Guild Wars 2

With the two types of ascended gear, I just have a quick question. I noticed the other day when I first started doing Fractals, that the gear has Agony resistance. I’m guessing that is something that I have to start worrying about later in the mid-high lvl fractals. On the other side, with laurels, it’s just straight stats with no resistance. Now I know 2+2=4, but is there any reason to get the Fractal ascended gear if you don’t really plan on doing fractals that often, or is it just a quicker or alternate way of getting ascended gear if you don’t have enough dailys done?

My thoughts are using your daily/laurel Ascended rings for WvW/PvE/Dungeons and your Fractal ascended rings for just fractals. Ultimately making a pure Agony res gear set for Fractals and a non res gear set for everything else. Correct?

Well, let’s put it this way:
Ascended Gear has an overall stat increase of 5% in comparison to exotic gear.

The infusion slots (in which you put this Agony Resistance) is indeed needed in higher level Fractals. You will NOT need this for any other aspect of the game, except for higher levels of Fractals of the mist.

Though, as you’re talking about getting rings and amulets etc. I would actually suggest doing Fractals. Reason is that with the amount of laurels you can accumulate every month, it would still take you quite a while to actually get all your ascended accessories.
With fractals, it should go a bit faster. Either if you’re lucky, or just do it enough.
As from level 10 and on. (Where also Agony starts to hit you, which the resistance is for). You can get a daily bonus on your even paths. In this daily bonus, you always get a Pristine Fractal Relic. And if you’re lucky even an ascended ring.

10 Pristine Fractal Relics = one Ascended ring.
So it would take you a maximum of 10 days to get a ring this way, while with laurels it can take up to a month if i’m not wrong.

Edit; typo’s.

you will have to do both eventually, ascended back item can only be gotten from fractal running while everything else other than rings is obtainable only from either laurels (amulets) or both laurels and guild tokens (accessories)

From the Wiki Amy’s are only Daily, Acc are Daily/Guild, and Rings are Daily/Fractals. Taking a look at the rings for example, Bagh Nakh is bought from both Laurel Merchant and 4373 vendor. Is there something different between the two? Infused version different? Secondly, if there is nothing different, then why does the Laurel merchant sell more items than 4373? Unless I can’t count, Laurel sells 30 rings and 4373 sells only 20. Is this because Laurel sells Def/Off/Util infusion slots and 4373 only sells Def/Off? The wiki only says Def Infusion and Infusion (I’m assuming Offensive). So to sum this up, I’m not looking to excel in Fractals, I just want my ascended gear to have the best possible pve/wvw gear and maybe a set of agony res gear for fractals if I ever decided to go further. I’m bored at work and have nothing better to do than learn.

I believe the reason it says that laurel sells 30 and 4373 sells only 20 is just a human error of not filling in the new rings on the site. If you click on the rings it says that they can be bought at both laurel merchant and 4373.

like yourself, OP, i have not delved too deeply into fractals yet for ascended gear. would i like to further excel down fractal levels later? sure, perhaps. but right now, i’m more focused on gettign ascended gear for the raw stats first.

so first things first, ascended rings right now can come in the form of basic, if you will, ascended rings. and at higher level fractals, you can get infused ascended rings, which come with an inherent +5 agony resistance. you can also use the mystic forge to infuse basic ascended rings to get that inherent +5 agony resistance.

on top of that, each piece of ascended gear has an infusion slot, of which you can slot in infusions – offensive, defensive, utility. and if you look at versatile infusions, they will give +5 agony resistance, along with a different stat (power, toughness, what have you). so currently my plan is to just get infusions and slot them into ascended gear. but i might not even do that yet because note that if you have say for e.g. an ascended ring and you put an infusion in. then at a later date, decide to ugprade your ring to an infused version, you will lose the existing infusion that you put in. so general rule of thumb is to not put any fancy infusions in until you’ve upgraded to the final version.

and, afaik, as of right now, only rings can be infused.

hope that helps clear it up a bit. if you’re looking to just do PvE/WvW for the ascended stats, don’t worry about infused versions and you CAN slot in infusions for that extra +4 or +5 stats. though they can cost quite a bit, depending how you go about getting them.

Akamon, So before infusion there is no +agony resistance on any of the rings? So it wouldn’t matter which vendor I bought the ring from? Only after the infusion process does it add the + res? Is there a way to upgrade the ring and NOT add the +resistance? I’m just looking for the best possible upgrade for my pve/wvw builds.

Labyrinth.7201:

Akamon, So before infusion there is no +agony resistance on any of the rings? So it wouldn’t matter which vendor I bought the ring from? Only after the infusion process does it add the + res? Is there a way to upgrade the ring and NOT add the +resistance? I’m just looking for the best possible upgrade for my pve/wvw builds.

From a non-Fractal PvE point of view, you can buy the rings from either source. As someone who’s just come back after ignoring GW2 for months, here’s a quick list of Ascended access options for a non-Fractal player.

Rings
Option #1 - Get random drops from the Fractals at lvl 10 or higher.
Option #2 - Buy your choice of ring using x10 Pristine Fractal Relics, which drop from even level Fractals difficulties once you’re at lvl 10 of higher.
Option #3 - Buy your choice of ring using x35 Laurels.

Ears
Option #1 - Get random drops from the Fractals at lvl 10 or higher.
Option #2 - Buy your choice of ear using x5 Gold Pieces and x12 Guild Commendation, which are rewards from completing the Guild Bounty missions (where you have to kill special Champion mobs in the open world).
Option #3 - Buy your choice of ear using x40 Laurels and x50 Ectoplasm.

Neck
Option #1 - Get random drops from the Fractals at lvl 10 or higher.
Option #2 - Buy your choice of ear using x30 Laurels.

Back
Option #1 - Buy your choice of back using 1,350 Fractal Relics. Then upgrade it through the Mystic Forge.
Option #2 - Create your choice of back using the Mystic Forge.

Infusions (for non-Fractal players)
Option #1 - Buy a non-Agony infusion for x5 Laurel.
Option #2 - Create an infusion using the Mystic Forge, which grants Agony Resistance and +stats at the same time.

Wiser, I have never heard that we could get anything other than rings dropping in fotm and I run it constantly. Where did you get this information?

rozcinana.7249:

Wiser, I have never heard that we could get anything other than rings dropping in fotm and I run it constantly. Where did you get this information?

Perhaps I am incorrect. I’ve been gone for months (up until this past weekend) and I was told that the Laurel merchants were selling items that were dropped in the Fractals. It’s easily possible that I was mis-informed.

only rings and mist essences for crafting back item drops in fractals.

The rest must be obtained via laurels or guild merits. Its just you can also get the rings from laurels.