Guild Wars 2

Hi all,

I recently got to level 80 and decided to start thinking about getting exotic armour. The thing is I see you can get 3 sets for level 80 from the dungeons. But I played the dungeons to death in GW’s so I don’t want to have to repeat this in GW2 (don’t get me wrong though, I’ll still play dungeons but just not 50 odd times) so I was wondering about my alternatives?

The 42k Karma armour I’ve heard doesn’t have very good stats so I was wondering if I max out tailoring will I be able to craft an exotic armour set that will allow me to pick which stats it has and allow me to add whatever runes I would like on it? This would allow me to keep exploring, doing events and working on tailoring etc.

Ps. I’ve also seen some exotic pieces for sale in the TP that look really good if you have all parts, can these be as good as the ones mentioned above?

Thanks for reading and any advice offered

Crafting is your best option, you can lvl it fairly quickly and it gives you the ability to make exotic armor with many different stat combinations. Some of the combinations are precision power crit dmg, or vitality power and condition dmg, depends on the items you use mostly

Thanks, thats good to hear. I was worried if I maxed tailoring the armour would only have stats like power, vitality & healing power.

Crafting if you wanna find the mats

You could do events in lvl 80 areas and save up around 10-15 gold and buy a set off the auction house (That’s what I did but I saved a ton of money from like lvl 40)

There’s also armor sets for the same price at the HQ of whatever order you chose during the storyline.

There’s cultural but thats like…. over 100g for full set.

yea once you get your crafting up there you can start looking at the various inscriptions(the part of the armor recipe that decides the stats), there are somewhere around 10 different stat combinations, and you don’t have to have every piece with the same one. Also most of the combinations that anyone would normally want are there (i.e glass cannon stuff or tanky stuff, crit focused, dot focused, pure dmg focused etc).

remix.9856:

Crafting if you wanna find the mats

You could do events in lvl 80 areas and save up around 10-15 gold and buy a set off the auction house (That’s what I did but I saved a ton of money from like lvl 40)

There’s also armor sets for the same price at the HQ of whatever order you chose during the storyline.

There’s cultural but thats like…. over 100g for full set.

Also in my experience, even if you buy the mats it costs less or at most the same as any of the crafted armor on the TP already made.

I don’t know about the Karma armor, but I think it’s worse than the Exotic craftable.

The exotic armor prices (at least for Heavy Armor, haven’t checked others) on TP are usually higher than the cost to make them. Of course, since the crafters want to profit, but only some. You may find some cheaper, so just keep searching!

The benefit of being a crafter is that you can buy the materials from TP, or farm them if you’re patient, and craft. Regarding equips from 1~79, I don’t think it’s worth crafting at all, since there’s alot of people crafting and they want to sell the items crafted for anything higher than NPC value, so you can always get some really great pieces for less.
But at 80 it’s different, and you’ll need to compare the materials price + components against the whole piece. I found some Insignias a bit cheaper (like 10s) than making them, and you could save 60s if you bought all 6 needed.
It all comes down to search and look for the best deal.

Also, if you’re not a crafter yourself you can find a friend or guildie who could craft for less/none/cheaper.

About stats, they’re based on Insignias. I don’t remember Insignias before a certain level (40? 60?) but they’re based on their predicates, for example:

Valkyrie has + + Power, + Vit and + Crit Damage
Berserker has + + Power, + Precision and + Crit Damage
Cleric has + + Healing, + Power and + Toughness
Rampager has + + Condition Damage, + Power, + Vitality
etc

To find them all, go to the TP, click Advanced Search, and put level 80 to 80, select Armor, Coats only, and Exotic only.
Then you’ll find probably the most common name of the armor, ie “Draconic Armor”.
Then put that name in the Search Field, and you’ll get all results for that armor with all predicates.

Valkyrie Draconic Armor, Berserker Draconic Armor, etc Draconic Armor…

Then check every one for the stats you want (I guess there’s 8 types only, +2 that aren’t craftable).
Also, check for a singular piece and find a particular armor name you want, you might find that it’s not obtainable through crafting (if it’s not one of the 8 predicates +armor name you’ll find). Then the only option will be buy them from TP or find where they drop.

About costs, with crafting, it costed me about 11, maybe 12 gold to make all 6 pieces of Draconic Armor (Exotic Heavy Armor 80), use as base to see how much it’ll cost you and if it’s worth crafting or just buying them crafted.

Thanks all that helps a lot.