Guild Wars 2

So I am starting to gear my level 80 Warrior with ascended items. Right now I am working on getting my ascended trinkets. I have been looking at ascended back items and unfortunately I don’t have the money to craft one at the moment. So should I try to put my time into grinding FotM to get fractal relics for the Fractal Capacitor as well as ascended rings? Or should I put more of my time into just making gold and crafting a different backpiece?

Do you find fractals fun? If yes then go for the backpiece!

I find them fun but the rewards:time ratio is a little meh.

What nearlight said. Also, keep in mind a lot of people that do a lot of theses or just 1 a day have banks full of ascended rings, so I wouldn’t rush and obtain them through laurels, guild comms or any other way and I would get them through fractals. Literally banks full.

People play fractals because on average they’re more interesting and challenging than regular dungeons. It’s not quite as bad a grind as it seems as once you get into it, the relics come flying in. Take me, as an example, I played it quite regularly, but not nearly at the level of grinding or farming. I’ve harvested enough relics to make 3 ascended capacitors. That’s a bit over 5.5k relics spent and I still have about 3k or so left. The problem is that there isn’t much else worth spending them on once you have the infusions or Gift of Ascension.

I will say though, it is by far the cheapest way of getting 20 slot boxes. It takes 150 relics to buy a uncommon fractal equipment box and you can make most of that with 1 run at a high level fractal. Doing a run at 41-45 and another between kitten will bring in over 200 relics if you convert the Pristine fractal relics as well. Pristine relics are ok, if you are looking to get a ring with particular stats and you haven’t gotten them as a drop, but once you have the rings you need, it’s not really worth keeping them so just convert away.

Once you really get into Fractals, if you enjoy them, rings start falling from the sky and you’ll never be short of them. I have a mule character that carries nothing but rings, in the vain hope that Anet will let us do something with them.

uberkingkong.8041:

What nearlight said. Also, keep in mind a lot of people that do a lot of theses or just 1 a day have banks full of ascended rings, so I wouldn’t rush and obtain them through laurels, guild comms or any other way and I would get them through fractals. Literally banks full.

I have about 30 Rings, not counting the ones I have on all my level 80s. I also had 4400 Fractal Relics until recently (after having bought 2 backpieces, a handful of Gifts of Ascension, and all of the bags, some twice). I then spent them all on Bloodstone Shards because I wanted to do some more Ascended Crafting and realized I wasn’t using my Relics.

For gearing up on Ascended, this is my method (feel free to disagree or not follow it):
Trinket: WvW Vendor (20 Laurels + 250 Badges)
Time Gated: At least 10 days (10 dailies + 1 monthly).
Accessories: Guild Commendations Vendor (12 GC + 5 Gold | Total 24 GC + 10 Gold)
Time Gated: At least 2 weeks for one or 4 weeks for two (6 GC per Week).
Rings: Fractals (Free running Fractals).
Time Gated: At least 2 days for one or 4 days for two. If starting anew, upwards of 10 days for 1 or 15 days for two. Minimum time required: 1 day for 1 and 1 day for 2, RNG based.

How does the ring work?
If you’re at rank 40+:
Run 1-9 + 10-19 + 20-29 + 30-39 + 40-50 for a total of 5 Pristine Relics in one day.
If you’re at rank 1:
10 runs will get you to Rank 11 and one Ring. You can now get 2 Pristine Relics in one day. 5 days and you get your second Ring.
1 day: Ring drops in Fractal Reward Chest.

Keep in mind, with each Fractal you’re looking at around 1-2 hours of time (usually doesn’t take 2 hours, but it’s better to have the time than to have to leave early, especially if you’re the host of the Fractal).

I don’t think Fractal Capacitor is one of the cheapest backpiece anymore, but most people that get it like the shiny look of the ascended one. The last time I did fotm was months ago, that’s only because I already got everything I needed from it. With a regular lv20 fotm run you get around 50 relics each time (each run takes about an hour or sometimes more), so you could easily get your backpiece in a month. I did fractals for the first few months when I needed ascended, got all the rings for 3 alts as well as 2 ascended backpiece, but stopped around lvl 40 because the groups started being more hostile and a lot more demanding (I usually did fotm for fun, not the grind). I would suggest doing both fractals and dungeons, last time I remember fotm didn’t give you much gold even with all the loot. Once you get all the ascended drops and 20 slot bags you need, it’s up to you whether you want to do high lvl fotm or not.

@nagr, higher level fractals pay for themselves. You typically don’t have sloppy runs and will clear things relatively fast as long as you’re not being stupid. By that point, all of the worse players have been seeded out and you’re left with people who play well with random people and know what they need to do. You might need to say a word or two to coordinate something like reflect timings, but for the most part it’s just a “plug n play” group (oh god I hate those words).

Additionally, each bonus chest is hard-coded as 1g, but the end chests end up giving you around 1-3g per run (not fractal, but whole run). You can definitely get more, as I’ve gotten multiple Lodestones over the course of a single run, but you shouldn’t expect too much.

Factor in the Relics, and it’s not a bad deal. Also, the loot is pretty far-spread meaning you’re in a good position to get multiple different Exotics with skins.

Of course, if you’re just aiming for money, getting a dungeon speedrun group is much better and more efficient. Heck, even solo/duoing Arah and selling the paths will net you more gold/time, unless you’re not capable of doing that yet.

My answer would be no.

I’ve played fractals quite a bit and I never had enough resources to make the back item. The blade skittene was comparatively easy to make.

It’s ironic that you’ll generally have much faster and smoother runs at the high levels of fractals than at the low levels. Mainly because of experience. The high level players know all the strategies to deal with pretty much any situation where as the low level players often are ones who are getting started and are finding their feet

As an example, I did a 49 fractal run ending in Mai Trin. We got through the whole run in a little more than an hour with no wipes at the end. Compared to a lowbie 19 that I spent ages on at Mai Trin constantly wiping with the pugs because they were terrified by her attacks. >.>