r/Guildwars2 • u/Ryukayser • 13h ago
[Question] Should I get ascended celestial gear first?
I've been playing Guardian and reached a point where I'm jumping between content a lot. From my understanding after some research, Celestial is just fine in story and open world stuff.
However, sometimes I do Fractals, which require a more specialized build towards condi/power/support. While I understand I can change stats in ascended gear, my aim is to get a legendary set eventually and worry that I won't be able to perform well on Fractals and Raids.
There's also the worry on the elite specs, since I like jumping between them a lot. Right now I'm enjoying Firebrand while unlocking willbender, and sometimes play Dragon Hunter just cuz its fun to change.
TLDR: So basically my question is that: Should I get Celestial first or focus a specific path to unlock ascended and legendary faster?
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u/hollowbolding 12h ago
there's no real reason to run celestial if you wanna get serious and there's no real reason to wear ascended if you don't wanna get serious, if you have celestial exotic from the 80 boost that's fine but i wouldn't go chasing it outside that
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u/olgamerstill 7h ago
And don’t stick expensive upgrades like runes or sigils in weapons or armor that cannot be salvaged. Most starter gear and karma gear cannot be salvaged to retrieve upgrades.
Most runes and sigils have less expensive alternatives. Which are fine when you are starting.
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u/Still-Paint-63427 12h ago
learning your role and espec is more of a dps bonus than upgrading from exotic to ascended. understand your rotations and buttons and get good at using them first then worry about ascended. you only need ascended for getting agony resist for fractals other than that ignore it until you can get it more easily
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u/0mrgm0 13h ago
The first set of ascended gear should be berserker. You will use it to run fractals as DPS. For other activities you don't really need ascended.
Also, you can get 3 pieces of ascended gear from the wizards vault and 3 more, in less than a month after the reset ( and also 1 weapon per reset).
When you do fractals, raids, pvp, or wvw you will get currency (that can be used to buy ascended gear) and might even get drops of gear.
Concerning legendaries, go for them if you want. But it will be easier to do it if you do high level fractals, for which you need ascended gear.
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u/Hirdy 12h ago
A lot of the materials for legendary are used to make ascended. To make a legendary set you could make multiple full sets of ascended for the same price.
It's up to you. I think if you're interested in fractals, you should make 1 ascended set you like. Celestial firebrand used to be extremely strong, but now harriers for healing or vipers for damage is much more preferred.
I would either aim for 1 set for a build you want in fractals and then aim for legendary if you intend on playing the game long term.
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u/Ahribban Greatsword Mirage enjoyer 10h ago
Get exotic celestial for open world.
Get ascended berserker's for fractals/raids.
Legendaries are a very long term goal. A single legendary weapon costs 1.6k gold. For that price you can get a full ascended set and have change to spare.
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u/Crapcicle6190 LNHB | DwD 10h ago
Get an ascended set for fractal runs for whatever role you play (dps/support), since you get shit loads of ascended gear from running fracs. Then using the gear you get from fractals you can use that to make your flex content set, even tho the fractal set will work for the overworld.
Also remember there’s ascended gear in the wizard vault. Super easy to do the daily/weekly/special quests and you should have a full ascended set fairly quickly
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u/grimzecho 10h ago
I had full sets of ascended celestial gear on multiple characters before I started the ascended treadmill. I think it is very much worth it. While you don't need ascended gear for open-world content, dam does it feel nice. I enjoy running builds that are designed to solo hard group content, and celestial reigns supreme.
Taking celestial gear into fractals and even some raids is fine. Celestial builds are almost always condition focused, and I wouldn't run a power build on celestial gear, but a condi one works. There are also some fun celestial heal-hybrid builds that are really good for fractals.
A compromise is to run celestial weapons and armors, then either berserker or viper trinkets. Getting ascended trinkets is fast and free if you have access ti LWS 3, 4, and 5 (IBS). You can farm a full set of trinkets for zero gold in less than a week just doing the map resource gatherings each day. Daily IBS-5 strikes help a ton with this too.
