Guild Wars 2

I’m still fairly new to the game and just acquired a full set of ascended trinkets/jewelry. I see ascended equipment has “infusion slots” but the infusions seem woefully weak…

+4 stat? Am I missing something here? I was looking at the infusions I could buy and I only see them offering +4 to a selected stat… That seems so low and negligible.

There isn’t a +4 to a stat outside of Agony Resistance (which I’ll go over in a second), though the +5 that they give isn’t that much better. The idea is that the overall stats gained from infusing are designed to be negligible due to the developer’s desire to make sure that grabbing them would be relevant if you grabbed them all (you basically get an entire additional two trinkets for a single stat if you grab them all), but to not make each one so breaking that it becomes necessary to grab them. Though every stat point matters in WvW, they’re not going to be necessary part of it (though, the WvW ones are pretty easy to get). Thus they’re extreme things to grind for if you do Fractals, and that’s that.

Now, if you do Fractals or WvW they are extremely good (though, for WvW, only in the non-PvP portions). Agony Resistance effectively caps out at 70, so even a bunch of +5 modifiers is a pretty massive boost to the stat. Similarly, WvW gives you a +1% damage or defense modifier against the NPCs, which can be a huge deal when you’re adding nearly +10% to both your damage output and defenses. The stat portion notwithstanding, the Infusions are extremely strong for those modes, and have very clear reasons for why they’re extremely worth it.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Infusion

I was looking here. The ones you can buy for laurels are listed as +4 of a certain stat.

But I guess what you’re saying is the infusions are mostly only for agony resistance and WvW?

Basically, the +4 Basic Infusions aren’t really worth it when you can get the WvW version with a +5 AND the 1% dmg/-1% dmg modifier.

If you run fractals though, you will probably want to start with the the Versatile Infusions. Agony Resistance does not cap at 70 but if you don’t run the underwater fractal then with current reward level cap you don’t get any benefit from having more than 70 AR.

The Fine Infusion will give you the AR and stat bonuses but these are more for fractals given the AR and the cost(s) are prohibitive for most players.