Guild Wars 2

So i hit 80 and i got no idea the best way to obtain gear, should i look for vendors to spend karma do dungeons are finish completing the maps? I dont have HoTs either dunno if that makes huge problem for gearing at 80 , any help would be very much appreciated

Gear in GW2 is much simpler than in many games. There are only 2 relevant tiers at level 80: exotic (orange text) and ascended (purple text) and all equipment within a tier is equally good – exotics bought from an NPC are just as good as ones dropped from a world boss, or crafted or anything else.

Exotics are widely available and relatively cheap/easy to get. Ascended is much more expensive and difficult to obtain, but only slightly more powerful. Which means it’s probably best to get a set of exotics first and then only get ascended if you want a long-term goal or really want to do high level Fractals (where it’s needed).

You can get exotics from a lot of different places and since they’re all equally good it’s pretty much up to you how you get them. The simplest is to buy them from the Trading Post. You can also craft them, or buy them from NPCs in Orr with karma, or WvW with Badges of Honour. You can find them, sometimes get them from collections and other achievements and you can get them with dungeon tokens.

You can also mix and match different ways to get them if you don’t have enough of one currency.

Having said that one thing you really need to think about is what stat combination you want. This makes a huge difference to how your character plays and some combinations are only available in certain ways – for example different dungeons offer different stats.

This wiki page is a good starting point to work out how to get what you want: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Attribute_combinations#Three_attributes

Slight edit: Exotic (orange) and Ascended (pink). It’s Legendary that is (purple), and not necessary (just optional), especially for a new L80.

Good luck.

As an addition to that ascended is just barely relevant. You definetly want trinkets and they are readily available, the extra armor/weapon stats is negligable in every scenario except min-max hardcore raiding. I honestly dont even consider it a goal in terms of gearing.

For your first L80, it’s fine to slowly upgrade to exotic as you can afford to upgrade, via Karma (using so-called Temple armor), buying on the trading post, or crafting your own. As a new 80, you’re still learning aspects of the game, and that’s demonstrably more important to do than improving your gear — gear (and build) matters; it’s just that how you use your gear (and build) matters more, in GW2.

As you do stuff with others, they will care more about your gear, mostly because there’s no way to guess someone’s skill other than judging a book by its cover. The presumption is that skilled players use appropriate gear (although in my estimation, this turns out not to be true that often).

In short, take your time gearing up. If you get stuck or as you grow your personal skill playing the game, come back and ask “what’s the best way to do X” and we can help with that.

I don’t know if you’re on a free to play account or not, but if you are on a paid account you get laurels every few days of logging in. You can spend those at a Laurel vendor in Lion’s arch for example (southern bit of the map) to buy ascended accesories for a pretty large stat boost. Without HoT it’s probably easiest to get exotics through dungeons or outright buying them from either Orr karma vendors (limited stat combos) or the trading post.

If you do ever wish to get ascended items (it’s for later really.. I’ve been playing on and off since launch, only have 2 full ascended chars). Ascended weapons give a meaningful stat boost, the same is true for trinkets. Armor is hardly worth it due to the tiny stat difference on those.

I do want to add that Heart of Thorns provides you with 1 lvl 80 booster that also comes with a box with a full set of exotic gear and weapons/trinkets. Plus the Heart of Thorns maps give a lot more access to exotic equipment in general (either from map rewards or achievements), even some fairly easy ascended weapons.

Small addition: If its is your first lvl 80, you could also try to buy lvl 78 exotic gear of the TP, which is muuuch cheaper than the lvl 80-stuff while the impact in quality is barely noticeable.

At 42k karma for a single piece , I think it’s generally a better idea to just farm gold though if you have the karma, then you can definitely buy it. Note you can’t salvage karma armor so any runes or whatever are lost unless you use a upgrade extractor which you shouldn’t.

The weapon is the most important component. Focus on getting a good exotic weapon with decent sigils in it. Then you want to have at least rare trinkets. Armor/backpiece is lower priority though you want to make sure you have some kind of upgrade slotted into them. Chest > legs > head= boots > gloves > shoulders

Same logic applies to ascended but that can wait.
Focus on doing dailies whenever possible (2g) and world bosses. Get these armors: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Named_armor
Level 78 ones are also fine

Try to avoid spending too much on trinkets as you can get ascended trinkets from laurels.

A relatively inexpensive way to get a backpiece is through the crafter backpacks which can give an exotic level backpack (but better than regular exotics)

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Crafter%27s_backpack

You would have to level to 400 to get the exotic version; I’d go with chef since it’s fairly easy to level: http://gw2crafts.net/cooking.html

Finally, certain inexpensive consumables can also help bridge the gap and makes things easier. For what amounts to the same cost as a single WP use every 30 minutes, chances are you will match fully geared 80s as many don’t bother with food.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Scoop_of_Mintberry_Swirl_Ice_Cream
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Peppermint_Oil (Unnecessary for easy content, but nice to have if you run into problems.)

Both foods also boost karma.

I made this a while back— this would be a budget level 78 exotic build for fresh 80s— Prices have fluctuated a bit but it should be around the same: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LhXRuxjD5L0CFfLmx_e_lPyrIl5_dC6DOy5sa2Xkz40/edit?usp=sharing

Also it’s for medium classes, but it should be cheaper for light/heavy; naturally you will need to get the appropriate gear.

Lethalvriend.1723:

I don’t know if you’re on a free to play account or not, but if you are on a paid account you get laurels every few days of logging in. You can spend those at a Laurel vendor in Lion’s arch for example (southern bit of the map) to buy ascended accesories for a pretty large stat boost. Without HoT it’s probably easiest to get exotics through dungeons or outright buying them from either Orr karma vendors (limited stat combos) or the trading post.

If you do ever wish to get ascended items (it’s for later really.. I’ve been playing on and off since launch, only have 2 full ascended chars). Ascended weapons give a meaningful stat boost, the same is true for trinkets. Armor is hardly worth it due to the tiny stat difference on those.

I do want to add that Heart of Thorns provides you with 1 lvl 80 booster that also comes with a box with a full set of exotic gear and weapons/trinkets. Plus the Heart of Thorns maps give a lot more access to exotic equipment in general (either from map rewards or achievements), even some fairly easy ascended weapons.

FYI: Play4Free accounts can not post on the forums, so if you see anyone post, you can be sure they have a paid account. =)