Guild Wars 2

Hello,
I play solo atm, not much time to do raids…
What is the the most reliable way to get ascended gear for casual solo player ? I dont mind if it’s longer, but just want to get little closer every time I play. Currently I am doing HoT story and learning masteries. As Ranger, should I just skin all the animals on the way and collect all the leather for later ? Is there any special ingredients for ascended gear you can’t get playing solo ? Like raid final boss drop… Thanx a lot

Pretty much everything you need you can get by simply playing.

Reliable? There is crafting and crafting. There aren’t any ingredients that requires a group to get.

you can get ascended from pvp, wvw, fractals, crafting etc, for example 1 season of spvp will give you almost a full set of ascended armor.

vesica tempestas.1563:

you can get ascended from pvp, wvw, fractals, crafting etc, for example 1 season of spvp will give you almost a full set of ascended armor.

That almost is one of the most perplexing choices they’ve made.

PvP season 5 gave out enough ascended shards of glory to buy 5 pieces of ascended armor, or a few weapons. But since there are only a few days left you’d have to no life PvP until the end of the season in 2 days in order to get more than 2-3 pieces of gear.

Crafting is the most reliable way, but it does require having 500 crafting to do so, which takes some gold. Other than that some collections will award ascended boxes, and fractals will drop ascended gear, but the drop rate is pretty bad until you get to T4, which requires ascended gear, so its not really reliable until you already have full ascended

Khisanth.2948:

vesica tempestas.1563:

you can get ascended from pvp, wvw, fractals, crafting etc, for example 1 season of spvp will give you almost a full set of ascended armor.

That almost is one of the most perplexing choices they’ve made.

It’s probably part of the ongoing initiative to entice players who play one mode only into other modes. Asc. via PvP could work both ways. A WvW or PvE player might go into PvP because he doesn’t want to dungeon/raid/craft or a PvP player sees he can go through the Asc. gearing up process by playing his preferred mode.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Khisanth.2948:

vesica tempestas.1563:

you can get ascended from pvp, wvw, fractals, crafting etc, for example 1 season of spvp will give you almost a full set of ascended armor.

That almost is one of the most perplexing choices they’ve made.

It’s probably part of the ongoing initiative to entice players who play one mode only into other modes. Asc. via PvP could work both ways. A WvW or PvE player might go into PvP because he doesn’t want to dungeon/raid/craft or a PvP player sees he can go through the Asc. gearing up process by playing his preferred mode.

I think the perplexing part is why you get 5 pieces and not a complete set, but I could very well be mistaken.

The problem with how you get Ascended armor from pvp is you can get it without playing actual pvp because you progress the track even if you lose. Basically it’s one of the easiest ways in the entire game to get Ascended armor. Hardly an incentive to play pvp, or learn how to play pvp since you are rewarded for losing.

But as OriOri.8724 pointed out the pvp league will be over in 2 days, 3 if you count patch day. The OP can wait for S6, although I do hope they change how that reward system works in S6 and it’s not the same kitten.

jarosujo.5476:

Hello,
I play solo atm, not much time to do raids…
What is the the most reliable way to get ascended gear for casual solo player ? I dont mind if it’s longer, but just want to get little closer every time I play. Currently I am doing HoT story and learning masteries. As Ranger, should I just skin all the animals on the way and collect all the leather for later ? Is there any special ingredients for ascended gear you can’t get playing solo ? Like raid final boss drop… Thanx a lot

If you are running power get an ascended weapon first.

As solo player you can solo the low level fractals especially with something like longbow. Although this is not hard to find a group for if you use the LFG tool. After you get 10 pristine fractal relics from daily you can buy an ascended ring of choice from a vendor. If only t1 fractals I think you can get like 3 pristines a day or something.

Since you have HoT you also have access to living story 3 maps which also give FULL ascended trinkets with any selectable stats. This is very soloable.

For weapons and armor, if you are unwilling to wvw (random drops) or spvp ranked, the only real option is heavy fractal grinding or crafting. Crafting is by far the best option for pve only people.

Salvage EVERYTHING you get as drops except exotics worth more than 1.5g keeping any exotic orichalcum imbued inscriptions and intricate gossamer insignia. You will need these for leveling up crafting and also for crafting ascended stuff.

