How I miss the days of old. Super fast Retribution clipping throwing my haunting ghosts and melting all during the A&B days. Times have truly not been nice to my favorite power. I've had to dig through and actually put hours into learning what this hidden gem can do and I must say I've enjoyed every second. Currently I'm running a 200 Solar Amp, 200 Trans, and a 195 Strat. There are countless horrible rotations/loadouts for this power plastered all over YouTube but I rarely see anything posted here. My loadout is Death Mark, Plague, DL, Amplified Heat Vision, Defile, and Neo-Venom SC. My 10sec ST hovers around the 40k/s range but I can see upwards of 60-70 depending on crits. I've heard whispers of a very strong rotation that only a select few know of. Am I close? Let's talk about this rarely discussed power.
I am also very interested in hearing this. I am celestial as well and just came back after not playing for several years and I am trying to resist switching to precision because I have always gone with a might based build.
Ye I'm re-exploring Celestial Might DPS side currently - although I use Grimorum Verum, Strategist Card and the Transformation Card since they can be good for both might and precision, and the latter two can be very strong for Celestial heal side too. I'm burnt out on precision DPS a little so yes I am too having fun with Celestial - load out wise I'm still discovering since as you said, many of the load outs on YT either aren't there for me or aren't updated. There is some variability with Celestial might with crits, so sometimes it can be hard to compare load outs. Defile is one of debate. I prefer it as it does huge crits right off the bat of a Plague combo (and with PI setup), plus its pure ST so in the case of unnecessary adds nearby this provides more focus on the boss (eg. Alpha Lex in FBe). But apparently there are stronger options than this with the artefacts I mentioned previously - only issue I have is the splash damage in unnecessary add situations. I sense Celestial Might ST load outs may vary depending on the raid itself.
Plague, divine light, weapon buff (get the 2%head mod), wrath of the presence, sidekick, neo. The single target has a lot of variants, there’s one that i figured out that didn’t use heat vision, I was getting 50ks consistently, and this was during metal part 2 dlc
If you're looking to test rotations on sparring targets, I generally get 80k/s vs 8 using: Divine light, plaque (combo), clip to wither (combo), clip to blight (combo), clip into heat vision (repeat). RSK as 6th, or sub for neo venom boost. You have to make sure you're clipping the powers at just the right time to cut animations and still get the full effect. If you must be at a distance (cannot use blight) then clip wither to a 2nd wither, then heat vision. If you clip just right, your heat vision will start casting just before it even starts the animation. This is also successful with alerts (3 or more adds). As far as single target goes, there are multiple different rotations that will give you good numbers. However the devasting rotation is, sorry, a secret that I'm guessing only a select few know/use.
Players want to be known as "the best *insert power here* player" and, as you can see, they are very stingy with their findings which is completely understandable. They put the work in so I understand why they don't feel obligated to share their info. Saying that, the loadout in my post won't get you kicked out of raids. Unless I'm running with my league, I'm usually top dps in PUG groups. (I admit thats not saying much these days lol) I'll hit the lab tonight when I get home to attempt to find some improvements.
Tell ya what, in light of helping people out a bit, I'll share some info, that surprisingly some people don't/didn't know. With most powers, you want to start out by getting your PI setup. With celestial, there are 3 powers that "setup" your PI. Divine light, Retribution, and the SC generator (I don't use it, so I can't recall the name). But wait, there's more (and this one of the secrets of celestial). The corrupted version of Divine and Retribution will also setup your PI. Meaning, don't waste your time trying to setup PI from the start, you'll be able to keep it going through combos. So, if you start your rotation (let's hope your tank has aggro) using plaque with the full combo, you've already got your PI setup with corrupted Divine light. If you start your rotation with Wither, your pi will setup with corrupted Retribution. So, in my comment up a few posts, (because I was inboxed about it) you don't need to start with Divine light. It's just the order I have my powers in my tray. Start with plaque, as you light your hands at the end of plaque, you got Divine light (no combo). Divine light and corrupted Divine light, both hit hard. So clipping this as your start, is going to land you 2 really big hits at the start of your power rotation. You can speed up, what I wrote above, by: Plaque clip Divine, Wither combo clipped to heat vision, back to plaque combo (Divine light is still on cool down), clip to wither combo, clip to heat vision. (Repeat) and get really good numbers. If you're up close, you can replace Wither with blight combo, and get about the same numbers. Blight can also hit hard even if the pi is not setup. So in alerts like VMF, if you've just used plaque, and the enemies die (while plaque is cooling), you can lunge the next set of adds and go straight into blight combo, heat vision or Wither to finish them off. Celestial dps is very active response based, in that you have to know which adds will die faster, so you can position yourself for the most damage, with whichever combo you need to get the job done. Blight is direction based, meaning the last hit of combo needs to be facing the adds to be hit. Another thing you can do is the death Mark combo, as when the shield breaks, it hits hard. So you can setup the shield before jumping into the adds, and get a nice hit in the short seconds it takes to break the shield.
