Fastest way to get tribal armor skins?
On average their the same, ~8 hours of play time per track. But sPvP is more volatile due to win/loss avg, and whether or not there’s a tournament running. Queue times can also set you back if you plan on using boosters.
WvW is more consistent, but theres a ramp up time with participation to get the reward track up to max tier. Depending on time of day, and the current activity level of your server, it can take between 10-30 minutes get T6 participation. But once up, it takes a reasonably small effort to maintain it; and as long as you harass guard posts, capture camps, or run with the zerg, you never have to worry about the decay timer. This consistency makes it the ideal situation to pop boosters, and can indirectly help gain reward track (slightly) faster.
But before I dive into that…. I would recommend the following:
- Do both sPvP and WvW in parallel, but use 2 different characters. On one character do a couple sPvP rounds a day to get the Daily rewards, which contain pvp reward track potions. Even though this progresses a separate reward track, you can advance this very casually by only spending ~30min a day (2 rounds) on it. Its quick enough, and will typically knock out 2-3 of the 40 reward ticks to get the end reward. (Don’t forget to get the PvP reward track guild buff).
For WvW, the efficiency of boosters are much higher due the very consistent ticking of the reward track. Unboosted it takes roughly 8 hours to finish a reward track…. but with minor bonuses (guild boost 10%) knocks that down to 7.2h. Exp boosters (but not the birthday/login ones) can boost the reward track gain (50%)… but their really expensive to run, giving only 2 hours each. At the current gem prices thats 25g each booster.
Despite not counting toward the reward track… I would still recommend using the Birthday/celebration boosters, as they double the your WvWXP, and thus rank gain. This is critical for playing in WvW for extended periods, as Ranking gives you points for character upgrades in WvW. These substantially increase your utility in the game mode, and makes its easier to get points and keep participation up. Faster ranking also gets more rank reward chests (coin, badges, and loot). You also get bonuses for Skirmish rewards if your rank is high enough (1 bonus pip at 160); and the Skirmish rewards are where real pay out is now (including small reward track progress).
For both of these, theres a seasonal Buff called “Call of the Mists”, which show up whenever Anet is hosting some kind of PvP event. This bonus applies to both sPvP and WvW, and boosts the reward track gain by 15-25%, depending on how high profile the event is. The sPvP League Season is a big one…. and I would definitely advise participating in them if you like sPvP. The reward tokens can be put toward discounted ascended gear, and is an opportunity to knock out the one-time reward tracks for extra mystic clovers.