Guild Wars 2

Now that we can buy ascended gear from fractal merchants, I was curious if anyone knows what’s the most cost-effective way of getting it: buying or crafting

I’m looking to get ascended for all my chars. I’m not into the legendary thing.

PvP Ascended Shards are the cheapest way to get ascended gear. You are capped per season on how many you can get though, it’s enough for 5 armour pieces per League season however.

Buying from Fractals costs more than crafting if you already have the craft you need at 500. (Roughly 350g for 6 pieces of armor on average more expensive, plus you need a lot of fractal journals)

Buying with Raid Magnetite Shards + Gold is also cheaper than crafting, if you raid.

Back items and accessories/ammys/rings can be cheaply obtained from Fractals/Guild Commendations/WvW/The newest map zones.

I, personally, did achievements that awarded an ascended armor box (Leystone and Bioluminescent collections) then crafted the rest of the set.
Proceeded to do fractal dailies and accumulate armor box drops from there, crafting the odd piece to finish sets if needed. I now have 6 ascended armor sets. (5 full ascended characters, plus a set of 6 armour boxes, and 2 boot/glove boxes I don’t know what to do with yet)

I have 3 ascended armor sets from crafting (few pieces from achievements), at least it’s the easiest and fastest method.

Short version: if you aren’t getting your gear from “natural” sources (drops etc), then crafting is your best bet. PvP is cheap and almost-quick; raids are less cheap and not very quick.

These are the following reliable and semi-reliable acquisition methods:

• PvP Ascended Shard rewards, ~5 pieces/season (at the current rate)
• Raid Magnetite Shards, ~1 piece every two to three weeks (longer for some, less for others
• Fractal Tiered Daily chests, more variable. Could be zero or a few pieces per month.
• Crafting, about 50-150g/piece
• Buying via Pristine Fractal Relics, roughly the same gold cost plus additional gold from integrated fractal matrices plus journal pages.

For those who do all the game’s content, PvP is the cheapest. For those who only do PvE including raids, raids are relatively cheap (even including the opportunity costs of monetized magnetite).

For those who fractal, it turns out to be absolutely cheaper to craft even if you have to level up your crafting ranks, unless you just need a single piece from the discipline. Buying from the fractal vendor is only valuable as a last resort for people who don’t want to level up their crafting toons.

The others have pointed it out nicely but everything has a “price” that you need to consider

1) You have to consider the price of leveling crafting from 1-500 before you can craft your ascended gear, which is different for all 3 crafting disciplines.

2) You need to be rank 20 to even be able to play ranked games (or am i mistaken?). If you arent “good” at pvp it can be frustrating as youre dealing with constant defeats,sometimes flames and toxicity from other players.

3) Not all players are doing raids, and even if they pay a run you still need to consider the price compared to other acquisition methods.

4) Fractals can be easier than raids for sure but you still have to do some effort and it can be time consuming. Someone also calculated that the price of BLING vendors are somewhat higher than that of the crafting (tho he didint use the price of leveling crafting discipline to 500)

In a game that has the same reward spread across multiple ways of acquisition sometimes it is better to look at time consumed in order to get it.

A 15-20 gold per hour farm could get you ascended armor set faster via crafting than anything else.

Vukorep.3081:

The others have pointed it out nicely but everything has a “price” that you need to consider

1) You have to consider the price of leveling crafting from 1-500 before you can craft your ascended gear, which is different for all 3 crafting disciplines.

2) You need to be rank 20 to even be able to play ranked games (or am i mistaken?). If you arent “good” at pvp it can be frustrating as youre dealing with constant defeats,sometimes flames and toxicity from other players.

3) Not all players are doing raids, and even if they pay a run you still need to consider the price compared to other acquisition methods.

4) Fractals can be easier than raids for sure but you still have to do some effort and it can be time consuming. Someone also calculated that the price of BLING vendors are somewhat higher than that of the crafting (tho he didint use the price of leveling crafting discipline to 500)

In a game that has the same reward spread across multiple ways of acquisition sometimes it is better to look at time consumed in order to get it.

A 15-20 gold per hour farm could get you ascended armor set faster via crafting than anything else.

100%
Anet stated when questioned about the pricing of the Ascended boxes in fractals, that they still wanted crafting to be the main, quick guaranteed way the majority of players got ascended armor. Given the restrictions in place on where to buy armour/weapon boxes (Magnetite shard weekly cap/ fractal research pages capped per day/ PvP shards capped by season with the Rank20 threshold).

The options on acquisition are there, but it depends on how much time you (the OP) want to spend on it.

The mixed way:
2 from PvP reward track. But I must convert them to my stats.
4 cafted = Time consuming (ascended mats), have all disciplines at 500.
Trinkets, backpack and stuff from Ember Bay and Bitterfrost (berries / wood).

It was ok.

Haleydawn.3764:

PvP Ascended Shards are the cheapest way to get ascended gear. You are capped per season on how many you can get though, it’s enough for 5 armour pieces per League season however.

Buying from Fractals costs more than crafting if you already have the craft you need at 500. (Roughly 350g for 6 pieces of armor on average more expensive, plus you need a lot of fractal journals)

Buying with Raid Magnetite Shards + Gold is also cheaper than crafting, if you raid.

Back items and accessories/ammys/rings can be cheaply obtained from Fractals/Guild Commendations/WvW/The newest map zones.

I, personally, did achievements that awarded an ascended armor box (Leystone and Bioluminescent collections) then crafted the rest of the set.
Proceeded to do fractal dailies and accumulate armor box drops from there, crafting the odd piece to finish sets if needed. I now have 6 ascended armor sets. (5 full ascended characters, plus a set of 6 armour boxes, and 2 boot/glove boxes I don’t know what to do with yet)

Gah that’s right, the journals. I also have to spend on stabilizing matrix as well.
I’m already at 500 and crafted a previous set. I’ll stick to craft then.

Teh intarwebz will calculate this for you. Ex. http://www.gw2spidy.com/recipe/7309