Guild Wars 2

Sooooo…. after a lot of work gathering materials and levelling up my Artificer it seems possible I might actually manage to craft an ascended weapon in the foreseeable future.

I’ve decided I want a staff for my elementalist main character.

My question is this.

What stat combo should I aim for? What stats are considered “a la mode” among those who do fractals or dungeons? What about PvE etc?

As someone who plays occasionally it’s a big “investment” and probably the only legendary/ascended scale weapon I’ll get, so I want to do it right (or at least well advise).

Thanks

S

Hmm I only have an ele alt, so there are others who are more informed, but I’m making my staff ele into a healer/support character. (If I recall, I’m planning on using 0/10/0/30/30, but again I have no clue if that’s good or not, just what I felt like doing with him)

I’d say it really matters what you want to do with him. You can check out some ele builds that use staffs and see which one you like more, and then go for a weapon that complements that.

Aside from that, I can also tell you this. Even if you play occasionally, the big cost comes from getting to 500 crafting. After that the more expensive/harder things to get an ascended weapon are

30 oby shards for the vision crystal
10 Glob of Dark Matter
9 Spiritwood Planks, 3 Deldrimor Steel Ingot (so 9 days of time gated stuff or money for buying them off the tp)
Possibly getting 500 of one of the following dusk/ore/fragments

So, you’re right, if you only play occasionally it would take a while to make a second, but it’s a bigger investment to get to 500 crafting. Not saying you should make one randomly without any thought, but just that it wouldn’t be impossible to make a second.

The “ala mode” would be berserker, aka Zojja.

rhapsody.3615:

The “ala mode” would be berserker, aka Zojja.

Thanks. That’s pretty much what I figured.

I still need roughly 60 Empyreal Fragments but I have characters parked at JPs and hope to do at least one dungeon this week which takes care of that.

I need one more spiritwood plank.

Just need some more discoveries to get up to 500 but I have most of the materials in hand.

S

I think with anything other than a full condition build, (healing, survivability….) you can get what you are looking for out of armor and runes. I would keep trinkets (jewelry) and weapons full berserker to boost your DPS output. So as Rapsody said above all ascended berserker weapons start with Zojja.

As a side note, getting your crafter to 500 is the worst part. Once you reach that getting the mats to craft the ascended weapons come pretty easy.

As for Empyreal Fragments, try parking alts at the jumping puzzles in Caledon Forrest. You get on average 7-9 per chest. I have 6 alts that I try to cycle through each day (Morgan’s Leap, Spekk’s Laboratory and Spelunker’s Delve). Once you get proficient at them you can do all three in about 10 mins per character if you leave them parked at one of them.

I have a legendary staff on my ele and I still pretty much just leave it in berserker’s mode. I think once or twice I wvw’d with it in soldiers but there really is no reason to go with anything else.

For empyrean you can get about a dungeon’s worth from queensdale alone within like 2 waypoints very simply. Theres six chests: starting from vale waypoint under the harpy tree then head east to the altar brook wolf cave then further north east across the lake into the bandits cave then waypoint to the south east corner for the 3 chest in the demon grub puzzle. After that I usually go to gap waypoint in kessex hills for the other bandit cave chest then warp back to lions arch for those.

Dungeons like cof and ac are the best for empyrean though since they pay good gold/time ratios and lfg always has people doing them. I have made 4 ascended weapons so far but now I only really collect vision crystals and just buy the rest. Getting to 500, twice, was the hard part but I could probably do it again much cheaper knowing what I know now.

Gator.5729:

I think with anything other than a full condition build, (healing, survivability….) you can get what you are looking for out of armor and runes. I would keep trinkets (jewelry) and weapons full berserker to boost your DPS output. So as Rapsody said above all ascended berserker weapons start with Zojja.

As a side note, getting your crafter to 500 is the worst part. Once you reach that getting the mats to craft the ascended weapons come pretty easy.

