New player needs input
Fractals provide better gear than dungeons (You can get ascended gear from them), but I think the real great places to get better gear is generally considered the temples in Orr, which sell them for Karma.
That said, I think Bladed Armor is accessible and has selectable stats (But you’d have to do T4 VB to get the chest plate), since as a new player you won’t have a lot of Karma saved up yet. I’ll have to check.
I find dungeons tedious and unrewarding for gearing for stats – their armor is mostly for the skins, not Exotic-level stats.
If you are new to the game, you might consider creating another character (or even with your Boosted L80 character, though you miss out on the tutorial and rewards) and playing through the Core Personal Story, then, perhaps, purchasing Living World Season Two (story) and playing through that so that you learn a bit about what’s going on in Heart of Thorns.
Welcome to Tyria, and good luck.
Fractals provide better gear than dungeons (You can get ascended gear from them), but I think the real great places to get better gear is generally considered the temples in Orr, which sell them for Karma.
That said, I think Bladed Armor is accessible and has selectable stats (But you’d have to do T4 VB to get the chest plate), since as a new player you won’t have a lot of Karma saved up yet. I’ll have to check.
I find dungeons tedious and unrewarding for gearing for stats – their armor is mostly for the skins, not Exotic-level stats.
What is t4 vb?
Fractals provide better gear than dungeons (You can get ascended gear from them), but I think the real great places to get better gear is generally considered the temples in Orr, which sell them for Karma.
That said, I think Bladed Armor is accessible and has selectable stats (But you’d have to do T4 VB to get the chest plate), since as a new player you won’t have a lot of Karma saved up yet. I’ll have to check.
I find dungeons tedious and unrewarding for gearing for stats – their armor is mostly for the skins, not Exotic-level stats.
What is t4 vb?
Verdant Brink map events have a meta event that you contribute towards by participating in events on this map. There are various tiers to the meta, with increasing rewards for unlocking higher tiers. VB t4 means you need tier 4 of the meta event on Verdant Brink.
Hi all. Just started playing this and got the hot expansion. I boosted to 80 and started playing the hot story. When I want to gear is it better to run dungeons or fractals? Also anything to know when going about my new adventures as a lv80?
It sounds very much like you came here with the mindset of other MMOs, like WoW, where the endgame is mostly “gear grind until you overpower things”. Since I did the same, and it took me some time to figure out GW2, what I learned was:
It’s not actually that useful to skip the core tyria content. HoT is actually pretty demanding of skill in the combat system, especially because dodge is much more important than face-tank style games like WoW. You also end up going back and doing the core stuff anyway, eventually, so might as well do it while you level up and learn.
Gearing is done by purchasing, or crafting, a set of exotic armor, and then eventually a set of ascended armor. Ascended trinkets, rings, and backs come from the new living story content most conveniently, through daily collection of the map currency.
You do get gear drops in fractals and dungeons, but you really don’t care. Once you purchase a set of exotic gear you are ready to do everything the game offers except the highest tiers of fractals, and the performance difference between exotic and ascended is pretty small. (Like, maybe ten percent.)
Finally, you will never reach the point that any part of the game is completely harmless. Sure, by now I find core tyria pretty trivial, and even HoT is mostly easy mode, but it’s never “ignore the enemy” easy, it’s “I know how to avoid being killed, and apply appropriate tactics to defeat these enemies” easy.
That is: the way GW2 approaches gearing, and gear, and increasing the challenge, is fundamentally different to other MMOs, so you need to accept that and pull back from the mindset that you bring in.
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/98588-how-to-get-geared-in-guild-wars-2/ is a pretty reasonable guide to the strategy. (and, yes, it mentions dungeons as a path to exotics, which they absolutely are. you /can/ do that, but it may not be the best way.)