Introduction Top

My name is Xavier130, a Vainglorious Bronze Lane/Roam main in SEA. Celeste is my favourite hero I would like to help others by writing an updated guide of this meta AoE specialised hero



Celeste is a late game orientated hero who uses her long ranged abilities to destroy from a distance while being safe in the backlines.

How to play Celeste? Top

Celeste excels very well in chunking slow heroes or those who get outranged by her. She does not deal well with dive heavy heroes but if played well, can outplay those heroes. She is meta due to her simplicity - hit your skillshots and kite - and she can outplay almost anybody if you are good at her. She usually needs to get her level 8 which increases the range of her main attacking ability by a significant amount and her BM+ EVE before she becomes this huge threat . She can 1v1 from the time she has a few crystal bits but is not at that super strong stage yet. She wants teammates who can set easy skillshots for her or those who can peel for her. This means she pairs very well with Lance, who can root enemies to get stunned, before stunning people by himself or pushing those melees away from the Queen Celeste. Anybody who has CC basically has immense synergy with her. She works well late game and could use some help in the mid game though taking early game heroes with her is not reccomended due to her wanting to go extreme late game which those heroes would fall off by then. Unless they are going to be simply a source of CC, early game heroes do not synergise well with Celeste.





Heliogenesis will be Celeste's main source of damage. It works in two stages. The first time you use the ability, a small patch of say 3x3 pixels take damage and a star spawns the the middle of that patch. I call this stage helio or heliogenesis. If you land a star in that 3x3 spot while the existing star is still there, a 5x5 patch will take damage, with the middle spot being the first star that you PUT down. This is the second stage which is called supernova or nova. Frostburn is a great item for celeste due to this. Slowing enemies down means that they can't get out of that area quickly and you can supernova them reliably. If you aren't against mobile enemys, frostburn can be substituted for more damage. Or if you are of higher skill, you can supernova enemys well by placing your helios in key spots which guarantee a supernova to go off and frostburn is not needed then.





Core Collapse is a high skill cap ability. It has a relatively high cooldown and can only be used once or twice in a fight. This means that landing this is very important. Its radius is decent but it has a decent charge up time which makes it easy to dodge/hard to predict. If you are against very dive-heavy drafts and/or mobile heroes and you require the stun frequently, consider getting a clockwork after your core items or maxing your Core collapse instead of your solar storm for the cooldown decrease.





Solar Storm is your ultimate, a long cooldown strong ability(usually, coughcough combat roll coughcough) and should be used in important situations only. As it is a map wide attack, it is great at sniping enemy heroes or gold mine/ kraken, espescially with its pretty wide width and good base damage. Upgrading the ability increase the base damage of each star and how many stars there are. it could go from (3x30) on the first point to (5x50) which is why i almost always prefer taking the point on my ult over on my B. The numbers are obviously wrong and does not calculate middle star and side stars but shows my reasoning for taking the point on my ult. Although this ability has a wide width, any star thats not the one in the middle will disappear once hitting a structure or an enemy hero. This means that a roamer could block those stars for their team. If such a situation occurs, only the middle star will pass through any structure or hero. This is useful information for sniping a low health enemy hiding behind the turret. I would not reccomend using this ability to harass or snipe as much as it is miles more powerful as a midfight ability. Kestrel's OSOK has a much higher charging time and is only useful for harass and/or endfight chase or sniping kraken but solar storm can hit the entire enemy team for massive damage and grant you great amounts of lifesteal.

More about The Queen Top

As Celeste requires her levels and items , She can go to either lane or jungle. For the best of both worlds, i run a Celeste with a subcarry focused on CC. Celeste starts of in the jungle for quick levels and the subcarry often rotates to help Celeste gain a advantage in the jungle. Once Celeste reaches level 8, Celeste rotates to the lane to get more gold as the jungle gold starts to stagnate. This means Celeste gets both quick levels and quick items while the subcarry doesn't totally get no farm as well. This is a slightly different method than the typical hypercarry takes all method.



How do you play Celeste in teamfights? The dream setup is that the main fight is in a very tight choke point while celeste is on the other side of a wall. An example of this is Celeste being in the bush beside the tribush and everyone else is fighting beside the shop bush. Celeste can help the fight due to her ridiculous range yet enemies cant get to her as shes on the other side of the wall. This way, she is safe and her allies can frontline for her as she destroys peoples dreams.





Another way is to literally spam helios. Use your A as often as possible without novaing them to create a wall of stars. If anyone walks into the range of the stars, nova them. The immense damage will deter people from walking through them. This allows easy zoning where you can push the enemy to areas where your allies abilities can easily hit, say zoning them to the top of a dead turret where your ally lance can easily impale.





To synergise well with your allies, i like to land a helio on the enemy first. Even better with a frostburn, my ally can then stun or root that hit enemy which can lead to a easy to hit core collapse and then a nova and/or solar storm. For fun times, stun the enemy, charge your ult and then immediately nova. the nova damage together with the ult can easily one shot a team with say 2 stacks of BM stacks from poking beforehand.

