Guild Wars 2

All, I’ll make this brief:

I dinged 80 while ago but never did much after that. I ran a few dungeons and then all my friends stopped playing. I dove back in today to try to find a beta portal farming events in Dry Top. I’ve noticed that my survivability and DPS really suck. My gear is pretty low end.

So, what to do for a good gear boost? Trading Post? Dungeon Runs? Please let me know as there are so many currencies and areas to go, I’m a bit lost.

Thanks in advance!

Berserker is still the meta gear in PVE. If you don’t have at least a full zerk exotic yet, COF, COE, and Arah offers zerker gears.

At full zerkers, Ele’s survivability is probably the worst in all classes. On another, you also have the best DPS.

Yenn.9185:

Berserker is still the meta gear in PVE. If you don’t have at least a full zerk exotic yet, COF, COE, and Arah offers zerker gears.

At full zerkers, Ele’s survivability is probably the worst in all classes. On another, you also have the best DPS.

Guardians give them a run for their money on low survivability in beserker gear. Ele’s have some of the highest self healing in game. They’re only low in survivability because they have a massively steep learning curve.

I don’t have a full set of anything. Like I said, my gear is just low end stuff from a few drops and very little dungeon running. I don’t even know what Berserker is…

So, any advice at all on where/how to obtain would be greatly appreciated.

It would help if we knew how you wanted to get it or what your funds are but, in general….

1) karma. Temple armor. 452k karma for a full set. Different temples have different stats. Can’t salvage.
2) dungeons. Self explanatory. Run one repeatedly till you get enough dungeon tokens to get a full set.
4) trading post or crafted. Do content till you get enough gold to buy directly or to buy enough mats to craft. Running dungeons repeatedly or doing current best gold making content (Silverwastes for example).
5) WvW. Badges mostly, some gold. Can’t salvage. Only one set of stats.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Temple_armor
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dungeon_armor
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/World_vs_World_armor

Read this about what the different stats do.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Attribute
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Item_nomenclature#Triple_attribute

there’s variations of this but should get you where you wanna go.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQFAWhMM6cW4wyBf0AhAB5tmrRBlrLXB-TRiDgAyqU0r8Dw8nr6KUXAg99H+0BkoEM6BAQGg8tA-e

I’d scratch temple armor off the list, imo really not worth it. Best to save your karma up for obsidian shards one day. Best use of karma by far.

Dungeon armor can be good, but can take a good deal of time to save up for. I consider it more of a cosmetic choice.

Armor on the TP is a buyers market, at least for generic looking stuff from mob drops and runes that need replacing. I’d start there especially as light armor is probably the cheapest. Certainly the harder stuff to sell for us sellers haha. You may even have enough mats in your bank from leveling up to sell and then buy a set of exo light off the TP.

As for what armor… depends. On my staff fire ele (fire/earth/~arcane) I use rampager’s armor. Weapons berzerker. Mix in the rest as I need it for the situation (e.g. soldier, zerker, dire etc etc have lots). All depends…

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Equipment_acquisition_by_stats

My ele may be a bit dusty, but at least I haven’t converted him into a bank slot …yet.

Thanks for the tips! I have about 32 gold in the bank. 400 Jeweler. 150 tailor.

I use scepter/dagger and solely Fire ele.

I tried running dungeons over and over and it got boring right before I quit..

How much karma do you have? Since you don’t have much gold and tailor isn’t at 400 you might get the temple armor as a starter set if you have the 425k karma, just don’t put expensive runes in it since you can’t salvage it. You might put orbs in place of runes as they are fairly cheap and can be changed easily. If you get stats that aren’t the best for you then it’s only karma that you spent.

Then play and earn enough gold to buy a set from the trading post for a full set and a good set of runes.

Obsidian shards can be gotten in the Silverwastes and I suspect the the OP is a long way from making a Legendary where he would need them.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Obsidian shards can be gotten in the Silverwastes and I suspect the the OP is a long way from making a Legendary where he would need them.

Which will cost over 1 million karma. If you think maybe running dungeons over and over again is boring, try farming a sw chest train for ~100hrs to maybe get enough shards. Or spend 16gp in the TP for a set of exo armor, which you could make back in a lucky world boss chest drop. And not just legendary weapons, but you forgot to mention that they are used in ascended crafting as well. Also, you can turn them into t6 mats at the mystic toilet. Cant imagine wasting it on temple armor, apart from just really-really wanting the skins off of them… which mostly are bleh.