PvP is most likely the easiest and fastest way to get at least 5 Ascended Armorpieces with chosable stats (HoT stats included)

Even if you arent that good at PvP you can easily get the reward Chests because:

• 1) You will be placed in a lower division if you are bad and in those lower divisions you will face other unexperienced Players so you have a good chance to win too
• 2) even if you lose 60% of your Games you will get the Ascended Armor within reasonable time because you gain a few Pips progress for losing too…
  You should ofc always try to win since winning gives a lot more Progress

You can get the current optimal builds at metabattle.com
Dont forget to read through the description of how to play the build and maybe try to watch a few twitch streams of top Gw2 PvP Players like Sindrenerr, Helseth, Rom or Drazeh since you can learn a lot about rotations when watching those streams

If you have no PvP Experience so far you can send me a mail ingame and i can try to find out with you what class would be good to start for you and give you some basic advices for how to play and how to rotate

Reliable would be crafting yes, it lets you craft any piece you wish with any stats you need.

Doing fractals can be also a way, but its group content and you mentioned you play solo.

Another way would be farming stuff in the new season 3 maps, but i dont think that involves ascended armor /weapons, only trinkets

Khisanth.2948:

vesica tempestas.1563:

you can get ascended from pvp, wvw, fractals, crafting etc, for example 1 season of spvp will give you almost a full set of ascended armor.

That almost is one of the most perplexing choices they’ve made.

ye agree with that, nothing wrong with offering ascended gear, but the rate at which you get it is far far too fast. 1 piece per season based on average regular play would have been far more balanced.

Crafting is slow, but reliable. Guaranteed stats you want, and you can figure out a time line of completion. If you have some gold to spend, you can cut down on the time gated items needed, making much faster.

Hey fellow solo player here you have a few options, PvP is prob the best place to start.

Ascended shards of glory is one of the fastest ways. But there are options presuming you don’t want to play ranked:

First you can screw around in PvP this is probably the fastest and one of the more reliable methods especially if you cannot tolerate pugs. (Helps if you get off on killing players like I do.) This will give you boxes and tomes via reward tracks. Please use hot joins and unranked because it’s rude to ruin ranked games if you aren’t going to play their meta.

Tomes = Money, you will need a bit of trade post knowledge but spirit shards (at least used to be since I hit end game I stopped caring) are a good profit when you flip mats like cores.

As for the boxes, these are the only boxes that work with MF. Wait till there is a mist event and pop every MF booster you can find including banners, and open all your boxes while in the mists. You are bound to get a few ascended pieces every event and changing stats isn’t expensive.

Best thing is this is ALSO accumulative with Ranked shards (and is why it’s prob the best option.)

If you can tolerate pugs, use them as DPS and fodder for dungeons and bosses you can virtually solo, then run as many you can a day for the daily rewards the idea is to farm gold to buy the mats required to craft a few pieces. (also helps if you can sell Arah still)

You will likely want to craft SOME of your gear, there are not enough reliable ways to get it via RNG, but until I tried rushing my second set I crafted only maybe 4 parts of my first set, one of which was my back piece. (this was before ranked seasons)

Last is EotM. I’ve never done it but some people swear by it. I’m not sure if it counts as solo but it’s fairly mindless and you don’t need to commit unless you are commanding, which you get the same rewards so no worries being lazy. (it’s like champ trains)

Most reliable as said is Crafting. Do not rely on drops from WvW or PvP, you could be waiting a long long time for them. I also wouldn’t go to PvP if you intend to not improve/try to win, just for the sake of still gaining pips towards rewards.

This PvP season ends on tuesday, so you’ll have to no life it for Ascended Shards to buy ascended armor until then if you want some armor pieces. If you aren’t rank 20, you wont be able to queue for ranked to even earn it yet.

There are two achievements which award an ascended armor box each (Bioluminescent and Ley-Stone Armor). Complete these and pick the expensive parts to save you gold, so you don’t have to craft them (chest+legs). There’s also a couple of achievements that award Ascended weapon boxes (Ambrite Weapon and Machined Weapon collections.) There’s also the Elite Specialisation Weapons, which are Ascended that you can work towards (Two shields, two staves, longbow, warhorn, torch, hammer and greatsword)

For back items, rings and accessories, Bloodstone Fen/Ember Bay/Bitterfrost Frontier for those.

My advice would be to craft. Then if you get into group content more do some fractals and work upto tier4 for dailies. You should start accumulating armor/weapon boxes to kit out other characters.

