Guild Wars 2

Good afternoon,
I recently hit 80 and took a visit to the cultural armor vendor. 63k per piece. I only spent maybe 4 or 5k kharma while leveling. I would have no where near 63k for even one piece when I hit 80.

My issue/question is that all this time I thought the game was not about grinding out the best possible gear. Yet, we will probably be grinding out kharma for cultural vendor tier 3 gear, and grinding out dungeons for dungeon gear. Once we get a max stat set, then what? Wait until the next content patch or expansion? Will they then increase the level cap and give us more goodies to grind for?

As ill-informed as I may be, this seems no different than the traditional MMO, without the raiding to test your skill and the meddle of your gear.

Could somebody help clarify why this is looking to be a gear grind at max level, without the purpose of a raid or some challange to test yourself?

Please put aside notions of explorable mode dungeons(I know how hard they are), exploration etc. Im merely concerned with the fact that Ive read dozens of threads saying this game wont be gear grind, yet here we are grinding.

The cultural sets wont be the best you can get. lvl 80 exotic(orange) gear will be the best in the game until the cap is increased. Legendaries(red) gear has the same stats as orange, they just look cooler and are harder to get.

There is no gear progression in the sense that once you hit 80 there wont be lvl80 purple tier 1 and tier 2 and so on. exotic 80 is the max and it will stay there. The only thing that changes is exactly what stats the gear has on it and the look of it.

That is not to say that there isn’t going to be a grind to get a full set. And you will will have to grind to get a full set that has exactly the stats on it that you want. That, is the progression in this game. getting your gear just perfect for the way you wish to play.

It is also worth noting that you can get your gear though crafting, or from drops or from reforging it in the mystic forge or from buying it off the TP. Exotic lvl 80 gear that is crafted is the same as exotic lvl 80 gear that is dropped. Again, the only difference being what stats it might have on it, but all exotic quality gear will have 100% of the potential stats for gear that level. Rare(yellow) gear will have about 88% of the stats that exotics of the same level will have.

Here is a list of the item qualities.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Item

tat gear sucks just FYI

why spend that much kharma on gear when you can buy exotic gear for 2.5g

Hmm that clears it up a bit.
So how does one go about getting exotic 80 gear? explorable dungeons?

So what youre saying is once you have a full 80 exotic set, youre good to go as far as max stats are concerned. There are other sets to grind out, if you like the look to be transmuted, and legendaries. Has arenanet, or do they have the tendancy to do so, said they will increase the level cap with each expansion? Or merely give us more content?

I think we can only speculate at this point as to whether there will be an increase to the level cap. In GW1 the cap was 20 and you reached that at around 2/3 of the way through the first game, even sooner in the other two releases. My guess is that, if they do increase the level cap, it will be just as easy to acquire max-stat gear.

In GW1, one of the things I loved about the game was stats wise, there was no progression for max weapons. You could get different stats, and different skins, but they weapons themselves did not get more powerful. That meant, the grind that I was used to as a requirement, was now my choice. Personally.. I chose to make that grind once, and grinded out a set of Vabbian Dervish armor in white dye that I wish was on display in my Hall of Monuments. Nevertheless… the weapons, and the armor… never changed stats.

So can there be a grind… yes, but the difference between this and traditional MMO grinds is, the choice is yours. You are not required to grind to get better stats or do more damage, you can grind for looks, for achievements, but not for viability.

There’s gear grind, but no gear treadmill.

How do you acquire exotic gear? Do you spend kharma for that as well?

“Once we get a max stat set, then what?”

I would love to see a pvp using the gear that you battled to get it.
Something like battlegrounds, or just the option to play the sPvP vs only level 80´s, and only with your real gear.

You can also get exotic gear (i.e. stat-capped gear) on the TP from other players for gold. So that’s very unlike other MMOs, where such BIS gear is almost always BOP.

Is gw2wiki pretty accurate in terms of the emblem costs for exotics?

Exotic 80 can be crafted by crafters at skill 400.
You can also put 4 yellow items into the mystic forge and there is a chance it will upgrade the output item to an orange. Probably better to use a master salvage on yellows that are 70+ to get the ectoplasms though. There are also specific recipies for the mystic forge to make legendaries so you might also be able to make exotics, not sure. Your best bet is to craft or have them crafted since you can specify what you want your stats to be.