Guild Wars 2

I’m at the very beginning of my fractal journey; I think my personal level is something like 9, I have 70 +1 agony infusions, only my weapons and trinkets are ascended, and none of them are attuned or infused or whatever – as far as I can tell, the attunement/infusion process requires materials and currency I have to run a LOT more fractals to acquire. But to run fractals above 20 (I think? is that right?) I need agony resistance. That’s coming up pretty fast and I still have no idea how to get started.

I tried looking for guides on how to put agony resistance onto my gear but they are all from the time when “Versatile Simple Infusion” was a thing, which it’s not anymore, so I’m kind of stymied at step 1. All the other guides are about how many thousands of +1s you need to get 150 AR as cheaply as possible, which is the opposite end of the experience spectrum from me.

Basically I’d like to start putting my +1s to use in a way that doesn’t require me to start from scratch or waste a ton of money/resources as I go forward.

hmm u should start farming them find easy fractals and repeatedly run them to get enough ar to make +9s and put them into your trinkets or weapons.

You will eventually need to attune and infuse your rings/backpack for the extra agony slots. But you don’t have to worry about that right away. Just getting a +7 infusion on all of your trinkets + backpack will give you +42 agony resistance, which is enough to get you to fractal scale 40 and higher

You don’t need to worry about getting to 150 AR right away ( though keep in mind most people go for 12 +9 and 6 +7 infusions). Don’t rush, take your time learning the mechanics, it’ll make your life a lot easier trying to do higher levels.

As you say rings need infuse & attune, and backpack infused ( unless you have one of the level 78 crafted backpacks, which have a single infusion slot also)

Order to apply infusions, depending on available gear ( priority on pieces you wont need to swap/upgrade:
+9s into two armour slots, and/or accessories ( not rings..).
or
4 +7 infusions onto your armour if you already have ascended armour.

Then either +7s on all weapon sets or +9s on rings/backpack if/when they are upgraded fully. ( weapons later, since you’ll need +7’s for all weapon sets you use)

Trade in your +1’s at the vendor for +7s or +9s. I think they require 64/256 +1s respectively & some gold.
Also infusions can be extracted for 24silver, which isn’t a lot to be able to use an agony slot for a while before upgrading a piece of gear.

edit: formatting.

There are three common ways to get AR+150:

• Simple (twelve AR+9, eight AR+7)
• Economical (eight AR+9, eight AR+8, four AR+7)
• Economical, without an infused backpack. (Fifteen AR+9, two AR+8, two AR+7)

In each case, just build up as you go, using the infusion extractor to remove weak infusions before upgrading/replacing them with stronger ones.

Simple: twelve AR+9, eight AR+7, using four of those for your weapons.
It’s the least amount of thinking, since you use the ‘nines’ on armor and infused+attuned rings and the sevens on everything else.

Economical: eight AR+9, eight AR+8, four AR+7.
Again, use sevens on the weapons and distribute the rest as you like (I go with nines on the rings, in case I want to swap to different toons).

How much cheaper it is depends on the market. I estimate you’d save about 10g on 150 AR. Given the total value of AR150 is around 225 gold, I’d be inclined to go with simple.

Economical without infusing a backpack
Except for Mawdrey, infusing a back costs 250 ecto, so this is often significantly cheaper.

Fifteen AR+9 and for weapons, use two AR+8, two AR+7 (each weapon gets one of each)

My estimate is that this saves 50 gold in reaching AR150.

PS ideally, you can save money if you infuse from loot — you might get lucky and get a drop and you’ll definitely get your own mist essences (buying infusion components from the vendor gets pricey).

Sister Saxifrage.7361:

Basically I’d like to start putting my +1s to use in a way that doesn’t require me to start from scratch or waste a ton of money/resources as I go forward.

I’d suggest: save the infusions that you get doing low level fractals, and buy the higher level ones from the vendor in the fractal lobby. That’s basically the same cost as forging your own, and gives you a clear cost and upgrade path for them all.

You can also purchase an extractor there to pull them back out of gear in order to replace them with a higher tier item later, when you need it.

As you gradually increase your AR, you can gradually increase the maximum fractal level you can complete, and through that speed up the rate of AR item drops in loot, leading to being able to move up until you hit peak.