I crafted my first set, then I’ve mix and matched 5 more sets of ascended at this point from crafting, Fractal drops, Bio/Lumi collections and got 4 pieces for Ascended Shards. Fractals has definitely been good to me. I did get an armor from a WvW rank up chest the other day, but that was my first armor box and I’m rank 280ish in there (not high, but def not insignificant).

I got some in ABML but you’d better hurry before the nerf.

I agree with the crafting route for armor and weapons, I play mostly solo PvE (LFG for metas like DS) and I ended up crafting all my armor expect my coat, which I used the reward for the Leyline collection achievement for. (though maybe AB multi loot stopping will make some of the currency more time consuming to get)

For my staff I again crafted it, though typically within two days of having crafted it I got two ascended weapon drops, one from Teq, one from TT! (now used them for dagger & trident) But I’ve done those events loads and those are the first I’ve had, so would stick to crafting first.

Trinkets I farmed winterberries in bittefrost for my aqua breather, one accessory and a ring. Farmed ember Bay for petrified wood for my backpack. Used LFG to do fractal dailies for a few days to get pristine fractal relics for one ring. Then got one accessory by commendations through guild missions (was going to get it by petrified wood in ember bay, but I happened to get invited to quite a friendly guild). I have a feeling I purchased something with laurels too, maybe the amulet.

Haleydawn.3764:

Most reliable as said is Crafting. Do not rely on drops from WvW or PvP, you could be waiting a long long time for them. I also wouldn’t go to PvP if you intend to not improve/try to win, just for the sake of still gaining pips towards rewards. Play to have fun, stop when it gets frustrating – enjoyable and fastest way to get ascended in game at mo.

don’t disagree with your comments bar spvp – its actually a guaranteed 5 pieces of ascended armor with choosable stats in a couple weeks of play (losing 1 in 2 fight), broken but true. only play when its fun though, the fights are usually good fun but can be frustrating after a while, stop when it gets frustrating and return later when you are recharged

vesica tempestas.1563:

Haleydawn.3764:

Most reliable as said is Crafting. Do not rely on drops from WvW or PvP, you could be waiting a long long time for them. I also wouldn’t go to PvP if you intend to not improve/try to win, just for the sake of still gaining pips towards rewards. Play to have fun, stop when it gets frustrating – enjoyable and fastest way to get ascended in game at mo.

don’t disagree with your comments bar spvp – its actually a guaranteed 5 pieces of ascended armor with choosable stats in a couple weeks of play (losing 1 in 2 fight), broken but true. only play when its fun though, the fights are usually good fun but can be frustrating after a while, stop when it gets frustrating and return later when you are recharged

I stated to not rely on drops from PvP/WvW, the Ascended Shard aquisition is a good source though, but only when the League season is running. It is guaranteed 5 armor pieces with the max Ascended shards you can earn per season. This season finishes in 2 days however, so chances of getting those 5 pieces in 2 days is very slim, you may get 1 or two. That chance is also non existant this season if the OP is not rank 20. Since you need to be rank 20 to queue for ranked.
Usually there’s a 6-8 week period between league seasons too. So in that time, you can definitely get a full set by crafting it and doing collections.

jarosujo.5476:

Hello,

What is the the most reliable way to get ascended gear for casual solo player ?

Armor: PvP competitive matches. You can eran 1200 shards, enough to get 5 armor pieces. Even with a 50% w/l ratio you will get the rewards in ~95 matches, which means one month playing three matches a day. Way cheaper in “gold” and time than any other method if you can’t afford playing high level fractals.

Trinkets: laurels for amulet and rings, clan mission tokens for earings. Alternatively the new Living Story Season 3 maps are excellent to get those ones + the backpiece using tokens.

Weapons: I would say that buying the materials and crafting the weapons yourself. If you only have a couple of characters then gather and farm rich iron ore (and platinum) and wood logs. There’s good guides out there of the best maps and gathering tracks to each stuff. Gather, sell, buy the materials and forge your weapons.

vesica tempestas.1563:

Khisanth.2948:

vesica tempestas.1563:

you can get ascended from pvp, wvw, fractals, crafting etc, for example 1 season of spvp will give you almost a full set of ascended armor.

That almost is one of the most perplexing choices they’ve made.

ye agree with that, nothing wrong with offering ascended gear, but the rate at which you get it is far far too fast. 1 piece per season based on average regular play would have been far more balanced.