Daywolf.2630:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Obsidian shards can be gotten in the Silverwastes and I suspect the the OP is a long way from making a Legendary where he would need them.

Which will cost over 1 million karma. If you think maybe running dungeons over and over again is boring, try farming a sw chest train for ~100hrs to maybe get enough shards. Or spend 16gp in the TP for a set of exo armor, which you could make back in a lucky world boss chest drop. And not just legendary weapons, but you forgot to mention that they are used in ascended crafting as well. Also, you can turn them into t6 mats at the mystic toilet. Cant imagine wasting it on temple armor, apart from just really-really wanting the skins off of them… which mostly are bleh.

/shrug

He is still a long, long way from even considering a Legendary or ascended crafting. Right now he can barely afford a set of armor, much less a set of decent runes and sigils. By the time he gets to the point he is doing ascended crafting or a Legendary he is likely to have the 1 million karma. If not, there are things he can do to earn it such as fractals or daily Tequatl runs. And he may never want to do either of those. Not everyone does.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

/shrug

He is still a long, long way from even considering a Legendary or ascended crafting. Right now he can barely afford a set of armor, much less a set of decent runes and sigils. By the time he gets to the point he is doing ascended crafting or a Legendary he is likely to have the 1 million karma. If not, there are things he can do to earn it such as fractals or daily Tequatl runs. And he may never want to do either of those. Not everyone does.

But you left all that out, they are not just for legendary weapons. Obs shards are high consumption, whether you work on ascended weapons, legendary, or converting them to mats to work up your crafting and/or making gold with them off the TP. For someone already at 80, now is the time to plan for where they want to go in this game. Burning off karma rather than spending less than 20gp at the TP for basic exo armor, well imo is a horrible waste, even if still undecided at this point of what to do. It’s a long-term hit to waste it, especially when what you want can be bought with just a few hrs of game play under somewhat lucky circumstances.

Daywolf.2630:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

/shrug

He is still a long, long way from even considering a Legendary or ascended crafting. Right now he can barely afford a set of armor, much less a set of decent runes and sigils. By the time he gets to the point he is doing ascended crafting or a Legendary he is likely to have the 1 million karma. If not, there are things he can do to earn it such as fractals or daily Tequatl runs. And he may never want to do either of those. Not everyone does.

But you left all that out, they are not just for legendary weapons. Obs shards are high consumption, whether you work on ascended weapons, legendary, or converting them to mats to work up your crafting and/or making gold with them off the TP. For someone already at 80, now is the time to plan for where they want to go in this game. Burning off karma rather than spending less than 20gp at the TP for basic exo armor, well imo is a horrible waste, even if still undecided at this point of what to do. It’s a long-term hit to waste it, especially when what you want can be bought with just a few hrs of game play under somewhat lucky circumstances.

Well, it’s up to him what he considers more important. As I said, not everyone does all that you are suggesting as uses for obby shards. If he is planning to do all that then buying with gold is better. If not, then karma armor might be the way to go. For all we know, he will only play a short time then leave again and the amount of obby shards he has or could buy will be irrelevant.

Daywolf.2630:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Obsidian shards can be gotten in the Silverwastes and I suspect the the OP is a long way from making a Legendary where he would need them.

Which will cost over 1 million karma. If you think maybe running dungeons over and over again is boring, try farming a sw chest train for ~100hrs to maybe get enough shards. Or spend 16gp in the TP for a set of exo armor, which you could make back in a lucky world boss chest drop. And not just legendary weapons, but you forgot to mention that they are used in ascended crafting as well. Also, you can turn them into t6 mats at the mystic toilet. Cant imagine wasting it on temple armor, apart from just really-really wanting the skins off of them… which mostly are bleh.

I have around 5-6 stacks of shards from chest farming for less than half of that time. It’s a lot faster to farm shards than farming karma and using them to buy shards.

If you want the most gold value out of your karma, try linen conversion or sun beads (both are extremely tedious however). Otherwise, there’s nothing wrong with buying temple armor or obi shards.

