Guild Wars 2

I am new to fractals but I understand you need AR. The higher the fractal level, the more the AR you need. You can only put infusions on ascended equipment. You can get infusions from playing fractals, the TP, or crafting.

1. What is a good way to get ascended equipment? What kind of equipment should I get first, armor/weapons/trinkets/backpack? I play druid. Is PvP a good way to get ascended gear or should I just play sub-20 fractals and it will drop eventually?

2. How do you build up your AR? Can I apply a +1 infusion to a ring and also take it off that ring to use it again or will it be lost? Is it best to build up your AR with the endgame (150 AR at fractal #100) in mind, or does that not matter? In other words, should I start saving for a +9 infusion or should I just throw the highest I can make now onto my gear?

3. Should I already be looking for certain stats on the infusions?

1. No set rule for the order of your gear… armor is usually last because it’s the most expensive and provides the least stat boost. Once upon a time, same could be said about backpacks, but the LS3 backpacks have decreased the cost to a much more reasonable level.

The ascended amulets cannot take AR infusions, so you can leave them out unless you want the stats. Also AR infusions on weapons only work if they are on your active weapon set, so you need to have infusions on both sets if yours is a class that swaps a lot.

PvP is fine to get your gear… but be aware you’re limited to 1200 tokens per season, so you need 2+ seasons to gear up. Also currently the PvP ascended items cannot be stat swapped at the MF… not sure if that’s a bug or not.

Sub-20 fractals may drop a ring (perhaps accessory) once in a while, but no armor or weapon boxes. T4 (and to a lesser extent T3) fractals are where the drops are.

Other ways to get your items:

• Crafting
• Various vendors (weapon and armor boxes are more expensive than crafting. Trinkets can be either bought for laurels, or subsidized with other currencies: WvW badges, guild commendations, pristine fractal relics)
• Elite specialization collections (specific weapons only)
• Various other collections (e.g. Leystone armor, Bioluminescence armor)
• WvW, PvP, Tequatl and Triple Trouble Wurm chests (very rare)
• LS3 currency (the only way to get HoT stats on trinkets outside of raids)
• LS2 and HoT achievements

2. Yes, you can just throw your infusions into your gear as you go along. One of the golem vendors will sell you an infusion extractor… it’s fairly cheap, but you need to get the fractal mastery track to unlock him. You don’t need any AR to start fractals… Agony only starts kicking in at level 20.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractals_of_the_Mists
You actually only need 135AR for fractal 100 because there is a cheap +15AR potion.

To upgrade a +1AR to a +2 (and so on), you can either craft using an Artificer, or one of the golem vendors can do it for you for the same price.

3. The stat infusions are expensive and aren’t required for any content. Plain AR infusions are fine. Only get them is you’re determined to fully min-max and are made of gold (e.g. a single Mighty +9 infusion costs ~100g to make, compared to ~10g a normal +9 infusion)

Thank you very much for your extensive answers! They help me a lot.

Not extensive enough IMO :p
Take your time to look through the wiki; it’ll have tons more detail that I missed.