Guild Wars 2

One of the funny things about GW2 is that the most expensive equipment is not actually the best. (This is a concept called horizontal progression.)

The best equipment is ascended which is mostly obtained by crafting (it does drop, but extremely rarely).

Once you’ve got that (or exotics if you don’t want ascended, exotics are fine for almost everything in the game) you can then think about getting cool skins. Strangly enough most of these start off either as skins with no stats that have to be applied to another piece of equipment to be used or as exotics. They come from a whole variety of places: drops, the forge, achievements, story quests, purchased with in-game currencies, the gem store etc. and the price will vary hugely and since they’re purely cosmetic it’s not always the ‘best’ ones which are the most expensive.

You can look at the galleries on the wiki or various fan sites, or use the wardrobe in game to choose ones you like and then use the wiki to find out how to get them.

Keep in mind that some weapons and armor are not currently available, or that if you just go by a look while you’re putting it together, you might end up choosing either one that’s not available, or one that needs a lot of time/luck/whatever to get it.

Still, I second getting equipment with the stats you want (start with exotic – they’re not that hard to obtain, even if it takes a little time for your first, and there are multiple ways to get it, depending on the stat combo you want), then looking at skins/upgrading eventually to ascended.

Keep in mind as well that the trait system is going to change completely on this coming Tuesday, so you may want to see if that will change what stats you might want.

When you say “best possible equipment”, do you mean best stats, or best looks?

Because the best stat equipment is Ascended, which you need to craft by getting the relevant crafting skill to 500. However, Ascended gear is a whopping 5% better than Exotic gear, so most people just use exotic, because it’s a LOT cheaper. You can get exotic gear many ways; through crafting at 400 skill level, through purchase with dungeon tokens, karma, or badges of honor, and, of course, by buying them on the trading post.

The items you see on the trading post that are so insanely expensive aren’t the best stat items, they’re just extremely rare skins, that you can just apply to your gear obtained through other means.

(Yes, legendary weapons have ascended stats, but it’s far cheaper to craft an ascended weapon than a legendary if you just want the stats.)

The best grade is exotic as the others say. You can change it at npc for tokens from dungeons or buy for badges of honor (crafting or buying on trading post sometimes expensive)
After a while you can change guild recommandation, laurers for ascended trinkets ( you need 4 weeks to have all of them)
Ascended armors are expensive and you need a lot of time to make them and in most places you cant feel the difference. (In most of the dungeons you have a stat max so you just waste points) the only place where you need them are the 30+ fractals

Most of those extremely expensive skins were cheap when they just came out. They are so expensive now because there were only so many in the game and supply has dropped to low numbers. There are new weapon skins added through the Black Lion chests every month or so. Look them over when they come out and see if they are anything you like. They are at their cheapest during their first month.

The current skins are the Scientific. http://dulfy.net/2015/06/09/gw2-scientific-weapon-skins-gallery/