Even temple bought back items are not worth it any longer imo. It was mostly just the first few months after gw2 went live when many people were using temple armor. Then it was only spineguards since exo armor became so easy to get while still hard to get exo back items. But since ascended back items, now it’s just best to mystic forge a back item which is the cheapest ascended pc to make if buying mats off the TP for ascended armor. A fraction of the price compared to what people spend for say an ascended coat. Such as e.g. Bowyer’s Delight. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Quiver

I have around 5-6 stacks of shards from chest farming for less than half of that time. It’s a lot faster to farm shards than farming karma and using them to buy shards.

bout 5-15 an hour. If going for a set of ascended and at least one legendary, that’s what around 600 shards? Unless you play a lot, that can take you a year to accumulate via kerma. Seriously, farming chests in SW has gotta be the most mundane thing to do in this game, completely numbing the braaain!
I’ll keep playing, you farm your IQ away. Luckz

PS, who “farms” karma?!? and I thought I heard everything in this game

It’s not like it’s hard to get karma. I bought a couple of stacks of obby shards for crafting, 3 sets of temple armor for the skins, several sets of cultural weapons at 64k karma each (that’s 252k karma for 4 weapons) and I already have almost 500k karma again. I would have more karma but I haven’t been playing as much as usual for the last 2 or 3 months or I’d have at least a million karma again.

OP: your best bet is to buy a set of soldier’s armor off the TP. Also get a set of trinkets, either soldiers or berserkers or assassins. As you learn to play ele better you can swap out the soldier’s gear for more offensive gear like berserker’s.

Gold can be easily had by running dungeons or by playing silverwastes or running world bosses.

DigitalForce.5602:

I use scepter/dagger and solely Fire ele.

while fire is nice for damage and what you will be attuned to most the time you need to use the other elements too. You have many tools as an ele and need to use them to survive. Scepter/Dagger may not be the best combo for this but still you have them.

Like if you have melee mobs run at you then switch to earth cast rock barrier improving your toughness, dust devil (aoe blindness 90% chance to miss next attack), earthquake (2 sec knockdown) then switch to air cast updraft dodging back away from danger and giving you swiftness to kite while you still have blinding flash if any mobs are close enough to hit you.

You must master all of the elements

Here is an extensive guide for you OP, if you are after all the info on dungeon ele :P

http://tinyurl.com/guidele

- staff ele is tops but boring to play (imo)
- There’s always the other builds which can also work :P

Dungeons haven’t changed much, how people run them has a little, we’ve gone from FGS to Icebow. heh. There’s good money to be had in them still, and you can get your tokens exchanged to the gear you want fairly quick and easy.

If you want a really easy way to get berserker just do some CoF (Cathedral of Flames) and CoE (Crucible of Eternity) and use those tokens for your gear. They also pay well so you can use the money for runes. That will get you an easy set to start with and do dungeons with to build up money to buy runes/sigils, make ascended and buy all the other pretty things in this game.

Thanks all for your prompt replies. I just got back to the PC so sorry for the slow response.

So, I just checked and I have 55,000 karma. On all your advice, I don’t know much about the game at all so besides dungeons, I have no idea where the karma vendors are, what the shards are for, etc etc.

Just being honest so any basic advice is very helpful. Level 80 Advice for N00bs right here.

Well, not near enough karma so it’s purchase, either gold or dungeon tokens. Either is up to you. 32 gold should be enough to buy a set if you don’t want to run dungeons, The problem is you don’t know the stats or what is best for how you play.

Another possibility, buy rare armor. Cheap. Almost as good as exotic. Let’s you try out different stats to see which is best for you.

DigitalForce.5602:

All, I’ll make this brief:

I dinged 80 while ago but never did much after that. I ran a few dungeons and then all my friends stopped playing. I dove back in today to try to find a beta portal farming events in Dry Top. I’ve noticed that my survivability and DPS really suck. My gear is pretty low end.

So, what to do for a good gear boost? Trading Post? Dungeon Runs? Please let me know as there are so many currencies and areas to go, I’m a bit lost.

Thanks in advance!

I play my Ele with valkyrie gear and exuberance runes. They are otherwise far too squishy. I highly recommend this set above zerker. Really good all-round setup for PvE. Exuberance runes are however the most expensive, better get a cheaper alternative. Most people will tell you that “only zerk is viable”, but I think there’s a little bit more a-priori to that than you might think.

COF until you get sick of it and buy all berserker armor with the tokens… Play pvp until you get sick, then use your transmution charges to change the ugly COF armor to something cooler looking.
Or
Go to Silverwaste and farm gold, then buy some armor off the TP.
Or ‘if your lazy’
Buy gems, turn them into gold and buy armor off the TP.
Or
World boss train or run Orr until you have enough karma and buy Berserker armor off a karma vendor.
But
You’ll still have to farm gold somewhere to buy your armor runes of the scholar.
So
You got a lot of playing to do…. get out of the forums and get to it