Item Choices Top

Broken Myth and Eve Of Harvest are the two core items for Celeste, and pretty much any CP carry. Broken myth amplifies your damage and eve of harvest heals you. This is similar to the Breaking Point + Serpant's Mask build and is the most cost effective combo for damage and sustainability. However, personally, I do not like Eve Of Harvest as my first or second core offensive item but instead opt for a Frostburn or Shatterglass as my second or first item. This is because Eve of Harvest requires you to deal CP damage and heals a part of what damage you deal. With little CP damage, you would not heal for much and so i prefer getting an extra 100 or 150 cp before getting an eve. As to when to get Shatterglass, Frostburn or Broken Myth first? It depends. If you go for either a Shatterglass or a Frostburn first, you MUST get a Broken Myth next. If you don't , your scaling gets massively pushed back and you will deal as much damage as a CP lyra until you get a Broken Myth. This means that getting Broken Myth as your first item gives you more choices as to your next items. Getting Shatterglass first will help you farm much easier as your damage is higher to minions. You will also get more damage outright and will outdamage a BM in the first few attacks before being outscaled. Shatterglass can be good for quick fights where its burst or be bursted or if you can't poke as much or want to start a fight with a solar storm. Frostburn is a good first item if you need the slow as quickly as possible. Broken Myth followed by a Eve of harvest immediately after is good if you are behind however. As said before, it is the most cost effective build and is good if you need to build tanky or have not enough gold. A second Broken myth can be substituted for either the Shatterglass or Frostburn if the enemy is building lots of shield against you. A Clockwork should only be built after BM + Eve so it should only be the third item or even the fourth item if you have a frostburn/shatterglass.



Basically, the possible buildpaths imo is:(in order of build priority)

Shatterglass > BM > Eve

Frostburn > BM > Eve

BM > SG > Eve

BM > FB > Eve

BM > Eve > FB

BM > Eve > SG

BM > Eve > CW



To see if you have been building well, you should get 3 T3 offensive items + T2 Boots + RB by 15:00. If you are in the lead, you should get those items by 12:00. If you went tanky, you should have 2 T2 items and 1 T3 Def + T2 boots by 15:00.



Other than offensive items, Boots should be upgraded to T2 around the 8:00 point to increase your mobility and RB should be built by lvl 6 or whenever you need it. If theres no CC, you can either build pure defense(Coat of Plates/ Kinetic Shield) or not build any defense until you have your core items.

Personal playstyle which has worked for me Top

Start with a Energy Battery and two potions, may be worth waiting in base to get a potion + minion candy instead but have not tested this thoroughly enough yet.

Go to the top bush and normal attack + helio the enemy laner. Continue aggresion if enemy laner is not strong early.

Focus on farming after the early aggresion if the enemy laner is pretty strong early.

Quickly clear the wave by helio + supernova in order to rotate.

Don't rush, focus on getting every single farm carefully when the minions are low.

Use your abilities to chip at them only when the minions health is high.

After clearing, rotate down and get a crystal bit and try to invade.

If successful, go back to farming. If not, once revived, go back to farming. Farming is VERY imporatant as Celeste.

If the fight resets, you can try to go into one of the lane bush and ambush. A helio + 2 AA + stun + nova can easily get you a solo kills.

I've probably gotten 50 kills on Vox at level 2 as Celeste all in all doing this. People underestimate Celeste's early game way too much. If you can get in range, you can deal massive damage.

After the early game, I pull back on the aggresion in the early-mid game till Level 8.

Most laners are activated in the early-mid game if they aren't the late late game sorts.

Waiting till you get your massive bullying ability is a good choice.

Then, you can siege with your massive range and by this annoying beautiful artillery <3

As you get more items from then on, you gain better zoning abilities and get stronger.

Even at this point, Don't underestimate your AAs! They still deal a lot of damage and are good to use when you aren't sure if you can hit your abilities and have limited mana. Still, this is only useful if you are forced to be in range. Using your helios to max range keeps you as safe as possible. Kestrel, Taka, Flicker and the flicker'ed can be revealed using your AAs and they will follow them to the end and can give your vision of where they are running to.

How to practice playing as The Queen Top

Celeste has three major factors. Kiting, Farming and Hitting. Celeste is useless if you can't hit a single ability or can't get your items. Practicing kiting will increase the survivability of the otherwise squishy Celeste. Practice these things in a 1v1 lane matchup and against someone who agrees to help you in a private match. The helper can play a mobile hero and you can try kiting him and hitting him to increase your survivability. Other good mechanics to learn are Reflex Blocking and chain stunning.







All the best with this beauty. She helped me on my journey from Decent-ish in 2016 Spring till now Vainglorious Bronze 2016 Autumn(?). She can be a good newbie hero and a devastating advanced hero. It all depends on you to unleash her full potential.

Patch 1.25/2.0 Top