mixed bag! It’s possible to play it but in more lenient content more or less But for CMs you definitely should not try to heal with celestial gear Only difference…ALL are running tanky while decent dps capable builds Then feel free but dont try to mix celestial builds with standard comps
Celestial is fine for solo content at least, right? Like, if you don't know build theory like most people, you just want zerk for DPS in a group, Celestial for HoT solo story progression? If not, I have no clue why ANet gives players Celestial when they use level 80 boosts. Give them the actual solo build gear!
Thanks for this. Would you have any suggestions for an open world build for Mesmer with Axe using Celestials? Would Axe Chrono work? Or am I better off with Mirage?
Chrono still has accses to quickness or alacrity while using axe, so I'd suggest that. Chaos is a must, the third line is up to you, Inspiration is the defensive option, Dueling the offensive one and Illusion + Chrono can get you permanent uptime on both main boons. What's right for an Open World build will always heavily depend on your preferences, if you ask me for mine the answer will almost always be: More Damage.
I like celestial, because i can build whatever i want and still be good. I know that people like to play metas and follow rotations just to increase DPS or Heal, but i like to play casual and i can do heal and DPS with celestial, not a lot like the berserkers/vipers/harrier builds but still not worthless
It's a figure of speech, an in no way a judgement of PoF. I was talking about that Pre-Buff celestials had no chance at relevancy in an environment in which PoF introduced Harrier's, Grieving and later Diviners in LWS4, which contributed to drastically increasing the standard of quality for statsets
I only see cele useful in wvw actually it’s hard to find a wvw roamer without cele gear. It’s pretty hard to play against since they have balance on everything
I should add that you can use a celestial booster build from the 80 boost to great effect as a new player but you should never go out of your way to gear jt
videos like this make arenanets rather cluless illogical implementation of class + elite spec balance that much more illogically outta whack n unfun. youll never really learn the game in pve ... learn competetive modes or call it quits.