The real cost comes from rushing this, rather than just building up gradually as you go. (Which is not to say that paying more money for faster AR gain has no benefits, just that it’s a time vs cash trade-off.)

Lots of good advice in here! Thanks!

Some important tips I’ve picked up:
-you can’t infuse accessories, weapons, or armor – only rings and backpacks
-attuning rings is cheaper than infusing them
-Mawdrey can be infused cheaper than other ascended backs
-infusions can be extracted for 24 silver
-artificing and vendoring infusions has a roughly equivalent cost

Some other questions:
-I’ve read the rule of thumb is you can do fractals up to the level of your AR minus 10, so you have to start with at least 30 to do level 20 fractals. Is this correct? And is there any reason to bother starting at 30 when it’s immediately too low at level 21? What are some good breakpoint totals to shoot for, do you think? Maybe 40 so I can break into T2?
-there is a vendor potion, the Anguished Tear of Alba, that gives 10 AR. It looks like it can only be purchased a finite number of times though. Should I save this to eke out 150 when I need to?

When you walk up to the fractal portal, it will tell you the suggested AR for each fractal that has agony. You don’t even need AR until scale 25 if you can handle the mechanics of the fractals

So that suggested AR can be trusted? I won’t be a liability to my group if that’s all I have?

You can also buy an agonized tear of alba or something that adds +10 to your AR I think of was it +15.

You probably want to start working on ascended armour, the PvP league system allows you to buy a full set of ascended armour almost by simply playing and getting the reward chests. You can also collect fractal pages and materials to buy from the fractal vendor, possible drops from fractal chests too but higher drop chance the higher the tier. Finally you can work on crafting armour or some pieces, just do your daily spool of silk weaving thread and elonian cord when you have the materials.

Sister Saxifrage.7361:

So that suggested AR can be trusted? I won’t be a liability to my group if that’s all I have?

The suggested AR is the AR you need for minimal agony damage. Having more won’t have any benefits. So yes, it’s trustworthy. You can do fractals even with slightly less AR than suggested. For example, for fractal level 20, 8 AR are suggested, but you can do it just fine with 7 AR. Once you reach lvl 20, there wil be an agony dmg test aviable in the factal lobby, where you can check, how much agony damage you would take with your current AR at the selected level – just in case you aren’t sure you got enough AR.

Sister Saxifrage.7361:

So that suggested AR can be trusted? I won’t be a liability to my group if that’s all I have?

That suggested AR can be trusted. The value the game suggests is the value that reduces Agony damage to 1% (the very minimum, it can’t get lower). So, basically, the maximum requirement for that fractal level. You can get by with few points less, but especially on higher fractal levels it’s not advisable until you’re really comfortable with their mechanics.

Notice that the old “fractal level – 10” rule of thumb is old (from the time when there were 50 fractal levels) and should not be trusted, especially at the higher levels.

Sister Saxifrage.7361:

So that suggested AR can be trusted? I won’t be a liability to my group if that’s all I have?

you will be a liability if you cant handle the mechanics if you have tho the required ar for the fractal you want to run the you got 1 less mechanic to worry about

Sister Saxifrage.7361:

Some important tips I’ve picked up:
-you can’t infuse accessories, weapons, or armor – only rings and backpacks

Not exactly. Accessories can be infused and there’s no reason not to do so. It’s just the amulet slot that can’t take an infusion.

Armor and weapons should probably be among the last items you infuse, because transfer to twinks is more difficult if you want to take those to fractals. Weapons have the additional disadvantage that only the currently active weapon set contributes to your AR. Kepp that in mind when you finish your gear – I’ve seen a few people wondering why they got oneshot by agony, just to discover that one of their weapons lacked infusions.

CptAurellian.9537:

Sister Saxifrage.7361:

Some important tips I’ve picked up:
-you can’t infuse accessories, weapons, or armor – only rings and backpacks

Not exactly. Accessories can be infused and there’s no reason not to do so. It’s just the amulet slot that can’t take an infusion.

“infused” as in “changed to have an additional infusion slot”. Only rings and backpacks have that option.

Ah, didn’t think of that. My bad.

I just bought a bunch of 9 Agony Resistances and plugged them anywhere I could and brought my self up to 63; I assume that level should be good for lvl 1 to 50.

I haven’t figured out the next step yet though.