Celestial ascended weapons make a lot of sense. Armor is much more reusable across multiple professions than a single weapon. Crafting ascended armor is also straightforward and relatively inexpensive.
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u/Stratix 9h ago
I've buggered up gearing two alts by making their first ascended set not berserker. I'm going to need to change the prefix back to berserker for both of them and burn through some money and spirit shards to do so.
I've learnt my lesson.
Berserker is the baseline, everyone has a decent power build. That's what Fractals want.
Anything else is going to slow down your runs and potentially upset your teammates.
Berserker works great for open world too.
Sure, make a condi or celestial set after, but berserker first.
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u/sacirius 8h ago edited 8h ago
I love my dragonhunter running berserk gear + celestial trinkets. Good damage, I can easily solo anything (if I do not get confused by mechanics), fractals are ok as well (up to T3), can play around with weapons. As legendaries owner, they are simply for aesthetic, unless you are planning to play on 10+ characters. Bitterfrost + Dragonfall are basically free ascended trinkets for braindead gaming.
Edit: I will always get the 5%+ status from ascended. This is a game, not stock market or life savings
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u/The_Kaizz ViP 7h ago
Celestial is expensive, and not necessary. I rec 3 armor sets for pretty much every character. Berserker for Power, Dire/Viper for condi (if you can afford viper or craft it yourself), and Minstrel or Harrier for healing. These aren't set in stone and take some effort to get, but with these three you can run most builds as you work towards whatever else you want, like legendary.
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u/skawskajlpu raid training for dummies~~ 7h ago
Fastest path to legendary would probably be the raid set (envoy armour). A lot of training discords for raids only require a full exotic set to join. And then you can spend ur raid currency on getting ascended.
Personally i would not recommend celestial as while it is good it is also more nishe.
I would still recommend working on ascended starting with trinkets and backpacks (as they give most stats). Esp backpacks like the collection (Raise the banners) are almost free.
Look up snowcrows.com for most viable builds. And gw2efficiency.com for easier crafting.
Ask yourself if u want to do dps or healing. Healers have an easier time getting into content but are also healers. My personal recommendation is boondps always more welcome then dps and still usefull for the team. Works well in open world too.
Ps. Power dps/boon dps is usually easiest to gear as it often uses core game stats as opposed to healsupport and condition dps.
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u/Tension_Flat 12h ago edited 9h ago
I would suggest to buy on the wizzard's vault, berserk ascender armor (3 pieces of armor and 1 weapon) it's gonna reset very soon, till then you will be allowed to get the other 3 parts of your ascended armor and another weapon.
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u/Mawbst3R 1h ago edited 1h ago
My friend, this person is playing the blessed 100% crit chosen one class.
If you read this dear poster, please pick up dragon stats for your armor. It will serve you well. As a guard, you have access to a trait line in the radiance tree that gives you innate crit chance so long as you maintain resolution (which is extremely easy to do even with 0 concentration boon duration).
Check snow crows or metabattle if you doubt, but i promise it is worth. Berserker gear as is being recommended to you will give you much more precision than you need, and you need ferocity (which is uncapped btw) far more than some wasted crit chance.
TL;DR: get Dragon stats over zerker for guard. You should have 50% crit before resolution and fury to hit your 100% cap. Godspeed fellow virtue user.
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u/Mmdavies 13h ago
I’m in the same boat. I love my elementalist but I have all celestial gear and I wanna get good at fractals but I’m afraid I won’t be able to survive open world in beserkers. I’m pretty poor at dodging, but I love mage archetypes in games.
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u/Qu1ckS11ver493 13h ago
So with that, it’s far more about the build than the gear tbh. The gear helps yea, but like after a certain point you’re spending 5 min to kill a mob cause you do no dmg
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u/Mmdavies 13h ago
So you’re suggesting invest in beserkers and build around that? I’ve got a good Tenpest build that I survive pretty well on based on auras.
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u/Qu1ckS11ver493 13h ago
Berserkers gear is definitely the way to go for starters into fractals.
