Guild Wars 2

Howdy. I’ve got a lot of alts and I was thinking of making 3 sets of ascended armor, one for each weight class that I can keep in my bank and let any of my characters use. I’d want it to be something versatile that would work for all my less-played alts who don’t have tons of specialized armor/weapon sets, but still maybe something useful for my main classes; thief, ranger, mesmer, necro, and warrior.

What do ya’ll think I should make the stats for each weight class? The focus would be on versatility for various builds classes I might run in PvE or otherwise.

Heavy: Celestial

Medium: ???

Light: Celestial

I felt like celestial is generic enough it would get me through 80 content smoothly on any character but I wasn’t sure if there’d be a better option for Medium weight armor. Would a thief be able to make use of celestial armor?

Actually celestial isn’t the best option for anyone in PvE, zerker is.

If you will also play in WvW then I can see Celestial being somewhat desirable, but even there most use Soldier and Dire sets and zerker, in case of roamers, is also common.

But, if you just want to be mediocre with every build, then go with celestial for medium classes too, actually engineer and ranger do quite well in WvW with celestial gear.

I personally wouldn’t opt for celestial for any class in pve.

Well I’m more like going for something that my mains could use but would still be viable for sharing the armor with my alts. But I can see celestial as maybe not being the best for that.

One reason I was thinking of celestial for Ascended was because celestial armor is timegated because of the charged quartz crystals. I thought it’d be annoying to make celestial armor twice if I could just make it once for each weight class.

What about a warrior in fractals. What insignia would be best for that? If I’m just gonna make one heavy set I might as well make it what’s best for my fractal warrior.

For PvE currently zerker is the only set you need for everything and any class, I’m not kidding.

BTW, for your warrior, use scholar or strength runes.

Yeah…I know everyone says full zerker. It just seems so wrong! :P All those other insignias getting the short end of the stick.

If you are good at “active defense” (dodging, blinding, etc), then Berserker’s is “ideal” because it offers three useful, offensive stats, including extra power, which scales better than other offensive stats.

That’s why people keep recommending zerk for all PvE classes: it’s the most efficient, for those who play with moderately to full efficiency.

You can, of course, use any stats and be successful in PvE, so long as you know your prof well (and a bit about those around you). There are also some effective builds utilizing other stats, although they tend only to be ‘most efficient’ in niche situations.

My recommendation is:

• If you understand your prof and active defense, go zerk. You won’t be sorry.
• If you think you have a lot of room to grow, do not get ascended gear, until you feel confident you understand the game really well. At that point, you’ll be able to design your own build/armor setup to suit your play.
• If you still want to get ascended gear despite the above, I’d go with Soldier’s or Celestial: the former adds defensive stats to plenty of power, while the second will ‘work’ for any build (it just won’t be the most efficient for any either).

Good luck.

IMO and granted I’m just a newbie but I’d go with exotics until I knew my playstyle, especially my tired and should have went to bed hours ago playstyle really well. Again just my opinion but the trinkets you chose are as if not more important then the armor you use. Ascended trinkets, at least from my math give more bang for the buck and useless you have lots and lots of Laurels they take longer to earn.