Heat vision is a damage loss with celestial during aoe scenarios. And wrath of the presence is mid range, and is better than wither And divine light is used not for the pi, but the damage, after a combo you clip into it, and then cancel the animation with the weapon buff
To each their own. However, I just finished testing celestial on 8, and 3 sparring targets. If you notice above, I said to clip Divine after plaque "for the damage." By dropping heat vision out of the rotation, you lose a significant portion of dmg/s: the numbers prove that on 8 and 3 targets. Also, if you read again, my comment, I never said you needed to use Divine to setup PI, I said use corrupted Divine (which means you use the plaque combo to achieve corrupted Divine). Yes, wrath is mid range, good point. Not long range like wither. You know what's better then wrath for dmg/s over time? Blight. That's why I put wither (for range) and blight (for close). Also, in every single loadout test I ran, clipping in the weapon buff does nothing for your damage over parsers: you can easily get higher parsers by using RSK instead of anoint. I tested this power with multiple rotations over the course of a week, for hours each time. The loadout I provided is a great "general" loadout for range and close. It is "not" the top notch loadout, of which I refuse to share.
I use Admonish(combo)-Blight(combo)-Wrath(combo) and repeat, using grim at 160 to have PI. I use Admo instead of Plague because plague has one more chance to be interupted, when parsing I dont get a constant dmg and the clipping of cleansed blight with normal blight is a good and constand DoT. Also, if you have solar at 200, you should use HV-Blight(combo)-wrath(combo). For the other 3 slots I use RSK, Neo-venom and I my personal case, shield. but you can use Weapon buff with head mod too. note: this loadout if for mid-range style. If you want full range then I recomend plague(combo)-HV- wither(combo) and repeat.
It's hard to beat divine light (no combo) setting up your pi, clipped into wrath combo spam until divine is off cooldown for aoe. Only at range will I use hv and plague for aoe. Yes with wrath you wanna be up in the mix, but your trying for big numbers right? Alot of adds are going to die fast in raids, divine into wrath is much faster than plague into divine. For st i use divine light (no combo) clipped with plague combo into HV. Plague will be off cooldown when HV animation is done. Repeat. Divine will set pi for plague ticks overtime, plague sets pi at the end of the combo. Divine, wrath, plague, hv, rsk, neo loadout works in most situations. I do have defile on a ST loadout but I almost never use it.
Oh boy, cant wait for all those "Finisher/Heatvision Spammers!!!" and "Might Dps takes no skill" and "Might Dps is too OP!!!" comments after the Prec nerf goes live.
Testing out a new loadout lately thats proven quiet well on mainly ST but does great on finishing those adds, too. 1. Robot Sidekick 2. Divine Light 3. Plague 4. Defile 5. Heat-Vision 6. Neo-Venom Boost(Supercharge) Rotation would be: Divine Light(Full Combo) -> Plague(Full Combo) -> Heat-Vision -> Defile -> Plague(FullCombo) REPEAT Not quite sure, but I run the Accelerated Plague mod. This may give a smoother and quicker transition. Artifacts are Solar-Amplifier, Transformation Card(for the higher probability and magnitude of getting that high Plague crit(100ks+ and 200ks with Neo-Venom on occasion)) and Strategist Card.
I'll have to give that rotation a whirl to see what's it is like. Currently, a very strong ST rotation is: Divide light (no combo) consume soul (combo if close to boss and/or adds are present), clipped to defile into heat vision. Repeat. I've gotten very impressive dmg parsers with this.
Okay, so I checked the listed rotation: DL combo into plaque combo, to HV, to defile. I'm unable to get numbers as high as this rotation: Divine (no combo) Consume soul (CS), HV, CS, Defile, CS, repeat and use Divine as soon as off cool down. RSK in 5th, and Neo venom 6th. Same artifacts.
