Guild Wars 2

Hey people,

So Iv been looking for a new game to play and I came back to look at how GW2 has been doing, and from what I can tell its quite vibrant on various forums, reddit, etc. Most websites dedicated to the game are up to date and ready for the new expansion coming out. I felt this was a great time to hop back into GW2 but I have a lot of questions:

*I got the game on release and quickly got to 80, had a great time, just decided to stop. So I still have that char and am trying to get into end game

1. Just a quick observation that ALL of the gear is the same so far that Iv bought or came accross. I usually buy things on the trading post when my drops arent up to my level. So I logged in for the first time since release and went and bought a few Rare items on the TP to be better equipped to get exotics. That was something that really annoyed me when I left the game and seeing as its been 2 years and the gear Im looking at for lvl 80 are still all the same and I still look like a godkitten pirate is just irritating. Thoughts? Does this REALLY change for exotics, or do people just get gear for stats and transmog them for the cool looking stuff?

2. From what I understand, the different ways to get exotic gear are pretty much the same as how you wanted to level: PvP, WvW, or Dungeons (PvE). Iv heard things about not being able to remove runes or sigils from exotic gear you get from PvP or WvW. From what I can see, its all the same, you do the objective, get tokens, go to respective vendor and buy the gear. Why would they make the ability to remove sigils or whatever different for each playstyle? So are there advantages or disadvantages to getting gear a certain way? The whole gear thing is really overwhelming, iv read a few guides that help though.

3. Now theres ascended stuff….just more stuff…so much stuff. What will I need that for? Exotics are what you need to run Fractels right? And for WvW and PvP exotics just make you kick butt? So Ascended gear is just making you even better, or will you need it to do the next set of dungeons in the expansion?

Thanks to anyone who can help explain all this

Exotics are fine. Ascended armor is primarily for fractals for AR.

Other than a few drops, I buy my exotics off the TP then, as needed, change the skin. So just farming gold (lots of posts about that) and buying what you need is a good option. Sounds like you are not crafting, so collect any nodes you pass along the way and sell.

1. Get gear for stats and then transmute into a look you enjoy. Here’s a gallery of medium armour (different races/genders selectable at the bottom) – http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Human_male_medium_armor

2. Yes you can buy then in different ways. I believe the inability to salvage the armour bought with Badges of Honor/Karma is an effort to maintain balance for some higher end mats as both currencies are easily accessible.

3. Ascended is needed for higher rated fractals. At level 10 agony is introduced and (apart from a couple of exotics) ascended gear is the only stuff that can take agony resistance infusions.

sPvP uses normalized gear/stats so you can take a level 2 (you’re upscaled to 80) into sPvP and still win.

Ok thanks guys. So I would just look at that gallery and decide which exotics I want and do the respective objective to attain. Iv been reading that everyone should basically just go for berserker stats, is this true?

Berserker is the meta. The idea being, kill them before they kill you. Thus the focus on Power (damage), Precision (criticals), and Ferocity (crit damage).

That doesn’t mean that’s what you have to go with. You could mix in other stats if you want more health or armor for survivability. Or if you want to play a condition-based necro.

You can always have more than one set of armor, too. So could have a berserker set to make the dungeon speed run people happy and another when you’re just running around squashing things.

kittennDrrn.1280:

Ok thanks guys. So I would just look at that gallery and decide which exotics I want and do the respective objective to attain. Iv been reading that everyone should basically just go for berserker stats, is this true?

Yes and no.

Beserker is the most unforgiving of mistakes. People with slow reflexes, high ping, etc., might be better off with a set of stats with more surviveability. If you can do the content without dying an excessive number of times then get zerker. Otherwise you might want to look at something else, like Knights.

I started off with knights on mine then upgraded piece by piece as I got better at surviving.

Okay, cool. I also noticed on the wiki it says to get the gear from dungeons, I have to complete it in explorable mode. What exactly does that mean? Is that the same as using LFG to do the dungeon?

You don’t have to get dungeon gear. It’s one way that’s cheap but you have to run enough dungeons to get the gear. You can also get karma armor from temples if you have enough karma. The different temples have different stats. Or, of course you can buy or craft.

LFG is the best way to find a dungeon group. There is story mode and explorable mode. You do it in explorable mode to get the dungeon tokens. If you haven’t done the story mode yet then someone who has done it needs to be the first one in each time to open the explorable mode. If you go in first it will trigger story mode.