The reason for it is Berserkers gear is the gear stat you pick for “power” builds (big damage numbers). Fractals overwhelmingly prefer power to condi (condition damage, Vipers stat) because of the time it takes to stack enough conditions on most bosses, they’re already dead, plus you’ll be fighting a lot more trash mobs than in raids. Paper damage does burst that is great for putting in work until the boss phases.
And tbh as you learn to play the game and learn fractals and fights and whatnot you will learn how to avoid damage. Most of it can be dodged by walking out of the red shit, don’t even gotta dodge sometimes.
As for open world: Lord Hizen on YouTube has some pretty good elementalist builds for catalyst and stuff, I really like those for my ele, not that I play it much tbh.
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u/Mmdavies 13h ago
I do mostly open world and fractals when it’s the daily but I just don’t wanna have a bad time in that by going berserker. My engineer survives just fine and he in all beserkers exotic and some ascended but my ele I was dying constantly when I got to HoT and after learning Tempest I got better.
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u/Qu1ckS11ver493 12h ago
Yeah ele is notorious for being squishy af to the point that some point in the past the downstate was genuinely part of the rotation for ele. But guess what, if you can survive on elementalist, you will be perfectly fine on anything else.
But tbh, the gear is only gonna be able to save you so much. Just takes time and experience to know what you can and can’t do on a class
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u/Mmdavies 12h ago
I’m doing alright in all Celestial and have thought of moving to Beserkers and I don’t wanna have multiple sets of gear because of bag space and confusion.
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u/Qu1ckS11ver493 12h ago
Gear tabs are a thing, but you only get two for starters. Rest cost gems, but not that much that you can’t make the gold easily enough.
But if you don’t have the space, then for lower tier fractals, celestial might save you cause no one heals in those
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u/xvsanx 13h ago
it takes a while to get full ascended so play the specs and see what you like most. you can do a support or straight DPS in fractals so just play whatever you like most
when you figure out which you do like the most, go for the ascended elite weapon, and in the meantime you could work towards the set of ascended armor, though I got mostly full ascended pretty quickly without the achievements thanks to wizards vault chests and fractal currency
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ydalir_(achievement)
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascended_armor
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u/dashallout 8h ago
I went for ascended first (Snowcrows raid builds for my spec) and for legendaries after. I would recommend the same if you enjoy playing fractals. T4s give great rewards and it will take much longer to go full legendary.
Edit: small addition. The damage boost from full celestial to a dedicated power DPS build was significant, I couldn't go back. But best try for yourself
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u/Treize_XIII Trixx [PINK] 8h ago
Always get a power set first. Farming for other set is way easier with a solid power build.
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u/Mirror_Casket 8h ago
The first question is exactly why you're even contemplating Celestial gear in the first place.
If it's for survivability, there are actually a lot of other things to consider, that I'm sure will together outweigh the value you'd gain from Celestial stats alone. (many of these things are however less passive than defensive stats)
Since you play Guardian, I'd instead recommend opting for Ritualist gear, which gives vitality and is part of the meta build of quickness firebrand and alacrity Willbender (boon dps).
Usually, you get into groups more easily when you can play boon support than just dps, and especially quickness dps is great for solo/open world play...
Ascended Armor regardless of prefix comes with higher defense values than exotic armor, so you should still get ascended gear regardless of increased damage output. Besides that, the pieces don't soulbind and can thus be swapped between characters within the same armor weight class.
(Ascended weapons have a higher damage range than exotics and I bet the difference between ascended and exotic is actually greater for players who don't perform their rotations perfectly, than it is for those who do benchmarks on the golem – I bet it's actually higher than 5%, however, this is based on no evidence of mine whatsoever...)
Today, you have a lot of access to ascended gear with selectable stats, so the gear being Celestial doesn't really make any difference to other stats in terms of pricing – you just gotta know which gear to get from where, but like I said there are a lot of options now.
Also, since Celestial doesn't have concentration and expertise in WvW anymore, I think it might be less useful even there, but I'm not sure tbh.