As for Empyreal Fragments, try parking alts at the jumping puzzles in Caledon Forrest. You get on average 7-9 per chest. I have 6 alts that I try to cycle through each day (Morgan’s Leap, Spekk’s Laboratory and Spelunker’s Delve). Once you get proficient at them you can do all three in about 10 mins per character if you leave them parked at one of them.

Lions Arch has 3 jumping puzzles that I think are easier than the Caledon ones. Trolls End can be frustrating at a few points, but I guess any of the JPs can become cake if you do them often enough.

Craft a Soldier. If you need Critical Damage, get it with other pieces of gear. 2H weapons do not have a secondary stat-to-critical damage ratio

As someone else stated above, emp shards are easily obtained from Queensdale, but also check out Hirathi Hinterlands. QD has 7 chests, and HH has 5 or 6.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Gator.5729:

I think with anything other than a full condition build, (healing, survivability….) you can get what you are looking for out of armor and runes. I would keep trinkets (jewelry) and weapons full berserker to boost your DPS output. So as Rapsody said above all ascended berserker weapons start with Zojja.

As a side note, getting your crafter to 500 is the worst part. Once you reach that getting the mats to craft the ascended weapons come pretty easy.

As for Empyreal Fragments, try parking alts at the jumping puzzles in Caledon Forrest. You get on average 7-9 per chest. I have 6 alts that I try to cycle through each day (Morgan’s Leap, Spekk’s Laboratory and Spelunker’s Delve). Once you get proficient at them you can do all three in about 10 mins per character if you leave them parked at one of them.

Lions Arch has 3 jumping puzzles that I think are easier than the Caledon ones. Trolls End can be frustrating at a few points, but I guess any of the JPs can become cake if you do them often enough.

You are correct the ones in LA are a little easier, but you seem to only get 2-4 per chest and then you wait till the next day. I would rather spend a few extra minutes and get 7-9 on each character.

Gator.5729:

Brother Grimm.5176:

Gator.5729:

I think with anything other than a full condition build, (healing, survivability….) you can get what you are looking for out of armor and runes. I would keep trinkets (jewelry) and weapons full berserker to boost your DPS output. So as Rapsody said above all ascended berserker weapons start with Zojja.

As a side note, getting your crafter to 500 is the worst part. Once you reach that getting the mats to craft the ascended weapons come pretty easy.

As for Empyreal Fragments, try parking alts at the jumping puzzles in Caledon Forrest. You get on average 7-9 per chest. I have 6 alts that I try to cycle through each day (Morgan’s Leap, Spekk’s Laboratory and Spelunker’s Delve). Once you get proficient at them you can do all three in about 10 mins per character if you leave them parked at one of them.

Lions Arch has 3 jumping puzzles that I think are easier than the Caledon ones. Trolls End can be frustrating at a few points, but I guess any of the JPs can become cake if you do them often enough.

You are correct the ones in LA are a little easier, but you seem to only get 2-4 per chest and then you wait till the next day. I would rather spend a few extra minutes and get 7-9 on each character.

The pirate one, which I consider really easy, gives in the 7-9 range. I’ve just parked an alt there to get it daily. I just need to send her out to clear her inventory every other week or so.

I used to run 4-7 jps daily, but since I got my ascended weapon it’s been piling up from the Clocktower/occasional fractal run. I’ll wait to see how much more I need after ascended armor comes out, if I have to start running more than 1 jp a day.

I recently had to make this choice as well, but went for celestial instead. The extra 100 power and 50 precision from zerker didn’t outweigh the extra crit damage, ~250 defensive stats and 83 condition damage from celestial to me (since you’ll be focusing on burning/lava font quite a bit anyway). It’s not like you’ll never be in water or in earth when doing fractals, and it’s easier to adapt the armor (mix ‘n match) to the weapon than the other way around given the cost of the weapon. Lastly, sharpening stones + maintenance oils + tuning crystals are all based on your toughness and vitality, so you’ll get another 8.3 stat points of your choice (power/precision/cond. damage) back as well. Small, yes, but it merely diminishes the trade off even further.