Guild Wars 2

It’s not the only way. You can drop ascended chest, but getting all the right stats you want is almost impossible. So basically, you don’t really have a choice. You need to craft it.

Crafting is the only guaranteed way to get all ascended gear with the stats you actually want. You can get ascended chests from various events and game modes, but the stats you get will be based on RNG.

You can now change the stats of ascended gear (weapons and armor). So it might be cheapest to get ascended loot with any random stats and then convert them to the stats you want.

However I’m not sure how this is done. Neither the converting nor getting the ascended loot. I do know you won’t get them in WvW, so don’t bother looking there

My guess would be that you get the loot from fractals and the converting probably happens in the mystic forge.

Let me look it up. This looks like a good place to start:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascended_equipment <- stat changing info here
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascended_armor
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascended_weapon
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascended_chest <- the chests you need to find if you don’t want to craft them

True, I did forget about the fact that you can change stats now. You do it by making an exotic insignia or inscription with the stats you want. Then you put that item, the ascended equipment piece, 5 ectos, and an item bought with spirit shards into the forge to make the new piece with the new stats.

@MMOINKS put together this YouTube video that shows how to reset stas on any Ascended armor piece or weapon.

Enjoy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQanZidd82Y

With the ability to change stats in the MF high level fractles are now a somewhat viable way to get armor/weapons. There is droprate research from a guild that does fractles a lot it’s basically about 15% to get an ascended weapon/armor piece at lvl 30 and it slowly goes up as you increase lvl to about 20% at 50 armor is about 2x as likely as weapons.

Another way is Teq I’ve had some pretty good luck with him and got 2 asended weapons from about 25 runs so I think there is a decent chance with him, but keep in mind that there are people who have done him everyday since release and got nothing so RNG is RNG.

WvW rank up chests have about a 0.5% to drop an ascended item but this can be a ring, a weapon, or armor so you could easily only get crap stat rings like me.

Champ bags can also drop drop weapons/armor but the drop rate is >0.1% to put that in perspective I’ve gotten 2 items from champ bags in 4000hr and that’s kinda lucky.

PvP loot boxes can drop them too but again the rate is really low not sure of the specifics on it.

These are listed in the order of easiest- hardest for ascended item acquisition.

Lordwafflez: Just to put things in perspective, I have been playing for about 5000 hrs now and I am still waiting for my first Ascended chest to drop. So I would not put much faith in RNG presents if you really want ascended items.

Here are some tips for the Luckless.

• Ascended rings drop from Fractals of the Mists daily reward chests.
• Amulets, Rings and Accessories can be bought with Laurals(buying in WvW for Laurals and Badges of Honor is most efficient)
• With a concerted effort you can craft to 500 in just a few hours if you have the materials and gold. There are numerous guides on fast crafting available.

Remember: Ascended are only ~5% better than Exotics(and ANet just recently changed their mind on upping it to 10% so I wouldn’t expect that to change anytime soon.). Unless you are hardcore PvP, Ascended items are just not needed.

Now, that being said, I only do PvE and my main character is in Full Ascended armor, weapons, backpack and trinkets. Why? Just because it was there I guess.