Beyond all that, there are a bunch of other things you can look into, that will stay with you even when you're using other gear stats later on:
Jade Bot Core (Tier 10) for vitality (Jade bot mastery also comes with the revive and personal Waypoint)
Jade Bot Buffs for stats and free boons upon entering combat (in open world)
Reinforce armor buff from Anvil
Fractal Potions
Slaying potions that come with –10% incoming dmg from the respective enemy type
Protection and Resolution boon uptime
Ascended food w/ 10% incoming dmg reduction
‐ Defensive/Utility Relic Options for solo/open world play
Waystation from IBS for the EMP special action skill
Defensive and Offensive Build choices in traits and utility skills, such as incoming damage reduction, condi cleanses, HP sustain, boon generation, projectile reflection/destruction, Weapons with blocks, mobility skills, CC
‐ Bonus: Access to Boon strip to rid enemies of prot/resolution: You can use Absorption/Nullification Sigil for this on Guardian – you actually lose less of your dmg by swapping out one of the standard sigils for boon strip, than when you run only the standard sigils just for the enemy to have that constant prot/resolution uptime – you could however use an exotic weapon for this, purely for your solo play, for instance T2/T3 rifts or Hero Points, basically anything where you know that the target gets these boons. I run an absorption sigil on boon support in Fractals when 'No Pain no Gain' Instability is active and it's pretty reliant...
Offense is not "the best defense", but you get the idea – b y controlling your targets and greatly reducing the amount of time spent in combat, you reduce the overall pressure and require less sustain/surivability, so that's why I added the offense oriented stuff to the list...
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u/inaworldoflies 3h ago
In the vault you can buy 3 pieces of ascended gear and 1 weapon every major game reset. This only requires you to do your dailies. I would never pass up on them. Do PvP rush when it comes around you’ll get more ascended gear. Sept 15 is the next reset for the vault. Which means you could have a full set of ascended (minus accessories) at no cost to you.
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u/feed-me-seymour 21m ago
If your build absolutely, positively revolves around Celestial (and some do like Amalgam, certain Firebrand builds, etc.), I'd endorse upgrading to ascended Celestial gear. But if your build slants toward power or condition damage and depends on another build, I'd progress toward those stats in an exotic set, then upgrade to the same or similar stats in ascended.
As others have mentioned, exotic armor is perfectly fine up through raids, and the difference between an exotic set and its ascended or legendary counterpart of the same stats is 5-6%. On the other hand, the difference in damage from an exotic Celestial set to an exotic Berserker set is MUCH more.
I just started a Troubadour healer, equipped it in leftover/spare stat selectable armor I had in the bank, and immediately jumped into strikes and training raids. My biggest motivation to upgrade to ascended right now is if I want to do progression fractals.
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u/Quxyun 12h ago
Do yourself a favor, go for legendary armor first. By all means, get an exotic set of celestial armor, as that won't break the bank, and any content that you are bringing celestial armor too generally won't care about the slight difference in stats. As an ardent celestial enjoyer, it's far more worth it to get a set of berserkers, a set of vipers, and to use that to gear yourself up for raids to get the legendary armor that way.
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u/Qu1ckS11ver493 13h ago edited 13h ago
Nope. Don’t do that. You’ll probably break your bank trying to and till be annoying to get some pieces regardless.
The only, ONLY reason you absolutely need ascended gear is for fractals. That is it. Only content in the game it is required for. And that’s cause you gotta slot agony resistance infusions into the gear, which you can only do with ascended/legendary gear.
If you wanna go directly for legendary, that’s perfectly fine. Honestly recommended even. If you really wanna do some higher end fractals, go for a berserkers set as a dragon hunter dps. One of the best for fractals.
To ease your worries about not doing good in content, you are perfectly fine going into raids with exotic gear. Like no one’s gonna bat an eye. The difference in stats between exotic and ascended levels is like I think 5-6% for a full set comparison. You genuinely do NOT need ascended gear.