Guild Wars 2

What is the gear progression in GW2?

I have a 80 warrior.
First I had quest gear, then yellow gear from world boss chests.
Then I’v been doing dungeons and now in full exotic gear (with berserker stats from CoF).

What is the next step, which zones/dungeons/places to do? WHat is the next level of gear that is an upgrade on my current one (which has a nice set bonus now as well)?

Please bear in mind that I hate crafting and won’t do that, open world/dungeons/pvp/wvw is fine I’m doing all of them.

The highest gear tier is Ascended quality. To get that the easiest way is to craft it. Otherwise you just have to pray to RNGeesus that you get some in WvW rank up chests/bonus chests or from doing Teq/Triple Trouble or from doing high level fractals (which you need ascended gear to get into).

Some collections also offer some ascended gear as rewards for completion. Check the wiki link below for more info on how to acquire the gear.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascended_equipment

So after the relatively easily atteinable exotic gear, the next step is the superlong craftable/randomgenerated ascended gear?! There is nothing inbetween? And why do I need ascended gear if I can do the current content happily in my exotic gear?

Nope nothing in between. And unless you have a desire to do level 50 fractals then you don’t need it.

kmark.8519:

So after the relatively easily atteinable exotic gear, the next step is the superlong craftable/randomgenerated ascended gear?! There is nothing inbetween? And why do I need ascended gear if I can do the current content happily in my exotic gear?

Doesn’t the game advertised itself “No gear treadmill”?

This is exactly what it means. If you think exotic is good enough for you, grats mate, this is it, you are no longer required to obtain better stat gear even after expansion hit.

Gear progression is a bit different in GW2 to most other games.

Firstly because it’s relatively short: there’s only 7 tiers (common/white, fine/blue, masterwork/green, rare/yellow, exotic/orange and ascended/pink) and normally by the time you reach level 80 you’ll have at least some rare items and exotics are easy to get.

(There’s also legendary weapons, and soon back items, which have purple text. But those have the same stats as ascended weapons so there’s not really a new tier.)

But the other difference is that all equipment with the same level and rarity is equally good. There is no such thing as ‘dungeon’ gear being better than ‘quest’ gear or ‘crafted’ gear etc. A level 80, exotic beserkers helm from a dungeon is identically to one crafted by a player or one dropped from an enemy. The only difference is the skin they might have. Which means the different methods of acquisition are options to allow everyone to get the gear they need through gameplay they enjoy (or at least don’t mind) rather than a fixed series of progression everyone has to go through.

So basically now you’ve got a full set of exotics with the stats you want you have 2 options:

1) Start working on crafting and/or playing Fractals to get ascended equipment.

2) Since you don’t need ascended for anything except high level Fractals you can just stick with your exotics and play whatever you want, whenever you want instead of worrying about what you have to do to get the next tier of equipment. If you need a goal to work towards you can always pick something else; for example getting skins you like for your gear, doing achievements, making a legendary, collecting items (either those in collections or ones you’re interested in) etc.

Thank you for the replies, this sounds cool, I hate the gear grind (and especially happy that this pve gear works fine for wvw).

kmark.8519:

So after the relatively easily atteinable exotic gear, the next step is the superlong craftable/randomgenerated ascended gear?! There is nothing inbetween? And why do I need ascended gear if I can do the current content happily in my exotic gear?

It’s not random generated as much now. Before, it was ludicrous to try to get a full armor from drop. But I just did it since you can change the stats of your ascended armor/weapons. I’m not saying that there is no randomness, but doing fractal 50 on a regular basis will give you a armor in not that much time.

For the craft, it’s superlong, but it’s not much work. It’s mostly daily crafting.