1 piece per season? Are you kidding? If you crafted ascended sets and did all of the daily crafting yourself, it would take 36 days to craft an entire set of Ascended armor (only 25 for armorsmith). So even if you didn’t have a single ascended mat crafted before the season started, you would have time for almost 2 entire sets through crafting, yet you think that obtaining 5 out of 6 pieces through PvP is too fast?

OriOri.8724:

1 piece per season? Are you kidding? If you crafted ascended sets and did all of the daily crafting yourself, it would take 36 days to craft an entire set of Ascended armor (only 25 for armorsmith). So even if you didn’t have a single ascended mat crafted before the season started, you would have time for almost 2 entire sets through crafting, yet you think that obtaining 5 out of 6 pieces through PvP is too fast?

I think the problem isn’t that you get 5 out of 6 pieces but how you get them. To be more specific, why do you get reward progress when you lose games?

maddoctor.2738:

OriOri.8724:

1 piece per season? Are you kidding? If you crafted ascended sets and did all of the daily crafting yourself, it would take 36 days to craft an entire set of Ascended armor (only 25 for armorsmith). So even if you didn’t have a single ascended mat crafted before the season started, you would have time for almost 2 entire sets through crafting, yet you think that obtaining 5 out of 6 pieces through PvP is too fast?

I think the problem isn’t that you get 5 out of 6 pieces but how you get them. To be more specific, why do you get reward progress when you lose games?

I don’t think that’s a problem. It takes 3 times as many games to get the rewards if you lose them all as opposed to winning, so if you aren’t winning you are putting in substantially more time for the same rewards. Plus, we got this new reward system where pips were separate from skill divisions because people were upset with them being tied together like they were in Seasons 1-4.

vesica tempestas.1563:

Haleydawn.3764:

Most reliable as said is Crafting. Do not rely on drops from WvW or PvP, you could be waiting a long long time for them. I also wouldn’t go to PvP if you intend to not improve/try to win, just for the sake of still gaining pips towards rewards. Play to have fun, stop when it gets frustrating – enjoyable and fastest way to get ascended in game at mo.

don’t disagree with your comments bar spvp – its actually a guaranteed 5 pieces of ascended armor with choosable stats in a couple weeks of play (losing 1 in 2 fight), broken but true. only play when its fun though, the fights are usually good fun but can be frustrating after a while, stop when it gets frustrating and return later when you are recharged

By spvp you mean 5v5 matches ? Does it have to be ranked ? So if I play these matches, from time to time I get box with possible ascended gear inside ? So no crafting needed at all ? Can I get complete set like this ? Still little confused :-)

It has to be ranked, yes. If you play ranked during the sPvP seasons (the current one ends tomorrow, the next one should start in about 2 months) then you can earn Ascended Shards of Glory (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascended_Shard_of_Glory) and you can spend those to buy any piece of Ascended gear. I think that after three seasons of sPvP you can get a full set of ascended equipment, that’s a full set of armour, trinkets and 4 or so weapons.

You can get your armour and weapons from two and you can get Ascended trinkets from Laurels too, Amulets and Rings are very cheap, Accessories/Earrings are expensive unless you’re in a guild that does guild missions).

If you’re lucky you can also get ascended items from rank up chests and spvp reward tracks.

So I have to wait for new season :-(
Well, I have HoT storyline still to finish, then probably some living stories (last time I played was when Lion Arch was destroyed). What about WvW ? Is it the same as spvp regarding ascended gear ?

jarosujo.5476:

So I have to wait for new season :-(
Well, I have HoT storyline still to finish, then probably some living stories (last time I played was when Lion Arch was destroyed). What about WvW ? Is it the same as spvp regarding ascended gear ?

Not really. There is no currency that you can earn in WvW that allows you to buy Ascended Equipment. You can still get Ascended equipment from the chests you get when you rank up in WvW and from the WvW reward tracks but I think it’s a very low chance.

You do earn Badges of Honor in WvW that you can use when buying Ascended Amulets and Rings. They make them a little cheaper, for example, an Ascended Amulet costs either 30 Laurels in PvE or else 25 Laurels and 250 Badges of Honor in WvW.

It’s worth doing daily Tequatl and Triple Trouble if you get in one of the organized maps.

Teq is very much worth it as there is a reasonable amount of loot (rares and 2 gold) plus it’s easy to pop in 10 mins before to a bit after the start time (at reset). Rates I’ve seen for Teq is about 1/50 for normal ascended weapon and 1/200 for the unique skin. Wurm can take a while to start if you don’t mind the afking. Also higher chance of failure and seems to be less loot in total.